I used to send myself every other year. Strangely, I’ve been attending for over 10 years now. Seems odd that it’s been so long. It’s been wild watching the changes in the conference over the years. This year is no different. There’s hardly any “just” MacOS X sessions now – iPhone and iPad (not surprisingly) crowd out the whole schedule. The time to selling out the conference is shorter this year than before, and I rather expect the crowds to be as insane as ever. Fortunately, many of my friends from Seattle Xcoders will be there – even if they love taking digs at each other over sax interface xml parsing code and “unnatural love”.

Best of all, the really big project weighing on my mind for the past month is out – I can go play, hack, drink, laugh with my friends, and not worry about deadlines for a while.

Here’s the details:

Do you love programming for the Mac and iPhone and think Objective-C is the bees’ knees?  Are you sick of your boring 9-5 job and wish you had more interesting problems to solve?  Would you like to join an indie Mac shop in the heart of downtown Everett, Washington?

Flying Meat ( http://flyingmeat.com/ ) is looking for a full time programmer to work on our award winning applications for the Mac, iPhone, and iPad.

The ideal employee has real world experience with Objective-C, programming with Xcode, a friendly attitude when talking to customers, and a penchant for figuring out tough problems.

Location:
- Downtown Everett, WA.

Responsibilities:
- Programming (fixing bugs, adding new features, etc) on our existing applications, and help bringing about new ones for the Mac, iPhone, and iPad.
- Assisting with 2nd level support.

Requirements:
- Experience with Objective-C and Xcode.
- Experience with Subversion or similar version control systems.
- Ability to work with at least a couple of scripting languages, such as Python, JavaScript, Ruby, Bash, Lua, JSTalk, etc.
- Experience shipping an iPhone, iPad, or Mac application.
- Highly professional, with the ability to multitask and deliver solid work on tight schedules.
- A sense of humor and an easy to get along with personality.

Experience that will help you stand out:
- Ability to work comfortably with Mac OS X graphic APIs such as Core Image and Quartz.
- Familiarity with network protocols.
- Ability to zip around in Terminal.app while blindfolded.
- You know the Mac HIG inside and out.

Benefits:
- Paid vacation.
- Profit sharing.
- Relaxed working environment.
- Retirement plan.

How to Apply:
Please send resume in plain text to gus@flyingmeat.com .  Make sure to point to projects you’ve worked on, and we would also love to see code you’ve written!

And yes, it hasn’t left my side. On of these days Karen might get to use it. Maybe. When I get a 3G version perhaps…

Anyway, it was time for the new experiment! I purchased a pogo stylus for working with the iPad. I originally saw one that an apple employee was using in an Apple Store (she wouldn’t give it to me, strangely enough), but she couldn’t tell me anything about it. I later saw an article from the Brushes help page on it, and went out and ordered one. Since I had the stylus, I wondered how different it would be to sketch with that instead of just my fingers. Pretty good, actually. Although I’ve got to admit I’ve become somewhat of a sucker for pressure sensitivity that you get with a Wacom tablet….

The end result is that you have to press a little harder, so in the end it doesn’t feel like a stylus – or at least not like any medium that you might be used to. There’s no scratch of paper, texture to the draw, and hard or soft and angle doesn’t make a different on an iPad. The good news is that you can see what you’re drawing a little better – as the stylus is about half the width of any finger, if not a bit thinner.

I’m still very much learning to use the application (Brushes) too. I have SketchBook Pro, which is pretty cool too – just haven’t really tried to work with it much yet – focusing on Brushes to start with.

I’ve learned to start sketching with really light opacity and a variety of thicknesses, repeating strokes to firm up lines. I’m also just now starting to get a handle on even the basics of textures with Brushes. It’s super flexible, but that just means I’m super lost right now too. The hardest thing to get used to is slowing down some of my motions, or making sure only the stylus touches – it’s very easy, if you’re a little sloppy with your hands – to make it thing you’re trying to double-tap when hatching a background, or to inadvertently “pinch/zoom” instead of making a stroke. Still, I’m happy with the initial results, even if I have a long way to go to get to the amazing quality of artwork I see others producing out there.

