John Ballinger

Setting up Codeigniter 2.1 with HMVC

Mon, 21 May 2012 10:44:32 +1200

KLCK & ChairBro - The tech stack

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 10:30:00 +1200

I was just asked on Twitter how I built KLCK, so here is a pretty good break down of the technology and the order things were done.

For quite some time I have testing and working on different systems and frameworks. I love Python but didn’t really want to host this app on app Engine and I have been doing a lot of PHP work lately. I have done a site in Ruby on Rails but find it quite complicated to come back to you if you dont do Rails fulltime, I had such a horrible experience hosting Ruby that its really put me off Ruby & Rails, but I love Ruby as language (yes I know about Sinatra). So this was the technology of choice, probably because it is easy to host and configure and pretty solid at the end of the day (even if it is a bit ugly at times).

So to start off with I built www.ChairBro.co.nz which is powered by 1 file, index.php.

This uses a super simple framework called Silex http://silex.sensiolabs.org/
Silex allows you to run your whole website from 1 file and manages all your routes etc. Its simple and flexible.

To make things super simple, the HTML uses Smarty Templates http://smarty.net/ which allows you to inherit and extend your HTML files. In essence you can create a master template file and inherit this into other templates. Choosing smarty was the best choice I made here. One thing about smarty is that it will compile your templates+code on the first run. So you templates are not parsed on every request, they are parsed once and then turned into pure PHP code. So KLCK, ChairBro run render super fast on the server.

I am a real fan of ORM databases, and love this one called Red Bean PHP http://redbeanphp.com/ which allows you to quickly get a DB up and running, I used MySql for the database but for some projects I have used Sqlite. I do recommend MySql for you DB. Red Bean allows you to keep away from SQL (you can still uses it though) so you focus on manipulating object, not SQL statements.

For image manipulation and cropping. http://shiftingpixel.com/2008/03/03/smart-image-resizer/ which basically allows you to manage image resizing on the fly. Super simple.

Finally after ChairBro was built I decided to create KLCK using the same engine but different design and different categories. Because I used Smarty for my templates I only had to create a new master template for the site and with some tweaks, I have 2 sites running of the same code base.

How big is it all. Well the 2 sites run off 1 index.php file which is about 900 lines long. This includes lots of comments and some other functions I am not using.

Result: Love it. Its simple, separated, DB code is terse and concise, templates are logical and very easy to move around and manipulate. runs fast.

Pilotmoon Blog: Scroll Reverser — get in practice for Lion

Fri, 15 Apr 2011 11:11:36 +1200

Pilotmoon Blog: Scroll Reverser — get in practice for Lion:

pilotmoon:

You might have learned that a certain upcoming version of Mac OS X may have scrolling that is “bass-ackwards”.

That is, when you push up on your trackpad or mouse scroller, the page content moves up too, just like on iOS devices.

I made a very minimal little app that lets you reverse…

iPhone ad-hoc builds

Wed, 25 Aug 2010 00:24:50 +1200

iPhone ad-hoc builds:

If you’re concerned whether the ipa file is properly created, go ahead and repeat the Share Application step but save the file to the desktop instead of opening it in Mail. Then unzip the ipa file and look into the Payload folder that is extracted. Inside, you’ll find an application bundle, and inside there, you’ll discover the embedded provision file. Load the file in TextEdit to confirm that the proper UDIDs have been included in the provisioning file.

Don’t Be Ugly By Accident! « OkTrends

Wed, 11 Aug 2010 10:45:31 +1200

Don’t Be Ugly By Accident! « OkTrends:

A must read on some funny facts about photos and attractiveness.

Getting your iPad on 3G.

Tue, 03 Aug 2010 14:34:00 +1200

Get the XT Prepaid Mobile Broadband 500MB - you don’t have to pay monthly - Confirmed By Telecom ^JL.

If you use your iPad now and again outside of your wifi zone. You could get 500MB of data from Vodafone or 2º but it’s going to cost you $20/month. You must also pay every month. On XT Prepaid Mobile Broadband 500MB, you pay for what you use and have 6 months to top up.

You need to tell them at the Telecom Store that you want the 500MB Mobile Broadband prepaid rate on the sim when you buy it. (they will probably look at you confused).

The cheapest is $29.95 (it says per month, but it should say, “500MB of data capped at 29.95”).

http://www.telecom.co.nz/mobile/mobilebroadband/plansandpricing/prepaid

This 500MB prepaid rate basically means you pay 10c/Mb up to $29.95 which is 300MB. Then you get a free 200MB if use that in a single calendar month.

At the bottom of this table is says.

“If you use less than your data allowance you’ll only be charged for what you use, and your credit balance will roll over to the next calendar month.”

Which means if you use only 100MB in a month, you only pay $10. If you use 300MB in one month you are billed $30 and if you use 500MB of data in 1 month you will be still be billed $30. You can add another 500MB though by topping and getting 1GB for $60 (I am rounding my values up to make my example clearer).

You must top up every 6 months.

