iridani.com

The Operation Was A Success!

jqs — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 01:05:33 +0000

No, no, not the new baby, that’s tomorrow!

With many thanks to OWC¹ and a few dollars, my Mac Mini has more long and short term memory! 250 and 2 gigs respectively…

Now to be productive! (After the backup restores… grumble grumble grumble)

1. Mini Upgrade Video ↩

iPhone OS 2.0 Quirks

jqs — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 21:03:49 +0000

Okay, maybe some of these are more annoyances than quirks:

Springboard Application Placement Upon Update

This one gets me every time an application has an update. If I’ve gone through the trouble of taking an application (that I paid for) and drag it across six pages of apps so that it can reside in the #1 spot on my iPhone, why when upgrading does it jump to the end of the list again? I can understand that new apps get chucked to the end of the list, but couldn’t the OS merely turn off the old version (I assume it isn’t deleted until the new one gets downloaded, but I’m not betting the farm on it.), move it automagically somewhere and setup the new ‘downloading’ app in the spot the previous version occupied?

And while we’re talking about upgrading apps, why does the App Store need to quit to the Springboard every time I tell it to download a new app? Can I queue these things and have them go all at once? I mean you can get all of the updates to installed apps in batch mode right?

Developer Hardware

So I’m a real honest to goodness, paid up, friend of Steve, iPhone developer. Full access to OS 2.1Beta… I haven’t produced anything yet as I’m too scared of the warning on the iPhone DEV site which states, that by installing the Beta iPhone software I may lock my iPhone permanently into developer hardware and it can’t be used as a phone again! What what what?

Are you kidding me? So if I really wanted to produce an iPhone app and wanted to use an iPhone, I need two of them? With Rogers requiring a contract to go along with every iPhone, perhaps my 1st gen iPhone becomes a developer box and a new one becomes my phone.

Personally I’m holding out that my new job picks up an iPhone 3G for me…

iPhone Post

jqs — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 14:54:11 +0000

Automattic released it’s iPhone blogging tool for Wordpress.

This is my first attempt to post using it and I’ll keep my judgement to myself until later.

Of note however, it seems that there isn’t anyway to upload a photo from my phone to the blog. (At least I haven’t really looked all that hard yet..)

Edit: Found the photos uploader… Can’t change the size or the thumbnail type but not bad for a 1.0 release. Also they’ve released the source code!

Cocoa Programming For Mac OS X

jqs — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 17:36:15 +0000

I’ve just spent a hour reading the first chapter of Aaron Hillegass’ excellent Cocoa Programming For Mac OS X¹

Aaron makes it easy to pick up Objective-C and start learning the ins and outs of event driven applications. This is the first time I’ve really started to ‘get’ this model of development. Granted I’ve got the free time to put into the project, but still.

I’m looking forward to future chapters and I apologize to my family now as I suspect I’ll have my head buried in this book for some time to come.

1. amazon.ca ↩

refactormycode.com == Great Idea…

jqs — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 11:45:32 +0000

I’m going to attempt to not spam this site with a bunch of non-development work stuff. I’ve other blogs for that… But in keeping with the vein of this website¹, I’ve recently been pointed to a very cool website who’s basic premise is too simple to have not been thought of before now…

We’ve all seen web clipboards and code repositories before², and even I am guilty³ of wanting to get in on the action. But all of these sites are simple repositories.

Marc-André Cournoyer⁴ has a fresh take on the idea. His refactormycode.com⁵ site isn’t just a web clipboard, but rather it is a place to put your code up for community scrutiny.

The idea is that you can post a code snippet and ask for help to see if anyone can help you sort out a problem. This isn’t a wholesale help board for new programmers, but for people who are having problems envisioning code design changes, code cleanup problems, and even those who want the tightest code possible and are seeking improvement.

The website even has an API⁶ for those who want to dig into the site that much more… (Maybe I’ll add a widget here for my refactorings…)

Good job Marc. Nicely executed.

1. code code code↩
2. pastie.org ↩
3. A new project will be released shortly… Keep watching this space! — c???x.iridani.com ↩
4. macournoyer.com ↩
5. refactormycode.com ↩
6. API ↩

jqs_random - Released

jqs — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 16:35:23 +0000

I’ve released¹ (finally) a version of what I consider a ’starter’ Wordpress² plugin.

This little
baby
is a
simple text replacement thingy.This little baby is a simple text replacement thingy. The nice thing is that is easily demonstrates a clean plugin that won’t trip over other plugins, creates proper administration pages utilizing AJAX and uses 2.5’s shortcodes.

It’s not production level code as there isn’t any real data validation on the admin form (altho if someone has gotten that far, you are toast anyway…), and it doesn’t check to make sure that it is being called from the admin pages either.

Beyond that, it is easy to read as an example for starting your own Wordpress plugin.

Enjoy.

EDIT: Looks like I’ve done something horribly wrong and the readme.txt file isn’t being parsed correctly… Thus the download isn’t working. Will update when this is fixed.

EDIT: (June 17, ‘08) It is fixed. I just ran the plugin auto-updater and it worked perfectly from this copy of Wordpress. Go download!

1. jqs_random @ Wordpress Extend ↩
2. Wordpress ↩

Welcome to the New Blog…

jqs — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 20:17:08 +0000

A lot has happened since I put this blog on hiatus a couple of years ago. I’ve changed positions at my place of work, I’ve completed a bunch of interesting projects, my wife and I have welcomed our first child into our lives and I’ve been given my freedom!

That’s right, I’m a free agent at the moment and am in the process of scouting out my next opportunity. Until that time comes, I’ll keep everyone updated as to my status here.

In addition, now that I’ve got a little free time on my hands, it’s back to the developmental grindstone. I’ve not had opportunity in the last few years to get anything out of me that wasn’t tied to my employer of record and I’m near to burst with ideas. This website will become home to all of them.

Most notably I’ve become a WordPress fiend and have a bunch of plug-ins I’m writing as we speak. I’ve joined Facebook and have more than a few ideas for applications for their platform. I’ve made a few improvements to my template class now known as tmpl and will be bringing those online shortly. And lastly, but not least(ly), I’ve an iPhone and am geared up to write a few apps for it as well.