August 2011
1 post
3 tags
CoreData Transformables not saving?
I’ve been having the damnedest time with a Core Data object that has, as one of its properties, a custom class that’s transformable. Behind the scenes, this saves any object as NSData — all you have to do is implement NSCoding. The glitch?
I kept saving, and saving, and saving, and while the initial creation of the objects was persisted just perfectly, any changes I made...
June 2011
6 posts
4 tags
I don't want a little scribble thing. Or, Why...
More on this 1997 closing WWDC keynote from Steve Jobs, an hour and one minute in, someone asks “what do you think Apple should do with Newton,” and gets a surprise preview of the iPhone:
“I tried a Newton, I bought one of the early ones, I thought it was a piece of junk, I threw it away. I bought one of the Motorola envoys, I thought it was a piece of junk after three months...
PICTURES FROM THE APPLE STORE » Vice Photo Blog →
On Viceland today:
As I only just got a smartphone like, three months ago, I’ve spent a significant amount of my life in the Apple Store checking my emails on their free internet. While I’m in there, I usually see if anyone has left any photos in the Photo Booth program and email the best ones to myself.
Fun. [link]
4 tags
How the MealSnap app works: Magic!
I was recently talking with someone about a web project of mine that has, at its core, users tagging meals they ate with the foods contained in those meals. I was mentioning that I spend a great deal of time bringing the friction point of tagging those foods down — making it as easy as possible. They brought up MealSnap, an iOS app that has users take pictures of food, and then magically...
How the Newton Saved Apple
I was just reading this interview with John Sculley when I came across this: according to Sculley, Apple pretty much gave birth to the ARM processor, which you’re familiar with if you’ve ever used a modern cell phone. The ARM, in turn, saved Apple from an early death:
Most people don’t realize in order to build Newton, we had to build a new generation microprocessor. We joined...
5 tags
WWDC Tips From Chris Ladd. Yes, The Chris Ladd.
I’m just back from WWDC, Apple’s World Wide Developer Conference for you non-nerd readers out there. In fact, non-nerds, you might just want to move along. This is not the post you’re looking for.
They gone? Good. If you’re reading this, you either a) just got back from WWDC or b) really, really want to go next year. Either way, I really enjoyed reading other...
May 2011
11 posts
3 tags
DevColor: free, simple, color representing strings...
Dear world: In a shameless bid to make friends before WWDC, I’m releasing a new, open source color editor today: DevColor.
DevColor is a simple, graphical tool I built to make my life as an iOS, Mac and web developer better. For the past several months I’ve been using DevColor every day as a lightweight tool to generate color-representing strings in a variety of formats. Now you can...
Seinfeld Starts Web Site of His Stand-Up Routines →
NYTimes reports Seinfeld is going to be doling out his standup career online, three clips at a time partly, he says, as a way to re-familliarize himself with himself
Reviewing some of his performances from the early 1980s, Mr. Seinfeld said he saw in them “a newborn fawn — the knees were very wobbly.”
But when he reached the end of that decade, just before he was offered the television series...
MIT's Fast Light
Had a fun nerd-night out last night at MIT’s Fast Light exhibition, part of the university’s 150th year celebration. Highlights?
This helix-like structure, made out of aluminum, that stretched up a 4-story stairwell:
These public rocking chairs have solar panels that suck up light during the day, and feed it out at night. They come complete with chargers for your laptop or iPhone....
DNJournal.com - Inside a Drop Catcher’s War Room:... →
Came across this in a completely unrelated story: what a quant little neighborhood the internet was in 1995:
One summer afternoon, he was reading the local Usenet groups for Cal Poly and came across a post from a “Lisa” who said that she was bored and wanted some new people.
Ambler recalled, “she said that she was a model and essentially described what I’d call my ideal woman. Of course, I...
BACK TO THE FUTURE : Irina Werning - Photographer →
Simply awesome: Irina Werning photographs people recreating photos of themselves from decades earlier.
[ link ]
Undo, Redo, we all Do. →
Yesterday, I was using the Evernote app and made a mistake entering text (deleting accidentally). After the ‘oh shit’ moment, I shook my phone on a whim. I won! It asked if I wanted to undo!
It made me so happy, I decided to fast-track adding undo to an as-yet-unnamed-still-very-secret app I’m working on now. (More to come on that soon…) Because, as Apple says:
The...
