ifoi ware

Posts have been sparse in the last few days and this will continue for about another week. I am working nightshifts since three weeks and my sleep level has fallen below the healthy limit. Looking at myself in the mirror I consider getting a shotgun. I should stop watching zombie movies, they do not go well together with the sleep deprivation (or in fact, they do, but not in a healthy way).

Just to keep you posted:

• RegenRadar will re-appear in the App Store next week. The copyright issues have been resolved.
• ZugInfo 1.2 is in the beta testing phase on my IPhone.
  It features a location history list to speed up your workflow even more. Expect it in about 2 weeks

one two three, from ny to germany

If you were wondering, if this was another blogged which quickly fades away after a first burst of activity … maybe it is. Na, just kidding. I was away in France for the week. There are no borders in Europe (at least for Europeans) and you can use the same currency in many countries, but they haven’t figured out how to “roam” your mobile phone in a affordable manner. Using my German IPhone in France, even with the same company as in Germany, would cost me a small fortune. No internet on the phone meant no real application beta testing.

But I managed to add the last missing features and if is doesn’t crash over the weekend, I will try my luck with the app store next week.

As expected, after spending 3 weeks coding in objective c and cocoa touch I found my code from week 1 messy and gauche (this came from the oxford advanced dictionary as an antonym for elegant). I cleaned up most of it, but will leave some for version 1.1.

PS: Yes, you can eat frog legs in France. They come buttered and fried and taste like chicken. Fishy chicken.

look, the lower right

Almost another week in my project, it’s time to collect the pieces and see where we stand

• I got what I paid for: my IPhone developer snick-snack-thingy, which in it’s core is access to the “internal” part of the Apple IPhone developer website. After I filled out a trilion webforms and up and downloaded keys and certificates I can run and use (aehm I mean test) my own applications on the IPhone. Victory.
• I tackled successfully the localization issue and the app runs now in two languages (see previous post)
• I found out that simulator and IPhone do not necessarily have the same libraries installed, which forced me to write some addditional code
• I created an App Icon (see above), then what is an ass without a face
• I worked for my day job, a lot

I will be off to France for a week, but I will beta test the app there and work on a french localization, and if everything works I will try to sell it to the geniuseseses at apple app store.

howdee cowbay

my first sony

Another tekupdate on the status of my this weeks project: today was all about learning steve’s big secret, which I am legally bound not to talk/write about. At least not as long as we don’t have a business relation (if you are interested, you can write me a cheque). But see for yourself. Works! Complete with output to the console.

Wait a minute … where is this console app again? No such thing? Hostia!

All right, I guess my victory shouts were a bit premature. Write in your mail to do list: Format and display query output. Save user preferences, previous queries, etc.. Catch errors and query ask-backs.

But for four days minus one bathroom re-painted not so bad.

On a sidenote: I discovered with terror that I am not the only one blogging about their experience of becoming an IPhone Professional Developer (c). And most of them started ages ago, like in the 90′s, or at least at the beginning of this year. Here a few of my favorites: Tristan O’Tierney (the guy who brought us twinkle! rock on!), Tim Burks and Alex Bisceglie.

It’s all meaningless, I will stop writing.

So two layers did the trick, goodbye 90′s. But that’s actually not what I was about to rant: I was about to tell you, why the hell we need another teknerd  ranting about his coding problems, which extend to his life. Well … I don’t have an answer for that one, but I can tell you instead what I am planing to do with the rest of the week.

I am going to write my first application for the IPhone (see somewhere below). Since I don’t have a good reason why I should do it, let’s skip to the how: First need to learn objective c, then cocoa, then IPhone API (am I allowed to write that in a blog Steve?), better all at once. Thank god there is google. I was always a grandmaster at googling my code.

My project will be straight forward: a wrapper application for a website based query to a train timetable. Probably not what Steve expected when he was raving about the best mobile user experience, but useful nonetheless. And doable. So Apple Dev put me on track with NSURLConnection. Combine that with NSString and NSScanner and the controller (a fancy term I picked up in an Apple Dev video tutorial from the evangelist) is up and running. Objective C done. Let’z get to the IPhone touchy thing. I keep you (Dennis) posted.

Some people like it, some people love it, the standard wordpress theme. I don’t like blue headers and color changing did somehow not work. So here I am with a new minimalism wp theme, based on some theme cooked up by people at the themelab (which is based on another theme, and so on). This is definitely not my final take on the theme thing, but for tonight it serves me well.

Update: Note the completely misplaced pages button at the top of the header. sweet.

and yes, it works on the small screen. If you read this on an IPhone it will look very bling, thanks to wptouch. Maybe one could add some diamonds at the top (how was that 1000$ iphone app called again? shame they removed it from the app store).