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Someone must like me
Much to my surprise, someone pointed out that my ReceiptWallet program appeared as a featured piece of software on Apple's Product Guide page today. In case you don't see it, here's what appeared (click on the thumbnail for a full size view):
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Curse Pentax!
I have a Pentax Optio S5i digital camera that I think is great. However, the one huge flaw in it; it uses some wacky USB cable that isn't the standard mini USB. Today my wife wanted to transfer pictures and it took me over 2 hours to find the stupid cable. I have tons of mini USB cables, but only one that fits the Pentax. My wife was able to transfer the images using a card reader, but the OCD part of me needed to find the cable. If it was just a mini USB cable, any old cable would have done and I wouldn't have cared. What is wrong with standards? I'm happy that Motorola is moving to mini USB on their cell phones for both charging and data...if I lose the cable, no big deal.
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Bulk Email Program in a flash
I decided to put my ReceiptWallet program on MacZOT! to give it some extra marketing and see how things go. While (obviously) I won't make as much as if I sold it directly, I'm expanding my customer base. As part of this, I had to implement some new systems in order to handle the orders as MacZOT! gives me a CSV file of orders that I download, insert the serial numbers, re-upload, and then have to send out the orders. I have a MySQL database and php frontend that I use for my normal orders and that works quite well. So I had to figure out the MySQL syntax (I'm still learning it) to import the CSV file into my database as a first step. That wasn't too difficult, but required a bunch of trial and error. The next part was, "how am I going to send out the registration codes?". The normal answer would be to write a script to do this. For some reason, I really hate scripting because I'm not familiar with the syntax (AppleScript, perl, php, etc.), so it takes a lot of time to get a working script. So, I decided to write my own "bulk email" program. No, this is not a spamming program. It's a program that takes the CSV file and a message and customizes each message with info from the CSV file. So, using the Message Framework built into OS X, I was able to whip up the program in about an hour. I even made it so that the fields can be customized and the program can be re-used for when I send out update information or the like. I really should learn some of the scripting languages, but sometimes the quick and dirty way is the way to go.
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The flip side of spam
The other day my wife asked me what the following meant in an email: