Custom Stars on the iPhone Using Quartz 2D
Posted on | April 15, 2009 | No Comments
I wrote a how-to post on creating a custom fill-able star class for the iPhone using Quartz 2D at the BeefyApps Blog. I have to say I had a lot of fun writing this class. I’ll be using it in a custom UISlider class that I will be writing later this week. I’ll post that how-to as well when I finish the UISlider.
Human Empathy
Posted on | April 11, 2009 | No Comments
It’s cool to find out that human empathy lives on, even in the busiest of places, as demonstrated by a tiny robot. Kacie Kinzers’ Tweenbots managed to navigate from their start position to their destination only by the intervention of random strangers, who took the time out to point them in the right direction. It gives me hope for humanity.
Snowboarding and Memory Management
Posted on | April 6, 2009 | No Comments
This Saturday I managed to make it out to Sunshine for a day of snowboarding. This was the second time I went snowboarding this winter and it was much much better than the first time. I actually lasted the entire day instead of quitting after only 3 hours like I did last time. I suspect it had a great deal to with all the leg exercises I’ve been doing lately. Next year I promise I will get out more often.
So one of the gotchas about programming in Objective-C for the iPhone is memory management. It took me a bit to figure out all the intricacies and it required the use of Instruments but I finally figured out how it works in Objective-C. I wrote a post about it on the BeefyApps blog if anyone is interested in reading it. Here is a direct link.
Sidetracked
Posted on | April 1, 2009 | No Comments
I was going to start this blog a year ago as a way to track my writing progress but life got in the way and I got sidetracked. After a year of not doing much with this site, I’ve finally gotten around to working on this blog. So about that writing… well it also got sidetracked. In the mean time I’ve completed all of my course components for my M.Sc. in Computer Science and I’ve started up a small iPhone app company called BeefyApps with a couple of my friends. The last three months I’ve been busy working on our first iPhone app, BeefyBoard: The iPhone Soundboard and it is now available on the iTunes app store.
Now that the first app is done, we are going to start on a couple of more projects. In the mean time I also have to find time to work on my thesis and finally get to writing my novel (which was the original reason for this blog). Wish me luck.