The tool is an AppleScript called SendContacts. You simply create a group in Address Book named “SendContacts“, drag the addresses you’d like to copy to the phone into this group and then execute the script. The script opens Address Book if it’s not already open and copies the addresses in the special group. My phone is setup to query me if an upload is requested so I unlocked my phone, confirmed the upload and away the script runs. It took only a few seconds to copy around 70 contacts. Nice.

Since a phone is used to, umm, make calls, I created my “SendContacts” group as a Smart Group defining only those contacts for whom a phone number is available:

Using a Smart Group to Define Contacts to Send

Kudos to Apple, LG, and the Bluetooth Consortium for making this all so easy and to C+C Software Factory for creating such a nice utility!

Also, check out Blastwave for OpenSolaris software.

A few days ago, I ran into Jonathan Rockway’s very entertaining blog entry Git Merging by Example.  Great read and very instructive.  But I was particularly amused by Jonathan’s quote:

I love the “Merge made by octopus” message; I am seriously going to have a t-shirt made that says that. I like it when sea creatures help maintain my code.

You know what?  I love when sea creatures help out as well.  So, to that end I’ve constructed a little bumper sticker in honor of Git and Jonathan.  Here’s a preview:

If you’re interested in getting a hold of one of the bumper stickers, leave a comment.
Sorry it’s not a t-shirt, Jonathan, but maybe someday…

Today I figured how to run a background process from within a web application that utilizes Spring 2.0 or greater. At first, I investigated all sorts of ways of adding multithreading to a web application before stumbling upon this gem.

The key is that Spring provides a class, TaskExecutor, that allows you to run a background task by simply creating a class that implements the Runnable interface and hooking it up to your application with some simple configuration.

In short, as Spring allows Java web developers to program using POJOs and not against a set of interfaces, TaskExecutor and its cohorts allow us to do background processing using simple classes instead of forcing us to handle the ugly details of multithreading and synchronization ourselves.

Thanks, Spring dudes! Once again, you save the day.
See Chapter 23 of the Spring Framework documentation for more information.

I.like(bigButts) && I.canLie(false);
otherBrothers.canDeny(false);
when (girl.walksIn())
{
if (girl.hasIttyBittyWaist() && roundThing.getLocation()==your.FACE)
{
you.getSprung();
}
}

Which I thought was quite clever. So, I felt I owed him a response comensurate with the length of time I made him wait for a reply.

So, I began thinking for an appropriate song. Then I remembered Men Without Hats‘ 1983 classic “Safety Dance” and how it contained a lot of if/then and boolean language (“‘Cause your friends don’t dance and if they don’t dance…” etc.).

The source code.
664 lines.
Developed using Microsoft Visual C# Express Edition and builds cleanly.

Well, I’ve got a new favorite. It contains all the elements of a great book: a snappy introduction, intrigue, plot twists and a cliff-hanger of an ending.

As I’m sure you’ve guessed, I’m referring to The Square Root of 3 by Jerry Bonnel and Robert Nemiroff, available on Project Gutenberg.

SPOILER ALERT: The 30,788th significant digit is 4.

In all ernestness, I think Project Gutenberg is a great concept. But when I ran across this, I just cracked up.

I found a great list in the FAQ section of the Gush IM/RSS page.

Now that you’ve read this, I have the perfect excuse to make my conversations even more terse and obscure.

To quote Linnea, “Put it in context!”