Programming Log

Saturday, March 30, 2013

Nike+ Running App

Yesterday I had an another great run. This time I used Nike+ Running app for iOS to help me to record my running. I was going to get a Nike+ sensor, but I found that that sensor is only of iPod. Nike+ sensor is old technology. Now with iPhone GPS, there are many other better apps available for tracking running. Nike+ Running is one of them and it was free when I got it yesterday.

I gave it a try with close to two hour run, about 16+K. One of great features is that it, by default, keeps announcing my running status, such as distance, time and speed every one kilometer. I had clear picture of overall running. I kept running at even pace, so that I was able to control my energy during my run. After running, I can see my running statistics. All those data are also available at Nikeplus web site with my personal login. That's great. With this app, it will be great tool to know my strength, energy level and progress.

Here is my stat about my average speed:

The app saves my running route as a map:

And this are my overall numbers:

This is a great app!

References

Nike plus
Nike+ Running at iTunes Store

Tuesday, March 26, 2013

My Plan to Run Marathon

In the past 4 weeks, I have been in preparation for Scotiabank Calgary Marathon 2013. I got this news from a local news group. I was immediately attached by this event. The reason I am interested in this program is that I have been on a weight loss program. At the time I knew about the marathon, I was already in one week in the program.

Basically, the program is based on a package of products from Melaleuca. It recommends to change three meals in to three smaller ones. To overcome craving, it suggests to add two snack foods between meals. The snacks are Attain or GC Attain, which is based on a technology with natural ingredients to block craving desire. All those are for reducing calories input.

Another key element in the package is to use Melaleuca's exclusive and patented Access bar. The bar itself does not have feature for burning fat. However, it can block adenosine effect, which locks fat release when energy is required during exercise. In other words, by taking the bar 15 minutes before exercise with empty stomach, it will allow fat to be released when energy is required.

I like running exercise. It is a outdoor activity. By running long distance, it will push hard on my body for energy, as a result the energy from fat. I have never tried marathon run before. That's why I would like to take this opportunity try out Melaleuca's weight loss program.

This was my first long distance run on Mar 1, 2013. It was about 15k.

The second weekend I added another 5k, extended from Prince's island to Calgary Zoo. The last weekend I added another 10K starting from Bowness Park to Zoo, and then back to Crowchild Trail at river side. During those long distance runs, I used Access Bat to help me to get more energy power.

In addition to all those weekend runs, I intentionally do more physical activities during week days. In the past week, I started to walk from 4th floor (this is the only lowest one to access to stairs, 1-3 doors are locked) to 23th floor twice a day, and run from 15th to 23th once. Those are great exercises to help me to build strong muscles.

Another great product I use is the Pain-A-Trate. This one has great effect to reduce muscle sore or pain. Without it, I would not be able to recover so quickly from my muscle sores.

References

Melaleuca Quick information: Weight Loss Program
Larry Wang's article: How Does the Access Bar Work?
Calgary Marathon

Thursday, March 21, 2013

Use HTML Button Tag in Blog

This morning I read an article on web. The article is a long serials one, but it does not show the whole article on one page. Instead, it breaks down into small ones and placed serval buttons at the end of each one: First, 1, 2, ..., Last. I like this style. I immediately related this to my blog. Sometimes, I do the same thing, but I use UL LI list tags to show them as a list.

I did some investigation. What I found are three basic ones. First is to use DIV or UL LI with CSS. Although it does provides flexible and nice layout, it is a little bit complicated. The most concern I have is that I have to define CSS styles in my blog headers. This is not an issue in Blogger, but my other blog web providers do not allow me to add CSS styles.

The second method is INPUT tag. It is very simple. It provide a button like UI. However, it is a single tag with limited layout enhancement.

The third one is BUTTON tag. With this tag, any HTML tags can be placed within open and close tags. I like this one very much. Both INPUT and BUTTON utilize OnClick event to trigger click or hit event. For my blog purpose, what I need is to direct to another URL, either in current document or a new window. This can be done by client side JavaScript. I'll show this later on.

Here I give it a try in this blog.

The following codes define two BUTTON tags. By using inline Javascript, one will open a URL (Apple web page) in another new window and another open Microsoft web page in the current window. Within each button, there is an image content with text on the next line.


<button type="button" 

   onclick="JavaScript:window.open('http://www.apple.com')">

   <img src="http://images.apple.com/home/images/billboard_ipad_hero.jpg" />

   <br/>Go to Apple... make my day!

</button>


<button type="button" 

   onclick="JavaScript:document.location='http://www.microsoft.com';">

   <img src="http://compass.surface.com/assets/e4/38/e43802e2-8e9c-4fb9-80d6-f27fa6cf50df.jpg#1280_carousel_1_meet_surface.jpg" />

   <br/>Go to Microsoft... make my yesterday!

</button>

Here is another example with two buttons. I added a SPAN tag with TITLE attribute so that each button has a tooltip when you move mouse over the button.


<button onclick="JavaScript:window.open('http://davidchuprogramming.blogspot.com/2004/05/my-first-blog-entry.html')" type="button">

  <span title="First blog">||&lt;&lt;</span></button>



<button onclick="JavaScript:document.location='http://davidchuprogramming.blogspot.com/2013/02/communication-between-mvc-controllers.html';" type="button">

  <span title="Previous blog">&lt;</span>

</button>

Thursday, February 28, 2013

Communication Between MVC Controllers

When there are more than two MVC controllers, controllers need to pass data or send notifications between two controllers. For example, a table list controller, parent, may push to an item edit controller, child, when an item is selected. The easiest way to is to set a property in child controller and pass the reference to parent controller to child's property. However, this strategy has one drawback: strong binding between parent and child controllers. In case the parent controller is changed to another kind of controller, the property of child has to be updated.

