Blag ~ dankrusi.com

Qt Manual/Fixed Layout Manager ("QManualLayout")

Dan Krusi (Daniel Krüsi) — 2012-01-18T11:09:27

I still question whether I missed something very obvious, but it seems difficult to manually layout widgets in the Qt Framework, and there isn't any provided QManualLayout layout manager. Below you will find my implementation of one. And yes, there are plenty of special cases where you might need one. Using my layout manager you can place widgets anywhere on the layout using the common widget methods such as move(), resize(), and setGeometry().

SVN Global Ignore

Dan Krusi (Daniel Krüsi) — 2011-11-24T14:49:54

Are you annoyed by setting svn:prop on all your repositories and subdirectories with the same redundant ignore lists? There is actually a handy configuration setting called global-ignores which will let you ignore specific files client-side in a global fashion. All you have to do is edit your SVN client config file at ~/.subversion/config with something like the following:

64 Bits

Dan Krusi (Daniel Krüsi) — 2011-11-04T10:27:31

64-bit processors and operating systems have been available to general consumers for just about ten years now. It's astonishing how hard it has been for software developers and vendors to fully make the transition to 32-bit architectures. Even when we install a 64-bit version of OS X or Windows, if we look closely there is still a lot of software running in 32-bit mode. Most rude are some of Adobes Create Suit products, such as In-Design CS5, which still runs in 32-bit on OS X. I finally made the complete transition to 64-bit on my Linux machines. I don't have a single bit of code in 32-bit running anymore. Everything is compiled for my 64-bit wide registers and to take advantages of the 64-bit architecture. The upside: Theoretically some software might run faster, but basically it's just progressive and cool. The downside: Some software might be harder to find (and not available). Thank God I use Linux and open source software.

Clipboard Sharer

Dan Krusi (Daniel Krüsi) — 2011-06-23T13:56:55

I use two computers running Linux and OS X for various frustrating reasons, and something that has bugged me for a long time is the wall between clipboards. It's an obvious problem: when I copy something on one machine I want to be able to paste it also on the other machine. So I finally sat down one evening and wrote myself a cross-platform clipboard sharer. Clipboard Sharer lets you share a common logical clipboard between two machines on Linux, OS X, and Windows.

iPhone Tracker

Dan Krusi (Daniel Krüsi) — 2011-04-21T09:46:16

Alasdair Allan and Pete Warden have put together a great piece of software which nicely displays where your iPhone has been over it's lifetime. Below you will find some impressions of my coverage...

Web Developer Extension Mod

Dan Krusi (Daniel Krüsi) — 2011-04-20T18:54:19

If you've ever coded up any HTML/CSS, you'll probably have come across the excellent Firefox/Chrome extension Web Developer by Chris Pederick. I mostly use the tools ability to outline all the block level DOM elements which helps when constructing complex structures. In addition, the tool also can spit out the DOM path (and all it's classes) for any element you hover over ("Outline Current Element"). However, the output of the path is quickly clipped by the size of the browser when displaying highly nested structures. So here is my modded version of Web Developer which solves this problem:

ConvertX for ImageMagick

Dan Krusi (Daniel Krüsi) — 2011-03-16T12:09:53

I use ImageMagick to convert images on a daily basis. It's rarely failed me with missing features or problems, but one thing that really bothers me is the way convert handles batch conversion of *.ext files on Unix. Other than no being able to easily change/append/prepend filenames, the greatest problem is that all images are done in one process. That means if I convert 200 images, they are all done in one convert process. That's why I wrote ConvertX, which simplifies this process for me and splits up batch jobs into separate commands.

Pixelation

Dan Krusi (Daniel Krüsi) — 2010-06-15T15:39:43

I recently came across photographing some close-ups of several iPhone/iPad Apps we developed at Nerves. Fore some reason, I had forgotten how wonderful our back-lit LED displays are. Isn't it amazing that these screens work for countless hours with hardly any visible error.

Welcome to the Digital Age

Dan Krusi (Daniel Krüsi) — 2010-05-23T14:51:24

I was recently interviewed for a documentary film about life in the digital age. Below are some excerpts which might be of interest.

