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Make a GitHub Project Page that's an exact mirror of your Master branch

Posted 3 weeks, 1 day ago

GitHub has a Project Pages feature that creates a webpage based on the content of the gh-pages branch of a repository. I asked, and subsequently answered, the question of how to get the Project Page to be an exact mirror of the Master branch over on Stack Overflow.

One way I found is to run the following command, which sets a configuration setting that causes every subsequent instance of git push to push the Master branch of the repository into the gh-pages branch:
git config --add remote.origin.push +refs/heads/master:refs/heads/gh-pages

The trouble with this solution is that I'm using the GitHub Mac App, which doesn't use a strict git push. According to their Help page, it does a git pull --rebase. Additionally, even when I select Push from the Repository menu, my git config line isn't adhered to. I'm not sure what's up with that...

I ran through a bunch of my own tests, trying to figure out how this branch mirroring can be done in a GitHub-For-Mac-App-Friendly way. It doesn't seem like you need to go through the exact process they've described to create the gh-pages branch. Over there, they provide the following process along with the disclaimer "Caution: make your working directory clean before you do this (either stash or commit), otherwise this will lose any changes you've made to your project since the last commit.":

1. cd /path/to/repo-name
2. git symbolic-ref HEAD refs/heads/gh-pages
3. rm .git/index
4. git clean -fdx
5. echo "My GitHub Page" > index.html
6. git add .
7. git commit -a -m "First pages commit"
8. git push origin gh-pages

Instead, you can simply create a new branch named gh-pages from within the GitHub Mac App. They probably don't instruct people to do this because what I'm accomplishing here isn't a typical scenario.

You can take these steps to create the 'gh-pages' branch from within the GitHub Mac App:

1. Go to the Branches view of your repository
2. Click the + button on your Master branch to create a new branch - name this 'gh-pages'
3. Click the Publish button to push it to GitHub
4. Use the bottom left menu to checkout the Master branch, if you're not working in the Master branch

Each time you want to update your Project Page, just run these steps to sync your Master branch into your gh-pages branch within the GitHub Mac App:

1. Switch to Branches view
2. Click the Merge View button to display the Merge view
3. Drag the Master branch to the left slot & the gh-pages branch to the right slot
4. Click the Merge Branches button
5. Use the bottom left menu to checkout the gh-pages branch
6. Click the Branch in Sync button to force a synchronization

Pick as a replacement for Digital Color Meter in Mac OS X Lion

Posted 3 weeks, 2 days ago

In previous versions of Mac OS X, I would use Digital Color Meter to hover over parts of my screen to get the HEX color code from certain images. In Mac OS X Lion, however, Digital Color Meter no longer provides hex color values by default. While it's possible to get Digital Color Meter to display HEX values, it is quite a clunky process of diving into the View menu every time the app is opened. Also, the values it displays now are only the two digit codes:

I just grabbed Pick, and it does the job nicely ? And for free!

Pick is invoked either through the Menu bar or the ??L keyboard shortcut. It turns your cursor into a large magnifying-glass-type device that it calls the Loupe. This displays a small area of your screen at the 1 pixel level. The HEX value for each pixel you hover over is displayed within the Loupe.
You can left click to copy the HEX value (in the format you choose in the program's Preferences) to your clipboard. You can also right click to choose a different format to copy your color code in:

View the changes between two branches of a git repository in SourceTree

Posted 3 weeks, 6 days ago

I use git for all my projects, because of how easy it is to deploy new versions & because of how easy it is to maintain two (or more) different versions of one project. I'll be talking a little bit about that second feature in this post.

I typically separate my projects into two branches:

• The Master branch is the production branch. This is the "Look... still has the old tag on, never even played it. Don't touch it! Don't point! It can't be played. That's it, you've seen enough of that one." branch.
• I create a second branch just for development, which is where I do all my actual work.

I don't make any actual commits to the Master branch. All of my work is done within the development branch, and I merge the development branch into the Master branch when I'm ready to deploy a release. Sometimes I'll work so much on the development branch that I'll forget all the changes that I've made since the last merge. If that happens, I turn to SourceTree so that I can view the differences between the last merge and the merge I'm about to complete. To do that, I open the repository in SourceTree (free in the Mac App Store) and click on a branch:

This displays all of the commits for all branches in the top middle window pane. You can kind of see the dev branch in the screen shot above, which is in blue. When I scroll down through the list of commits, I eventually come to the last time that I merged the development branch into the Master branch. This is the last "release version" of the project & I select this entry by clicking it:

Then I scroll all the way back up to the top of the list of commits. I ?-click (command-click ? pretzel-click ? however you refer to it) the very latest commit. This displays, in the bottom left window pane, a list of files that were changed between the last merge and the latest commit. I click through each file, which displays the line-by-line changes in the bottom right window pane, double checking all the changes in order to remind myself of everything I've done. This helps me remember whether I've made any drastic changes that will require further action surrounding deployment.

