nathan hammond

Not Quite Switching from Firefox to Chrome

2012-05-28T17:53:21-04:00

Hi Mozilla! After having spent the past seven years using Firefox, I'm now open to change. This is in spite of my love of everything that Mozilla has done for the web, my familiarity with Firebug, the AwesomeBar, a carefully curated set of extensions, and years of browser history which is a treasure trove of interesting reading or valuable resources on the web. The last straw for me was simply the performance hit taken by having Firebug enabled. Yes, I could disable it, but having to relaunch is a huge pain and this switch would have to happen multiple times each day. I know you're working on a more-tightly integrated set of developer tools and I really do hope that these solve my problems: I have to use a different browser to view web video because of consistent stuttering and Firefox frequently hangs or pegs a core at 99% usage.

Hi Google! I'm in the market for a new browser. Though it isn't particularly a knock against you, I don't like the way Webkit seems to have adopted Microsoft's "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" approach to web functionality. I'm unfamiliar with Chrome's web developer tools and its importer tool is choking on the huge dataset that is my Firefox profile. Most of the extensions I rely upon for daily use now exist. As Chrome is a significantly smoother experience for me I'm willing to try new things in spite of my complaints.

However, there remain a couple of features whose lack really annoy me:

Having the home button be able to open more than one page. According to reports around the web this used to be possible by using a javascript: protocol link. However, presumably due to work on reducing the surface area for self-XSS (a semi-bug I first reported in 2009), this is no longer possible. (Though it should be noted that javascript: protocol links work on *startup* pages... one of these is likely a bug which should be fixed.)
I'd like to be able to sync my open tabs to my iPhone, like I can with Firefox Sync. I've heard rumor this might be happening, but it can't happen soon enough.
An option to not close the entire window when I close the last tab. (Doesn't exist for OS X in the Chrome Toolbox extension, kinda feel like a second-class citizen.)
You're being obstinate about creating an option to remove the "X" (close button) on tabs? I'd much rather have more text when I've got a bunch of tabs open. This is a really stupid place to draw a line in the sand and pick a fight with your users. Anybody asking for this is already a power user so create and direct them to an about:config knockoff. Or put it in the Chrome Toolbox extension.

So I'm not switching. But can one of you please get your act together?

1Password Tips & Tricks

2012-02-08T12:58:37-05:00

I've been using 1Password for almost a year now and I figured I'd share some of my strategies for using it to stay organized. My last in-depth thoughts about password management were still early in my adoption of 1Password and I did not yet have every nuance considered. So, with no further ado, a few hints on how to use 1Password from somebody who has 367 stored items:

Don't use 1Password's folders. Seriously! Everything that a folder does (grouping) can be better accomplished using the tag system. Think of a folder as an arbitrary grouping which you're manually performing based upon some attribute of the items inside it. Instead of storing that information apart from the items, add a tag to the individual item to store that piece of data directly on it.
Use tags. More than you might initially find prudent. Related to my previous tip, I have tags that identify the address information of mine that the service has (Address/None, Address/All, Address/CityState, Address/Timezone, Address/ZipCode). I have tags for the credit cards they have on file (eg. Card1, Card2, BankAccount1). I even have tags for who introduced me to the service!
Use smart folders. 1Password's smart folders basically let you construct your own super-fancy venn diagram to group your stored items into logical clusters. These work wonderfully in tandem with your overly-tagged approach. I have smart folders labeled "Shared Passwords" (a collection of things where multiple people know the passwords), "Review Account Information" (accounts which I may need to adjust), and one for each client I've done work for.
Create a tag named "Archive" and never delete any accounts. Now you can use 1Password to track every site you've ever given your information to. It seems like every few months there is yet another company for which I've signed up for an account with that has closed down. Simply tag it "Archive" and move on. Now, you might say that this is because I often have accounts with early-stage startups and I'd probably agree with you, but companies come and go and at some point it might happen to you.
Create a tag named "Typed" for passwords you have to be able to type. In addition to the passwords I require myself to learn (Dropbox, email, system password, 1Password master password) I also have typeable passwords for situations where 1Password can't autofill, or where storing a password on your clipboard temporarily is tedious. This is a small list for me and is most common when I encounter modal login windows: iTunes, Battle.net, and Steam.
Use "Secure Notes" for data types that 1Password doesn't know how to handle. Sometimes I'll find myself using a service through OAuth (eg. Flickr) or I'll want to store something like my insurance card information. Just because 1Password doesn't have a template for that scenario doesn't mean you can't store the information. Write it out, tag it appropriately, and now you have your custom information stored!
Make sure every scrap of your information is included. If you're using 1Password the way I am, as both a tool for password management and estate management, you need to include everything. Sure, your same Amazon password lets you sign in to both Amazon and the Amazon Payments sites, but you should save an entry in 1Password for the account as if it were two accounts. This is so your technology executor knows that your Amazon Payments account exists.