Stretching the Timeline in Flash

Dan Krusi (Daniel Krüsi) — 2010-01-25T11:02:12

One of the greatest lacking features in Adobe Flash is the ability to stretch the timeline. I find this an unbelievable missing feature. I assume the reason it is missing is because of the technical questions that arise when stretching the timeline: mainly that which has to do with rounding errors. Because flash is keyframe oriented, rounding errors can become sorely visible when performing stretch operations. A difficult problem to solve universally. However, in many cases these errors can be ignored. Below is my JSFL script which will stretch the selected frames on the timeline by any given factor.

New Finder Window for OS X

Dan Krusi (Daniel Krüsi) — 2009-11-27T14:38:58

Developing software for OS X and iPhone OS requires a significant amount of time spent in the OS X operating system. While OS X is really nice and user friendly, there are many little things which annoy me to a point of insanity. These annoyances mostly have to do with the inability to tweak and change user-interface behavior, which is limitless in the world of Linux/Gnome.

My Very Own Soft-Bodied Robot

Dan Krusi (Daniel Krüsi) — 2009-07-13T15:29:10

Everybody that knows me knows my fascination for robotics. Recently, I have been fixated by the idea of a soft-bodied mobile robot - more precisely, a teddy bear stuffed with electronics and a small brain. You see, I believe that simplicity is key to jump starting the robotic revolution. Instead of mimicking every human joint using mechanical devices to build a humanoid, I find it much more effective and efficient to look into design techniques which yield similar results but by a heavily reduced complexity factor. This is why I am stuffing a teddy bear with a simple skeleton made up of six moving parts. For the last few nights I have spent some time realizing my design for a robotic teddy bear. After a few hours of work the teddy is already stuffed with all the necessary electronics and I have created my first prototype. Below some impressions:

Introduction to Robotics

Dan Krusi (Daniel Krüsi) — 2009-06-23T11:06:39

For all those interested, below is a copy of the introduction in my Bachelor Thesis...

Compiling/Building a Static version of Qt 4.5

Dan Krusi (Daniel Krüsi) — 2009-05-29T16:28:31

God Bless Qt/Trolltech/Nokia for their very excellent cross-platform framework, but sometimes, even I admit it can be a pain (despite my deep love and passion for it). My latest pain is with the static builds of Qt version 4.5.0/4.5.1. I have spent a considerable amount of time getting this build environment to work on a fresh Ubuntu installation. Below you will find the instructions to make yourself your very own static build...

Complex Numbers

Dan Krusi (Daniel Krüsi) — 2009-04-27T10:42:44

To better understand complex numbers and how their various functions work, I implemented a templated operator-overloaded C++ class which represents a complex number (complex.h, see below).

java.sun.ibm.com?

Dan Krusi (Daniel Krüsi) — 2009-04-03T21:38:56

Really? Is IBM going to buy Sun? Ah, that would be so nice. Just imagine the fire it would like underneath Microsofts bum! Such a acquisition would create a beautiful new edge in the a-little-bit-lazy computer software industry today.

Cisco Group Password Stupidity

Dan Krusi (Daniel Krüsi) — 2009-03-27T11:21:00

What is the point?! I am annoyed by the Cisco group passwords every time when I want to create a VPN tunnel to my University's network. Everyone knows how to decrypt these things so why even bother include them encrypted in the profiles? Everytime I have to digup my piece of C-code, edit the line pwd="xxxxxx", compile, and run. I think the ubuntu network manager should include the decrypter in a future release (seriously, who would complain? Cisco?).

Coding the Old-English Way

Dan Krusi (Daniel Krüsi) — 2009-02-27T13:17:50

What is it with programming and mono-spaced fonts? Why not code like this (for style points)?

Zip Library for iPhone SDK

Dan Krusi (Daniel Krüsi) — 2009-02-12T09:38:17

Below you will find the source files for a relatively light-weight zip library for the iPhone SDK including an Objective-C interface. iZip is a simple interface to the zLib library for iPhone OS based on the miniunz application. To use this class you must include all the zLib C files and link to libz.dylib. The dylib file can be usually found under /Developer/Platforms/iPhoneOS.platform/Developer/SDKs/iPhoneOS2.0.sdk/usr/lib/libz.1.2.3.dylib or similar. Unzipping an archive requires only a single call: unzipArchiveWithSourcePath:DestPath:.

Line Scanner-Parser Objective-C

Dan Krusi (Daniel Krüsi) — 2009-02-12T09:36:07

For anyone who needs to quickly and efficiently scan each line in a string stream...