After I'm comfortable with the changes that will go through, I go back to the GitHub Mac App. I'm much more comfortable doing the actual git work with this app, because of how simple it is. I don't have a very in-depth knowledge of git, and the GitHub App really keeps me from being able to do much harm.

Using a custom version of Git on Mac OS X Lion

Posted 1 month ago

If you're using git-osx-installer to install Git on Mac OS X Lion, and 'git --version' in Terminal isn't displaying the version you've just installed, then your system is using the version of Git that's provided by Xcode Developer Tools.

To use the git-osx-installer version that you've just installed, you'll need to edit the /etc/paths file and add "/usr/local/git/bin" to the top of that file.

To open the file for editing, type sudo nano /etc/paths in Terminal.  Add the "/usr/local/git/bin" line to the top of the file.  To write the file, and exit nano after making that change, type Control-O then Control-X. To allow the change to take place, you'll need to quit Terminal, then open it back up again.

git --version should now report the newly installed git-osx-installer version of Git.

How Multi-File Search in BBEdit improved my workflow

Posted 1 month ago

It's fairly common that I'll have to look through dozens of files for particular lines of text.
Sometimes it's a set of log files that I need to find every instance of a certain action in...
Sometimes it's a CodeIgniter project that I need to find each instance of a function in...

In the past, I've used grep to do this. It allowed me to search an entire directory of files with one command, which was incredibly helpful. I still had to note the filenames that contained the search results, and open those files in an editor. After I was in the editor, I'd have to do another search to actually get to the text that I was looking for.

Now, with BBEdit, I do one Multi-File Search and click the search results that I want to inspect closer. This opens the file in the lower half of the window - just below the search results in the same window. The file is opened directly to the line I need, with the search result highlighted. It's not just a display of the file, either, it's a fully functioning editor.

Fast searching.
Instant access.
Complete context.
In-search editing.

BBEdit just replaced grep in my workflow.

Little Corner: My Open Source Project To Make You A Better Website

Posted 9 months ago

A while back, I ran across two really cool profile/hub/aggregate website providers: Flavors.me and About.me.  I really liked the idea of the personal hub page, and the way that both sites accomplish the design.  So, for my recent website redesign I decided to push my blog over to http://blog.jameschevalier.us and use the base domain name as my own attempt to recreate what I saw Flavors & About doing.

I've decided to call what came out of this idea Little Corner.  The source code of this project is available at GitHub, so you can even implement this for your own website.

I see this form of website as a more functional "business card" type website.  The main page is pretty simple, and static.  There are a few links which look like they'll bring the visitor off to other services, but what they're really doing is bringing the services into the site.  When a link is clicked, the right side of the page displays a translucent overlay on top of the full-screen background with the content of wherever that link would have gone to (Twitter, Foursquare, Last.FM, etc) on top of that.

This has been a great opportunity to jump into a few APIs, as well.  Each of the external services that I'm pulling data from is pulling that data through the service's API.  This makes for a fairly typical experience with a site like Twitter, but allows for some really cool things to happen with the information from sites like Last.FM or Foursquare.

I've just barely started, so there's much more potential in what this open source project could be.  While I was creating the first version of this project, Foursquare released a new version of their API ? I started getting into the Twilio API ? And there's still so much customization to offer within the website itself!

You can see Little Corner in use on my own website right here, and you can either download or contribute to the project right here.

My Open Source 'Viral Launching Soon' Project

Posted 11 months, 1 week ago

I really like the "viral launching soon page" that LaunchRock is doing, which started for them with Forkly's invite page. I decided to see if I could make something similar as part of my ongoing learn-by-doing attempt at web development, and it works (at least in that it isn't broken)!

So what I've created is Launch Soon, a drop-in PHP site that provides a viral launching soon page to collect users (well, their email addresses) before your actual launch date. The site is fairly standard in that it's collecting email addresses, but it also provides a unique URL to each user which keeps track of how many people they get to sign up. The idea is that you'll give preferential access to those who gather the most invites.

This is an early release, so there's still a lot of customization that hasn't been added in yet. The design is really nice, though! It's the result of me converting Mel Choyce's PSD file into CSS, which was yet another first for me. A huge thanks to her for saving me on this one!