“Uh… No, but then i didn’t write OneBusAway either. I wrote SeattleBus…”

That bit of confusion resolved, we talked some more about Brian Ferris’ very impressive work with OneBusAway and contributions that it’s made to Seattle Public Transit. I thought it was worth writing some here for more public consumption too.

I am incredibly impressed and whole-heartedly applaud the work that Brian has done with his web site, public and open API, and general efforts to improve the daily life of folks using public transit in and around Seattle. I think the opportunities to do some interesting things with that site and the iPad are tremendous, even more so if you look at some of the cool things that the WalkScore folks are doing as well with their open source graph server.

I’m keeping SeattleBus an iPhone only application. I originally wrote it for me, and I continue to use it on a regular basis. My concept for the application is really only meant for the iPhone setup. Brief, very direct access to the route information you need right then. There is a lot you can do with more screen real estate, more detailed information about routes, etc. That’s not what I want SeattleBus to be. The narrow focus is the important thing to me, and the larger format screen of an iPad just doesn’t seem needed. Glorious, yes, but not needed.

For the folks hacking away at similar things – I can assure you from feedback that I’ve received: There is desire to have something more. I would encourage you to look closely at Brian’s work for ideas and inspiration. He has requested that anything using his site and APIs be made freely available (non commercial) – a perfect platform for hacking and learning while also benefitting the community. Take advantage of what he’s made available, go forth, and make some great things.

So what next for SeattleBus? Not a whole lot in the near future. King County Metro is still somewhat freaky about the use of it’s data from a policy perspective. That’s a damper on future development for me. I don’t make even close to a living from SeattleBus and as you might suspect, other projects are taking most of my spare time right now.

I am looking for an application idea to create for the iPad that would fit a iPad. Way more than an iPhone application, somewhat less than a desktop application. I haven’t yet found that fit and inspiration, but I’m still looking and not feeling in too much of a rush to just do something. I’ll strike when I find the right thing. For now… I’ll keep looking around.

Hal’s response to the Xcoder mailing list was so incredibly well stated that I’m going to completely steal it and put up the response here. By “the group”, he’s speaking of the Seattle Xcoders:

Your best bet is to attend some meetings and get to know some people. The group has been very supportive of new ventures and new developers. But I don’t know any decent Cocoa developer who’s sitting around thinking “oh if only I had a project concept”. You will have some selling to do.

The risk in these “rev share” deals seems to me to fall mostly on the developer, particularly as an opportunity cost, since it amounts to an interest-free loan, to the business, of the value of that developer’s time. Ideas are easy; I have a notebook full of them (and if the value of your idea goes to zero as soon as someone else hears of it, there’s really no barrier to competitors). If I’m going to take on a partner I want to see a proven record in the business side: marketing, sales, management, fundraising. I want to see a complementary skill set with a dollar value comparable to what I would be putting into the venture.

]]> http://www.rhonabwy.com/wp/2010/03/30/hey-ive-got-an-idea/feed/ 0 http://www.rhonabwy.com/wp/2010/03/27/python-in-a-web-browser/ http://www.rhonabwy.com/wp/2010/03/27/python-in-a-web-browser/#comments Sat, 27 Mar 2010 19:31:56 +0000 Joe http://www.rhonabwy.com/wp/?p=955 Continue reading →]]> well, really it’s remote python through a web browser, but it’s still pretty cool. I caught these two links from an email that Brian Dorsey wrote, and thought they were worth putting up on the blog for later reference (thanks Google!)

http://try-python.mired.org/

Try-Python is a classic interactive python 2.5.2 (as of this writing) interpreter, so available through some javascript magic and running in what looks like a console window. For those little “How’s python do this again…” things, it’s amazingly quick. Okay – so I normally find it just as quick to pop open a terminal, but if I didn’t have a terminal available… this would be invaluable.

http://con.appspot.com/console/

Similar to try-python, but made with a very different intent – it’s meant to plug into Google AppEngine (they’ve made the source available at git://proven-corporation.com/app-engine-console/). Can’t beat that! Functionally, it’s pretty much the same as Try-Python except that it makes you log in first – which I can’t really complain about – if I were running an open interpreter like that I’d likely want to know who was doing what… or otherwise force a means of “cleaning” that system periodically.

