How to install Git on CentOS

Git-Logo-2ColorGit is a superb version control system that’s tightly integrated into Apple’s Xcode. To collaborate with some coding buddies of mine we wanted to setup a central remote storage on my Plesk server so we could all contribute to the code.

Since we did not want to share our code with the public we wanted to make it secure. So secure in fact that we could contribute from coffee shops around the world, hence we decided to use Git with SSH. This is probably the easiest and most straightforward way for read/write access to Git remotes: no daemon to setup, to Firewall to tweak – all we needed was a set of SSH credentials and a server running Git with a bit of space.

Read more

How to give your Plesk users SSH access

Plesk-LogoBy default SSH access is disabled for FTP and web users which is a very good thing. I’d recommend enabling this only if you know exactly who’s connecting to your server and why.

In my case, I want to use my server to host Git repositories so I can collaborate with some trusted coding buddies of mine. Here’s how I did it – I’m using Plesk 11 for this demonstration:

Read more

How to change the background colour of a UIView

You can use the backgroundColor property for this: self.yourView.backgroundColor = [UIColor purpleColor]; Pre-defined values are blackColor darkGrayColor lightGrayColor whiteColor grayColor redColor greenColor blueColor cyanColor yellowColor magentaColor orangeColor purpleColor brownColor clearColor You can also define your own colours by creating a UIColor object (from RGB or HSL values). Here’s how you can create your own RGB […]

Workaround: Parallels Desktop is not seeing my DVD Drive in Mountain Lion

Today I wanted to install Windows 7 using Parallels Desktop 7 on my Mac, but sadly I always got an error message every time I tried. It was saying it could not connect to my DVD drive – which clearly my Mac could.

Doing some research it turns out that several people had this problem, however I didn’t understand the instructions given by Parallels very well. Getting frustrated I decided to write my own, and give you some pointers where else to look for help.

For this scenario I’m using a DVD copy of Windows 7 Home Premium and the latest version of Parallels Desktop 7.0.15107. Parallels Desktop 8 is already out but I’ve decided not to upgrade at this point.

Read more

How to create an NSString from an NSDate

NSDate *date = [NSDate date]; NSDateFormatter *dateFormatter = [[NSDateFormatter alloc]init]; [dateFormatter setDateStyle:NSDateFormatterLongStyle]; [dateFormatter setTimeStyle:NSDateFormatterLongStyle]; NSString *dateString = [dateFormatter stringFromDate:date]; First we’ll create a date object. Next we’ll create an NSDateFormatter and set how we’d like for display our date (and optionally our time). Then we’ll call the magical stringFromDate method which will create our string.