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Put the knife down and take a green herb, dude.


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One feller's views on the state of everyday computer science & its application (and now, OTHER STUFF) who isn't rich enough to shell out for www.myfreakinfirst-andlast-name.com

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Tuesday, March 12, 2024

If you want to release a .NET MAUI app on macOS (or even iOS), I'm going to assume you want to develop at least part time there.

Visual Studio on macOS is dying, which leaves us with either using a dying app or using VSCode (which I wish everyone would write like that... VSCode. Then it'd actually be easily googleable).

Using VSCode for .NET MAUI isn't straightforward, imo, but I found a pretty danged good tutorial on it from James Montemagno, a long-time Xamarin user and MS employee.

MAUI on VSCode lacks some stuff like XAML designers, iirc, but he actually decided to use VSCode and straight-code the UI in C# for this video, which makes it perhaps the best, "How to use MAUI on macOS" tutorial out there right now.

So here you go...

Recreating Threads App with .NET MAUI & NEW VS Code Extension!

aka "The best tutorial for coding MAUI on macOS available today".

No thanks [for me for showing you this] necessary. ;^D


A few other .NET MAUI links to remember (might edit as I add them here):

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posted by ruffin at 3/12/2024 04:13:00 PM
Saturday, February 24, 2024

From The Verge:

It was only three years ago that Mercedes was feeling quite bullish about plug-in powertrains, saying that by 2030 it would only sell EVs. At the time, the company said it would completely phase out gas-powered vehicles, while including the caveat โ€œwhere markets allowed.โ€

Now it seems that the market is not allowing Mercedes to follow through on its plans. Today, the company said in its fourth quarter earnings statement that it only expects 50 percent of its sales to be all-electric โ€” a significant drop from the once rosier outlook. Gas and hybrid vehicles will remain a part of the companyโ€™s future for years to come.

At first, I wondered why so many automotive companies thought moving to EVs was their density. EVs are almost certainly an environmental win, if only because we can at least concentrate the pollution from cars somewhere away from people. (And that's a very conservative "if only".)

Did automotive companies like EVs because EVs are ultimately going to be easier to manufacture?

Is it because EVs are an excuse to get away from the dealership model?

Maybe it's that EVs have higher sticker prices so they bring in more profit per sale?

Is it California?

That is, I don't think anyone's making EVs to save the planet. I figured conventional automakers started making EVs to ensure they had a card to play if Tesla took off like it looked like it might, but ultimately they only do it if EVs, long-term, create more profit than ICE vehicles.

Still, it seemed like Big Oil would have something to say about this. There's simply too much infrastructure, money, and, frankly, culture tied up in providing gasoline. The entire world is configured around the value of oil. Why wouldn't oil's interests win out?

I'm not saying Big Oil is what causing what appears to be an EV downtown. If the advantage is higher prices for equivalent vehicles, it's not surprising that the market of people rich and/or fortunate enough to afford EVs (and to install home charging stations) is extremely limited. And if I live somewhere cold, I'm probably not fired up about EVs.

But I will say I'm not surprised every time I hear a company, like Mercedes, is scaling back what are, by definition, poorly crafted earlier overpromises about their EV plans.


By the way, I love how Mercedes tries to blame "the market" like they're a passive player in all this. I've noticed this move in academia -- I've read that a movement "emerges" or "is emerging" as if there were no possible explanation or alternative for the occurrence. I usually try to counter with the phrase "emerges like a beast emerges from its lair" to strip passivity & re-inscribe volition to the term.

All these overly passive descriptions connote is that the writer doesn't have a good narrative explanation yet. But we likely will later. Don't be fooled by lazy explanations like this. What part of "the market" is doing this? Maybe those flaws were always there? Why didn't Mercedes see them?


I've got a number of articles on this I've been saving to come back to at some point. Here are some.

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posted by ruffin at 2/24/2024 05:22:00 PM
Monday, December 18, 2023

Amazingly accurate comic from xkcd is amazingly accurate:

Some day I'll blog about the time a lib maintainer deciding to [literally] say [well, "post"] "Ho hum" about just such a dependency temporarily crashed a reasonably large company's deployment script, but that day is not today.