“Any top-up credit needs to be used within six months otherwise it will expire and you need to make sure you top up at least once every six months to avoid your Prepaid account being deactivated.”

http://www.telecom.co.nz/mobile/yourmobile/topup (Heading - By the way, just so you know…)

This means if you use you iPad now and again on 3G it’s pretty good, if you need heaps of data, eg 500MB to 1GB this plan is good.

You can see lots more options here if you have more data requirements.

http://www.whiteandblack.co.nz/2010/07/ipad-data-plans-comparision-xt-vodafone-and-2-degrees/

Thanks to Matthew Buchanan for his assistance with pulling the correct data together for this post.

Mac OS X: ssh key generation and deployment

Fri, 23 Jul 2010 15:14:41 +1200

Mac OS X: ssh key generation and deployment:

Creating RSA keys for OSX / Linux

sponno's iPhone-Photoshop-JSX-Icon-Exporter at master - GitHub

Sun, 18 Jul 2010 11:49:41 +1200

sponno's iPhone-Photoshop-JSX-Icon-Exporter at master - GitHub:

Photoshop - iPhone App Icon Export for iPhone 4/3 Touch and iPad.

Creates all 6 icons sizes that are required for these devices from homescreen, retina display, spotlight search

1. To use this script, double click the script file, photoshop will launch and ask you for a 512x512 icon file of any 
image format (jpeg, psd, gif, png etc.)
2. Select the file and photos shop will create 6 icon files and save these with the correct names in the save folder as 
the 512 image.

3. Add these images into your iPhone project and update you app plist.
Read Apples Q&Q 1686 on how to add this icons to your info plist
http://developer.apple.com/iphone/library/qa/qa2010/qa1686.html

Video JS | HTML5 Video Player

Mon, 24 May 2010 10:32:12 +1200

Video JS | HTML5 Video Player:

HTML5 video player, fallback support for IE, Opera, works with iPhone and supports, h.264, ogg and webm

Duplicate line in xCode with Ctrl+D, finally.

Mon, 24 May 2010 00:27:11 +1200

Duplicate line in xCode with Ctrl+D, finally.:

More details on all the commands to make your own.
http://www.erasetotheleft.com/post/mac-os-x-key-bindings/

OSX SVN remove pesky svn files from a folder

Wed, 12 May 2010 23:57:35 +1200

In Terminal navigate to the correct folder first.
To see what this command is going to remove run

find . -name .svn

Then when you want to remove these files. Note the traling slash semi colon.

find . -name .svn -exec rm -rf {} \;

Developer-To-Developer iPhone App Distribution Without Ad-Hoc Provisioning

Fri, 02 Apr 2010 14:49:44 +1300

Developer-To-Developer iPhone App Distribution Without Ad-Hoc Provisioning:

A pretty simple way to send an app for another developer to re-sign and install on their machine. Watch 2min Vimeo video to see how easy this is.

SSH Public/Private keys.

Fri, 26 Mar 2010 14:31:55 +1300

SSH Public/Private keys.:

Quickest way to generate and share SSH keys.
1. Generate key (if you haven’t done this before).
ssh-keygen -t rsa -C “tekkub@gmail.com”

2. Upload key.
cat ~/.ssh/id_dsa.pub | ssh user@host ‘cat - » ~/.ssh/authorized_keys’

You may have to login to the server and mkdir .ssh
If you get permission denied, delete this servers .ssh folder and recreate it again.

Damn awesome album by E603, the mixes make want to download all...

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 11:22:44 +1300

Damn awesome album by E603, the mixes make want to download all of the originals and listen to them.

Download for free but you can also pay what you want. I have been listening to it so much that I paid $25 USD and Ethan is sending me a Tee-Shirt to NZ, double win!

Get your Torn Up mix from www.e-603.com

Oh I love stuff like this. /via matthewb Albert Exergian...

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 23:35:05 +1300

Oh I love stuff like this.

/via matthewb

Albert Exergian created this great set of minimalist film and television posters as a personal project. You’ll find these and many more on his blog, and his commercial portfolio is equally impressive (and much more ornate).

The coolest way to use Dropbox on a Mac to send...

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 21:14:07 +1300

The coolest way to use Dropbox on a Mac to send file.

http://wiki.dropbox.com/DropboxAddons/Dropbox%20Service

Once installed you can simply right click on any file and copy/move it to your Dropbox public folder. The public URL will automatically be copied to your clipboard. Awesome.

My take on how the new iMac should have been designed. Even less...

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 11:44:10 +1300

My take on how the new iMac should have been designed. Even less noise than the latest iMac with “reduced” noise.

Graphed data of New Zealand fixed and 2 year floating rates from...

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 12:38:14 +1300

Graphed data of New Zealand fixed and 2 year floating rates from 1964 to Jan 2009
Full Size

The PUMA Index

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 22:56:06 +1200

The PUMA Index:

How all stock marketing charts should be created. !=

Ever wonder what the differences between Arial and Helvetica...

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 22:54:59 +1200

Ever wonder what the differences between Arial and Helvetica were?