Blogs

Google’s friendly little chromecast has some great background images. If you want to download all of those images so you can have a nice high quality screen saver on your laptop/mobile etc. just do this: git clone -b patch-1 https://github.com/mattburns/chromecast-backgrounds.git cd chromecast-backgrounds/ npm install lodash q request nopt chalk node cli.js --download=images --size=1024 --load=backgrounds.json Change the size from 1024 to whatever maximum size you want to download. I had to tweak the source from this project on github....

Does your current version point to JDK6 even though you’ve installed JDK7? matt$ ls -l /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/CurrentJDK 8 lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 59 21 Nov 14:43 /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/CurrentJDK -> /System/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/1.6.0.jdk/Contents The do this: sudo rm /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/CurrentJDK sudo ln -s /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdk1.7.0_51.jdk/Contents/ /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/CurrentJDK If it’s not already, set JAVA_HOME accordingly in your ~/.bash_profile: export JAVA_HOME=/System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/CurrentJDK/Home Test it worked: matt$ java -version java version "1.7.0_51" Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.7.0_51-b13) Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 24....

If you’re using a UK edition usb keyboard with Ubuntu, you may be swearing every time you want a relatively common characters like £, # or |. I’ve been suffering with a poorly mapped keyboard for months. I’ve no idea why, I just assumed I must have tried when I installed the OS and deemed it impossible. Anyway, I’m an idiot because it’s really easy. Open up your keyboard settings and pick “Layout Settings”:...

Install Homebrew (if needed) ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL \ https://raw.github.com/Homebrew/homebrew/go/install)" Install R brew tap homebrew/science brew install r

Before OddPrints… A short while ago I wanted to print some photos for a little frame (4x4cm). I don’t own a printer and so I wanted to get it printed online. However, the smallest size offered by most online labs is 4×6". I’m a programmer and amateur photographer, if anyone should find this easy it should be me. How hard can it be? Somehow, I needed to resize and re-save my photo so that it had just the right border around the edge so that when the new image was printed at 4×6" my picture would be in the middle at exactly 4x4cm ready for me to cut out....

We’ve all seen loading spinners and they generally look like this: Urgh. This is just an animated gif and has the following drawbacks: Limited to 256 colours Need to regenerate the image if you want a different colour. Framerate and resolution set when you create the image. (and increasing either will hurt load times). Playback is jerky until all frames are downloaded Wouldn’t it be better to use some vector magic and hardware-accelerated loveliness to get a spinner like this:...

Google have just announced that they’re giving Latitude the boot. Not in the distant future but next month (August 9th). I’m gutted as I was just getting used to relying on its awesomeness. At first I panicked because I’ve been using the Location History feature to log my location for the past 3 years. Thankfully, that feature is spared the chop (well, for now at least). If you have also been using it to log your location then you’ll be glad to hear you can download your location history....

Intro I recently changed the OddPrints logo on the website from an image to simple text styled with CSS and @font-face. To me it seems like the obvious thing to do but very few websites seem to employ the technique. I thought I’d explain my thoughts and I’d love to hear what you think… 1 – Sharper This is the main reason. I recently bought a Retina MacBook Pro and the screen quality is amazing....

If you have your cart built up in javascript then just follow Google’s documentation. If you submit your Google Wallet cart server-side using the java SDK and want to track the sale using Google Analytics’ ecommerce feature, then this blog is for you… Before you start, make sure you have enabled the ecommerce feature in Google Analytics. In your Java code, you need to set the analyticsData (String) in the cart:...

Looking to build a new PC? Want to build one that will play nicely with Windows or Linux or could even be a Hackintosh? Making sure you choose the right combination of components is important and a pain to research. If you’re feeling lazy, here’s my shopping list for the machine I built that I’m using right now. By the way, it’s faaaaaast 😉 CPU – Intel Ivy Bridge (i5-3570K) – £169...