Whirlpool is a very strong hashing algorithm (one way encryption) that encodes any text into a 128 character string (popular md5 generates a 32 byte string).
Looking for the JavaScript version, I had to search on my email inbox for an email I received back in October 2009 to found the link where to download the Whirlpool Hash Javascript Algorithm. It’s kind of surprising that searching in Google for “whirlpool js”, “whirlpool javascript” or “whirlpool hash javascript algorithm” does not return the link.
For the record, here is the url:
Whirlpool Hash Javascript Algorithm
So I finally decided to downgrade my iPhone 3G from iOS 4.0.1 to iPhone OS 3.1.3. For some reason, Apple does not keep the old ipsw restore files easy to find and most posts on Internet are missing a link to them. Here is a list of some of them:
iPhone 3.1.3 firmware for iPhone 2G
iPhone 3.1.3 firmware for iPhone 3G
iPhone 3.1.3 firmware for iPhone 3GS
I have downgraded my phone following this article: Downgrade iOS 4.1 iPhone 4, 3GS, 3G and iPod touch to iOS 4 / iPhone 3.1.3 / 3.1.2 [How to Guide]
The process is super simple, I couldn’t believe it was so easy, specially, since RecBoot runs so clean and fast. What the tutorials don’t say, although I expected it, is that you will lost all your data (as every time you recover). The problem is the next time you connect to iTunes, you wont be able to restore from your latest backup since it would be for a newer OS version.
Luckily, iTunes keeps track of old backups. I’m currently restoring from a backup I have from April 2010, probably the last one before I updated to the back then beta version of iOS 4.
For the last four weeks and despite other projects and deadlines, I’ve been working on a mobile app for iPhone and Android, using Titanium Developer from Appcelerator.
I still hate it. And I still love it.
More to come…
How many times have you found yourself printing strings like “————-” or “===========”? I do that a lot when I have to do console.logs or if I’m working on a console application or script. Adding dividers to the output makes it more readable.
Python has a very peculiar syntax for repeating strings, which consists in just multiplying the string by a number, like this:
-
"123"*4 // returns "123123123123"
We can achieve the same in Javascript using Array.join() like this:
-
Array(4).join("123"); // returns "123123123123"
-
Array(30).join("-"); // returns "——————————"
-
Array(2).join("<span>test</span>"); // returns "<span>test</span><span>test</span>"
Very useful for logs or to generate repeated html strings, etc.
It happens that when working with Javascript frameworks like MooTools for a long time, it’s easy to forget how to do things in plain/native Javascript. For example, concatenating arrays is an easy task thanks to the Function object method apply:
-
var array1 = [1,2,3,4];
-
var array2 = [5,6,7];
-
array1.push.apply(array1, array2); // array1 = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]
-
array1.push.apply(array1, [1,2,3]); // array1 = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 1, 2, 3]
Note that this method concatenates two arrays, and does not check for duplicate items.
In MooTools, the equivalent to this method would be Array.extend():
-
var array1 = [1,2,3,4];
-
var array2 = [5,6,7];
-
array1.extend(array2); // array1 = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]
-
array1.extend([1,2,3]); // array1 = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 1, 2, 3]
Again, Array.extend() concatenates two arrays without checking for duplicates.
Lately I’ve been developing Android and iPhone apps with Titanium Developer and also switching from on Mac to another. At the end I ended up with a computer that only had the latest iOS 4 SDK. Thus, I couldn’t compile anymore apps for my 3G iPhone with OS 3.1.3.
Fortunately, the old versions of XCode and iPhone SDKs are still available for download, although they don’t show up in the Downloads section of the Apple Developer Connection site.
Here is a list of versions and links:
iPhone SDK 3.1 with XCode 3.2.1 for Snow Leopard (10.6.0)
iPhone SDK 3.1.3 with XCode 3.2.1 for Snow Leopard (10.6.0)
iPhone SDK 3.2 Final with Xcode 3.2.2 for Snow Leopard (10.6.0)
Xcode 3.2.3 and iPhone SDK 4 GM seed for Snow Leopard (10.6.2)
Xcode 3.2.3 and iOS SDK 4.0.1 for Snow Leopard
Xcode 3.2.3 and iOS SDK 4.0.2 for Snow Leopard
I’ve been using Titanium Developer for a while now, since I installed it to do some mobile app research one or two months ago. But up until now I barely used it again other than to maintain a desktop app I created for a game, which thanks to Titanium runs in both Mac and PC. Thus, up until this week, I hadn’t really get in depth with it.
The good things
Nice, easy and fast. Creating apps is piece of cake, loading JSON feeds from Internet, using local storage, placing buttons and labels on the screen… it’s all easy and it works on both iPhone and Android right away.
The bad things
Titanium Developer looks like an unfinished app. It shouldn’t be version 1.X, not even 0.X. Looks like an alpha, buggy and very easy to get screwed up, specially if you share your projects between Windows and Mac. This time it launches the emulator, this time it does not. This time your project does not load properly. Next time, you try to create a new project and it fails. And the errors are totally useless. Not very helpful.
Conclusion
The idea is great, awesome. The code is clean and using Javascript for development makes it easy for web developers to get easily involved into mobile app development. If only the Appcelerator team could improve their app, we would save a lot of headaches.
I just found this little trick to zero pad numbers in Javascript. It is also applicable to padding with any character, not just zeros.
-
var n = 123
-
String("00000" + n).slice(-5); // returns 00123
-
("00000" + n).slice(-5); // returns 00123
-
(" " + n).slice(-5); // returns " 123" (with two spaces)
Found here.
Programming languages have methods to cast integers to strings and strings to integers, but usually is had to find equivalents to parseInt(), a Javascript function that basically removes all non-numeric characters from a string and returns the resulting integer.
Today, while working on a Freemarker template, I had to convert strings like “40 ms.” and “128 px” to their respective integers 40 and 128. The solution I found is to use regular expressions, which are kind of tricky in Freemarker but can save you lots of time.
Example in Javascript:
-
console.log(parseInt("40 ms")) // outputs 40
-
console.log("40 ms".match(/^\d+/)[0]) // outputs 40
Same in Freemarker:
-
<#assign myInt = "40 ms."?matches("^(\\d+)(.*)")[0]?groups[1]>
Looks like even using regular expressions, in Freemarker we need to match the whole string with groups to separate the number from the rest. Thus, this will work only if the number is at the beginning of the string, which was the initial requirement in my case.