Happy App Store Day

July 10, 2008

This morning I woke up to the news that the iPhone App Store had gone live. So of course I quickly fired up iTunes to make sure my app was listed and there it was in all it’s video poker glory. So happy! But had I not gone to WWDC this year it probably would never had existed as anything more than my own personal animation playground.

A little over a month ago I was assigned a project to be developed for the iPhone. This project got a little bogged down waiting on some outside resources, so I decided to spend some time familiarizing myself with iPhone development in general. To me a real app is the best way to familiarize myself with how I might employ certain APIs in a real world situations and one of the first things to pop into my head was video poker. It would lend itself really well to animating images, sliding around cards, flipping them over, credits increasing / decreasing. I got far enough along that it would deal / draw cards, evaluate a hand, update your credit total and such in time for the flight to San Francisco for WWDC. So maybe I also wanted something to do on the flight too.

So like I said, I hadn’t planned on really doing anything with my app, but after encouragement from several developer friends at WWDC (thanks so much guys), I decided I’d at least talk to some higher ups at Griffin and see what kind of response I got. They thought it was worth a shot and so I set about making it fit for human consumption and sprinkling in a few additional features while I was at it. The result is 5 Card Touch (side note: the name game we had before settling on 5 Card Touch was great. Names such as iPoker, RedHotPoker, Poker in the… you know. These failed to make the cut), and you can get it at the App Store on iTunes or your iPhone / iPod Touch for a measly $1.99. A bargain! There is a screenshot on the App Store, but it’s kind of hard to get a feel for how it plays from a static screenshot and so I leave you with a 30 second video clip which for some reason doesn’t have audio. Enjoy.

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Odontophobia

May 16, 2008

So the other day I posted about a dream I had, which was unusual because I don’t typically remember the specifics of my dreams. It does happen from time to time though, and often it seems I dream that my teeth have fallen out, are in the process of falling out, or just anything terrible involving my teeth. Usually this results in several days of intense dental hygiene. So I have this terrible fear of my teeth rotting out of my head, but I also have a fear of dentists (as illustrated in the video).

My recollection of dentists

Apart from the pain your likely to experience during a visit to the dentist’s office, there’s the guilt for not brushing enough or the right way, or flossing, or drinking / eating too much junk food, or perhaps you could find something else to chew with because you’re getting these dirty.

Upon entering my “adult” life I never really felt an urgency to see a dentist for all the reasons I mention above. What’s worse, the longer I didn’t see a dentist the more ashamed I became not having seen a dentist. I certainly didn’t want any dentists to find out.

Well, Wednesday evening one of my nightmares came true. I was eating Taco Bell and as if that wasn’t horrific enough, something felt not quite right about half way through my tacos. Initially I thought maybe a bit of taco shell had lodged itself in between my teeth, but it didn’t take long to figure out that in fact a portion of one of my teeth had broken off! The jig was up. I was going to have to find a dentist, beg their forgiveness and see if they could fix my tooth.

Since the rest of my family (who do not share my dental anxiety) are between dentists, my wife (bless her) scheduled an appointment for me yesterday with a dentist based purely on proximity with my house. This turned out to be Dr. Jacqueline Butler-Mitchell at Integrity Dental Care. I prepared myself, as best I could, for what I was certain would be news that all my teeth were damaged beyond repair they’d have to go. That’s not how things turned out.

Apart from the shock that I’ve not been to a dentist in something like 20 years, Dr. Butler-Mitchell and her staff were extremely nice to me and did their best to put me at ease after I’d explained my anxieties. They couldn’t make the cleaning equipment run without that terrible high pitched scream, but other than that the cleaning process was not entirely uncomfortable. It also turns out that dentistry has made some advances in the last 20 years. Who knew?

Apart from being a bit funkified, it looks like I may only have one cavity. The doc wanted to wait until my cleaning was done to be sure. My broken tooth is going to need a crown and possibly a root canal. I have to wait until next Wednesday for a specialist to run some tests that will determine how close the nerve is to the broken part of the tooth. I’m sure neither of those procedures will be pleasant, but so far I’m feeling much better about my perception of dentistry. Hopefully things go well next Wednesday and I’ll be able to schedule regular cleanings, eliminating (or at least easing) two of my fears in one swoop.