(Luckily it was reasonably easy to fix, but it certainly cemented my usual claim that, "If you adopt a third-party dependency, you should also be routinely submitting pull requests to it.")

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posted by ruffin at 12/18/2023 09:54:00 PM
Thursday, December 07, 2023

From Yahoo Finance, apparently quoting Warren Buffet in 2011:

Buffett stated, โ€œI could end the deficit in five minutes. You just pass a law that says that anytime there is a deficit of more than 3% of GDP all sitting members of congress are ineligible for reelection.โ€

Reminds me of Perot's suggestion to raise the gas tax. Here's his explanation, apparently from the Clinton-Bush-Perot debate from 11 Oct 1992:

Q: As part of your plan to reduce the ballooning Federal deficit, you've suggested that we raise gasoline taxes 50 cents a gallon. Why punish the middle-class consumer to such a degree?

PEROT: It's 10 cents a year, cumulative. It finally gets to 50 cents at the end of the fifth year. I think "punish" is the wrong word. I didn't create this problem; we're trying to solve it. Some of our international competitors collect up to $3.50 a gallon in taxes. And they use that money to build infrastructure and create jobs. We collect 35 cents, and we don't have it to spend. I know it's not popular. But the people who will be helped the most by it are the working people who will get the jobs created because of this tax. Why do we have to do it? Because we have so mismanaged our country over the years, and it is now time to pay the fiddler.

BUSH: The question was on fairness. I just disagree. I don't believe it is fair to slap a 50-cent-a-gallon tax. I don't think we need to do it.

Both Perot's and Buffet's are rational (something you couldn't always say about Perot), "Give me the place to stand, and I shall move the earth" style answers. It is that easy -- and not, all at the same time. But if you put reps' self-interest between a problem and a solution, you could get some movement. (And I would nearly guarantee the deficit would be 3% of GDP, at least until there was a loophole that allowed it to be bigger :sigh:.)

These are definitely solutions from business owners; you can see in Bush's answer that he's got a much different mindset: not alienating voters is his primary concern, not solving problems [quickly].

I wonder why there's such a difference business vs. politics, where you can convince people in a company to follow difficult decisions so much more easily than a country. I mean, sure, it's obvious: In one case, the executive can can you. In the other, they [ostensibly] can't. But why isn't there the same buy-in? You could argue one's stake in their government should be greater than what they have in their company. Anyhow...

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posted by ruffin at 12/07/2023 06:12:00 AM
Friday, November 10, 2023

I've talked about how great it is to have a store in my pocket for 15 years. And I've often lamented how this -- the ubiquitous store -- seems to be the end game of the digital age.

Remember when Windows tested advertisements in Windows Explorer? Well, here's Microsoft's user friendly (?) alternative that did get released: Begging you not to leave Edge for Chrome with Edge playing the part of a jilted lover.

No, not joking. Edge even tells you (no, literally it does!) that it loves you to make you stay.

From The Verge

: Edge telling you We love having you!

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posted by ruffin at 11/10/2023 06:39:00 PM
Thursday, November 02, 2023

John Carmack, a brilliant, gifted developer, recently said this about V/AR, and it continues to bother me:

I remain unconvinced that mixed reality applications are any kind of an engine for increasing headset sales. High quality pass through is great, but I just donโ€™t see applications built around integrating rendering with your real world environment as any kind of a killer app. I consider it interesting and challenging technology looking for a justification.

But we already have mixed reality applications. AirPods in transparency mode are one, but even transitor radios at baseball games in the late 50s. Telephones? They don't render sight, but they do render augmented soundscapes. Ask the blind if a sightless world counts as a reality.

And what are our phones? They aren't VR. They do interact. Take the blue dot on a map -- or the location-based notifications we get walking into an Apple store.

Do I just not understand what Mixed Reality is? Tom's hardware tries to explain:

Virtual reality (VR) is a fully immersive world that is created by hardware that does not bring in elements of the real world.

...

Augmented reality, meanwhile, is the other end of the spectrum โ€” which Microsoft refers to as the mixed reality spectrum. Augmented reality (AR) basically adds digital overlays to the existing real world.

