The Adventures of Emacs the Viking

Ok, my iMac is late 2012 and only has 8GB of RAM. I decided to see if it would be possible to speed up my development cycle, especially for running unit tests and the like but just as much for an improved build time as well. After much fiddling in the dark and reading some great pages, I eventually came up with the following solution that works for me but bear this in mind: Danger Will Robinson RAM is volatile so everything you do is gone forever when you unmount it or shutdown so don't forget to copy your changes elsewhere. If you have Git integrated properly then get into the habit of committing frequently. I have considered writing a small bash script to run `rsync` from a custom menu option  (and thus a shortcut key binding) or look into using the Apple Automator to transfer any changed files across to the hard drive. Whatever... you have been warned! Step one: Create the RAM disk, I do it like this: diskutil erasevolume HFS + "RAMBO" `hdiutil attac

Having recently configured AndroidStudio to use a RAM disk for Gradle, I thought I would look around and see if I can use the remaining space for Opera. This is essentially a reproduction of this fine page: http://www.ghacks.net/2010/10/20/how-to-change-the-opera-cache-directory/ That page does not deal with Macs though and after a little bit of experimentation I came up with this spell: open /Applications/Opera.app/ --args --disk-cache-dir=/Volumes/RamDisk/opera For the record, here is my Opera version: Make sure that the specified folder exists before starting Opera, if might automatically create the folder for you but I didn't bother to find out, I hate disappointment. And for the record, the way I create a RAM disk on my iMac, which is done automatically when I log in, is like this: diskutil erasevolume HFS+ "RamDisk" `hdiutil attach -nomount ram://4194304` The above line was courtesy of this YouTube video: Thanks to Bartech TV then! So, with Turbo m

I am in the process of reviving an old project from 2014 that I never finished because of other work commitments. In that time, bitrot has set in, the Android API has moved on and all in all, the home-brewed HTTP server I wrote using SocketServer and the org.apache libraries had to go! I looked around, found a couple of contenders and after much time decided to go with NanoHTTPD because it is lean, small and fits in exactly two files. The main server is in one file `NanoHTTPD.java`and there is another file called `ServerRunner.java` which manages instances of running servers. The others The other project I looked at is this one:  https://github.com/koush/AndroidAsync which led me a merry dance and I just couldn't figure out how get the POST data I had uploaded. I spent a few days really digging at it with Wire Shark too to make sure the data was going up. It was. Whatever... I had used it via a gradle dependency entry but I dropped it and went back to NanoHTTPD. For m

I am currently developing an application that requires playing YouTube videos in full screen mode. After scraping around and putting together the pieces, I currently have the following code which I hope is of use to anybody else out there. public void playYouTubeVideo(String videoId) { String videoTemplate = "@YTBASE@@VIDEO@"; String videoAction = videoTemplate .replace("@YTBASE@", "vnd.youtube://") .replace("@VIDEO@", videoId); Intent intent = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_VIEW, Uri.parse(videoAction)); intent.putExtra("VIDEO_ID", videoAction); intent.putExtra("force_fullscreen", true); startActivity(intent); } There are some points to bear in mind though... Once the ACTION_VIEW intent has control, your application is effectively paused i.e. it won't work until you use the back button to exit the player intent and return to your application. It may or may not work in t

I think prime numbers are the numerical expression of peace. Restful nodes in the vibration of everything. Prime factorisation has always struck me as something truly astounding and it is reassuring to know that awsesome minds are hard at work trying to solve the Riemann hypothesis right now. There are some truly wonderful professional and amateur (in the nicest sense of the word) explorations I have watched recently and the ones that moved me the most, in order of cool factor were: This guy,Carlos Paris, has put in some serious work with AutoCAD and made some interesting observations. I truly enjoyed watching all of his four videos. Awesome work Carlos. As an interested amateur I found his work and thoughts to be very compelling. I am sure the professionals would groan or moan but to me this video is most excellent and informative. Speaking of the professionals, this video is also very interesting to watch as it goes some way to visually explaining the Riemann hypothesis in

Just a quick note about something I recently found whilst trying not to buy MOCL… http://www.lambdanative.org/ LambdaNative is developed and maintained by the Pediatric Anethesia Research Team (PART) and the Electical and Computer Engineering in Medicine (ECEM) group at the University of British Columbia (UBC). I have spent a week or two evaluating it and accidentally contributed a pull request that got merged and one that didn’t and I have to say that, for what it offers, it is awesomely good. Having personally spent many hours with it now, I do not yet think it is ready for mainstream development for a few reasons. I don’t mean that it a bad way either. What I mean is that the language, Scheme, is not really that widely known and as such it probably won’t break out into the public arena any time yet. That’s a real shame because I think that they have achieved an amazing thing; total abstraction of the underlying platform with a really powerful, underestimated language. Go