Look for the Hawaiian Electric commercial when the Tokyo Olympics starts. My custom music will be featured on the spot.
Searching for an Apple Watch app
The App Store from Apple has a terrible search. What I mean is that any search that cannot find a unique string is bad by default. Every search worth anything can find a hashtag or a unique word easily. You have to change the programming so it doesn’t find a word on purpose. I have two applications, Intervalz and Musical Keyboard made for only the Apple Watch (not iPhone) that cannot be easily found on the App Store. Even Apple support couldn’t find these apps. All because the App Store cannot find a literal/unique string!
Well, it turns out there is a way. The Apple Watch does have a watch app called App Store. This is the App Store app that runs directly on the watch itself. This marvelous piece of engineering is able to do what the entire ecosystem of Apple cannot do – find a simple unique name.
So press the crown, find the App Store app on the watch, scribble in Intervalz or Musical Keyboard and install!
Moving Flutter projects
It’s unbelievable that simply moving a Flutter project from one computer to another can cause it to not run. In the interests of saving people time, here is the fix.
After moving a project from another computer or even from another folder!
1: Enable dart Support (it will prompt you)
2: Run flutter pub get in terminal in the project root directory
3: Go to Preferences->Language & Frameworks -> Flutter and set the flutter SDK path
Removing Safari “wrong” auto completion in address bar
If you have vexing wrong auto completions due to mistype etc… in the Safari address bar. Fix this by doing the following:
In the Finder, Go->Go to folder..
Type in ~/Library/Safari
Find the History.db file and throw it to the trash.
Muting channels with Mainstage while preserving polyphony
A user on the keyboard corner posted a cool tip about the note modifier plugin. By making it map note events to off (i.e. nothing) you can mute a channel by stopping note events from getting there. This worked well until Mainstage 3.3 which was just released. I tried a number of work arounds but finally settled on the scripter plugin. All you need to do is add a scripter plugin, paste this code in, save and assign your scripter to this script. When the scripter is active, it will mute all note on events. When bypassed, everything is normal. It works very well. Here is the script:
// only get rid of note on events, send everything else.
if (event instanceof NoteOn)
{
}else{
event.send()
}
Increasing battery life on MacBook Pro
Found a neat program called Turbo Boost Switcher. It can turn off the Turbo Boost and give your computer more battery life. I tried turning off Turbo Boost and for most things, you can’t tell the difference, but your battery can!
Electrolux type dryer blow fans
Many types of blower fans for dryers have a plastic blower fan which has a metal spindle in the center which goes on the motor drive shaft. If the fan does not come off easily with moderate force – forget it. You will need to destroy the fan (crack the plastic) and replace the entire blower fan assembly. The fan has a plastic nut and will only handle moderate pressure until it will strip. In addition, the spindle will become fused to the motor shaft and will be virtually impossible to remove.
Lowering a stuck car window with cable type regulator
A catch 22 is that you need to lower the car window to take the window off the regulator track, but the window is stuck in closed position. Don’t even try to force the window down – it won’t work. A suggestion was made to try to press the down button on the window switch and hit the engine of the regulator with a hammer. This may loosen the engine and allow the window to lower. If this doesn’t work, you need to cut the window regulator cable. The cable must be cut on the upper pulley side. Hold the window while you make the cut – you need another person to hold the window or you need to tape the window when doing this. Use a tough set of wire cutters.
Here is a good article on how the regulators work:
http://www.agcoauto.com/content/news/p2_articleid/153
Update. If the window is stuck in the down position – you need to cut the cable on the bottom side. But how to reach it???? How about popping out the speaker? That works!
If the window comes off the rubber track, push the window forward towards the front of the car and the front rubber track has enough depth to allow you to reposition the window in the back rubber track.
No devices in XCode
Somehow the simulator had no iPad devices listed. Only the iPad device itself was available. To get the devices back you need to control-click on XCode and navigate to the following path:
- Open iOS Simulator is at
/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Applications/iOS\ Simulator.app. - Go to Hardware > Devices > Manage Devices
Then you can add the iPad 2, iPad Air etc… back.