Already some of these approaches have saved me a tremendous amount of time and helped keep me organized. Just a few anecdotes from the last year where these practices have been helpful:

I recently had a credit card whose number was compromised. With a single click on the tag "CreditCard1" (tag name changed) I had a list of places online where I needed to update my information. This is most important for those annual billing things you might forget to change.
In October of last year I moved across the city. With 367 items stored in 1Password you really don't want to go through and review more accounts than you have to. I created a Smart Folder which showed me items tagged with "Address/All" or "Address/ZipCode" since those were the only things that changed. Now I only had 165 items to review and update address information.
For much of this year I've been incrementally updating old passwords of mine. Not every account immediately had a generated password. I kept a smart folder which searched for my passwords that I used to reuse named "Change Password" until I'd gone through all of them.
2011, like every year before it, and every year to come, was the year of the Internet startup death. My "Archive" tag reads like a "who's who" of previous tech industry darlings.

Have any other clever approaches of your own? Let me know in the comments!

iosfont - A script to install fonts on iOS

2012-01-30T12:37:30-05:00

Show me the code!

A few days ago I had the (arguably) bright idea of trying to install fonts on my iPhone so that I could use them in Apple's Pages application. The entire manual process was, in short, incredibly annoying:

Open the font in a program which allows you to review its name tables (Font Book on OS X, Font Forge elsewhere.)
Note four attributes of the font: PostScript Name, Full Name, Family, and SubFamily.
Connect to your iOS device and copy down 6 property list files.
Add those four pieces of information you got about your font to the six property list (.plist) files you downloaded from your device.
Copy the updated property list files back to your device.
Copy the font you want to install to your device.
Reboot your device and hope that you didn't screw it up because if you did you'll have to revert the changes you made and try again.

And all of that just to install a single font! Most of the time you'll want to install an entire font family, so you'd need to go through (at least parts of) that process four times!

Fortunately, computers are really good at mindless detail-oriented work. After installing exactly one font manually I decided to write a script to automate the process. Now, using this script, installing a font is this simple:

iosfont install myiOSdevice.local Roboto.ttf

You can then use that font in Pages, your favorite reading application, on the web, or any other application that supports fonts.

Of course, I didn't want to release it when it only supported installation. After it met my needs I cleaned it up really nice and made it handle backups, restore from backup, update itself, and handle uninstalling fonts.

My hope is not that this becomes the end-all solution for installing fonts as it is still incredibly cumbersome. My aim instead is for it to get enough attention to pressure Apple to include the feature into a future release of iOS. So, Apple, if you're reading this, iOS 6?

You can check out the project at its website, iosfont.com.

Pages for iOS: Incomplete.

2012-01-27T21:55:36-05:00

Today I purchased Pages for iOS. After quickly skimming through the startup prompts I loaded in the only document I've ever created with Pages. And everything comes to a screeching halt:

Apple, the company who is supposed to focus on user experience, definitely didn't deliver on this occasion. At first glance it looks like I may have "wasted" a perfectly good $10. But, not to be dissuaded, I figured I might go ahead and see if I could improve my lot. The first thing I did was get clever with a footer element inside of Pages (desktop):

Success! With some clever positioning, I'm only mostly dead. My page count element now peacefully exists inside of a Pages footer component meaning that it will update successfully. Now, since I have a jailbroken iPhone, I decided to get adventurous and see if I could somehow load fonts onto my iPhone. After a bit of work (and creation of a library to install fonts on iOS!) I managed to get the fonts installed:

So, Pages for iOS is still incomplete–lacking support for formulas–but I did manage to improve the situation a good bit. I find it curious that Pages for iOS doesn't support formulas considering Numbers exists for iOS, so maybe it will come in a future update. Hopefully Apple will add that feature soon to validate my purchasing it.

In any case at the end of the day I went from this:

To this:

And if you read this far, that is what my invoice looks like! If you were to hire me for contract work you would receive one of those every week. If you couldn't already tell, I enjoy working on intractable problems, but most particularly in the realm of HTML/CSS/JS code.

A Paradigm Shift in Live Sound?

2012-01-25T21:03:24-05:00

I truly believe that Mackie is releasing the product that will change the way that sound engineers handle live music. My biggest problem when I was doing live sound was getting a band's trademark sound "just right."

Mackie just came up with a way to do just that with their new Mackie DL1608. I have absolutely no reason to own something like it, but I have a strong desire to anyway.

The new workflow:

Sound engineer does a few acoustic tests in the venue to end up with a mains EQ profile that approaches a flat frequency response curve.
Band shows up and hands the sound engineer their exported base profile(s).
Everybody plugs in, sound engineer rings out each input channel.
Software adjusts "pre-fader" (post-gain) levels automatically based upon the largest difference between a "target" input level and actual input level achieved while maintaining level parity.

And that is it! The band can even create multiple profiles for individual songs and their own monitor mixes. At this point the sound engineer's job is limited to making sure the sound design (already complete!) simply transfers well into their own venue.

At the end of the day you end up with an incredibly repeatable sound, a very happy band, a very happy sound engineer, and as a result, a very happy audience.