(Michael Chinen)

It’s been a while since I posted an actual project I’m working on. Since I started working full time for Apportable, I’ll admit there is less time to work on projects, but that’s really no excuse. In addition, as the new year merits such reflection, I’ve been thinking about why I didn’t ship anything last year.

Then I realized, I *technically* shiped something. I shipped my children’s note teaching app (that was already on iOS) on google play using the Apportable framework. Apportable lets you compile your objective-C iOS project to android and run natively. I thought it was lies and insane when I first heard about it; now I can confirm that it is simply black magic. Anyway, I’m usually working on other company’s apps, and improving the Apportable platform where it is is not perfect, so this was a nice way to hit two birds with one stone.

I also started on a binaural beats app, and got a quick prototype, but it didn’t seem as useful or original enough to publish without specific controls, so I’m still working on that. Instead, I put my efforts into a ‘background noise’ app. I started on this because I wanted to be able to drown out the sounds of the 580 and BART that my midcentury apartment building windows are not rude enough to prevent passage into my bedroom. It’s made me remember how much I love the sample synthesis for-loop in an audio callback. (I want to post more on various synthesis techniques in the future). So far the app only has three background noises – rain, waves, and crossfaded white noise. To stay productive, I might just release it as such and develop further as my interest stays with it. To the right is a screenshot of the minimal gl/coregraphics based rendering to accompany the background noise. I’ll try and do a live coding screencast just to get some of it on the screen again.

With the full time job, I can work on all those financially-worthless-but-fun ideas that are musing around in my head that were out of the question when I was doing the solo contract-dev shop. Just to be clear, I am posting this so that I will feel embarrassed if I don’t take advantage of that freedom when I come back and check on this blog.

Yesterday I was at Owl & Company over on Piedmont Ave in Oakland and came across an interesting read by complete chance. It is a book of poetry and narrative of archy, who was a roach in 1920, and before that, a free verse poet. Archy hops from key to key on a typewriter leaving notes for his human ‘boss’ who owns the typewritter and ‘provides’ him with food in the garbage can. It is a real treat, and because of the whitespace, a real short treat at that. I finished it within a couple hours. The curious thing was that soon after reading this I found an untitled document open on TextEdit that I do not recall having anything to do with. I’m keeping it here so that I can document it.

i used to be a programmer
but now i am just a roach that had my soul transmigrated from
a programmer after i died
why a roach you ask well if you must know
it is for my programmer sins like
using so much indirection and so many underscores
oh the irony
i can t even press the shift key being a roach
can t even make an underscore much less
left parenthesis right parenthesis

the funny thing is
being a roach now
i have many ideas
but can t code any more left parenthesis
i had some ideas while human
they all made money
like the one to drive cars
with mustaches or umlauts
can t remember same thing really
they all take thirty percent right parenthesis

when you die and turn into a roach
they give you all your money
it carries over so to say
but as a roach it is hard to pick up
a dollar bill and
they don t make credit cards for us
but now i have no rent to worry about
i live in a lovely victorian
and the food is good as ever

now i have time to think
come up with some real good ones
but since money doesn t mean anything now
i think of programs to make abstract art
i described it to the venture capitalist
he said people don t want roach art apps
they hate things that are ugly and free
or maybe just things that are free that are made by a roach
i told him i don t need money
he said why dont you need money
i said i m a roach
he said lol i should have known
i am hiring a taskrabbit to step on you
and another to save you to make it a fair game
because they call me an angel investor
and i want to disrupt the world
anyway i decided to leave then

only a few problems for roaches
there is a programmer rat here named steve
code reviewing my text
bad indentation he says
its not even code i say
he says you got that right
what a jerk

Here’s my .emacs file in all its unedited glory. May it be a light in your time of google searching or a darkness in your time of trying to understand how to configure emacs.

It’s also in a gist.

It’s a franken.emacs from lots of sources on the net. I’ve forgot them all, but almost none of this functionality originated with me and thus you should give your thanks to the anonymous internet. I wanted to document it for a while because it’s helpful when I switch to a new computer. It’s so messy that I put off documenting it. I’ve decided to share it anyways.
Features are

• ctrl-x ctrl-o to switch between a .m, .mm, .c, .cpp file to corresponding .h file if it is nearby
• ctrl-arrow to switch between multiple buffers/windows that you split horizontally or vertically (e.g. with ‘ctrl-x ctrl-3’
• auto reverts when file changes on disk (e.g. when you git checkout) – note this can be a little dangerous, but I believe it doesn’t do this if you have local modifications
• copy and paste works with os-x clipboard and vice-versa with your yank/copy/kill ring
• other stuff