Blog:
Ramblings and randomness on happenings and hobbies.
2013
Raise a Single Window by Title on Mac OS-X
Posted:08 Jun 2013
Tags: AppleScript Objective-C Snippet##Update: Not three full days after posting this, come to find it does not work on OS-X Maverick beta. See the bottom for the updated solution. Ever since switching off of a dedicated application for my Gmail access, no more Mailplane, the one thing I have missed most is the ability to use a keyboard shortcut to raise Gmail to...
N-Dimensional Array Allocation in C
Posted:31 May 2013
Tags: C SnippetAs languages go, C is not well known for its support of multi-dimensional arrays. While recent standards updates in the C99 and C11 releases have increased the support for allocation and use of both statically and dynamically allocated arrays using the type name[size1][size2]...[sizen] syntax, it retains significant limitations. The biggest of which is that it allocates the array entirely on...
Finding the GMail URL scheme for iOS: Part 2
Posted:17 May 2013
Tags: iOSBack in January I went on a quest looking for a good way to open gmail URLs on iOS. At first the attempt focused on doing it in the browser but for some reason the url scheme used by desktop GMail is completely different from that used by the mobile versions, and is not consistently portable. That led to the...
OpenCL error checking
Posted:29 Mar 2013
Tags: trick GPU OpenCLOpenCL is many things but it is not the easiest programming model to check errors in, as it does not offer a conversion from error codes to error strings at this time. The error codes from the header are relatively straightforward but it’s a bit of a pain to check them every time. /* Error Codes */ #define CL_SUCCESS 0...
Finding the GMail URL scheme for iOS
Posted:29 Jan 2013
Tags: iOSIn iOS, URL schemes are the standard way to open one application from another as well as to pass data to the newly open app. While the method is standard, the schemes used by various applications are not, so it tends to be a bit of an adventure determining how to launch applications made by third parties. The good people...
Herb drying in 2 minutes or less
Posted:02 Dec 2012
Tags: trick food cooking##The problem As we reached the end of the fall, and chill began to set in, my wife found us in possession of a great deal of fresh herbs to deal with. Not wanting to waste them, we set to preparing pestos and a number of other preserved herb delights, but a great deal of oregano, thyme, and thai basil...
My (current) favorite SSH tricks
Posted:04 Jul 2012
Tags: trick ssh##Why? As tools go, ssh is easily one of the most useful in my computer toolbox. There are a lot of tricks up its sleeve, and a lot of little gripes with it as well. These are some of my favorite ways to get it to do really cool things, and diminish problems at the same time. ##The configuration This...
Tutorial: getting started with vim
Posted:25 May 2012
Tags: tutorial vim#Synergy tutorials, vim This is the first in a series of tutorials I’ve put together to present to the synergy group, my research group at Virginia Tech. They were meant to be delivered as presentations, so the format may not be entirely natural when read, but I hope some will find this useful. ##Starting materials: A tar archive with a...
IPDPS2012, welcome to Shanghai
Posted:12 May 2012
Tags: travelIPDPS 2012 is being held in Shanghai this week, and I am here to deliver two talks and chair two back-to-back sessions in the HPPAC workshop. Surprise number one arriving in Shanghai, the conference hotel is inside of a full-size stadium. Somehow I didn’t expect that from a computing conference, but the further surprise was that the stadium was hosting...