James Andrews

Last night I was browsing twitter when one of my tweeps mentioned an article about iPhone and Flash. The article basically stated that before the release of the iPhone there were discussions of using flash on the iPhone for application development. That talks went south and since then there was no turning back. Now whether there is any truth to that I don’t know. What made the article interesting was the mention of an SDK called Corona by a company called Ansca Mobile. Essentially it’s a scripting language similar to actionscript/javascript that allows you to build iPhone apps as if you were building a Flash application.

I’ve wanted to write Cocoa apps for a while, but with work, and life I haven’t been able to get enough time to wrap my head around Cocoa and bindings and all the fun that goes with it. I know Javascript very well. Since I am a web developer so I thought I would give Corona a shot.

Corona cost $99 but there’s a 30 day trial version. I downloaded the trial version, and started reading through the docs (ok skimming through the docs) and sample applications. I found the APIDocs to be poor. No real explanation on how to capture events, which on the iPhone is important. Touch events are everything when it comes to the phone. Also, the company seems to be indecisive about some of the touch event naming, like “drag”. They thought it didn’t make sense, but I easily knew what they were talking about. Though I probably would have called it “swipe”. The sample code however was full of useful snippets, and from that I was able to build a 45 line application. That’s right in 45 lines I had the application I have been wanting to write for 5 months. Now I haven’t been able to test it on an iPhone or within Apple’s iPhone simulator. I have tested it in Corona’s iPhone simulator, in order to test it elsewhere I need to pay the $99, so for all I know it could totally break. I will give them the benefit of the doubt that it will work fine on the iPhone, and could revolutionize iPhone development for those who want to quickly get something out without the time consumption of learning Cocoa Touch, or paying an iPhone developer up to $150/hr

I am looking forward to them having a version that supports the iPad, I am sure they are working diligently on it.

It’s been one day since Steve Jobs announced the iPad to the world. Since then it seems like a world of haters has vomit their hatred of the iPad upon us. Complaining that it’s nothing more than an oversized iPod touch. What I am trying to figure out is this 1) why is that bad? and 2) Did you really expect something more? 3) Why did it have to be more?

In Steve’s keynote he talked about the computer and the smart phone and something in the middle. The iPad is not meant to replace the computer, and it’s not meant to replace the smart phone. It’s meant to compliment them. There are plenty of instances where you may want something portable like a phone, but not as clunky as a laptop, and that is where the iPad comes in. Something that doesn’t need a full computer operating system. Something that can become the device you need at the time.

Let’s say you are in the medical profession, do you really want to have to boot into a complex operating system like windows, linux or OS X that uses up battery life quickly? Or would you rather just turn on a device that allows you to open your application, view and enter patient data quickly and submit it to the servers in the hospital IT department? What if you are a photographer, or a real estate agent, or a business person in general who wants to track their appointments, calculate costs quickly. Applications designed specifically for you, so you don’t need to multi-task into other applications? That is what iPad is about.

Sure there are instances where multitasking may be nice, such as listening to Pandora Streams while doing something else in another application. It’s not a perfect device, but for people to condemn it for it’s faults and not look past them to the devices potential just seems real sad to me.

The iPad will be a great device once you get it in your hands, and see what it can do.

Photography is one of my hobbies. Sometimes I’ll do a wedding for a little extra money, sometimes I’ll shoot models. Trying to keep track of everything is a pain. Last night I was organizing apps on my iPhone and decided to look for some new ones while I was at it. I came across one called “Photographer’s Workflow”. From the images in iTunes App Store it looked like it did pretty much everything, and it was $3.99. Cheap enough for me to want to give it a try.

I downloaded and synced the app to my first generation iPhone. The first thing I noticed was that it requires use of Google Calendar. I give it my gmail account and password and it connected. Fulfilling that requirement, I attempted to add a project.

I add my project and the app crashes. I go back to the app, and enter the project. None of the information is there, and there’s no way I can see to delete the project and start again. I add another project, and wouldn’t you know it happens again. App == FAIL.

This app looked so very promising. I was really upset about the requirement for Google Calendar. I don’t want all my business information on the cloud, I’d rather have it sync to iCal through iTunes, or at least have the option for it not to use Google, and just keep it on my Phone. I couldn’t get a project to work at all which means that the application was totally useless to me.

I have contacted Apple for a refund.

Don’t waste your time, the app needs a lot of work.

Today WBZ is reporting an incident at a Taunton, MA public school. Where a 2nd grader was asked to draw a picture of what Christmas meant to them. This child drew a picture of Jesus on a cross with his exes for his eyes. When he turned in his paper his teacher deemed it to be “too violent”. This 8yr old boy now has to go through psychiatric before he can return to school.

