June 2011
1 post
App Dev Business Strategy 101...
1- Optimize for what will likely be approved for sale in the app store
2- Pick a problem to solve that isn’t part of the OS’ built-in capabilities
3- Have an exit strategy for when #’s 1 & 2 change without notice
March 2011
1 post
You Climb Productions →
Must watch: El Camino Del Ray trail hike video.
January 2011
2 posts
4 tags
JSON Pretty Print formatting in BBEdit
Working with large JSON output can be a pill, especially when the server strips white-space or makes no effort at formatting the response for human-readability.
Having previously looked for a solution to make this easy, and not finding the right Google-majik to find it, I came across this article that talks about BBEdit’s Unix filtering abilities: BBEdit: Its Unix Support Doesn’t...
August 2010
2 posts
tumblrbot asked: WHERE WOULD YOU MOST LIKE TO VISIT ON YOUR PLANET?
Dynamically create a UIViewController and Add it...
I recently needed to dynamically create UIViewController objects based on class/nib names defined in a configuration file, then display them in a UINavigationController.
Here’s how it’s done:
// Dynamically create new view controller based on class name string, then add it to
// my app via [UINavigationController setViewControllers:animated:]
NSString...
March 2010
1 post
January 2010
1 post
October 2009
2 posts
“Reinventing body. Breakthrough 1 : Your body is not a physical structure....”
– Deepak Chopra
September 2009
1 post
WatchI felt emotionally drained after watching this.
August 2009
1 post
Magic incantation to make iPhone 3.0.1 debuggable...
Run this command with a user that has ownership/write access to the /Developer tree, or wherever you installed the iPhone SDK [all on one line]:
ln -s /Developer/Platforms/iPhoneOS.platform/DeviceSupport/3.0\ \(7A341\) /Developer/Platforms/iPhoneOS.platform/DeviceSupport/3.0.1
July 2009
1 post
“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a...”
– Robert Heinlein
May 2009
2 posts
We each make the past the way we wanted it to be.
Based on our own desires to conform reality to the experiences we are each addicted.
If we desire to experience the joy in our own lives, we tend to remember the joyous moments, and forget those less so.
The opposite is also true.
For each who is of joyous desire, there must be one who desires the pain.
This is nature’s drive to...
“race team: A group of people charged with completing a six-month project in less...”
– http://www.buzzwhack.com/
April 2009
7 posts
WatchThe creator of the Sticky Note watches a video of folks doing stuff with his invention he never dreamed.
Klingon phrases →
nuqneH: Klingon “hello” greeting. Translates to “What do you want?”
Linux boot time comparison obsession →
Not sure I understand the obsession with shaving a few seconds off the boot time of an OS that proponents often point out rarely needs to be rebooted.
WatchThe first well paid for by the Twestival funds is drilled!
Having a well run dry on the farm last summer, I’m very aware of what it’s like to be without water, and we could just drive down the road a few miles to get some.
These wells are literally change and save lives where they are being drilled.
WatchCan Design Save the Newpaper?
March 2009
8 posts
“Greatness is a transitory experience. It is never consistent. It depends in part...”
– Frank Herbert, Dune Messiah
The human brain is on the edge of chaos →
All the interesting stuff happens on the border zones where order and chaos meet and interact.
It is that interaction that makes possible everything we know.
“…any value you might find outside your work, any other loyalty or love,...”
– Ayn Rand, John Galt’s Speech
“People can never be something they are not. No matter how much you might want...”
The Cult of Done Manifesto →
Resonance:
“1. There are three states of being. Not knowing, action and completion. …
“6. The point of being done is not to finish but to get other things done. …
“8. Laugh at perfection. It’s boring and keeps you from being done. …
“11. Destruction is a variant of done.”
Top 3 iPhone Features for the Enterprise →
My first article for iPhoneCTO is shipped!
Many jobs I’ve had in the past, I have enjoyed the work, but disliked many of those I worked with.
The last couple or three, I’ve not enjoyed the work as much, but really liked my co-workers.
What has changed is not the nature of the work. What has changed is myself.
Project Predictability Correlates to Developers’... →
Here’s a test: Take 12 random stills distributed evenly across the span of a movie and give them to someone in a random order. Ask that person to sort them based on their sequence in the movie….
February 2009
21 posts
“If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will...”
– @redstarvip
Proletariat Style
“Denim pants have been around since at least the 1600s when they were worn by workers in England. The name denim came from the French serge de Nîmes: the twilled fabric, serge, came from the French town of Nîmes. In the mid-19th century, Levi Strauss used the fabric to design a sturdy pair of pants for the workers who had come to mine for gold in northern California. Later, a tailor...
“Three nights per week pushups, plus three nights per week dumbbells, and I...”
– Me
Damn Doorknobs
You’d think that doorknobs would be simple. They’re all the same size, most doors are pre-drilled with the holes, there are standard tools for cutting the holes correctly for those doors that aren’t pre-drilled, etc. etc….
And yet, they make these fancy doorknobs. They are supposed to be “better”, in some cases they are prettier, but they can be a real pain...
“For every ailment under the sun
There is a remedy, or there is none;
If there...”
– W.W. Bartley
“The most academically correct solution is rarely the most pragmatic.”
– Me
“The problem with mistakes is that they’re usually not obvious while you...”
– Me
“No matter how cool your interface is, less of it would be better.”
– Alan Cooper
A Parable, 2/15/2009 →
The kung fu disciple, to his master: “What is the meaning of it all?”
Philia: Philia in Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics... →
“young lovers, lifelong friends, cities with one another, political or business contacts, parents and children, fellow-voyagers and fellow-soldiers, members of the same religious society, or of the same tribe, a cobbler and the person who buys from him.”
“All of these different relationships involve getting on well with someone, though Aristotle at times implies that something...
PowerPoint singalong →
“A presentation read verbatim from the slides without observations, notes, comments or asides of any kind. Monotone optional, but not required.”
Don’t Be Afraid To Have Opinions Or Take Sides →
I’m willing to take a risk and be wrong. Mistakes are a good way to learn what not to do.
What I’m not willing to do is sit on the sidelines, ride the fence, and do nothing.
5 Secrets To Ninja Writing →
“Should you lead off the following paragraph with a question? Probably not – but if you’re worried about this you can always answer yourself with a bolded sentence, thus creating and disposing a nice recursive black-hole paragraph in one pass.”
The Last Newspaper →
“He reminded his rapt audience that what they now refer to as “content” used to be called “stories,” delivered by trained individuals known as “storytellers” and “journalists.” These people didn’t work for companies like Google or Amazon as they do now, culling “content” from armies of information aggregators and feeding it into computers which analyze and pull out the relevant information...
“Memory management and real pointers keep C programmers pragmatic and focused. ...”
How Twitter was Born →
“The company had just contributed a major chunk of code to Rails 1.0 and had just shipped Odeo Studio, but we were facing tremendous competition from Apple and other heavyweights. Our board was not feeling optimistic, and we were forced to reinvent ourselves.”
The most successful ideas are often the “Plans B”.