The whole thread popped up on the local Seattle Python mailing list because Katherine Hernandez was interesting in poking at python, but was primarily working from an iPod (and soon, I think, an iPad) – where an interactive terminal is discouraged if not denied.

That denial means you can’t sell anything like that through the AppStore, but I’m beginning to wonder if I couldn’t knock together a python interpreter and the standard libraries as a development-only thing, and then make that available. Anyone with a dev license could compile and run it, and share it with a number of folks using the ad-hoc distribution model. It’s the only immediate work-around I can think to the AppStore controlled model, but it might do the trick.

Of course, I need another new project like I need a hole in my head, but it’s a neat idea…

They’ve all been buzzing about the iPad. Shit, anyone in technology has been buzzing about it. Microsoft and HP (or laptop/tablet vendor of choice) had a decade to break this code and didn’t manage it. I’ve been hearing almost exclusively around why Apple fucked up, blew it, and why the Kindle and netbooks will continue to rule the roost. I won’t even go near the whole “Flash thing”.

I think they’re all dead fuckin’ wrong. Pardon the vuglarity, or not, as you please. It’s needed on this one. The iPad is a sign post. A marker of where we’re heading, and a sign of the change to come. I saw the preso, reading a few IRC channels and frantically refreshing web pages – and my thought was “Holy shit! I’m seeing something just like the first copy of NCSA Mosaic running on a Mac. This is going to change the world…”

And I found that I was completely unable to articulate this in any way that I could present to my coworkers. I didn’t bother demanding they listen, or that I was right, or any of that nonsense. I see it coming – they will too, eventually. In the past day or two, however, some very articulate fellows have done an amazing job putting down into text what I couldn’t. If you haven’t read these – do.

• Future Shock (Fraser Speirs)

• New Worlders (Steven Frank)

Thanks gents – I appreciate the words and thoughts – especially since I couldn’t seem to articulate them.

I’ll definitely have to check this one out this coming week on the commute into work.

I’ve been impatiently awaiting this day for a while. I promised Gus I wouldn’t talk about features or the code or whatever while it was in beta, but now it’s out! The handy little feature that Gus posted (Command-Shift-6) a little while back has been my virtual life saver while making screen shots for classes. The new feature (my favorite, clearly) not only makes a snapshot but brings ALL the windows on your system in as layers in an Acorn document.

You can navigate down a great little hierarchy to find the one you can, select and copy the layer, and then paste directly into Keynote. Getting “just the right” shot is a hell of lot easier now: no trimming or dealing with that shadow effect (a real PITA for screenshots), you don’t have to worry about what background you have on your desktop, and even the windows of a given application are nicely sorted out into their own layers. You can merge them back together, or just grab the specific window you need (Hello Interface Builder!).

If you’re doing anything with screenshots on the Macintosh – get this program now! The minor cost will get paid back time on the first project you do with it.

The bullet points really define it well. Just go read Rand’s post. Heh – and his blog, if you don’t already.

A new version of class-dump is now available. You can download it from the links on the class-dump project page. It is built for Mac OS X 10.5 or later.

Version 3.3 adds support for Snow Leopard, improves property handling, improves structure/union handling, fixes a bunch of bugs (including two crashers), and no doubt adds some new bugs.

(Via Steve Nygard’s Weblog.)

(Yeah, I’ve been playing with it pretty solidly – what’d you expect?)

So my impressions a day later?

