Sam Soffes

Reverse Minimalism

Posted on

I sold all of my stuff when I started Nothing Magical and work on Cheddar. It was refreshing. All I had was my bed and my desk. For productivity's sake, this was the best thing I ever did. I'd wager that Cheddar wouldn't have been done as quickly or at the quality it was if I had more stuff to distract me.

If you've never sold all of your stuff, I recommend it. It's a great experience. You'll discover how much time you waste doing stuff that doesn't matter and how not doing that stuff effects your happiness.

That said, I now have stuff again. It's nice. I started working at an office with some friends. Getting out of my apartment is really nice. After biking home from the office for the first time, I was tired. I realized all I had was my bed and my desk. "Well, time to get a couch."

Continue reading →

Developer ID, Mountain Lion, and the Keychain

Posted on

Recently, I released a Cheddar for Mac beta. Since it's a beta I'm distributing on the Cheddar website, I'm signing it with Developer ID. Basically, if you're running Mountain Lion with the default settings and try to open an app that isn't signed with Developer ID or downloaded from the Mac App Store, it won't let you open it.

I'm all for Developer ID. I'm really glad Apple spent the time to make it. There is one problem though. If you are using Mountain Lion, it's totally broken. You can't reliably use the Keychain if you build with Mountain Lion. Writes work alright, but every read gives a –25293 ("Authorization/Authentication failed.").

I have read lots on this topic in the two days I spent trying to solve this. Most of them said use 10.7 or 10.8.1. Since I was already on 10.8, I tried 10.8.1, but it don't work for me. I tried the release of Xcode and the latest developer preview. Both didn't work on 10.8 and 10.8.1. Finally, I resorted to installing 10.7 on an external hard drive and booting from that, and that worked!

Continue reading →