The ZAZ Blog

Image Masking

Sun, 12 Oct 2008 01:27:24 -0500

Over the past few days I've seen this topic come up on the REAL Software Forums and the REALbasic NUG. There's quite a mix of information - some correct and misleading. Luckily, I've not seen information that is just flat out wrong.

Custom Controls: Finding your global screen bounds

Sat, 11 Oct 2008 01:46:08 -0500

I find myself writing a fair amount of custom controls. Frequently, I find myself wanting to find the position of the mouse relative to my control. The MouseDown, MouseDrag, etc. events have this info, but if you need this in the Paint event, you must either save it to a property or get it from the system. We're exploring the latter, as it's not as simple as you might think.

I hate Gmail

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 18:33:02 -0500

I hated Gmail before I ever used it. Now I've been using it for about 5 months now and I've learned to complete despise it.

What I've been up to

Fri, 05 Sep 2008 23:03:58 -0500

Just a general post, nothing special about it.

HIToolbar 1.1.3 Released

Sat, 23 Aug 2008 01:50:19 -0500

Even though I should be working on getting two other projects made public, I thought I would update HIToolbar first. Since it broke on REALbasic 2008r3, it made sense that this one should get more attention.

Determining if a window should be highlighted

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 10:29:41 -0500

I've been working on a window designed to look similar to Safari. This means a window with a "Unified" toolbar and tabs that blend into said toolbar.

Does a window have a sheet?

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 02:44:30 -0500

So Norman Palardy recently posted some code for detecting if a window has a sheet attached. Charles Yeomans took this code and modified it to work without subclassing window.

I take it one step further, and fix a bug...

The ZAZ's Open Source Roadmap

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 01:42:42 -0500

I've got a brand new open source project coming up. In fact, the code is already complete and in use, I'm just working on the documentation... and this one will have significant documentation. I imagine that nearly every REALbasic project will want this code included.

Best. Song. Ever.

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 01:06:03 -0500

I'm going to keep this short and simple. View the picture.

Relove for the iPhone

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 00:13:51 -0500

I used the leaked iPhone 2.0 firmware. It's like I when I first bought the iPhone over a year ago - I can't put it down.

But this time, I can keep adding features. Some will be better when push support comes in September, like AIM and NetNewsWire, but it's pretty damn cool.

My personal favorite new app is Shazam. That's one really cool thing Verizon customers could have over me - but this is here now and free!

OmniFocus is pretty great too, I'm keeping it synched with my desktop.

I'm sure you'll read about this everywhere else, but I felt like saying something here.

:: Sent from my iPhone, BTW ::

Figures...

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 23:53:30 -0500

I've been working on an internal tool for REAL Software that is probably my best web app to date. It's a web 2.0 app, feels like a desktop app, on caliber with some of the .Mac stuff. Really sweet.

And yet, I'll never get to show the world.

Figures.

Tropical Sillyness

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 00:45:34 -0500

So, I stumbled across a trailer I thought I might check out.

Tropic Thunder - don't bother. Just to view the trailer, the website asks for too much personal information.

Source-Controlled Website

Sun, 15 Jun 2008 00:05:07 -0500

This concept is so simple and easy, I'm amazed I had not yet thought of it. See, I keep a subdomain of this website which I use as a sandbox. I draft new designs or concepts with it. But it's always been a complete pain to bring the sandbox to the live site. I don't want to overwrite too many or the wrong files, and I made the mistake of keeping subdomain files inside my www directory. It's a mess, and I know better now.

Finally, a new day job

Wed, 16 Apr 2008 17:37:25 -0500

So after five and a half years with Subway, I have found a new job that's actually in the industry I have real talent in. Not to say hadn't done a good job managing over a hundred teenagers, it just isn't what I want to do. Not to mention it requires me to work about 50 hours a week over 6 days. If I were single and had no friends, it wouldn't be so bad, but considering neither of those are true it really gets to me sometimes.

But no more. I just signed and returned an offer letter.

AnimationKit 2.0 Released

Sun, 30 Mar 2008 12:50:08 -0500

I have finally found some free time, so I decided to release a brand new version of AnimationKit. This new version is significantly changed, and will break existing code. It does, however, include some great new features.