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California Dreaming

May 13, 2008

So hey, I remembered I have this blog…

It seems to me that that tweet I posted earlier needs more than the 140 characters alloted by Twitter. Also I tend not to remember my dreams, so this is a bit unusual and I wanted to write it down before I forgot. My dreams aren’t as lucid as Kat’s, but I’ll do my best.

Near as I can remember I was riding a forklift while being pursued through some sort of warehouse. Or maybe I wasn’t being pursued and just wanted to see how fast I could drive a forklift. In any event, I came to an obstacle that the forklift could not go over and so I climbed over and found myself in something like a break room…

It contained a drafting table and Gus Mueller was at the table writing some code or something. The guys from Rogue Sheep were there and I think Jalkut was rummaging through some cupboards. I dunno, but it quickly became apparent that we were in San Francisco getting ready to go to WWDC. Anyway, I was like “Hey Gus, what’s going on?” to which he replied that everyone was waiting for the ride to the Moscone to arrive. Apparently Apple was picking up groups of developers in limousines and several people had already left. Oh? I hadn’t heard about this I informed him. Someone else asked if I’d registered on Apple’s new DTS site. I informed them that I was just on the ADC site and figured that was good enough but apparently not having registered with DTS was why I didn’t know about the limousine rides. It seemed kind of silly to ride a couple blocks to the Moscone center, but I didn’t wanted to be left out and so I left to go and see if I could register in time to get my ride.

The registration process was edited from my dream as was the trip from the warehouse break room thingy to a hallway in the hotel or the lobby or something. Anyway after I was registered I started getting messages from the DTS site like “Flying Meat wants to be your friend”. This new site was some sort of Facebook / LinkedIn mashup for developers. It was terrifying. And yet I dreamed on…

There were displays in the hotel showing what appeared to be Twitter updates from various conference goers. Mostly these seemed to be updates from people that had arrived (via limousine) at the Moscone center. One tweet, and I couldn’t figure out who it was from, said “Calling somemomintn”. somemomintn is my wife’s unused Twitter name, so naturally I was thinking who the hell is calling my wife!? And where is my limo!?

So what does this all mean (besides that my wife is clearly having an affair with a Twitter user). Near as I can tell Apple must be buying Facebook and I assume Mark Zuckerberg will be using the proceeds to ferry all the developers to the conference via limousine. You read it here first.

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Thoughts on MWSF Keynote ’08

January 15, 2008

I wasn’t going to watch the keynote, or more accurately one of the many live blogs of today’s event. But then there was a little crowd gathered in the conference room and someone mentioned pizza.

Overview: Apple sold lots of stuff in 2007. iPods, iPhones, Leopard, etc. That’s good. Keeps me employed and all. Get to the interesting bits.

Time Capsule: A wireless base station with a 500GB or 1TB hard disk for use as a Time Machine backup. It looks like it can be used as a generic drive as well so maybe I can finally consolidate my family iPhoto libraries in one place. $299 for 500GB or $499 for 1TB. I expect I’ll continue to procrastinate.

iPhone SDK: Aha! I’m extremely anxious to find out more about how applications with be keyed, deployed, etc. But it looks like I won’t be finding out today. the only news regarding the SDK is that it’ll be out in February, which isn’t really news. Sucks.

iPhone: Updates to maps, webclips, multiple SMS, etc. All availablevia a free update. 3G later this year? Anyone? Bueller? I don’t have an iPhone and nothing is mentioned that compels me to buy one… Yet.

iPod Touch: Apple finally adds all the applications from the iPhone that should have been on the iPod Touch to start with. But they’re charging $20 for it?! But there is no corresponding increase in the price of a new iPod Touch, which will come with all these new features. Grr.

iTunes Movie Rentals: $3.99 to rent new releases, $2.99 for “library” titles. My first thought is how long is a release new? I don’t expect I’ll take advantage of this very often, but I can see it for people that travel a lot and would rather avoid the price of hotel movies. An “all you can eat” monthly pricing plan might work better here, especially when I compare the value of this to something like Netflix.

