10,000 Monkeys (Cartoons)

I've been doodling wee cartoons on various coding topics for some time now. They've become pretty popular. Indeed, one of my Becoming a Better Programmer magazine columns was full of them.

I have set up a Tumblr blog for them. Feel free to stroll through the archives at petegoodliffe.tumblr.com.

Writing: The Art of Software Development

The latest issue of ACCU's CVu Magazine is out now. It contains my latest Becoming a Better Programmer column, The Art of Software Development. This time I present a fun little diversion for your reading delight, your visual delectation, and to stimulate your development prowess.

On the cover you can just about make out some pseudo-UML I once scribbled on a whiteboard in the vein hope of understanding someone else's tangled code structure.

Speaking: Worship Collective 2012

Adding to my speaking engagements this summer, I'll be leading a session at the Worship Collective conference at C3 in Cambridge.

I'll be taking a seminar for the keyboard players, where we'll look at technique, working in a band, attitudes, and a hand-picked selection of interesting, useful, and practical stuff.

Speaking: Mobile East

I'll be speaking at the Mobile East developer conference next week, on Advanced iOS Development.

Session details are here for your viewing pleasure. Selected highlights:


This presentation will take you from a basic level of understanding of iOS to look at advanced topics that will make you apps more polished, better designed and, ideally, more successful. 


Abstract concepts are no use, so in this talk we'll take some existing successful commercial iOS applications as a case study, and see how a selection of iOS technologies and techniques combine within it.

Writing: Our Differences Make Us Stronger

The May 2012 C Vu magazine is out now - it contains my latest column, Our Differences Make Us Stronger. This is the second part of my discussion of how a development team must interact with the QA department to craft excellent software.

Find out more details from the ACCU website.

Installing Realtek USB WiFi drivers on Mac OS Lion

The airport card in my laptop died and I couldn't get it fixed before going away for a week. So I needed a stop-gap solution. There are many USB wifi adaptors on eBay that claim Mac compatibility. Some are super-cute little things that only just stick out of the USB port (how they have enough antenna showing to get a signal is anyone's guess).

They almost all seem to use a Realtek chipset. (You can verify this by going to System Information on your Mac, opening the Hardware>USB page, and selecting the device. The bottom pane shows the device info, included the manufacturer name (look at the Vendor ID line).

If you're lucky, you'll get a driver CD bundled. If you're very lucky it's even got some Mac drivers on it.

Don't even try to use them! They'll be hideously out of date.

And don't go to the Realtek website and download the driver that matches your chip number. no doubt that too will be hideously out of date.

I wasted hours doing that; it reminded me of why the Mac is (usually) a so much better computing environment that Windows and Linux. I wasted hours fiddling with different driver versions, 32-bit and 64-bit kernels, cleaning out old driver installations, Googling forum postings, trying other driver versions, and all sorts of tedious tomfoolery.

The simple solution I found, which works on Lion, with 64 bit kernels and 32 bit kernels, is to install the following Realtek driver:

http://www.realtek.com.tw/downloads/downloadsView.aspx?Langid=1&PNid=21&PFid=48&Level=5&Conn=4&DownTypeID=3&GetDown=false&Downloads=true

Select the RTL8188CUS>Others>Mac OSX 10.7 Install Package (UI ver 1.9.7) version.

Even though the chip number doesn't match my USB key, the software is perfectly compatible with older devices. And it has the added bonus of working.

Remember: the driver doesn't integrate into Apple's airport utility. So you'll have to run a separate client to set up the wireless network. It isn't pretty. But it works.

Speaking: Forthcoming talks

News on a few talks I'll be giving:

• I'm speaking at ACCU 2012 next week. Details of my talks are available here. This year I'm in the "tools" track. Make of that what you will.
• I'm speaking at Mobile East in June, on Advanced iOS Development.

As ever, I promise plenty of fun and interest. And technical content.