It works by taking a person's email address, and creating a four-character hash out of it. It then inserts the email address, the hash, a zeroed 'invites' field into a mysql database. The hash is used for this user's custom URL, which is used to keep track of their invites. When a person joins through a hashed URL, it will search the database for that hash, and increment the 'invites' field for that other user. The idea is that the people who drum up the most invites will have preferred entry into your project.

This also seemed like a great opportunity to create my first github repository, so this project is available for download or collaboration here. Ideally, someone out there will be able to use it as-is ... Or maybe someone will get some use out of it after some modification ... At the very least, I might get some constructive criticism.

Oh, and here's an example of the project in the wild: feebaloo (which is another idea of mine - A network for developers who need beta testers of proven quality, and users who aren't satisfied with just consuming).

A Look At Three Stop Motion / Time-lapse iPhone Apps

Posted 1 year, 1 month ago

I recently tried out a few iPhone apps so that I could play around with stop motion video, and I figured I'd share my thoughts on each of them. The three apps that I tried out were iMotion, iTimeLapse Pro, and StopMotion Recorder.

While I was testing, I found that adding frames to existing videos can have a tendency to change the brightness levels, which throws off the color.  So, it's not usually a good idea to complete a whole project and then attempt to go back and add/edit individual frames; instead, try to get each frame right as you make the video.  This should be taken into consideration for some of the pro/con items listed below.

Another thing that I noticed is that the ability to set the FPS (Frames Per Second) value for the video is extremely important. Sometimes the stop motion video being created is good to go with a low FPS, but sometimes the video needs to move quickly in order to keep that sense of fluid motion.

Below I've listed each app's pros and cons. The list of apps is ordered from what I thought was the best to what I thought was the worst.

iMotion

The notes below are based on version 1.4

PROS

• Big FPS range of 1-30 frames per second
• Ability to duplicate frames - great for adding pauses
• Preview the video (on a loop) without render
• Ability to inject frames at any time
• Offers automatic timelapse mode with number of photos & interval

CONS

• A little slow on the photo-taking... it definitely seems slow next to the freakishly fast 'StopMotion Recorder', so this app's speed is probably normal
• The preview loop is a little jolting, especially if you're previewing early on in your creation or previewing a short clip

iTimeLapse Pro

The notes below are based on version 1.1

PROS

• Unlimited (9,999) frames
• Seems like unlimited frame rate, but the app started crashing before I could verify
• Will also do automatic time-lapse

CONS

• Cannot insert frames to existing videos
• Awkward "take photo" location
• The "take photo" spot (can't quite call it a button, since it's just text) is too small & is crowded by other UI elements
• It takes a long time to take photos
• It takes a long time to render videos
• No preview before rendering
• The app started crashing when I tried rendering videos, and exporting to camera roll failed with error

StopMotion Recorder

The notes below are based on version 1.2.1

PROS

• Takes photos incredibly fast
• Grid is a nice feature to help line things up a bit more
• The UI has good character, without taking away from the experience of using the app
• It's fun

CONS

• Video quality is noticeably pixelated - I consider this a simple toy app until this is fixed
• Limit of 150 frames (using an iPhone 4, with high/large setting)
• Cannot add to existing videos
• Cannot preview the video before rendering

All of the links to iTunes in this post are affiliate links.

Never Miss New Snow With Blizzalert

Posted 1 year, 1 month ago

I've set up a new service called Blizzalert, and I'm really excited about what it can do for fellow skiers & snowboarders.
Blizzalert monitors the weather at over 400 mountains across the United States, keeping track of snowfall. You select which mountains you want to watch, and Blizzalert sends text messages letting you know how much snow is coming, where, and when - all before it happens.

I've done this by hooking into a few APIs. An API is an application programming interface, and there are more and more of them coming out every day - Programmableweb has quite the growing list of them.

Here is a quick look at the APIs that I'm using...

I hook into the NOAA API, provided by Weather.gov, to get the projected snowfall amount at each of the mountains across the United States. This location is based on the Latitude/Longitude of each mountain - those were gathered in a grueling weekend where I was attached by the eyeballs to Google Maps.

I hook into the Twilio API, which allows me to send text messages (the blizzalerts!) to all of my customers. They provide a lot of other features, like voice calling/receiving and transcription, but for this project I only need to send text messages.