The alternative way is to implement delegate in Objective-C. Define a delegate in .h, then keep communication by defined methods in the delegate. Here is the steps of this strategy.

Define a Delegate

The delegate provides APIs to pass data or to send notifications. For example, the following codes define a update method:


@protocol MyEntityEditDelegate <NSObject>



- (void) updateEntity:(NSIndexPath *)index;



@end

Add a Delegate Property in Parent Controller

The next step is to implement the delegate property in the parent controller. This breaks the strong binding between the parent and child. The child will call parent by the delegate APIs.


@interface ParentListViewController :
    UITableViewController <..., MyEntityEditDelegate>



....

@end

Define a Delegate Property in Child Controller

The last step is to add delegate property in the child controller. This will let the child hold a reference to its parent by delegate.


@interface ChildEntityEditViewController : ...



@property (nonatomic, weak) id<MyEntityEditDelegate> delegate;



@end

Notice that the property type is id<...> type. This prevents the coupling between the parent and child.

Monday, February 18, 2013

What is the Next Big Thing for Apple

This is a question most people ask today. There are many rumors about iWatch, a wearable device can be attached to human body. Personally, I think this is a tip of iceberg, and it must be a part of Apple eco-system.

In the past, from Apple's WWDC seminars, I noticed that Apple has been very interested in BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) technology. There was a demo about using iPod touch as a BLE device to communicate with iPhone. This is a open standard protocol and has great application potential in many areas.

I remembered one Video of Steve Jobs' talking about what Apple learned from its past. Apple invested a lot in personal computer, OO technology and graphics OS. Steve was so fascinated with this. This came out of the result of Mac computer. One thing Steve mentioned that he missed out network and internet, the potential products in this area. Actually, from Apple's past, the company has invested a lots in this area with innovative technology, such as zero configuration networking or Bonjour.

With iPhone's success, I think this has been raised to top priority of Apple's next technology innovation. iWatch is just one device for motion monitor device (MMD). It seems that Apple is also working on motion event device (MED) as well.

The next big thing is built from the past technology or concept in Apple for long time. When it is out, I think it will be a big surprise WOW for consumers. This will be not just one single device. This is a whole system with iPhone and mobile devices. The innovation will be built on a solid system and it will an open system for developers.

Sunday, February 10, 2013

Update my Codes to iOS 6

After I updated my Xcode to 4.6, I got several compiling errors when I tried to compile my app. It seems that they are iOS 6 related. Most of them are easy to fix. However, I had a little bit hard time to nail down two.

The first one is block related. I used self within block. In Xcode 4.6, this is a potential memory issue: Capturing 'self' strongly in this block is likely to lead to a retain cycle. With the help of SO, I quickly found the solution: using __weak prefix to capture self as none-retaining variable. Then use the var in the block.

if (entity.imagePath) {

    __weak UITableViewController *weakSelf = self;

    // Load image from entity to doc helper with handler

    [self.docHelper addImageDocs:myDoc

             withCompleteHandler:^{

                 [weakSelf.tableView reloadRowsAtIndexPaths:

                    aPath

                    withRowAnimation:UITableViewRowAnimationBottom];

             }];

}

The second one was tough for me, because it is Storyboard related. The warning only indicates a potential issue but I could not locate it: table view background color is deprecated in ios 6.0. In a similar way, I got an answer from SO. But in my case, I have too many views and components. It is hard to locate the issue. Eventually, I found a way to view the storyboard as XML text and soon I located the deprecated color. I submitted my answer to SO.

References

SO answer: Retain cycle on `self` with blocks
My submission to OS: Is groupTableViewBackgroundColor deprecated on iOS 6?

Friday, February 01, 2013

Start Weight Lost Program

I t has been two weeks after my vacation from China. I read a news from Melaleuca about weight lost program. Basically, the program works in a simple way: reduce daily large meals into small ones, meal size like my fist. Take GC Attain or Attain between meals to replace snack food. Exercise 45 minutes daily, and take a Access bar before walk out. Optional: take PfoFlex20 within one hour after exercise.

Today I sent my application to Melaleuca. Here are my numbers:

Weight: 74Kg
Belt waist: 94 cm
Height: 1.72m

I also took a photo before I start the plan today. I'll see if I'll loss 10% after the ten week plan.

Reference

Melaleuca Weight Loss Program Brochure: Take the Challeng. Loss 10 Percent.

Sunday, January 27, 2013

New Year Resolution

Just come back from my visit trip to China. I spent about 3 weeks there in Wuhan and Beijing to visit my parents and family relatives. During my stay in China, I had some time to think about the new year 2013. In the past year, my work switched to application support. Therefore, I had less time on software development. In 2013, I think this will be the same.

The only thing I will do is my Mac or iOS development. I think I have layout very solid foundation already. I have started several projects, but not finished yet. The only way to make progress is to make personal commitment. I have set up my year 2013 resolution: first, loss weight 10%, to about 150p. The second one is to commit two days after work time on my iOS development. With this effort, I'll be able to finish my long-over-due project.

Start from this week!

Saturday, January 19, 2013

Cardiovascular System and ProvexCV

This is a known fact:: Coronary heart disease is the singl leading cause of death in the world today. In our lifetime, it is highly likely this deadly disease will affect us or some one we love. People have been waiting for science research break through in this area, either cure solution or even impotently a way to prevent heart disease.

As a IT technician, I want to maintain my cardiovascular system in good shape. Through my after work investigation and research, I am so fortunately to find out there is solution from Melaleuca. ProvexCV is one most popular product from the company. In past about 17 years experience as a Melaleuca preferred customer, I have witnessed its introduction and updates.