Apple TV (take two): The original Apple TV suffered from requiring a connection to a computer to synchronize or stream content from. Not so with the new version. You can rent titles directly from iTMS (including HD content), you can also watch skateboarding dogs, browse Flickr, download podcasts and more all in a redesigned interface, albeit with the same crappy remote. Well if iPod Touch owners are paying $20 for a few widgets that are essential the same apps that run on the iPhone, I can only imagine what Apple will be charging for this. Oh, I see, it’s a free upgrade for old Apple TVs and the new models will see a price cut. We joke in the conference room that the upgrade will be subsidized by iPod Touch owners and their $20 upgrade fee. This would be funnier if I hadn’t purchased an iPod Touch for my wife recently.

I have to admit the Apple TV looks far more compelling that the first attempt. I already have lots of boxes hooked to my TV with the Tivo, Wii, HD-DVD player. Until the purchase of a new box eliminates one of the older ones, I’ll have to give the Apple TV a miss, but probably the most tempting announcement in the keynote.

MacBook Air: A very thin notebook computer. Apart from thinness, nothing revolutionary. What’s worse, it appears that you will be unable to replace the battery or upgrade the memory. Sealed for your protection. The audio and USB connectors connector are recessed in such a way that some of your usb / audio devices may not work without an adapter. No ethernet connector either, but you can buy an adapter to plug into your single USB port for $29. Unless you were using that for your external optical drive that you can buy for another $99. If you buy a MacBook Air, expect to carry around a bag full of crap to make it work in those situations where you have to have a optical drive, or wired ethernet connection, etc. Or, better yet, buy a regular MacBook which is effectively only 0.25 inches thicker, 2 pounds heavier, and includes a firewire port, 2 usb ports, a replaceable battery, DVD drive, faster processor, more memory, and anywhere from $300 to $2000 cheaper.

Randy Newman: The keynote ended with a performance by Randy Newman. And while I wasn’t at the keynote, I nevertheless have “You’ve Got a Friend In Me” running through my head for the rest of the day. Thanks a lot.

So no big surprises in the keynote and that $20 iPod Touch upgrade thing just soured me for the rest of the presentation. I know it’s only twenty bucks, but what the crap? Anyway, nothing I’m going to go out and spend any money on right away. I suppose I should probably consider that a good thing.

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GTD with VDP

December 10, 2007

I’m writing this down as much to reinforce the process that I (sometimes) follow as much as to (hopefully) provide some benefit to others out there. This post kind of assumes you know something about GTD.

I first read David Allen’s “Getting Things Done” in the summer of 2006 and found that it was a decent approach to organizing the variety of disparate tasks that come up in day to day life, as well as the things that I’m supposed to be attending to at work. So I set about trying to incorporate some of the principles from that system into my life. This went well for a while and I either was more productive and organized, or I had the feeling that I was anyway, which is almost as good. As time went on I followed the GTD method less and less and as a result chaos began to take root again. The trouble is that once this starts to happen it’s easy to become overwhelmed with the mess and continue sweeping stuff under the rug rather than tidy things back up.

Recently I came across Things which is made by Cultured Code and though the screen shots look very nice, it is still at the alpha stage of development so I’ve no idea how well it works. This did get me thinking again about getting myself organized and staying that way this time. Before I went back to my old system, I looked at some of the other GTD apps such as OmniFocus and iGTD. While these are all fine apps, they just weren’t quite flexible enough for me.

When I originally began considering GTD, I realized that I needed an application to organize all the notes, images, pdfs, and whatever else might by relevant to a particular project. Flying Meat’s VoodooPad fits the bill perfectly. As it says, “You put your brain in it”. Next I needed to come up with an organization structure I could apply to VoodooPad, email, disk drive, del.icio.us, etc.

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