Neil Ang (personal)

Hyperspaces ...Hyperawesome

Sat, 18 Oct 2008 10:06:00 GMT

My most anticipated software release of this year is Tony Arnold's "Hyperspaces". This new application extends Leopards built-in Spaces application to add features that you would expect out-of-the-box for a multiple desktop program. Hyperspaces lets you set custom backgrounds, colours and labels on each desktop, giving each space its own special "flavour" (why would you want four identical desktops??). The application also allows you to set custom hot keys to quickly add and remove more rows of spaces as you need them.

I was lucky enough to be on the early beta program for this app, and I have been really impressed by what Tony has been able to do and how well Hyperspaces has been built. Why Apple didn't ship these features with Spaces originally is a mystery to me, as these set of features substantially improves the user experience of Spaces.

My favourite feature of the app is the colour blends. I've set a different colour tint and label on each desktop. The colours blend with my wallpaper to give a distinct variation on every desktop.

I would highly recommend trying out this app.

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Things to know before going to WWDC

Sat, 21 Jun 2008 06:59:00 GMT

As most of you know I spent last week in San Francisco attending WWDC ‘08. I had a great time thanks to the AUC, and highly encourage others to attend this conference next year if they have the opportunity. It is worth it.

Here are some tips for anyone who is thinking of going in 2009:

1. Bring a list of issues you want solved

The conference has sessions that run all day, but they also have labs where you can get Apple engineers to help solve issues with your software. These labs gave me a chance to talk with the actual engineers who work in the field of my software problems.

2. Take business cards

I didn’t take any business cards with me, but a few people asked for my email address and it would of been perfect if I had a business card to give them. You don’t need a business to have a business card. Just include your name, email address and website (if you have one).

3. Take your equipment

This one is pretty much a given, but if you have a laptop, take it along. If you have an iphone or ipod touch, take that as well. Apple set up a convenient website for the attendees with the latest session updates and news which I checked everyday. They also had a version of the site that worked on the iphone. Very handy.

4. Partition your hard drive

Before I left Australia, I backed up and formatted my hard drive to clear up some space. I also made a separate partition incase we got new software. After I got a copy of snow leopard I was able to install it straight away alongside leopard.

5. See San Francisco while you are there

The AUC had arranged a bus tour for the Australian delegates, and we had an awesome day seeing all the highlights of the area. We checked out the Googleplex, Apple HQ and the computer history museum. Silicon valley is a great place for nerds to site see.

6. File bug reports before you attend

A common response to questions in sessions and labs was “file a bug report”. The engineers are not able to fix things on the spot, so if you have found a major problem with an API or system, its better to file a bug report before you attend.

7. Prepare to get up early

Jet-lag along with early morning sessions and late nights out will leave you feeling tired most of the week. Luckily there are plenty of starbuck stores around and other coffee outlets.

8. Attend parties

During the week parties are held by various organisations to celebrate WWDC. If you are thinking of attending any, make sure you RSVP. I would also recommend going to the “Stump the experts” event and the Apple design awards.

9. Don’t be afraid to meet people

At the conference you are surrounded by developers, engineers and Apple enthusiasts. It is a great chance to make contacts and spread your own name as well (again, take business cards).

10. Don’t feel bad about missing sessions

A lot of interesting sessions and labs are run concurrently at the conference which means you will miss sessions that you wanted to attend. If there is a conflicting lab and session, attend the lab as the sessions become available on video after the conference.

And finally, enjoy the time there as much as possible and take lots of photos. The week will go by very quickly.

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Auto-respond FAIL

Sun, 08 Jun 2008 00:28:25 GMT

Before I left for San Francisco last Friday, I thought I would be smart and write an auto-response rule in Apple Mail instead of Groupwise. I set my mail rule to send an auto-response message to any email received in my Groupwise inbox that was addressed to me. This worked, but a little too well. What I should of done is made the rule send an auto-response message to any new email received. Oops. There are 5900+ emails in my inbox. I think Apple Mail sent a message to all of them.

So sorry to everyone who has been getting heaps of auto-response messages from me lately. I've turned the rule off, and won't be setting another one anytime soon.

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White whale: A blog undesigned

Tue, 03 Jun 2008 08:30:00 GMT

Relaunching a site is usually about enhancements to design. Well, I've never been one to follow the herd: I'm shaking up the mix by undesigning my blog. Say hahlo to my new design the "White Whale".

For some time now, I've been pondering how to make neilang.com a better site for users. My thoughts on this have been many, but I keep coming back to the same three goals:

Accessibility;
Speed;
Navigation.

I realised that over-designing my site was hindering these goals, not helping them. From this was born the White Whale - a clean, stripped-back, easily navigable design with super-fast loading time and scalability across a range of different platforms.

But how, you say? Read on...

By reducing images, enabling gzip compression and reducing white space from mark-up, I was able to reduce the site size to a miniscule 17KB, reducing the load size by 92%. I rock.

By using the WAI guidelines as the basis of my design, I was able to greatly increase my site's compliance with accessibility standards.

By allowing all posted content (e.g. articles, categories, comments) of my site to be fed directly to a user's RSS reader, I can offer users the ability to select only the elements that they want to read.

With the sites reduced size and increased accessibility, it should view well on an iPhone. But if you are still stuck in the middle ages (like me), and have a Sony Ericsson or Nokia, I've made you m.neilang.com. This is a super cut-down valid WAP 1.0 version of my site.

Thoughts?

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Intelleject: An experiment in Cocoa

Sun, 23 Mar 2008 00:45:00 GMT

Earlier this year I was lucky enough to attend a workshop on cocoa (which was kindly sponsored by the AUC). It was a great 3 days of programming and introduction into the world of cocoa. Since then I have been playing around with ideas for mac applications.

A crazy app idea I had a while ago was an assistant service to remove mounted volumes. Thanks to the training provided by the AUC and the advanced assistance that Tony Arnold has provided me, I have been able to write my first cocoa application.

Intelleject might not look like much, but I had to learn a lot to create it. It's a service that you call through the shortcut ⌘-e, to visually review and eject (by single clicking) volumes. My aim was to make it simple.

Features:

Core Animation - It uses leopards implicit animations to visual change the number of volumes
System notifications - The app listens for mount/unmount notifications to detect if it needs to update its display
Bindings - Tricky for a beginner, but great when you work them out.
Global shortcut key - Globally binding it to ⌘-e was the most difficult task. I wanted the application to override the default eject shortcut key.

I would like to invite you all to try it out, and let me know what you think of my first applicaiton ;)

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Learn How To Juggle

Sat, 15 Mar 2008 23:11:00 GMT

Last Thursday I was talking with Dean about ideas for new sites. Most of them were silly ideas and would never work, but there was one I felt I could accomplish successfully.

So over the last couple of days I've been working on a new site that teaches visitors how to juggle. I'm happy to announce it is now live. There are some pages that I'm still writing, but the basics for learning how to juggle are there.

Please check out my new site: Learn How To Juggle, and leave a comment on this post of your thoughts.

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And We're Back

Sat, 01 Sep 2007 14:50:00 GMT

With only 2 months till neilang.com turns 1, I've decided to give the web site a 2.0 style extreme makeover. Things you may notice include my new logo, social content and web host.

I've swapped blogging software to symphony (an XML/XSL based system) and built this brand new theme (what do you think?). It's still a work in progress, so things might change a little.

I've also swapped to Dreamhost, a hosting company that is carbon neutral.

And finally, if you haven't found it yet, I've included content from my social networks on this blog. You can also subscribe directly to the feeds as well:

N.B. Don't forget to update your RSS feed (the URL has changed)

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