This product was introduced one year after I become a preferred customer. The introduction of this product was the most special event I have ever seen. The company noticed us, all the preferred customers, a very important telephone conference call one day. During the call, Frank VanderSloot, the CEO, was very existed to claim that Melaleuca was in the leading position with the ProvexCV product, in terms of preventing heart disease. He mentioned one of key researchers, Dr. John Folts, who is the person discovered Aspirin health benefit for heart.

Even it was a very existing news, I did not pay attention to this product. I was in very good health and I did not think that I needed this product. However, I knew that I could share this news with some one who would benefit from this. My parents and in-law parents had heart issues. I purchased the product and sent to them. During the past years, they told me that ProvexCV really made difference in their lives. They feel much better with almost daily on ProvexCV.

In my after work hours, I spend some time to study Melaleuca products. I read all the information I could get from Melaleuca. I collected some key facts and I tried to find support from other channels. This investigation does open my eyes. With my extended knowledge in this area, I got exited about this product.

One of break-through findings in 2012 was that I found video shows about Dr. John Folts on cardiovascular system research and red wine. This was the first time I head directly from Dr. Folts about the relationship of his research and Melaleuca. His in depth research taught me the importance of food supplements. They are nutritional substances to maintain our cell, organ and body in good health. They are not magic bullet to cure disease like medicine drugs. In terms of ProvexCV, this is for endothelial cell health, which is critical for cardiovascular system.

This blog will be scheduled to be published on the date when I get back from my vacation.

References

Wikipedia: French paradox
Wisconsin University: Dr. John Folts
Science News article: Grape Juice: Better Than Aspirin?
Wisconsin Video Library: Forty-Four Years of Fun Research in Cardiology / Update on the Exciting Red Wine and Flavonoid Research
Wisconsin Video Library: Vascular Biology of Atherosclerosis and Beneficial Effects of Grape Flavonoids: Is It Really True?
Melaleuca Document: Nature’s Gift for a Healthy Heart

Monday, January 07, 2013

Download Video and Audios

This is scheduled blog during my vacation China. I think that this blog is still not accessible during my stay there. This blog is about web tools to download videos and audios.

Before I leaved for China for my vacation, I wanted download some Youtube videos from WongFu Production. One is a serials of Away, we happened, and another is When it counts. I wanted to write my Chinese blogs based on those videos. Since I could not access to Youtube when I am there, I wanted to download them.

Soon I found a very convenient way to do it. There is a web service for this kind of downloading: SaveFrom.Net. This web service provides a simple way to download videos:

Coy URL of a video, such as one from Youtube.
Open SaveFrom.Net web site
Paste URL to download text box.
Click on Download button.
Select one video format you like such as MP4 360p

One thing I noticed is that if the size of a video is too large, larger than 150MB, you would not be able to get the video. It seems that there is limit to download.

Reference

Free Download from... SaveFrom.Net

Tuesday, January 01, 2013

My StackOverflow Reached to 5k

My StackOverflow reputation reached to 5k on Dec 21, 2012. I wrote this blog on the same date, but scheduled for publishing on Jan 1, 2013. This is new start date. As you mentioned in my previous blog that in the year of 2012, my contract job was changed to focus on application support. As a result, I spent less time on codes.

However, since I was active on SO, my previous contributions and efforts have been recognized by other users on SO. As a result, my reputation has been kept grow. The following is the snapshot of my 5k moment:

By the time of the first date of 2013, this blog will be published. I will be on my vacation in Beijing and Wuhan by that time. Even my work will be less coding, I'll continue my effort in iOS and Mac OS development and I hope I'll get my first app release soon. I will write my programming experience in iOS and Mac OS more in this blog.

Monday, December 31, 2012

Year 2012 is Over, Welcome Year 2013

Year 2012 will be over soon. At the time of this blog being published, I am on my way to China for my vacation. In the middle of 2012, my contact job was changed. My previous contact job is mainly as software developer to support historian services for SCADA system. Development work only took small portion of my time, I was mainly responsible to provide support for applications, such as SQL server, Parcview, and applications I wrote.

When my contract was terminated, I thought I would never to touch Parcview. I was looking for .Net development jobs, as well as iOS development. In my personal profile and resume, I did not mention Parcview at all. To my surprise, I got a call from a company, in about 2 weeks of my break, to ask me to fill a role to provide support for Parcview. As a result, I accepted the offer. Now my IT role has been changed since. Not much development work, my work, or new contract, has been mainly on Parcview and historian service support. In 2012, a big change happened in my career.

Even though I know Parcview and historian services very well, there are still many new challenges. I think this provides me a good opportunity to extend my skills and knowledge in this area. Since my work is mainly in support case, I have not touched codes at all. I tried to reorganize some of previous Visual Studio projects and trie to find a way to put them in my work. So far, my effort has not been approved yet.

My iOS app has been on hold as well. The career change may be one of reasons I delayed my app. Another reason is that I have been waiting for my daughter to provide art work for my app. The app is about 80% finished. All my iOS development are in my afterwork hours.

I had a talk with my best friend over a weekend. He asked me what are my new goals for the year 2013. Among many goals I would like to complemented, to continue my iOS development is one of them. My current contract has been extended for the year 2013. I am pretty much sure there will be not much development at my support work. Therefore, I will focus on iOS or even Mac OS app development. I have to make my effort to plan my time and allocate enough resources to continue my software development. I hope this will extend my software development to a more existing area.

Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Get Folder Permissions by Scripts (3)

In terms of getting folder permissions by using PS script, the first two blogs are just good enough. As a bonus and my personal reference, here are simple helper function and entry point. That completes my blog about my script.

The help function is a very simple one which prints out the usage of the script. The same practice can be applied to other scripts.