I also hook into the Recurly API in order to handle recurring billing. The service costs $2 per month, and there would be a huge headache involved in programming that billing system (never mind the huge amount of concentration that would be required on security). Instead of taking all that work on myself, I simply let Recurly handle that for me.

Here's a little bit of information on the data I'm collecting...

Blizzalert is currently watching over 400 mountains across the United States. I'm aiming for 100% coverage, and I'm really close to that goal already. The majority of these mountains are public ski resorts, but I'm also in the process of adding backcountry spots - there are already a few in Colorado that have been added!

The weather that I'm gathering is strictly NOAA-reported projected snowfall via the Weather.gov rest API, so I'm not doing any calculations on my own (yet) and I'm not getting any "second opinions" yet either. They provide this snowfall amount in six hour chunks, and I'm combining these chunks of time for each day into a total projected snowfall for that day. I'm expecting huge improvements in my weather collection & assessment processes as I continue to work on Blizzalert.

Here's a little bit about how I'm getting these alerts to my customers...

I've decided on text message alerts, because this removes all platform barriers. I'm not limited by who has an iPhone, or who has an Android phone - anyone with a mobile phone (or just a Google Voice number) can subscribe to this service.
Twilio, the service that allows me to accomplish this, provides an API to voice calling and SMS. This is a brilliantly simple service that was the quickest part of this project, but arguably the most important. I've programmed Blizzalert to send text messages through Twilio for each of my customers once per day and only if there is snowfall projected at at least one of their watched mountains. By using Twilio, and not attempting to create this SMS service myself, I'm saving a huge amount of development time and I'm also future-proofing Blizzalert. Twilio automatically scales on their end so that they can handle however many users that Blizzalert grows to.

On to the future...

While Blizzalert is fully functional at nearly 100% of the ski resorts in the United States right now, I still have a huge path open to me for improvements. I expect to add more and more backcountry spots, have even better snowfall projections, and improve the blizzalerts themselves. I'm really excited about what Blizzalert has to offer today, and I'm thrilled by the possibilities that lie ahead.

How Twezr Could Be Our Central Messaging Solution

Posted 1 year, 3 months ago

Twezr is a new iPhone application that brings all of your contacts into one central place. You can open up Twezr and immediately see if you have email, Twitter mentions/DMs, Facebook messages/wall posts, SMSs or missed calls from any of your contacts across all of those services. Click through that first Twezr link to read a couple reviews, see an interview with the CEO, and meet them on Twitter... Then continue reading to hear my take on how Twezr can be fully realized as our Central Messaging Solution by becoming simpler.

The problem that I have with Twezr is that it tries to bring in the general timeline from services, as well. So your Twitter mentions & DMs are competing with the tweets from everyone you follow ... Your Facebook messages are competing with all of your friends' wall posts. I had a quick conversation with Twezr on Twitter (that's a mouthful) about these issues which you can read here:

Instead of their current way about things, Twezr should leave the general timeline (not to mention Twitter Lists!) alone and instead only handle messages that are to you. Here's how I would make that happen:

• Change "Contacts" so it lists my contacts without taking activity into consideration. So, the "Clear", "To See" and "Top" buttons can be removed - maybe the "Clear" button can be swapped out to indicate that it will sort by activity. Selecting a contact should bring me to a an all-inclusive profile screen that combines information from each service. This profile can include the five most recent posts to each service the person has joined. Twezr should allow merging of contacts so there can be one entry for a person that is known across multiple services. The 4-button bar (favorite / call / sms / message) on the profile screen should be left as-is, it's great.
• Change "Messages" to be a prioritized list of messages to me regardless of which service the messages exist on. This screen might look more like what the current "Contacts" screen looks like, but the red icons indicating activity should be changed to tiny icons representing which service the message came through.
• Remove the "Services" screen altogether. If there needs to be a way to view all activity, then add a button in the top bar of the "Messages" screen named "All" or "All Activity".
• Leave the "Compose" screen as-is.
• This might already happen, but make sure that replies seamlessly send back in the same format/service I received them in. If I received an @reply on Twitter, then my reply back should be an @reply (subtracting available characters from the 140 we're allowed to allow the @username text) ... If I receive an SMS and a Facebook message from one person, and I reply to both messages, then my replies should be sent back as SMS and Facebook message respectively.

Basically, the core focus of the app should shift away from the general-purpose status update direction that it seems to be going in and instead hone in on cross-platform (personal) messaging. Twezr has serious potential to be the one inbox for your entire online presence (or, considering this same situation from the other point of view - the one tool to manage your contact list & outbox), but any attention given to general purpose use is just going to limit that impact.