“If you don’t know where to start, start from writing tests.”

Sometimes a little bit of automation goes a long way and other times it may be just wasted time. I have run into one of these situations recently when dealing with Xcode and trying to rename menu items from NewApplication to the Application Name.

For Example:

Quit NewApplication -> Quit TestApp

My first approach was to use Ruby open the MainMenu.xib and do a replacement. This technique may prove to be useful in the future when I have more command line tools for other tasks, but currently there is a much simpler way of dealing with renaming menu items.

1. Right click on MainMenu.nib and select “Open As” -> “Source Code File”

2. Press: “Command-F” to open find/replace dialog

3. Replace all NewApplication strings with desired application name.

That’s it

I have spend some time wondering why would Apple decide to style their buttons in a non-standard way and then not respect the css style set by the designer. I just found the answer how to get rid of the Apple predefined style and allow the buttons to look like in every other browser. To do this you have to set the webkit-appearance property to none:


input { --webkit-appearance: none; }


That’s all.

I have always been a fan of open source and wanted to contribute some code to a project or two. Somehow, I never found a project I would really enjoy and could directly benefit from as well. I was simply looking for an project that would scratch my itch.
Finally while working on an e-commerce system for my company I have decided to use active_merchant to connect to PayPal. The original implementation used by active_merchant was targeting and older xml based gateway and I have decided to re-implement the gateway using more recent NVP (name-value pair) interface. Hopefully this will allow for more modern features of the PayPal service.
A few days ago Cody has committed my patch and it is currently part of the active_merchant main code.

I have also created git repository where I can add more functionality as needed.
Here is the link for the interested:

git clone http://git.furmanek.net/active_merchant.git

Enjoy.

“My Google is as good as your Google.” - Brent Rowland

Dave Thomas shows how to make ruby into a beautiful meta-programming language. So if you want to know how things like has_many in Ruby on Rails works, here is your chance.

http://www.infoq.com/presentations/metaprogramming-ruby

It seems that Google (the search engine) has hard time associating XcodePhoenix with CocoaHeads Arizona or Cocoaheads and Phoenix and people are finding my site when searching for the group. My previous post did not mention the Google forum XcodePhoenix uses for communication so here it is:

http://groups.google.com/group/xcodephoenix

Hope to see you there.

“Chess is mostly mental.” — Chris Tingom

Sometimes it is very cool to work for a small company. It comes with perks you just can’t get in a big corporation. For example, a new computer. Yes my old Dell workstation is still working well; however it is not optimized for a *nix geek. So I my boss let me get a workstation that will better fit my work habits. I got a brand new Mac Pro! I don’t think I could ever get that in a big corporation unless I was working for Apple.

Today we are organizing new Cocoa Heads chapter in Scottsdale Arizona. We hope to be the place for cocoa developers in the Greater Phoenix area.

First meeting meeting will be held at:


Target Training International LTD.
17785 N. Pacesetter Way
Scottsdale AZ, 85255


At: 7:00pm (until 9:00pm)

More information on Cocoa Heads:
CocoaHeads Website

We will conform to the cocoaheads guidelines and schedule for meetings.