# FUNCTION LISTINGS

# =============================================================================

# Function: HelpInfo

# Created: [11/25/2009]

# Author: David Chu

# Arguments: 

#   $p_scriptApp: script application

# -------------------------------------------

# Purpose: display usage message

# -------------------------------------------

function HelpInfo($p_scriptApp)

{

  Write-Output ""

  Write-Output "Description: Get permissions for a folder."

  Write-Output "Parameters: folderPath [outFile] [/s]"

  Write-Output "Where"

  Write-Output "      folderPath: a path for a folder"

  Write-Output "      outFile: output file"

  Write-Output "      /s: recursive to get sub folders"

  Write-Output "Examples:"

  Write-Output "This one running from PowerShell:"

  Write-Output ("  PS: {0} C:\MyData" -f $p_scriptApp)

  Write-Output "The following example running from cmd console:"

  Write-Output ("  cmd> PowerShell {0} C:\MyData myFile /s" -f $p_scriptApp)

}

PS entry section is the place to get all the parameters from command line.

# Example to run this script:

# @powershell d:\Scripts\GetPerm.ps1 'D:\Displays\Public' /s

# Result:

D:\Displays\Users Everyone:(OI)(CI)F

                  BUILTIN\Administrators:(OI)(CI)F

                  NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM:(OI)(CI)F

                  CREATOR OWNER:(OI)(CI)(IO)F

                  BUILTIN\Users:(OI)(CI)R

                  BUILTIN\Users:(CI)(special access:)



                                    FILE_APPEND_DATA



                  BUILTIN\Users:(CI)(special access:)



                                    FILE_WRITE_DATA

#*=============================================================================

#* SCRIPT BODY

#*=============================================================================

# example parameter values for this script. Add the parameter to PowerGUI Script

# Editor's Input toolbar:

# C:\Users /s

$scriptApp = "GetPerm.ps1"



# check input arguments

if ( $args.length -eq 0 -or $args.length -gt 3 )

{

  HelpInfo $scriptApp

  return

}

# Get the first input parameter

$i = 0

$folderPath = $args[$i++

$outFile = "outFile.txt"]

$recursive = $false

if ($args.length -gt 1)

{

  if ( $args[$i++].ToLower() -eq "/s")

  {

    $recursive = $true

    if ($args.length -gt 2)

    {

      $outFile = $args[$i++]

    }

  }

  else

  {

    $outFile = $args[$i++]

    if ($args[$i++] -eq "/s")

    {

      $recursive = $true

    }

  }

}

# check if source and dest pathes exist

if ( Test-Path -Path $folderPath | where {!$_PSIsContainer} )

{

  GetFolderPermission $folderPath $recursive $outFile

} else {

  Write-Output ("Invalid path: {0}" -f $folderPath)

}



#*=============================================================================

#* END OF SCRIPT BODY

#*=============================================================================

In PS, command line argument can be obtained from $args[] collection, and the number of arguments is the property of length of $args. Each argument can be enclosed by single quote ' char, not double " char.

Tuesday, December 11, 2012

Get Folder Permissions by Scripts (2)

I created a simple function in PowerShell script to get folder permissions. As I mentioned in my previous blog, a DOS command is used to get folder permissions: Calcs. If there is subfolder within a folder, the function provides recursive option to get subfolder permissions. In addition to that, the folder can contain wild characters such as "*data".

To get all the containers as a collection in PS, the command is Get-Item with option $_.PSIsContainer:

$fs = Get-Item -Path $p_Path | Where-Object {$_.PSIsContainer }

The following is the function

# Function: GetFolderPermission

# Created: [10/02/2012]

# Author: David Chu

# Arguments: 

#   $p_Path: folder

#   $p_recursive:    true for recursive, false for not

# -------------------------------------------

# Purpose: get folder permissions

# -------------------------------------------

function GetFolderPermission(

  $p_Path,

  $p_outFile,

  $p_recursive)

{

  # get all the files matched and timestamp > comparing date
 $fs = Get-Item -Path $p_Path | Where-Object {$_.PSIsContainer }

  if ( $fs -ne $null )

  {

    foreach ($folder in $fs)
   {

      $fullDir = $folder.FullName

      Write-Output $fullDir

      $cmd =  'cacls "{0}"' -f $fullDir

      Invoke-Expression $cmd | out-File -Append $p_outFile

      if ( $p_recursive )

{

       $fsSub = Get-ChildItem -Path $fullDir |Where-Object {$_.PSIsContainer}

        if ( $fsSub -ne $null)

        {

          foreach ($subDir in $fsSub)

          {

            $fullDir = $subDir.FullName

            GetFolderPermission $fullDir $p_recursive $p_outFile

          }

        }

      }
   }

 }

}

The above codes are very straightforward, therefore, no need to explain.

Tuesday, December 04, 2012

Get Folder Permissions by Scripts (1)

I found there is a DOS command tool to get folder permissions: Calcs. By using this tool, permissions can be added, deleted or modified as well. Based on this findings, I used PowserShell to create a script to get folder permissions. I am planning to further to enhance this script to create duplicated permissions for a specified folder.

Here is a example of using the script in a batch script:

C:\test\powershell c:\scripts\GetPerm.ps1'C:\MyData' /s

The result is something like this:

D:\MyData Everyone:(OI)(CI)F 

         BUILTIN\Administrators:(OI)(CI)F 

         NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM:(OI)(CI)F 

         CREATOR OWNER:(OI)(CI)(IO)F 

         BUILTIN\Users:(OI)(CI)R 

         BUILTIN\Users:(CI)(special access:)



                           FILE_APPEND_DATA



         BUILTIN\Users:(CI)(special access:)



                           FILE_WRITE_DATA

If there are sub-folders within, the script will loop through to get all sub-fodler permissions as well.

It is possible to use WMI class or other tools in PS to get folder permissions. Calcs is a free tool in Windows. I found it is much easy to leverage its power to do the job.

