I’ve published my first iOS open-source project, BrowserChooser. It demonstrates the use of a category I wrote to allow users to open a link in Mobile Safari or Google Chrome for iOS.

The code is ARC-compliant and published under the MIT license, meaning it’s free to reuse in any type of application. Submit a pull request on GitHub if you’d like to help improve the code, or use my contact form to contact me with any questions. Enjoy!

I originally typed this info up as a response to a post over at Lifehacker. While this falls outside of most of my technical help suggestions, since it involves using technology to make your move easier, I decided to put it up over here.

The last time I moved, I found something that helped me immensely (and I’m using it again when I move in three weeks): Making my own moving labels with colored paper and a business card template.

Grab a pack of multicolored paper from your local office supply superstore, then fire up your word processor and find a business card template (I use Avery 5371). Each business card template page should have space for about 10 cards or so, so you just make your label so it repeats for each “card”. The ones I used looked basically like this:

(Note for Mac folks who have iWork: I have posted a Pages template of the moving cards I used in 2010 for anyone to download. You can change the date by doing a find on “7/2/10″ and replacing it with your moving date – I tried exporting to a .doc, but the template’s busted).

You print each room on a separate color (green for bedroom, red for kitchen, yellow for bathroom, etc), and then cut up the paper so each tag is about the size of a business card. This also means it’s about the same width as a strip of packing tape, so you just have to grab a piece to be able to slap it on any box. Or, as you can see from that pic, you can use it to put a little travel label on stuff by wrapping the tape around a handle.

This was SUPER helpful for me because I was able to see at a glance where stuff went during the moving process, figure out what was in each box during the unpacking process, and then organize my storage closet so that a) all the labels were on one side so I knew what was in each box without digging through it and b) how long it had been since I actually looked at what was in each box.

It takes a little more effort up front than just scrawling on everything with a Sharpie, but particularly if you’re using recycled boxes people have already scrawled on (which I definitely do), it is SUPER helpful in the long run. Plus, you can re-use the template the next time you move just by changing the date.

I also find this better than the traditional moving tape labeled with room names that places like UHaul sell – you can pick what you want to call each room, and again, the fill-in-the-blank for the contents is REALLY helpful when you’re trying to prioritize what to unpack.

If you’ve got any questions or suggestions for improvements, let me know!

This is a slightly more advanced problem than most of the ones I’ve covered so far, but this saved me so much time and aggravation, I wanted to share how I dealt with this problem in detail.

On OS X, Spaces and text expansion software don’t really play nicely. If you switch back and forth too quickly between spaces while you’re using text expansion (and certain other types of quick-text-input) software, the space can become stuck.

You’ll see this little guy, the Space changed indicator:

but although it normally disappears after about half a second, when this problem occurs it sticks to the screen and won’t go away. You can still use your mouse, but your keyboard locks up and you are unable to type anything. This happens with both built-in laptop keyboards and external keyboards you can use with laptops or desktops.

Until I did some serious digging into help threads, I was restarting my computer every single time this happened, which was incredibly annoying. But what I found after many suggestions and a fair amount of trial and error was surprisingly simple, if a little obscure.

The secret to un-sticking the Space changed indicator is a little weird: Using Exposé to turn off your screen for a second. Go to Settings > Exposé and Spaces, and select the Exposé side:

As you can see, I’ve already gone ahead and set the top left hot corner for my screen to “Put display to sleep.” If you click on any one of those corners, you’ll get this drop-down menu:

Once you’ve activated this hot corner, all you have to do is move your mouse into whichever corner you’ve selected, let the display go to sleep for a second or two, then wake it back up by tapping your keyboard or moving your mouse.

This is a trick that’s worked for me about 98% of the time to unlock everything. Every once in a while I have to go back to my previous technique of restarting the computer entirely, but that’s been a massive improvement over having to restart it every single time this happened.

There are two possibilities, depending on what you’re seeing. This is how the top of your Safari window should look, with the address bar:

If it looks like this instead:

Then you have accidentally hidden the address bar. Read the rest…

Let’s say your Mac should display a screen like this:

But instead it looks a bit more like this:

Somehow, the “show negative colors” preference has become activated.  Read the rest…

In 2010, I helped move a friend’s comments from Haloscan to Blogger’s native commenting system. It was ridiculously, hilariously complicated, and if you’re looking for something a little more in-depth and perhaps headache-inducing, please check out the post on my personal blog, So You Want To Move Your Comments From Haloscan To Blogger….