Jan 11 — 1
Juan from Midnight Apps will be speaking at CocoaHeads tonight (Thursday, Jan 11) at 8pm. The meeting will be at the Apple Store in San Franisco, and Juan will be talking about the process of developing the new version of Cha-Ching
Jan 09 — 43
It seems some are, shall we say, overreacting to the name change from "Apple Computer" to "Apple." Please, everyone, relax. Practically no one has used the full company name in a decade, so this is just the formalization of what is already in place
Jan 09 — 50
Well, I don't think anybody predicted all of that. So we have an iPod which is an iPhone, which is also actually a Mac. That should make for an interesting WWDC. The device looks amazing, but we all have to wait until June. Apple Computer is now just Apple, which is as it should be
Jan 08 — 10
This is probably going to be another one of those three-second fixes, but I've really checked and re-checked all of my code this time. I'm trying to get a custom layout to display in a Rails app, but layout declaration in ApplicationController is not getting propagated to subclasses
Jan 07 — 7
The Pomcast podcast is doing a series of interviews during Macworld week, and I was asked to do a video interview on Wednesday. The topics range from learning Cocoa, how I got started, what's coming up in Leopard, living in the valley, and even a bit of Ruby on Rails
Jan 07 — 13
I found out a recent CocoaHeads meeting that there's an easy way to visualize bindings using the Instances tab in Interface Builder. The following example uses the NIB file from Core Data Tutorial at Cocoa Dev Central
Jan 07 — 6
Due to a scheduling conflict, we won't be able to host our special guest for the January 11 CocoaHeads Silicon Valley meeting. The most likely case is that we'll find another guest and move the event to the Apple Store in SF so that everyone has easier access to it. It's out of my hands. Don't blame the messenger.
Jan 06 — 5
I have an experiment I want to try out. There are more than a few excellent Mac developers, a ton of excellent users which support those developers, but a vanishingly small percentage of developers have an actual booth. Most of them are just walking around on the floor. So here's my idea
Jan 05 — 8
Tim Burks has repurposed my little MailDemo sample app as a RubyCocoa project. This is the app that is used in the Cocoa Dev Central Bindings Tutorial. The interesting thing about this, of course, is that it's Ruby using Cocoa Bindings
Jan 02 — 64
TUAW talks about the growing swell of upcoming apps which will use Leopard APIs, and therefore, will require Leopard to run. I'm sure some users are wondering why developers are doing this, and some developers are wondering if they should do the same
Jan 01 — 27
It's risky to write a "year in review" story since there are just so many of them, but I'm going to carve out my niche and look back at the stories that mattered to Mac developers in 2006
Dec 30 — 3
The acts_as_list declaration in Rails is useful little device which doesn't have an obvious counterpart in Cocoa/Core Data. It also tickles some of the side effects of Rails being more SQL-centric than Core Data, which honestly caused some confusion for me initially
Dec 29 — 3
As I re-learn Rails, I'm documenting concepts that seem different to me coming from a Cocoa/Core Data background. Association join models don't exist at the modeling level in Core Data
Dec 28 — 6
I put together a fairly simple site design for CocoaHeads Silicon Valley. There's shades of Cocoa Blogs here, but it's more stripped down and focused. Stephen just put it live
Dec 28 — 21
Sometimes the simplest things are the most elusive. There are a number of options for multi-button mice at the Apple Store, but I couldn't find one with 4 or 5 buttons for the price I had in mind
Dec 26 — 30
After my review of Cha-Ching, the concept of paying for beta software has surfaced in my head a few times. It seems strange on the surface, but the more I let the idea marinate, the more sense it makes to me
Dec 25 — 14
About a month ago, I asked Deric Horn if he could try to find some interesting guest speakers for CocoaHeads. To say he delivered on that would be an understatement. We have a very special guest for Thursday, January 11 in Cupertino (during Macworld week)
Dec 25 — 18
I always try to get you guys something for Christmas, but you're so hard to buy for. So instead, you get code. Mac OS X has solid time/date functionality, but it's spread across a number of different places. THCalendarInfo consolidates them
Dec 24 — 4
I think it might be helpful to document some of my experience (re-)learning Rails, specifically how it compares to Cocoa and Core Data. One concept I just hit that seems a bit foreign to me is the Rails version of the term "composition" and the composed_of directive
Dec 24 — 20
My little goofball mistake with Rails reminded me of one of the biggest timesinks in working with scripting languages: there's no compiler doing sanity checking for you
Dec 24 — 5
I'm using some free time to look through O'Reilly's Ruby on Rails book, and I've hit a presumably simple but confusing stumbling block on migrations. I've googled a bit and looked at the errata but haven't found anything yet. Any help? (Update: Nevermind.)
Dec 23 — 8
Gus Mueller found a USB adaptor for his guitar, recorded a sample of the results, and posted it. Guess what? He knows his stuff. Here's what I propose: all you Cocoa and Mac bloggers out there should post a recording of yourself playing guitar (or some other instrument). Here's mine
Dec 23 — 4
A series of micro reviews for the Nintendo DS games I own, with a visual aid provided by Delicious Library
Dec 22 — 22
I downloaded Cha-Ching today and bought a license a few hours later. Within about twenty minutes it occurred to me that Cha-Ching somehow to convinced me to do something I had never had interest in before: track my account locally, rather than through the bank web site
Dec 21 — 13
Ten years ago today, Apple started off on a new path, sparked by the company's decision to acquire NeXT. It was a real challenge to sit down and write about this because there are a lot of pieces that just don't make sense when put into words. Still, I think it's worth trying because it's an interesting story
Follow your bliss.