Wednesday, November 28, 2012

OPC and DCOM/COM Issues

My working experience with OPC and DCOM/COM can be tracked back to more than 10 years ago. I remember that when I was working at a SCADA software company in Calgary, I was assigned to a project to write OPC Client app. OPC technology is based on Microsoft Windows DCOM/COM infrastructure to provide automation for industries. At that time, it was very advanced technology and has been quickly adopted by many industry companies, specially in SCADNA system.

Since then, I have been on and off on OPC development and support. Even COM was very nice library based design infrastructure, it has it is drawbacks. Microsoft has been moved to .Net based infrastructure, COM and DCOM becomes old technology. However, so many software and applications have been developed and they are in use in various systems, it is really hard to cut it off.

Recently I have been working on a project to build a new historian system. The system is based OPC technology. In the past week, I have been working to set up a new historian system. I expected OPC configuration being the hardest task. Basically, an OPC client application has be set up to communicate with a remote OPC server. I have been struggled for almost a week on the project. I almost reached the point to make them to talk. The OPC client could talk to the remote OPC server by using local Administrator, but not a domain user. The DCOM settings on the OPC server side should be OK since we have a production OPC Client collecting data. It is just a new Windows 2008 Server not being able to collect data. Windows 2008 Server is a kind of Windows Vista, which is based on a more complicated secure framework, such as firewall, network configuration and system security configurations, in addition to OPC configurations.

My past experience and my knowledge in this area still benefit me a lot for my current work. I have changed my careers in a wide range of areas. Never know what you have done may continue to impact your future.

Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Oligo Got Patent

Since I started my new contract job at HP/Cenuvos, I have not been doing application development. Instead, I provide applications support. That's why I don't have a lots to write about my programming and skill experience.

I have been kept listening some .Net technology podcasts, such as HanselMiniutes and .Net Rocks. Those podcasts occasionally talk about some none-programming topics. That's a change to bring some thing the authors being interested while they cannot find any good topics. Now I am going to talk about nutrients.

I have been a Melaleuca preferred customer for about 16 years. I really enjoy their great products, green, safe, effective and reasonably priced. This month I got my products. Along with the box, there is fly normally about products and specials. I saw the first page is dedicated to Oligo, the technology behind many of Melaleuca products.

To restate the claim:

Melaleuca's Oligo™ technology is now protected by U.S. Patent No 8,273,393

On Tuesday, September 25, 2012, the United States Patent and Trademark Office granted a patent protecting the Oligo technology that powers the Vitality Pack® and other Melaleuca products.

*Patent pending in Canada

I started to use Vitality products (multi-vitamins and minerals) 10 years ago. It makes great difference to improve my health. Before I did not believe nutritional supplements at all. I thought I get all the nutrients from my daily in-takes, and why should I rely on supplements. From Melaleuca product information and my own research, I found that I could not get enough and balanced micro-food my body needs. That changed my mind to give Melaleuca Vitality product a try. The more I learn about health knowledge, the more I believe that I need to use Melaleuca products to enhance my life.

That's my after work research and hobby. I am a down-to-earth person, not only for the best codes, but also for my other hobbies, such personal health. I spent many of my after-work hours to explore and to study Melaleuca products. Each time when I see anything I don't know, I'll try to do my research through all the channels, such as on web and books, to expand my knowledge. As a programmer and IT consultant, I think my health is very important. I need to keep my mind sharp and my body strong and in good shape so that I have more energy to do what I like.

Before Oligo, Melaleuca has already obtained patent about how improve minerals absorption, it was called as fructose-compounding. This technology makes Melaleuca multi-vitamin and multi-minerals with high absorption rate. The Oligo technology goes one more step. It has been proven that the Oligo-fructose compound minerals has much less oxidations during digest process, which means less multi-vitamines wasted during intestinal digestion process.

Reference

US Patent: 8273393 and previous patent appication on Dietary Supplement Compositions
Melaleuca's Oligo Web Site
PatentBoddy about inventor: Alexander Rabovsky
Dr. Alexander Rabovsky's research paper: Minimization of free radical damage by metal catalysis of multivitamin/multimineral supplements
Similar research paper at US National Library of Medicine, National Institute of Health: Minimization of free... and original PDF in medial journal.
Live Strong article: About Melaleuca Vitamins
YouTube on Melaleuca - Vitality (29 minutes)

Tuesday, November 13, 2012

Xcode 4.5 Upate and Mac Automatic Update

Yesterday I saw Xcode 4.5 update in my App store. I have been put my App development on hold for a while. This update may have new features I have been waiting for: customized object collection view for pictures I'll use my my app.

One new feature in Mountain Lion(ML) is to download updates automatically. All the Mac and app updates are through App Store. The download process happens automatically. However, the update has to be done through users.

Before ML, Mac OS update check is set through System Preference, as a scheduled check. When new updates are available, OS will prompt user to proceed downloading and then installation. In ML, the software has more options in System Preference:

The download process can be done automatically, as well as system data and files. For other updates, Mac users have to be click on Update button to proceed. The above is my settings. The advantage of this update is that the update process will avoid long time waiting for downloading. When updates are ready, the installation can be done immediately.

I notice that there is no way to define checking updates schedule, daily, weekly or monthly. There is only a button for Check Now.

This new feature is quite convenient for users because most of cases users want to do updates.

Monday, November 05, 2012

Mac OS Security: Gatekeeper (2)

I remember that one of WWDC 2010 session videos has a show on this topic with demos. The demo was a quick one, but it is very impressive. I have done some tests on this feature. Here are my hands-on tests.

App Store Only

First, I tried to set up my Security to Mac App Store only. This is the most restrictive option. With this simple setting, I could not download any apps from browser.

