Alan Quatermain

monoceroi:

Summary: Just released RAProjectTools, a collection of Ruby and Bash scripts that make your life easier.

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sync-resources / sync-resources.rb

The script in sync-resources.rb looks at your Xcode project, and finds a group named Resources. If it finds one, and the group itself is associated with a directory in your project — for example, Project/Resources — it will attempt to reconcile the contents of the directory with the contents of the group. Files added to the directory will be added to the Xcode group, and files no longer found will have their references removed.

It works well against projects with one single target. It’s possible to extend the script so it is more robust. The script uses the Xcodeproj gem from CocoaPods, and the appropriate Bundler magic is already set up for you.

Invoke sync-resources from the root-level directory containing your project.

next-version

The script in next-version bumps the version number by one. It works with Git Flow, the awesome branching model for software development, and AGVTool, Apple’s solution for software versioning.

It works pretty well if you are already using these tools. Remember to start this script from the develop branch, and it’ll make a new Git Flow release with the next version number.

Invoke next-version from the root-level directory containing your project.

That’s a fairly sizeable amount of awesome right there.

monoceroi:

Summary: Just released RATilingBackgroundView which implements a very simple UIView subclass that takes several background tiles, generates more if necessary, and scrolls them with the containing UIScrollView.

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You’ll find RATilingBackgroundView in this project. It needs a delegate to work. Do these things to start using it:

• Drop the project into your app as a static library dependency.

• Implement <RATilingBackgroundViewDelegate>:

  - (CGSize) sizeForTilesInTilingBackgroundView:(RATilingBackgroundView *)tilingBackgroundView;
  - (UIView *) newTileForTilingBackgroundView:(RATilingBackgroundView *)tilingBackgroundView;
  

  It’ll ask about the default size for tiles, and will also ask for new tiles whenever the bounds of its containing view has changed and it has no dequeued tiles to cover the area.

• Optionally, set the stretching flags so you can use stretchable images for tiles.

  @property (nonatomic, readwrite, assign) BOOL horizontalStretchingEnabled;  //  YES
  @property (nonatomic, readwrite, assign) BOOL verticalStretchingEnabled;    //  NO
  

  If you don’t set any stretching flags, the tiles will be stretched horizontally to the same width of the containing view by default.

  For example, if you have a square or rectangular image you’d like to repeat, set both flags to NO.

Very useful as a counterpart to AQGridView.

monoceroi:

Summary: Just released RAReactionKit, which lets you do blocks-based KVO and key-path binding between objects, and handles premature deallocation cases gracefully without swizzling -dealloc. It is spliced from IRFoundations, which has grown too large to be instantly useful in any case.

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There are three major parts of the Reaction Kit: Bindings, Observings, and Deallocation Monitors. The entire project is built upon ARC and mandates support for weak references. It does not swizzle your -dealloc methods, and work nicely with NSManagedObject instances.

Bindings

In NSObject+RABindings.h you’ll find these methods added to NSObject:

- (void) ra_bind:(NSString *)aKeyPath toObject:(id)anObservedObject keyPath:(NSString *)remoteKeyPath options:(NSDictionary *)options;
- (void) ra_unbind:(NSString *)aKeyPath;

For now, the binding is strictly one-way. Two-way bindings are very interesting to have, though. :)

You use the binding mechanism like this:

[cell ra_bind:@"someView.elements" 
    toObject:modelObject 
    keyPath:@"someOtherElements"
    options:@{
        RABindingsMainQueueGravityOption: @YES
}];

There are currently two options keys:

• RABindingsMainQueueGravityOption: If it is set to @YES, RABindings will take care to asynchronously set the value on the receiver from the main queue. If you have an non-atomic object that gets hit from all the places (mediated with a serial dispatch queue), this can be handy.

• RABindingsValueTransformerOption: You can pass a RABindingsValueTransformer block:

  typedef id (^RABindingsValueTransformer) (id inOldValue, id     inNewValue, NSString *changeKind);
  

  This allows you to do some very cheap value transforming, for example between NSDate and NSString.

Observings

In NSObject+RAObservings.h you’ll find a bunch of methods added to NSObject:

- (id) ra_observe:(NSString *)keyPath options:(NSKeyValueObservingOptions)options context:(void *)context withBlock:(RAObservingsCallback)block;

- (void) ra_removeObservingsHelper:(id)aHelper;
- (void) ra_removeObserverBlocksForKeyPath:(NSString *)keyPath;
- (void) ra_removeObserverBlocksForKeyPath:(NSString *)keyPath context:(void *)context;

- (NSMutableArray *) ra_observingsHelperBlocksForKeyPath:(NSString *)aKeyPath;

- (void) ra_observeObject:(id)target keyPath:(NSString *)keyPath options:(NSKeyValueObservingOptions)options context:(void *)context withBlock:(RAObservingsCallback)block;

The main reason for exposure are two-fold:

• The code was written by a more naïve version of myself
• Observings are assumed to be frequently made and broken.

You use the Observing mechanism by invoking ra_observe:options:context:withBlock:. It spins up a temporary, private KVO listener which forwards incoming communication from the Key-Value Binding mechanism to your handler block.

Deallocation Monitors

The Deallocation Monitor is provided in NSObject+RALifetimeHelper.h:

- (void) ra_performOnDeallocation:(void(^)(void))aBlock;

If you pass a block to -ra_performOnDeallocation:, the block will be called when the object is deallocated.

Please note that for static NSString instances (the @"" string literals you specified in code), or special cases like @YES and @NO, they will never be deallocated.

If you have zombies on, nothing will be deallocated — as well.

Looks very interesting indeed.

Via Marco— squashed : Mitt Romney thinks you need to take responsibility for your life:

Generally, there’s nothing wrong with asking people to take responsibility for their actions to avoid social ills. Stop littering. Spay or neuter your pets. Vaccinate your children. Get up early enough to eat breakfast so you’re not so grouchy at work. If your diet is making you sick, change it….

Apparently anyone earning less than 3x the minimum wage is an underachiever, and thus not worthy of the Republican candidate’s attention…

seenontabletop:

I’ve been playing Catan for years and it was nice to see it featured on Tabletop. Being the father of a rapidly evolving, small humanoid, I of course want to start impressing upon him my love of board games.

This past week, at GenCon, I got the opportunity to try out Catan…

My daughter is four right now… I therefore need this game. Like, *medically need* it.

wilwheaton:

This is great. A guy shares five reasons he wants his children to play D&D.

Reblogging in the hope that my wife will see it & be convinced… ;o)