Unicode master list
Unicode symbols (⬅, ☂, 𝄫 are great to mock up designs with stand-in symbols until artwork is ready.
I am constantly Googling for this big, amazing list put together by Alan Wood. Linking to it here more to help me remember where the ‘good one’ is, as much as to share with everyone else.
A quick Wikipedia primer on how to include unicode symbols in HTML without needing to promote the...
Innovative music iPad app
I just ran across this very, very cool iPad app called Harmonizer. From the developer’s site:
The pitches on the Harmonizer are arranged in a hexagonal matrix according to three interval types.
+++++++++++++++
NOTE: Be sure to manually quit this app when you’re finished. Although cool, I’ve found it drains your battery when sleeping because, I believe, it is somehow still...
Quote of a Quote: The Starbucks Effect
I found this really interesting - a chunk of Marco’s piece on why he’s not worried that Apple is readying itself to release an Instapaper-ish service in the next version of Mac OSX:
The Starbucks effect
Starbucks practices extremely predatory site selection for their stores: they’ll intentionally move in right across the street from or immediately next door to independent coffee...
April 2011
18 posts
WatchIncredibly creepy: Spider attack (by Ahmet Ozkan)
via kottke. Also, check out Ahmet’s other creepy spider videos here. Spiders are the lions of the micro-world.
XCode Shortcut of the moment
Three fingers up or down to switch between .h and .m files. Classy.
Today Now! Interviews The 5-Year-Old Screenwriter... →
Today Now! Interviews The 5-Year-Old Screenwriter Of “Fast Five”
Apple's response to LocationGate →
Nice response to a tricky situation:
The iPhone is not logging your location. Rather, it’s maintaining a database of Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers around your current location, some of which may be located more than one hundred miles away from your iPhone, to help your iPhone rapidly and accurately calculate its location when requested. Calculating a phone’s location using just GPS satellite...
Stand Up While You Read This! - NYTimes.com →
It doesn’t matter if you go running every morning, or you’re a regular at the gym. If you spend most of the rest of the day sitting — in your car, your office chair, on your sofa at home — you are putting yourself at increased risk of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, a variety of cancers and an early death. In other words, irrespective of whether you exercise vigorously, sitting for long...
Method of the Moment:...
Just stumbled upon (via XCode’s autocomplete) this great macro:
UIDeviceOrientationIsPortrait(orientation);
Returns a BOOL, does exactly what you’d expect, and saves you a lot of equality checks to determine, essentially, if you’re dealing with 320 or 480.
http://pragmaticstudio.com/media/Xcode4Shortcuts.pd... →
A really nice little PDF list of shortcuts in xCode4. My personal favorite? Command + Option + o for open quickly. I use the equivalent command CTL + q in coda all the time. Soooo very glad I can do the same in iOS.
“Figure out the absolute least you need to do to implement the idea, do just...”
– John Gruber, Daring Fireball: iPhone-Likeness
Oh, so THAT's how you use vi...
ViM was absolutely KILLING me, because I failed to grasp this very simple thing:
Vi has two modes insertion mode and command mode. The editor begins in command mode, where the cursor movement and text deletion and pasting occur. Insertion mode begins upon entering an insertion or change command. [ESC] returns the editor to command mode (where you can quit, for example by typing :q!). Most...
Reel Roulette →
Neat twist on a professional promotion site:
Click “Next Reel” to see a random motion design reel. If you see a reel you like, just hit “Like This Reel”. This will help bring the best reels to the top. Connect with your favorite artists and give them a job, will ya?
CoffeeScript →
I haven’t played around with this, but it looks promising:
CoffeeScript is a little language that compiles into JavaScript. Underneath all of those embarrassing braces and semicolons, JavaScript has always had a gorgeous object model at its heart. CoffeeScript is an attempt to expose the good parts of JavaScript in a simple way.
It’s always a few seconds of shock when I’m...
The Oregon Fail
A few days ago, I was reading this article about the Oregon Trail computer game. Back in (literally) first grade, all of us would pile around the Apple IIe and play Oregon Trail all. Day. Long.
So, fresh from reminiscing, I check out the iPhone app. Huge. Disappointment.
The first thing you’ll notice is the gigantic download time. This is because, as it states on the app page:
Size:...