Identified Developers

This is the recommended option for most users: Mac App Store and Identified Developers. This means you can download apps from web, but those apps have to have authorized developer IDs. According to Apple, an developers ID certificate can be obtained from none-Apple Agents, such as Google, Microsoft.

I set up this option in my Mac. Then I can download any apps from Web. Only apps with identified developer IDs can be opened. For example, I downloaded a free app NetNewsWire.app, which is an app signed with Apple Developer ID. After downloading, the following warning message is display for the first time to run it:

No Open for None Identified Apps

For example, I tried to download MesaSQLite from CNET downloads. For the time bing, this app has no Apple Developer ID signed. Therefore, I could not run this app on my Mac.

No Open for Other Macs

I tried to copy this app to another Mac. Still I cannot run it. It seems that the Mac OS quarantined the app upon its download.

Anywhere

This is the most open option, as same as previous Mac OS or Windows. You can download any apps from Web and use them. The interesting thing is that I tried to temporally set to this option to get apps which I trust with no harm. Then I reset option to Identified Developers. The file I got from anywhere are free to be copied to another Mac by USB, Airdrop or network shared drivers. Therefore, Gatekeeper is only for web browsers.

Authenticated Developer ID

The key point in Gatekeeper is the concept to sign an app with an authenticated developer ID. In the WWDC demo, one interesting demo is a hijacked app. That is, to modify an app, either signed or none-signed. For those apps, Gatekeeper would identify them as potential malicious apps.

To test this case, I opened the content of the app NetNewWire by Show Package Contents from its context menu. I copied one image to the root of its content. Then I uploaded it to my Dropbox's Public area. From there I downloaded the app again. Here is the image of original app, on the left, and modified app, on the right side, on my Mac:

No matter my Gatekeeper setting is Anywhere or not, I just cannot run this app. This app is quarantined by OS upon its download. Nor I can run this by copy to another Mac (I mean copy the downloaded app).

However, if I modify the app on my Mac, I can still run it and I can copy it to another Mac. Gatekeeper is just a security gate at browser between Mac and Web.

I think Apple's Gatekeeper strategy is an innovation change in OS level. It is a very effective way to protect Mac users from attacks by malicious apps, which most sneaked in, either accidentally or social engineered downloading from web browser.

Gatekeeper is just the forefront tier of Mac OS security layers. For developers, this is a big change and it will be new trend we have to face to. If you sign your app with your ID, your app will be treated as good citizen in binary world, or white list, until you intentionally make crime, attack user computers or steal private information, for example.

This is analogous to the case of border gates of US, Canada or any country in the World, passport is a practical identify as to citizenship when you across border gates. This is by far the most effective and less costly way to protect countries. Just image how you can secure your country if you have to check periodically each one in your country to see if they are not malicious. In theory, the strategy of internally up-to-bottom thoroughly checking periodically may be the most secure method, but impossible in practice.

Reference

Mac Developer Library: Tools Workflow Guide for Mac
Free app for Mac on Web: NetNewsWire
CNET Download: MesaSQLite for Mac

Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Chinese Blog Site: diandian

Weibo is my favorite twitter. In Chinese it means micro blog. Weibo is very populate in China. I have seen some English tweets there. Today, I noticed one my of followers has moved his blog from Sina blogger to Diandian web site. This caused my interest.

Actually I like Sina blogger very much. It has some nice features. However, the only thing I miss is the CSS and HTML control. I cannot define my CSS classes and HTML scripts there. That's why I prefer Google's Blogger. I have my duplicate Chinese blog at Blogger as well. For sure, it is also for backup purpose.

点点 or dian dian in Chinese means bit by bit. As it says in Diandian's about page, all the complicated contents starts from simple points, then lines, curves, pixels, text and more. Its motto is Let blog start simple"(in Chinese). The overall look of dian dian blog site is very simple and clean. Of course, the most attractive point is the feature of customized CSS and HTML with Javascript.

Based on some articles on TechRice, Diandian is a copy of Tumblr, which is popular web based blog service. I tried to explore Tumbler, but I could not find a reason to switch to this site, even it says that you can customized everything.

Although the following diandian.com home page looks like Trumblr.com, there is difference, blank page on diandian.com. According to diandian's plan, they will have some distinctive features for bloggers.

There are many great web services in China. I don't mean I want to get the best blog web site, but I am interested in one with features I want. In addition to that, the popularity and reliability are also very important. I am going to ask my Weibo follower about it. I really like to move my Sina blog to another simple and powerful blog site in China.

I'll keep my update about Chinese blog if I make any significant changes.

References

My Weibo: 茶树油客
My Chinese blog at Sina: 茶树油客的博客
Chinese blog service: diandian
TechRice article: Diandian Founder Jack Xu: Before I Knew What a Computer Looked Like…:

Sunday, October 21, 2012

Mac OS Security: Gatekeeper (1)

Mac Mountain Lion OS 10.8.2 introduced some new changes in the area of OS security. In this blog I am going to explore the first one: Gatekeeper. It is a very interesting concept. Security concern has been with computer OS since it started. How to protect user data, information, and their privacy has become one of most important issues in personal computers. Even Apple's Mac OS has been very strong in terms of fighting computer virus or malware, with the population of Internet, Apple has realized the potential danger of malware invading Mac OS. Macs still takes very small market share, comparing to Microsoft Windows. This has been used as an excuse for Mac not having much malware attach. However, Apple is aware the potential attack, and has been keeping very close eyes on the battles of malware against to personal computers.

Based on the information from the past WWDC, there some seminars on Mac security issues. I noticed that Apple has learned lessons in this battle. In this battle, most security focuses have been mainly on defensive side. For example, wildly used anti-virus softwares are always one step behind malware. As a result, Windows treats apps from Internet as potential malware and prompt daunting warning messages to let user to make decision to accept them or not. Apple thinks that this would be a never-win-war.

