yjnote

yjnote is a Mac OS X command-line tool for creating note items in Yojimbo. You can use it to pipe the output or usage notes of other programs into Yojimbo for reference or logging purposes.

Download

Download yjnote.zip (1.7 KB)

Tested, minimally, with Yojimbo 2.1 on Mac OS X 10.6.2. yjnote is written in Perl with a pinch of AppleScript. Further testing, bug fixes, and improvements are welcome (and likely necessary).

Usage

You can display this documentation at any time with yjnote -help.

NAME
       yjnote − Create Yojimbo notes from the command line.

SYNOPSIS
         yjnote [options] [FILE...]

DESCRIPTION
       yjnote creates a Yojimbo note by concatenating the contents of the
       given files (or by reading standard input, if no files are given).

OPTIONS
       −title TEXT
           Sets the note item title.

       −comments TEXT
           Sets the note item comments.

       −label TEXT
           Sets the note item label. Ignored if the label does not exist.

       −tags TAG[,TAG,...]
           Sets the note item tags. Separate tags with commas.

       −flagged
           Flags the note item.

       −reveal
           Reveals the newly created note in Yojimbo. By default, the new note
           is not displayed.

Posted on Sunday, December 13th, 2009.

LSynth 3.1 for Mac OS X

I have compiled a Mac OS X version of LSynth 3.1, the recently released update to the program that synthesizes LDraw code for flexible LEGO parts.

Download LSynth 3.1 for Mac OS X 10.5+ (Universal Binary; 85 KB)

This download includes the lsynthcp executable as well as the configuration file (.zip) and the constraint parts (.zip) available at Willy Tschager’s installation tutorial page for MLCad users (which contains some useful information for all LSynth users).

Important Compatibility Note: The executable in the above download may only work with Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) or greater. Click here to download a version of lsynthcp that should also be compatible with Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger), provided by current LSynth developer Don Heyse. Thanks, Don!

Installation

Copy the LSynth constraint parts to the parts/ or Unofficial/parts/ directory of your LDraw part library. Keep the lsynth.mpd configuration file in the same directory as the lsynthcp executable. LSynth is not integrated with Bricksmith, so you can keep these files wherever you prefer. You will need to use the command line to run LSynth.

Usage

To use LSynth, you manually place constraint parts at key locations such as the endpoints of a hose. Then you input the LDraw file to lsynthcp, which generates a duplicate file containing all the hose segments, chain links, etc. necessary to represent the flexible part described by the constraints.

For example, here is the RUBBER_BAND-Constraints.ldr file from Willy’s excellent page of LSynth examples:

With the file in same directory as lsynthcp and lsynth.mpd, run the following command:

./lsynthcp RUBBER_BAND-Constraints.ldr Rubber_band_output.ldr

Here is the output:

For more detailed information about using LSynth, peruse Willy’s troubleshooting page and the pages linked above.

Notes

Here are the minor modifications I made to compile the LSynth 3.1 source package for Mac OS X:

Edit the comment on Line 69 of lsynthcp.c to begin with slashes (//) instead of backslashes (\\).
Append “-arch i386 -arch ppc” to lines 3 and 17 of makefile to enable Universal Binary support.

The make command is sufficient to compile the program.

This release supersedes the LSynth Service I made a few years ago.

Posted on Saturday, November 21st, 2009.

Drawings

I’ve been cranking them out for NaNoDrawMo.

Here are some other favorites:

Plenty of profile drawings of pretty faces. What next?

Posted on Monday, November 9th, 2009.

NaNoDrawMo 2009

NaNoDrawMo is a drawing challenge started by Steven Frank of Panic software. Inspired by NaNoWriMo’s 50000-word target, the objective is to do 50 fifty drawings in November (a picture is worth a thousand words, so fifty pictures…). My contributions will be visible here.

I’ve started off in familiar territory, but I hope to experiment with different styles over the course of the month.

Posted on Monday, November 2nd, 2009.

Using QuickCursor with TextWrangler

Via Michael Tsai’s blog: QuickCursor is a new utility that let’s you use the text editor of your choice to edit text fields you encounter in any program. It supports BBEdit by default, but it’s not too hard to add support for BBEdit’s little brother TextWrangler. Here’s how:

Open QuickCursor.app/Contents/Frameworks/Info.plist with Property List Editor, display the QCEditInChoices array, and click Add Child. Enter com.barebones.textwrangler and save the file.

Now you can use TextWrangler almost anywhere.

qctwmenu

Of course, it’s not too hard to cut and paste text to and from another editor. This is most useful if you define a shortcut key to open the current text field in your favorite editor.

Posted on Monday, October 5th, 2009.

In which I present alternate model building aptitude as a marketable career skill

From the NYT article on Lego’s business recovery:

The changes [that optimized the company’s supply chain] also filtered down to the ranks of Lego’s toy designers, says Paal Smith-Meyer, head of Lego’s new-business group. The number of different bricks or elements that go into Lego toys has shrunk to less than 7,000 from roughly 13,000, and designers are encouraged to reuse parts, so that a piece of an X-wing fighter from the “Star Wars” series might end up in Indiana Jones’s jeep or a pirate ship.

There’s an emphasis on the creative reuse of limited parts in the design of current Lego sets. Someone who demonstrably makes that specific challenge the focus of their hobby would be an asset to the company.

Posted on Sunday, September 6th, 2009.

Transportation Alternatives

A post at The World Awheel suggests we should compare bicycles to the foot rather than the car. From that perspective, the around-town advantages seem unambiguous. The ability to travel faster than you can by walking, combined with the ability to navigate beyond the domain of public transit, is a great ability indeed — especially if the operating costs are next to nothing.

In fact, there are a lot of people, most of them hidden from those of us in a comfortably middle-class position, who are not a part of America’s car culture because they simply can’t own a car. These are the people we need to get on bicycles, because for them, for all intents and purposes, it’s still 1881.

There is more to solving transportation problems than providing an affordable vehicle for everyone, of course. Transportation needs are irrevocably related to the structure of our society. Where do you go, how do you get there, and what are the costs?

Posted on Wednesday, September 2nd, 2009.

FileMaker Pro 10 Rulers

A quick tip for FileMaker Pro 10 users: in Layout mode, you can choose to display Graphic Rulers from the View menu:

What you may not realize is that you can easily toggle between ruler units by clicking the unit label that appears in the upper left corner of the rulers. Unit options include in (inches), cm (centimeters), and px (pixels):

You can also toggle units by clicking the unit labels in the Info palette:

palette

Posted on Wednesday, September 2nd, 2009.

Bookmark in Yojimbo compatible with Yojimbo 2.0

The current version of my Bookmark in Yojimbo script is compatible with the recently-released Yojimbo 2.0.

Posted on Wednesday, September 2nd, 2009.

Expanded Comments Fields for Yojimbo 2.0

Bare Bones Software has released Yojimbo 2.0, which I heartily recommend. However, Yojimbo 2.0 still comes out of the box with fixed-height comment fields. Here is an updated version of my hack to display comment fields that expand to fill the available space:

Download Expanded Comments Fields for Yojimbo 2.0 (32k)

Posted on Wednesday, September 2nd, 2009.