Archive for January, 2008

Most of my family lives in Hawaii, but they still have a house over here in Corralitos, Santa Cruz County, California. My dad decided we should rent it out, so it will be available (starting in April or May).

What is special about this house? Well, my treehouse is on the property, although it is going to not be included in the rental so we have a place to visit and stay at.

My dad posted the following on craigslist:

http://monterey.craigslist.org/apa/557952922.html

“Built in 1981 redwood home with dining room and den. two car garage with room for one car, carport, large deck with hot tub. Partial furnish if need. Gated community over bridge on all year creek. Orange trees, lemon trees, macadamia nut tree, plum tree. Great place for Garden. Great views Monterey Bay!! I will keep treehouse – Stan 808 667-2277 stan @ mauiprop.com. ask about pets – ask for more pics”

So, if you are looking for a place to rent out, it is a beautiful house. Contact me or my dad for more information.

I mentioned before that I’m going to be “riding the lobster”. One of my team mates, Kevin, had a great article on him in the good times (a local paper in santa cruz):

http://www.gtweekly.com/unicycle-adventures

Check it out!

Speaking of a unicycle ride, I’m going to be doing a unicycle tour in Vietnam in March, dubbed “uninam”: http://uninam.net/

..it’s time to start training! Today Louise and I are going to do about 18 miles to get warmed up for it.

corbin

I’ve always loved treehouses, and eventually I hope to build a few more on my property. Until then, I’ll have to live vicariously through other treehouse builders. Steve Chmielnicki, of Rosemont, PA, is an excellent treehouse builder who is open for business. Take a look at some of his work:

Feel free to contact Steve via his website: http://www.artisantrees.com and go get a custom treehouse of your own built!

Mac OS 10.5 added a “source list” highlighting style to NSTableView, with the API below for your reference:

enum {

NSTableViewSelectionHighlightStyleRegular = 0,

NSTableViewSelectionHighlightStyleSourceList = 1,

};

typedef NSInteger NSTableViewSelectionHighlightStyle;

- (NSTableViewSelectionHighlightStyle)selectionHighlightStyle;

- (void)setSelectionHighlightStyle:(NSTableViewSelectionHighlightStyle)selectionHighlightStyle;

Source lists should have bold text when the item is selected, and NSTableView attempts to auto-format the cell’s contents to automatically do this for you, as seen in this screen shot for the selected item in the open panel source list:

However, the code that does this formatting does so by converting the ’stringValue’ of the cell to an attributedStringValue that has the bold text. This is done *before* calling the delegate with “willDisplayCell”. The delegate gets the final say of how it looks in “willDisplayCell”, but this can cause unexpected results if you want to do something like this:

- (void)tableView:(NSTableView *)tableView willDisplayCell:(id)cell forTableColumn:(NSTableColumn *)tableColumn row:(NSInteger)row {

if(row == 0) {

[cell setTextColor: [NSColor redColor]];

} else {

[cell setTextColor: [NSColor blackColor]];

}

}

The problem with the above code is that it is *too late* for the coloring to be correctly applied to the cell if it is selected. The work around is easy; you need to color the cell text earlier, and a perfect place to do that is in the new 10.5 delegate method “dataCellForTableColumn:”

- (NSCell *)tableView:(NSTableView *)tableView dataCellForTableColumn:(NSTableColumn *)tableColumn row:(NSInteger)row {

NSTextFieldCell *cell = [tableColumn dataCell];

if(row == 0) {

[cell setTextColor: [NSColor redColor]];

} else {

[cell setTextColor: [NSColor blackColor]];

}

return cell;

}

Cool. Have fun.

I’m getting Louise to give me some Silk lessons in our house. I figured it would be easiest for me to learn by pictures. So, here they are. Click on any picture for a larger image on picasa. This is a simple inverted drop.

• Climb the silk
  
• Place your body in the middle of the silk
  

• Invert, keeping your legs on the outside of the silk (important!)
  
• After inversion, twist both legs around the silk – rotate them towards the outside so the silk comes out the middle of your legs
  
• Keep the silk above your hips, and wrap it (once) around your back and bring it back to the front.
  
• The silk should be held at your belly with one hand firmly holding both silks, and the other slightly atop it
  
• Flip your legs out forward. Be sure the silk is riding on your hips
  
• Hold yourself in place with one hand, and grab a portion of the silk with the other. Don’t grab too much — otherwise you will hit the floor, and grab a smaller portion when you are first learning (a foot or so).
  
• Pull that portion of the silk towards your other hand that is holding the silk. Don’t let the loop of silk go around your arm or anything
  
• The last step set you up for the drop. Simply let go with your hand that is holding you to the silk and you will drop to your other hand (hold on tight!)
  
• To get back up, grab each silk half with each hand at your waste
  
• Move your arms out horizontally, holding tight
  
• Rotate your legs down towards the ground and your body upwards (I have to swing to get this done, as my lower half isn’t as heave as louise):
  
• Super..that’s it.

Here’s a picasa web album for Christmas at our house with Louise’s family:

Christmas 2007

Dani, a great unicycle rider from Hawaii, not only flew all the way over the Pacific to come to Muni Weekend, but he also brought his camera and got a lot of great shots. Here’s the two videos on you tube:

Trials riding at my house:

Trials at the Jetty in Santa Cruz by the beach — I’m actually in this one a bit. I have a blue helmet, white shorts (ripped), blue unicycle. Louise has a yellow shirt at the start.