In Mountain Lion OS, Apple introduced Gatekeeper concept. This is based on a very different concept. In stead of black-kist strategy, Apple implements white-list strategy. This is very analogous to security gate in reality. Security guard will allow any one to enter as long as they have proper id card. Alarm will be on if a faulty or unauthorized id is present. As a part of Gatekeeper strategy, Apple asks all the Mac application developers to apply for Apple developer's id. Apple recomments developers to sign their applications with their ids.

Hence Mountain Lion OS introduced a big change. In order to smooth the transition to this new security practice, the new Mac OS provides three convenient options for Mac users to install apps:

Mac App Store
Mac App Store and identified developers
Anywhere

With those options, users can temporally loose control on Gatekeeper if they want to install known apps without developer id. You can keep your gate door wide open by allowing Any one, but I think most people will choose the first or second option.

I think this will be a new change in app development. Any developer will require to obtain his/her id if he/she wants to distribute apps through internet.

Monday, October 15, 2012

VIM Tips: Multiple Commands

This tip may be too simple and not not the best way to do it. However, it saves my tremendous time. Last week, I was going to bring my Visual Studio solution to my work. This solution contains a lots of projects. I realized that there are some namespaces and copy right issues to be updated. I could use VS to do it. But the VS at work is a new one, without tools like Refactory tool, CodRush Express, Resharper.

I did not like the native Find & Replace in VS. I decided to use VIM to do the job. The challenge I faced was that, first, I had to find all the files contains the strings I would like to replace, and secondly, do the find and replace for each file.

I used TotalCommander tool to do the search. It has built-in find feature and it is very powerful. I can easily get the search result files in one panel. Then I added a tool bar associated with VIM (set parameter %P%N). It is a very cool tool.

Next, I tried to use VIM to do replacement manually. I had too many .cs files. It was just to tedious. Then I searched for a way to do replacement, then save the changes and quit. Can I do three commands in one line? Soon I found a way to do it:

:%s/searchpattern/replacement/g | write | q

In VIM the pipe char is used to link a list of commands. This made my job much quicker. Afterward, I found that this could be done on command line like this:

gvim -c "%s/searchpattern/replacement/g | write | q" test.cs

I think that there must be a better way to run a chained command in a Windows command console: first finding all the files containing expected strings, and next using gvim to do the replacement.

Reference

Total Commander tool

Wednesday, October 03, 2012

VIM Tips

Recently I was working on a project to set up a new server. The new server is a replacement of existing one. One of issues I tried to resolve is to migrate permissions from the existing server to the new server. The problem is that there are too many folders to be checked, 4k folders. I need to find a way to export permissions for each folder to a text file.

Quickly I found a command to get permissions:

cacls.exe folderName

It was very nice to find out this command. Then I use Tree to export folders to text file and edited the text file as a batch file. This is a simple batch file, but a long list of folders.


@cacls folder1 > perm.txt

@cacls folder2 >> perm.txt


...

@cacls folder4000 >> perm.txt

I encountered a problem. Some of path was wrong. I think I may missed some parts of their paths. To find out which one is not valid is a challenge. I need to find a productive way to do that. I knew the following command is a convenient way to detect valid path:


@IF NOT EXIST %folder1 ECHO %folder1

I used VIM to help me to create another batch file based on my above batch file. I used the following VIM replacement command to trim my batch file:

:%s/@cacls //g
:%s/ > perm.txt//g
:%s/ >> perm.txt//g

Those are simple VIM find and replace commands. Now I have a list of paths left:


folder1

folder2

...

folder4000

Then I use find and replace with group command to repeat folders with ECHO command:


:%s/\(.*\)/\1 ECHO \1/g

where \(xxx\) is a group. Finally I insert prefixing IF command at each line the the command:


:%s/^/@IF NOT EXIST /g

where ^ is the beginning of line. With above commands, my new batch file was created.

@IF NOT EXIST folder1 ECHO folder1
@IF NOT EXIST folder2 ECHO folder2
...
@IF NOT EXIST folder4000 ECHO folder4000

Soon I found invalid folders and quickly I fixed my scripts.

Friday, September 28, 2012

Open Excel File by Double Click

Recently I had experience a problem at work. I cannot open Excel files by double click them. I tried to open from Excel Open menu and it works fine. I have no problems to open other files such as word or txt files.

I checked my other colleagues and they don't have the issue. One of my friend recommended me to find solution from web by googling. Soon I found a solution. This is something related to Excel registry settings. Since the complexity of Windows registry, it is not recommended to directly edit or change settings there. I found that there is file association from File Explorer. Here is what I did.

First, open File Type from Tools menu, locate the XLS (notice the upper case):

Click Advanced button, the following dialog is displayed.

Select Open in Action list. Click on Edit button:

Make sure to clear Use DDE, then click OK. Apply changes. This will be double click on Excel default behavior back.

Reference

Microsoft Knowledge Base: You cannot double-cock to open an Excel...

Tuesday, September 11, 2012

iOS and New iPhone in Tomorrow's Special Event

Apple has been doing special event to release news about devices and software in past years. I have been kept close look at those events since I got my first iMac in 2007. Tomorrow, September 12, 2012, will be another special event.

A lots of rumors are focused on new iPhone or new hardware devices. What I am actually interested in is the formal release date of iOS 6. I have been waiting XCODE update with iOS 6 support this Fall. I have watched WWDC 2012 videos about iOS 6. I really like the new features in iOS 6, both in Objective-C and new UI components. My next app will use some of those new features.

I'll update this blog after all the news will be released in tomorrow's Apple special event. This will determine how I'll be back working on my apps.