1. It is noticeably faster. I upgraded my first gen phone to iPhone OS 3.0 and it was a bit pokey in places. Particularly the email and the first unlock screen. Seemed like it always paused on the unlock, which really screwed up my patterns of using the phone for a while. With the 3GS, the email is really quick – much more like whipping through email on a desktop machine, and there is zero pause in the unlock panel.
2. That video thing is cool. Had to try it out – so I went outside and captured a bit of video with a honeybee in our front yard: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scMgmByu97c. The sharing from the phone right into YouTube was really nice too. I’m not much of a YouTube user, but I can see where I might start using a lot more. Never thought I’d want a camera on my phone either… I’m looking forward to the moment when I get the facebook video upload integration too – that’s where I’m thinking I’ll share most of the videos to be honest.
3. Speaking of cameras, the new one is a LOT better. The light balance is greatly improved, and while it was interesting to work the original iphone camera around to avoid that terrible white-light bloom problem, it was a pain. The new camera makes that really easy.

There’s a lot more that I’m sure I’m missing from the phone as yet – things I’ll learn from watching Brad do some crazy ass thing with his phone at the Luau some thursday night, and then I’ll be all over him asking “Awright you – how’d ya do that”. Apple even sent me a nice email today saying “Thanks for buying a new iPhone, here’s some cool things you can do with it”. That’s pretty cool outreach.

So I’m happy with, and very glad I waited for the upgrade. I do wonder what’ll come out next year….

While I’ve been working on this coursework, Beth has been learning about iPhone development, sometimes helping at the classes and other times working on her own. It’s been really interesting to see the responses to her emails on the cocoa-dev mailing list. Some incredibly good help, a few jerks and their responses.

Beth’s made a screen cast talking about one of her challenges: doing the Interface Builder work to put together a TabBarController and a NavController. A common enough pattern for utility iPhone applications, and one that isn’t easy to explain or see when it comes to Interface Builder.

I think getting people used to using Interface Builder, including learning how to debug it and what happens when you make mistakes, is one of the biggest bonus’ of the in-person class. There’s a huge amount to that tool that just isn’t obvious until you see someone do it.

Heh – it’d be nice if the refactoring tools in Xcode would understand when you’d renamed an outlet too. That’s an interesting error for a newbie to run into. All of a sudden they’re going “Hey, what’s the key value coding thing and what did I do to make an undefined key?!?!”.

Anyway, check out Beth’s screencast if you’re interested in iPhone development. It’s well done.

It’s especially nice news coming back from WWDC where my good friends at Rogue Sheep won the Apple Design Award for .

While the MyBus.org site has been responding fine for the past few weeks, we’ve now seen multiple times over the past year when their site has been down and/or unresponsive to the point of breaking the Seattle Bus application. Hopefully this will fully resolve it. A future point update may allow users to choose between real-time trackers, but that hasn’t been coded in yet and I hope won’t be necessary.

I’ll post an update when it’s past review and is available for purchase again on the iTunes AppStore.

I apologize for the trouble and annoyances.

If you have the application already, it’s worth noting that the application does work periodically. Unfortunately, the data feed is just so inconsistent as to be nearly useless.

UPDATE:

I have a new parser functioning correctly with by MyBus.org and King County’s Metro Tracker site. The update should be uploaded to the AppStore shortly. I’ll post when I get the new version uploaded, and when it’s available.

I must say, it’s incredibly embarrassing that the King County site doesn’t even emit well formed HTML. The new parser is an interesting screen-scrape accumulation of regular expressions to pull out the relevant data. At least they’re posting it online…

The site that the application uses for it’s data source (mybus.org) has been intermittently available recently, and today it’s been down completely. This is a site run at the University of Washington, and I’m afraid I don’t have a direct contact with the administrators.

There is another site with similar data provided by King County Metro (not as well structured) – so I may end up re-writing my scraper/parser to pull data from that site as I have no details on when or if MyBus.org will come back online.

I wish there was a better way of providing this data to you – I’ll keep everyone informed through this developer diary as I have updates.