C. Thomas Payne II

OMG OMG OMG HP WEEKEND!!

Fri, 15 Jul 2011 16:00:01 -0500

This is a test -Tom

c25k - Week 1 Day 1

Tue, 21 Jun 2011 08:48:05 -0500

Well… For the first time in a long time, I’m going to give this whole “Exercise” thing another go. After hearing from several friends and the encouragement from some co-workers and my future brother-in-law, I’ve started the c25k (couch to 5k) workout plan. In short, it involves a 5 minute warm-up, a certain number of sets of Running then walking, and a 5 minute cool-down. As I progress in the program, the runs will get longer and the walking shorter until the walks are limited to the warm-up and cool-down periods only.

As the subject suggests, this is only week 1 day 1 of the program and from my experience last night, I have a LONG way to go before this is even remotely enjoyable. Wish me luck, my body can use the regular exercise.

Applescript to Auto-Mount a SMB Share

Sun, 06 Jun 2010 10:34:00 -0500

I’ve tried damn near everything to get my smb shares to mount and stay freaking mounted, but to no avail. The last solution I tried involved modifying the /etc/fstab file and all that did was cause my mac to crash when the share randomly became unavailable. Yesterday, I wrote a simple Applescript that had:

mount volume ‘smb://user:pass@server/MyShare’

and everytime I noticed the share would drop, I’d re-run that line and everything was pretty good.

Today, with a little patience and some Google-Fu, I found and modified this script: http://dae.cyberic.eu/blog/applescript-to-mount-unmount-a-drive/ to resemble the following:

property minutesBetweenSaves : 0.5

on run
	tell application "GrowlHelperApp"
		set the allNotificationsList to {"Disk mounted"}
		register as application "Disk Mounter" all notifications allNotificationsList default notifications allNotificationsList icon of application "Disk Utility.app"
	end tell
	tell application "GrowlHelperApp" to notify with name "Disk mounted" title "About to start monitoring the MyShare mount" description "I'll update you in a few when I finish my first checksee" application name "Disk Mounter" icon of application "Disk Utility.app"
end run

on idle
	set myVolumeLabel to "MyShare"
	set myMountString to "smb://user:pass@server/MyShare"
	tell application "Finder"
		if not (disk myVolumeLabel exists) then
			mount volume myMountString
			tell application "GrowlHelperApp" to notify with name "Disk mounted" title "Volume mounted" description "Disk “" & myMountString & "” with volume “" & myVolumeLabel & "” has been successfully mounted." application name "Disk Mounter" icon of application "Disk Utility.app"
		end if
	end tell
	return minutesBetweenSaves * 60
end idle

on quit
	continue quit
end quit

Read the article above for a better understanding of the “big picture”, but in a nutshell, this script is meant to be saved as an application with “stay open” checked. When it runs, it’ll do the “on run” section and register itself with Growl then let you know its about to try to mount your share. Then, it moves into the idle section and checks to see if the volume “My Share” exists. If not, it will run the “mount volume” command from above and let you know that its done. This part of the script repeats every 30 seconds until I close the application.

Hope it helps someone out there. If so, shoot me and the page above a comment.

Thanks!

ctpstudios: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/kaeruboy-book-1-for-i...

Wed, 28 Apr 2010 11:54:00 -0500

ctpstudios:

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/kaeruboy-book-1-for-ipad/id368649542?mt=8#

KAERU-BOY (book 1 of 2) is the manga charged tale of a dyslexic kid who discovers he can read the secret language of superheroes, turning him into one.

Dead parents, dyslexia, no friends and a family that just doesn’t understand him…KAERU-BOY is an angry kid who’s got every reason to hate the world but he’s the only one with the power to save it.

In case you’re wondering, Kaeru (pronounced Ky-Ru) is Japanese for “frog”.

Frogs and toads aren’t the prettiest things out there. They can be a little slimy. They can be a little warty. Most people don’t want anything to do with them. But that’s what we LOVEe about Kaeru-Boy. He’s a hero with warts. Sure, there are tons of comics featuring “flawed heroes”–- but with Kaeru-Boy we’ve chosen to do something different. Kaeru-Boy isn’t a hero struggling to overcome his flaws. He’s a hero because of his flaws. Gavin, like millions of other people, wrestles with dyslexia. Dyslexics see and understand written language differently. Well, what if that difference was the key to unlocking a secret language? An alien language. What if dyslexia isn’t a disability at all? What if it’s really a hidden ability? And what if that hidden ability was the key to transforming into a superhero?