Today, September 12, 2012, Apple made a long list of announcements. iPhone 5 looks gorgeous. The most interesting news for me is the iOS 6 release date. It will be available in one week time, next Wednesday, September 19, 2012, before iPhone 5 release (on September 21, 2012). Not sure when the XCODE update will be available.

I am still watching today's Keynote speech, 1 hour 53 minutes. First time in almost 2 hours. I think my internet has some problems, or the Apple site streaming may have issues. I had several times frozen during AirPlay Mirroring. When I went back to my iMac, I still has similar issue. The reason I suspect internet provider issue is that my QQ app lost connections several times. Anyway, I am going to back to the speech.

Sunday, September 09, 2012

Get Caller Class Context and Caller Method Names

In my MyLog class, I prefer to print class name and method name in my log messages. What I did before was to use hard coded strings. This practice makes the maintenance difficult, specially when class or method names are changed.

Later I found two nice Cocoa C-Functions to achieve the same result, without any hard-coded strings. Those functions are great way to get context class and method names. Therefore, I added them to MyClass as convenient macros:


#define CALLER_SELECTOR_NAME NSStringFromSelector(_cmd)

#define CALLER_CONTEXT       NSStringFromClass([self class])

Here are examples to use CALLER_CONEXT to initialize MyLog instance and use CALLER_SELECTOR_NAME to get method name:


// ExampleClass1.m

#import "MyLogger.h"

...

@property (strong, nonatomic) MyLogger* logger;

...

@implementation ExampleClass1

...

@synthesize logger;

- (MyLogger *) logger {

    if (!_logger) {

        _logger = [[MyLogger alloc] initWithContext:CALLER_CONTEXT];

    }

    return _logger;

}

...

- (void) viewWillAppear:(BOOL)animated {

    [super viewWillAppear:animated];



    [self.logger debug:

     ^{

         return [NSString stringWithFormat:@"'%@' is called!",

                CALLER_SELECTOR_NAME];

      }

    ];

...

}

...

@end

Here is the result in the debug console:

2012-09-09 14:23:44.990 TapToCount[5260:c07] [DEBUG] ExampleClass1 - 'viewWillAppear:' is called!

Reference

iOS Developer Library: Foundation Functions Reference
My previous blog on MyLog update

Monday, September 03, 2012

Update: MyLog with Block

I wrote a utility class to log messages in Objective-C long time ago. I updated the class with block early this year, which is similar as delegate in C#. The reason I like to use blocks is that I think, it will improve my app performance.

Here is what I did before, taking info as an example:

- (MyLogger*) info:(NSString*)messageFormat, ...;

A message string is passed to info method by using a list of dynamic string parameters. No matter if I enabled info logging level or not, the message string would be built on call.

By using a block, the string is built within a dynamic block of codes. The bock is actually a pointer to a function. The block of codes may not be executed at all if the logging level is not enabled. Therefore, I think this strategy would improve app performance.


typedef NSString* (^MessageBuildBlock_t)();

...

- (MyLogger*) info:(NSString* (^)(void))msgBuildBlock;

The block is defined as a function returning a string. Then the block is used as a parameter for info method.

Reference

My previous blog: MyLogger Class in Objective-C (1)

Sunday, August 26, 2012

Objective-C: Using Swapping to Mock Method Impelmentaion

Recently I read an interest blog on Unit test in Objective-C. A customized class is defined as method-swizzling helper. With this helper class, two methods in two difference class can be easily swapped at runtime. Therefore, by using this strategy, you can easily mock method calls avoid calling to database or making HTTP requests.

The key points for this helper class is based on Objective-C runtime functions.

class_getClassMethod(...)

method_exchangeImplementations(...)

The first method is used to get a class method as a data type Method. The original and swapped methods can be obtained by this function call. Then the second method is used to make an exchange of method implementation.

The blog has an example of this usage. It looks very easy to make a mock of a method implementation, which is a key practice in unit tests.

Reference

iCode blog: Using Method-Swizzling to help with Test Driven Development
Mac OS Developer Library: Objective-C Runtime Reference

Saturday, August 18, 2012

Scrollbar in Mac OS

Since 2007, my interest has been shift to iOS and Mac. One thing interesting UI is scroll bar. Apple has changed the behaviour of scrollbar in iOS. The purpose of this change is to utilize the maximum territory space in a scrollable view. The scrollbar will disappear after the view stays static within seconds. To bring it back, you can user touch gestures to swipe the view. All these are handled by OS. This has been in iOS devices for long time.

Since Lion OS, Apple introduced the similar support in Mac OS. It is a very interesting design. Here is my understanding. The scrollbars (horizontal and vertical ones) are two UI components. When they are visible, they are UI elements with two main purpose:

They provide visual vision of positions of its content, and
They respond to user interaction, moving or scroll to a position when they are clicked or dragged.

When scrollbars are invisible, not only cannot users see content positions or if content is scrollable, users also have no way to interact with scrollbars. In iOS and Mac native applications, this normally does not present any issue. Users can user touch like swipe to check or move content positions.

However, I had a case recently that invisible scrollbars do cause me some trouble. I use web based RDC to connect to Windows. The RDC window was developed in Java, which is based on Java UI component. It does not support swipe gesture. When I saw a blue window, I had no way to scroll its contents even I knew the Start menu there on the bottom behind the window.

What I found there are two solutions to resolve the issue. The first method method is limit to Mountain Lion OS. Windows in ML are resizable by dragging any boarders. By dragging boarders, the scrollbar will appear for a short period of time. With that period, just quickly touch the scrollbar to make a move.

The second solution is to make scrollbars always visible. This can be set in System Preference | General.

Actually, the scrollbar-always-visible looks really ugly after I am getting used to the new-and-clearn views. However, this solution is the only solution when a window is not sizable.

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