Ransen's Blog

Usually the cat doesn't get to sleep in the bedroom, but one evening he snuck in and arranged himself on my pillow, near my head. I could hear his purring quite loud. I like gentle sounds when I go to sleep, distant trains, planes, dogs barking, even cars. So I enjoyed listening, in the dark, to his purrs. Then slowly they faded away and all I could hear was him breathing deeply. I'd heard him fall asleep, it was wonderful feeling.

I don't mind other people cooking for me, as long as I don't have to clean the messy pans with sticky sauces, congealed cheese etc. Apart from the fact that I dont' eat fish or meat, the most important thing is that I don't have to do much washing up. I've developed a dish which means that I only have a single bowl and a single spoon to clean.  Here are the ingredients: Apart from the vegetables (which you can vary according to what you have on hand) and the beans, there's olive oil, turmeric, cumin seeds and balsamic vinegar. Chop up the vegetables, add the other ingredients and... Yummmmmmy!  (My family have given up and now allow me to eat my salad with spoon.)

A few nights ago I went onto the balcony to have a look at the loverrrly sky to the east: Then I looked behind me, over the roof, to the west. And there was my favourite constellation, Orion. His belt is made of the three stars in an almost horizontal line you can see in the center of the photo: It is not a great photo, but you can see the real thing these days if you live in the northern hemisphere and look east. And the real thing is a real wonder. In the photo Rigel is the star, below the belt, which is almost touching the roof. And Betelgeuse is the one above the belt and in line with Rigel. When you look at the constellation for real you'll be amazed at how these two stars have definite colours, Rigel is blue and Betelgeuse is orange.  Follow the line of the belt leftwards and you'll find Sirius, the Dog star, the brightest star in the sky. In the photo is is near the end of an antenna. Go back to the belt and extrapolate along it to the right, you'll f

As I said in a previous, post code signing annoys me these years like as networks did many years ago. I've just had to renew my Comodo code signing certificate, and as usual K-Software (a Comodo reseller) made it as painless as possible.  The process has not changed, but the graphical interface of Firefox has. So for my own future self and for others in my position now here's how it is done. Once you have ordered the certificate from K-Software, and they have worked their magic in the case of any hiccups with Comodo, your'll get an email from Comodo, something like this: Click on the link in the email and  the next thing you'll see is a web page on the Comodo site which asks you to enter your collection code. If all has worked well the collection code will appear in the web page automatically: Click on the Collect Certificate button and the next screen you see should be like this: The phrase about backing up the private key is a bit misleading if

After about 20 hours of downloading Xamarin and Android SDKs ( see here ) I finally got VS2015 (apparently) able to compile C# code into an Android program. Remember that the native language of Android is Java, so Xamarin cleverly converts from C# to Java. Anyway the download and install carried on apparently without errors and with a condesceding message from the programmer in the dialog box: "Don't worry we've got this. Why not do some tutorials while you wait?" I hate it when programmers talk to the public in that "I'm friendly but I know better than you" tone. Or even like this . Or this .  Despite my cynicism the download and install completed without error. So I could start the tutorial (again). I followed the tutorial. There were a few mis-steps, but I noticed immediately that I felt at home, I knew my way around VS2015, while Android Studio was a new beast. As I saw the fragments of C# my annoyance at the huge Xamarin download began to

Well, for a start, I found the Xamarin versions and options and downloads totally confusing. After a lot of work and a lot of hours uselessly downloading I've understood (maybe I'm wrong) that Xamarin Studio only really exists for the Mac (free). You can use Visual Studio (preferably 2015) with a Xamarin add on to create Xamarin programs. What is called Xamarin Studio for Windows is really "Mono", an open source program. It is hard to find out if it is still maintained and usable. As I say I may be wrong and it took me a long time to garner even this little information. I'm interested in Xamarin for two reasons I know C# so I don't have to learn Java, which I would have do with Android Studio. I know the VS2015 IDE, so I would not have to get used to the Android Studio way of doing things. But what, I hear you say, about targetting Apple products, which is supposed to be the great advantage of using Xamarin? Here are the reasons I don't care

Ha! I'm beginning to grok this thing (a Robert Heinlein would have said). When you click on the green run button in Android Studio... ...you need to have run the emulator at least once in that session to get it to appear in the list of available devices. Otherwise you just get a blank list. So if you intend to run your program in the emulator click on AVD manager: On my machine the Tools menu is only built up over the first minute that Studio is run. So initially it only contains Tasks & Contexts and Save File as Template , which is disconcerting. You just have to be patient till al the menu items are loaded. Then hopefully you'll see a list of virtual devices which you have previously set up. Once the emulator is running you can get your app running by pushing the main green button in Android Studio... It did run but I got a scary message that I was trying to use 1500MB in a 512MB emulation. Ah. What now? Mr google and stackoverflow came to the res