Kaeru-Boy is a 2 book run, all ages, mech fueled adventure with a very vulnerable and very real kid at its center. Just give him a chance. If you look past all the warts, you’ll discover a hero.

"@kidkong Congrats on the new iPad App: Kaeruboy Book 1 ! It looks awesome. Great Job, Guys!..."

Tue, 27 Apr 2010 21:29:42 -0500

“@kidkong Congrats on the new iPad App: Kaeruboy Book 1 ! It looks awesome. Great Job, Guys! http://bit.ly/c0ltCT”

- ctp2nd

Tik Tak Zoo on Android OS thanks to Adobe!

Wed, 21 Apr 2010 17:10:00 -0500

Wow! I spent about 20 minutes changing a few tweens to work better with the Google Nexus One / Android OS (GTween works better than Tweener right now) and Tik Tak Zoo is running pretty nicely!

The intensive re-development (from iPhone OS to Android OS) process can be outlined as so:

1) Open .FLA
2) Change Target to Adobe AIR 2
3) Create Self Signed Certificate
4) Tweak code if necessary *
5) Click Publish
6) Package it for Android OS
7) Install

Thats pretty much it and depending on the complexity of your application, it doesn’t take very long at all. It was easy, fun, and very exciting to see on my new Google Nexus One.

Thank you, Adobe. Thanks for spending the time, money, and effort to bring us (Flash Designers and Developers) the ability to realize our applications on the iPhone. Thank you for hearing our voices and feeling our grief when Apple closed their App Store to the thousands of apps you made possible. Thank you, again, for giving us yet another avenue of expressing our ideas via the medium we have grown to love and opening, for us, the world of Android OS.

Video of Tik Tak Zoo (Beta) on Android OS / Google Nexus One:

p.s. Adobe, I think I love you. ;)

Tik Tak Zoo for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad on the iTunes App Store

Wed, 10 Feb 2010 16:16:00 -0600

Tik Tak Zoo for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad on the iTunes App Store:

The classic game of TicTacToe has evolved into a whole new animal! In TikTakZOO you pick your species, make your mark and battle— claw, tooth and nail! Now available for only 99 cents on the iPhone and iTouch, download the game that Ann Klinger (a 3rd Grade Teacher) calls “A family friendly romp! It blends the simple strategy of TicTacToe with stunning animations, all while teaching players fun facts about nature’s cleverest creatures”.

Choose 2-player “Battle Mode” or put your skills to the ultimate test against TikTakZoo’s fearsome AAI (Artificial Animal Intelligence).

GAME FEATURES
* Classic TicTacToe gameplay for both adults and kids
* Choose your species (with more to come in future updates)
* Each battle unlocks new and educational animal facts
* Unique battle animations and graphics for each creature
* Advanced in-game intelligence for single player mode

TikTakZoo is owned and developed by Kid Kong Entertainment and CTP Studios.

Video

Mon, 08 Feb 2010 10:32:40 -0600

iPhone Bookmarklet to view Zuda Comics (via ctp2nd)

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 10:50:37 -0600

iPhone Bookmarklet to view Zuda Comics (via ctp2nd)

Three Bookmarklets for Zuda.com's Competition Pages

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 20:53:00 -0600

My friend and designer of nearly every application I develop, Darrin Stephens, had his comic Aliens vs Ninja vs Samurai accepted into Zuda’s February “Zuda Contest”. If he wins he’ll land a contract with DC Comics for 52 pages of the comic which they will print and sell in a trade. This would be Huge for Darrin, so, I’m doing what I can to help him with social marketing, gadgets, and whatever else we can come up with.

I got to looking at the results page, here’s a place where a little bookmarklet might come in handy. This one:

Sort by Results (drag this link to your bookmark bar)

allows you to sort the results page: http://zudacomics.com/competition/results by the number of views each has had. While this doesn’t indicate that an individual entry is winning, I would estimate that the ones with the greatest traffic will be in the top of the competition.

