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August, 2010

  1. Implementing a Repository Pattern for iOS Apps

    August 31, 2010 by james

    Ever since I started working with iPhone and Core Data, ive been a bit taken back by how hap-hazardly the code ive seen is used for it.  People just set up entity retrieval and fetches wherever it is needed in the code and move on.   I believe i have an idea on how to fix this issue.

    (more…)

    Category Programming | Tags: ,,,, | 6 Comments

  2. “Social” Meetups

    August 19, 2010 by james

    I’ve been thinking a lot about social the past few days, and naturally from that I began to think of social meetups.  We have tweetups, beerups, refreshes and all sorts of other things, and out of all the ones I’ve been to, I’ve noticed a central problem with them all.  They’re not very social.  Sure you’ll see tons of people talking to each other, and a great time being had by what seems like all, but there’s a fundamental flaw with them.

    I’ll preface this with saying that I’m just as at fault as everyone else with this, so don’t think I’m on a soapbox; but we all seem to hang in cliques at all of these meetups.  We go with the people we know, and then, that’s it.  We don’t socialize.  We don’t REALLY go and meet-up with new people.  I’ve heard stories of people going to events that are supposed to be fun and social, but ended up hating the time they had, because no one was really being social, instead they were just with their friends, in a corner.  This isn’t the 8th grade dance people, let’s not be wallflowers!

    When I hear tweetup, I picture people with the same interests meeting together at a place and talking.  Let’s say I go to one of these meetups that I saw someone I follow on twitter mention. It usually is very hard for me to get a solid conversation going, as most of the time, everyone is just hanging with the peeps (tweeps?) they already know.

    So from now on I propose a few challenges for all you tweetup attendees:

    • Gain/Meet a new person that you dont know.
    • Join in a conversation with people you dont know.
    • BE SOCIAL.

    So whether it be the next refresh fort lauderdale, pizza tweetup, chevy pizza crawl, or whatever. Lets all try and embrace the social space, and actually be social.

    I’m game. Are you?

    Category Life, Social | Tags: ,, | 2 Comments

  3. Thoughts on Facebook Places

    August 19, 2010 by james

    So yesterday, facebook announced “Places”, its answer to foursquare, yelp,gowalla, etc.  The idea is the same as all the others, check into places via your mobile device and let your friends know about it, tag it, leave comments, the whole 9.  A real good look into Locations can be found here.  While I have no problem with facebook throwing its hat into the geo-location arena, I do have a personal issue on why I wouldn’t use it over foursquare/gowalla.  I know that gowalla and foursquare will integrate with Locations, but isnt that kind of overkill?

    To me, I have different uses for different social media channels. When I used facebook, I had all sorts of friends on there.  I had friends from elementary school that I rarely talked to (and only added them because they requested me), I had people from job interviews add me (no joke).  As my uses for each channel gets more specific, the fewer friends I have on it:

    As you can see, facebook had the most amount of friends, which if you were my friend on there, you would know my activity stream was very very sparse and pretty non informative.  The only time I would post activity would be when someone else tagged me in a photo, or I was testing some sort of API call for an app.

    Inside my facebook friends, I had a smaller number of followers on twitter.  I feel more comfortable being more active on twitter because there are more of my true {friends} on there.  People in my industry, or just friends I stay in more touch with.

    Inside of my twitter, is finally my geo-location channel, foursquare.  As of right now, I have 43 friends on foursquare, a few of which I may delete and/or dont really use it.  To me, I’m revealing a very private part of my life, mainly where im at, at an exact moment in time.  Twitter does this to an extent with its new location services, but its not as exact.

    The main point of this is that in my opinion, facebook is too broad of an outlet for me to feel comfortable posting where i’m at, during any given time.  And yes, I do know you can post to facebook from foursquare and gowalla, and even for that I never turned it on.

    What do you think? Are you going to abandon your gowalla/yelp/foursquare ship for facebook locations?

    Category Programming, Social | Tags: , | 2 Comments

  4. How To Be A Liger Of Development: My SXSW Panel!

    August 11, 2010 by james

    I couldn’t be more excited to have a talk planned that was accepted into the panel picker for this year’s South by Southwest.

    What is it about?

    The main thought is a liger is an awesome beast that is two things in one.  And to be a liger of development, you’re a mix of more than one language.  Be it .Net and PHP, or Objective C and AS3, being a liger can be very stressful to do, and to be efficient at one takes a lot.

    In my panel I will talk about what i believe is required to be efficient in this role, as well as what to look out for once you take this title on.

    I plan on bringing some SWAG to this so im excited about creating that as well!

    Vote for me here if you’d like to hear more about it!

    Category Life, Programming | Tags: | 1 Comment

  5. Instruments of Salvation

    August 10, 2010 by james

    I’ve been working on a pretty intense project lately.  It really pushed my knowledge and experience of being an iPhone developer.  I usually have been pretty good with memory management and preventing crashes in my apps, but this one was using images and core graphics a lot, and was crashing WAY too many times.  After nailing down some all of the bugs, i still had one error i just couldn’t wipe out.

    I knew what i HAD to do, but I wasnt very sure on how to do it.  I knew i had to use the Instruments app that comes with XCode.  I’m still a rather new iphone developer, and have used the leak instrument a bit, but after using that, i still couldn’t figure out the leak.  So I did what any other programmer does. Stack Overflow.

    <tangent>
    If you’re a developer and dont know what stack overflow is, you should probably just start a new career now.
    </tangent>

    Luckily a SO post led me to googling about the “Object Allocations” instrument thats included, and found this wonderful post that led me in the right direction. @markjnet‘s post on zombie use detection was spot on and helped me find my bug within an hour of using the instrument.

    Heres the official documentation for the instruments app.

    Another helpful post ive read about instruments can be found on The Apple Blog.

    Bottom line is, if you want to really optimize your time spent on bug hunting, knowing the Instruments app is crucial!

    Category Programming | Tags: ,,,, | No Comments