...

Mixed reality (MR) lies somewhere in between the two. It adds overlays and real-world objects into a virtually rendered world. Intel actually describes it really well. โ€œYou can play a virtual video game, grab your real-world water bottle, and smack an imaginary character from the game with the bottle.โ€ In proper mixed reality, the lines completely blur.

If you say so. I mean, our location is already "mixed" into the virtual world of Pokemon Go. And as much as you try, if the imaginary character tries to let you drink out of their imaginary water bottle, you'll stay thirsty, my friends.

MR seems to be another way of saying "AR, but, like, really augmented".

So I'm back to wondering what Carmack is talking about.

Maybe it's the immersion. There, I'd tell him to lower his bar. You don't have to have Apple Vision to have mixed reality. Again, any interface that puts the digital into the "real" works. The McDonald's app that lets you order food. Your EZ Pass transponder.

Does Mixed Reality require glassses? Then why doesn't it require earphones? How about gloves and sleeves and suits that remediate touch? Is his argument that AR glasses aren't MR enough and are, therefore, doomed to fail?

If so, the critique reduces to the absurd: "There is no MR killer app until the digital IS REAL!!1!"

I think his metric for MR success is literally what he says -- "headset sales". He'd say, sure, MR sells phones, radios, EZ Pass accounts, but not glasses. It'll never sell glasses.

I'm wearing glasses typing on a laptop right now. If I could get my phone and computer into that same shape without a concern for weight or power (or eyesight), I would. The potential isn't just there, it's at least as big as the market for glasses.

I don't know about Carmack, but I'm glad Apple has started looking for a way to make those glasses happen.

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posted by ruffin at 11/02/2023 12:05:00 PM
Friday, September 22, 2023

On Windows, I have two tools that get a lot of work when I'm ready to check in files:

  1. Merge tool: KDiff3 -- since 2012, it appears.
  2. Diff tool: WinMerge -- more recently; used to use KDiff3 for both

The WinMerge usage is recent-ish. When you want to compare two files and two files only, its simplistic UI is refreshing compared to the busyness of KDiff3.

One problem: KDiff3 uses KDE and is available pretty much everywhere. WinMerge is, um, Windows specific.

When I'm on macOS, I've been using BBEdit (nee TextWrangler) in place of WinMerge more recently and, I've found, you can use BBEdit as your official diff tool in SourceTree now too with a dedicated dropdown option.

One problem: SourceTree puts the more recent file on the left in BBEdit for some reason. That's not how SourceTree does it with WinMerge.

How do I swap that? Funny you should ask... Just ran into this SourceTree help request today that happens to show exactly how...

I spoke to BBEdit about this and they reminded me of the solution I had (with their help) implemented previously, before SourceTree added BBEdit to the official part of the external diff menu. I pass it along here, in case it is helpful:

in the "Diff Command" field, it needs the full path to bbdiff, e.g.

/usr/local/bin/bbdiff

I had been just putting "bbdiff" and that may have been the full problem I was having. In the "Arguments" field I put "--ignore-spaces --wait $REMOTE $LOCAL" and that seems to work well.

That still puts the newer edit on the left, but that's easy to fix. Swap $REMOTE and $LOCAL and...

Success. That's a nice, usable working environment I've almost got on macOS. ๐Ÿ˜‰

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posted by ruffin at 9/22/2023 05:37:00 PM

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Just the last year o' posts:

URLs I want to remember:
* Atari 2600 programming on your Mac
* joel on software (tip pt)
* Professional links: resume, github, paltry StackOverflow * Regular Expression Introduction (copy)
* The hex editor whose name I forget
* JSONLint to pretty-ify JSON
* Using CommonDialog in VB 6 * Free zip utils
* git repo mapped drive setup * Regex Tester
* Read the bits about the zone * Find column in sql server db by name
* Giant ASCII Textifier in Stick Figures (in Ivrit) * Quick intro to Javascript
* Don't [over-]sweat "micro-optimization" * Parsing str's in VB6
* .ToString("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss.fff", CultureInfo.InvariantCulture); (src) * Break on a Lenovo T430: Fn+Alt+B
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