Once again, this isn’t much, but it was fun to do. Darrin mentioned that the one thing that really sucks about Zuda’s website: http://zudacomics.com/node/1714 is that you can’t see the strip on the iPhone. While the HTML5 vs Flash argument has been played out by many smarter than me, it still sucks that the iPhone, and the future iPad will never have flash. So, I made this one:

iPhone-ify (drag this link to your bookmark bar)

While it too is pretty simplistic, it does add a bit for the iPhone. It replaces the flash <object> tag with two div’s and an <img> tag. The image’s URL is set, dynamically, to the first image of that entry’s comic. the div’s have a previous and next button to navigate the pages. Once again, simple, but effective.

If anyone uses these, it’d be nice to hear about it in the comments. Have a good one.

"Developed my first #chrome extension: #updawg . It adds a button to chrome that simply goes up one..."

Sat, 16 Jan 2010 12:15:20 -0600

“Developed my first #chrome extension: #updawg . It adds a button to chrome that simply goes up one level in the URL. http://bit.ly/5oAvdD”

- ctp2nd

There will not be a beta for Flash Professional CS5 (Adobe Flash Platform Blog)

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 11:56:29 -0600

There will not be a beta for Flash Professional CS5 (Adobe Flash Platform Blog):

Quite disappointing… Oh well… CS4 and I get along pretty well…

Google Chrome - Download a new browser

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 10:49:18 -0600

Google Chrome - Download a new browser

Dropped Calls, Failed Calls, No Coverage? There's an App for that #att #iphone

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 09:00:20 -0600

Dropped Calls, Failed Calls, No Coverage? There's an App for that #att #iphone:

Let’s see… I don’t have any reception, so I pull out my new AT&T app to notify them of the problem. Doh! No reception to do that. And the app even nicely brings up a GPS map showing where I am. The GPS signal is much more reliable of course.

Dragon Dictation comes to the iPhone. Wow.

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 08:57:24 -0600

Dragon Dictation comes to the iPhone. Wow.:

To dictate on the iPhone you just launch the app, press the record button, and start talking. Your dictation can be a brief sentence, or a much longer treatise. Once the text has been created from your speech, it’s possible to email it, send it as a text message, or put the result in your clipboard. After recording your message, you can edit the resulting text before you send it off for others to read

via dilbert.com

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 08:54:26 -0600

via dilbert.com

7 stories Barack Obama doesn't want told - John F. Harris - POLITICO.com

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 09:20:37 -0600

7 stories Barack Obama doesn't want told - John F. Harris - POLITICO.com:

In short, a critical view of BHO’s Presidency. Here’s the list, details in the actual article.

He thinks he’s playing with monopoly money
Too much Leonard Nimoy (leaving the emotional/human side out of policy)
That’s the Chicago Way
He’s a pushover
He sees America as another pleasant country on the U.N. roll call, somewhere between Albania and Zimbabwe
President Pelosi
He’s in love with the man in the mirror

Under 30 for 3:45... And closing fast

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 20:16:10 -0600

Getting older … Where’s my walker?

TextExpander Touch + Tweetie 2 = Awesome Remote Mac Management

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 13:22:36 -0600

About 2 months ago, I started playing with TweetMyMac, and enjoyed how easy it was to remotely manage my computer using Twitter. I can send a direct message to a Twitter account setup for my mac and have it open/close programs, send screenshots and iSight camera snapshots, and pretty much anything else I care to write an AppleScript to do. The only real headache was the task of repetitively typing in whatever the commands were to get a snapshot or kill Adium from my iPhone’s Twitter client… That was before I saw that TextExpander had released TextExpander Touch and Tweetie 2 had integrated it into their client. Now, I can type in 4 characters (it could be less, but.. meh) and have the text replaced instantly with whatever the command i needed… (typically closing adium after I leave in the afternoon)

Wcca poof’s to “-d computer_twitter_account close Adium”

Wcss poof’s to “-d computer_twitter_account iSight”

There are quite a few more, these are just the ones I use most frequently.

via dilbert.com

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 09:03:10 -0600

via dilbert.com