What on earth are we coming too? When I was 8 we use to draw epic battles.. It was like playing army on paper. We use to design “bomb shelters” that had 20 levels, had guns, and rockets and all kinds of things to protect us. We use to do this in school, and the teacher use to compliment us on how good our drawings were even though they were horribly drawn.

Society today is out of control, trying to control things that it shouldn’t. Reacting to things that they shouldn’t. A kid walks down the hall and punches his classmate for no reason. That’s a reason to send him in for a psych evaluation. Not a harmless drawing. That teacher should be fired. and so should the rest of the town school committee.

My car is old. It’s a 95 Mitsubishi Gallant. I’ve replaced the engine twice, both times with junk yard engines. The last time was less than 6 months ago. Last week the car wouldn’t start, it turned over, but didn’t ignite. Monday I sent the car to the mechanic. The diagnosis is that the timing belt snapped. This sucks. It essentially means that the head of the engine is now trashed. A new head is $500, to do all the work is $1200. (Quoted from the mechanic). I would like to know why engines are designed in such a stupid fashion that when a belt breaks the engine crashes and burns. It’s not right, its down right stupid. There’s got to be a better way to design engines, so that if a belt breaks it doesn’t cause $1200 worth in damages. It’s down right stupid, and frustrating. I have no idea what I am going to do. Buying a new car at this point would be stupid.

For the last 15 years it has been the big todo from environmentalists that the earth is warming and we the human race are the cause. I’m not here to argue that the human race isn’t contributing to any warming of the earth that is happening. It would be stupid to assume that we weren’t contributing to any climate change, cause we are.

The earth’s ecosystem is a complex beast. No one on the planet fully understands it. Sure we can predict the weather, and based on conditions we can assume that there may be a hurricane forming, or tornados may touch down and cause havoc, but in reality our understanding is minimal. Over the past 4.54 billion years the earth has been around, it has gone though many natuarlly occuring changes. Just as we age and evolve, the earth too ages and evolves. Going through seasons year after year, the glacial ages, and temperate ages. The earth’s ecosystem is not designed to stay at one extreme or the other, and takes thousands of years to swap from one extreme to the other. The last glacial period ended roughly 10,000 years ago, and it is theorized that that they run on 40,000 and 100,000 year cycles. It’s not a stretch to believe that this global warming is mostly naturally occuring and that eventually we will have another ice age that flips it 180.

What gets to me is all the fear mongering over global warming. OMGOMGOMG we have to do something! Do we? Sure, I think we do, but not because of global warming. We cause a lot of polution. The acid rain falling from the sky. The large amounts of plastic in the pacific ocean. The smut and smog that cause severe breathing problems within our population. All these things destroy the environment, and are honestly things we should fix. We should burn less oil, we should find renewable energy sources, but not because of global warming. Stop listening to the fear mongering, stop blaming the freak 65F degree day in Boston on global warming. Stop polluting for the sake of saving our environment for our children today and for their future children. Lead the way so that they can live in a better world than we do.

Today I was browsing Craigslist help wanted section. In the “computer gigs” section I came across this add.

Title: Web Application Developer Wanted.
We are looking to build a 25 to 30 page web application. If you are interested please supply a quote.

25 to30 pages in total
YOU MUST MUST MUST have experience in SOAP API integrations and prove this.
The web application will in turn need to be connected / integrated to other applications such as SFDC (Salesforce.com) or iphone.
Looking for start to finish quote.

Please send resume and contact info.

Thank you!

The title was clear and concise. It was enough to peak my interest, and see what it was about. The first two sentences though sent me turning the other way. They have an idea for a 25 page site. Without any description of what those 25 pages are they expect you to send in a quote? Then they go on to re-itterate how many page there are, like they already hadn’t pointed that out. Then we “MUST MUST MUST” have experience with SOAP API. Looking for a “start to finish” quote. A quote on something with no explanation of what it is, or on what technology; beyond SOAP API.

How on earth do you expect someone to quote a project if they don’t even know what is involved? If you have a project and you need someone to do the work for you. Figure out what tech you want to use, if you have no preference, specify that. Don’t ask for a quote, ask for resumes. Take some resumes first look them over, and find people who seem to have some technical expertise Ask them to sign an NDA, give them some specifics and then ask them for a quote.

With the ad above any quote you get will be wrong, and in the end either you or the developer will lose out because the project wasn’t properly speced.

I am sitting in the little room that the company I am working for has herded us contractors into until we can get cubes. One of the other developers returns from the men’s room, and says to me “I have something that tops your men’s room experience.”. He states, “I wake in the men’s room and there’s a guy at the urinal. His phone rings, and he picks it up, and answers it and says. ‘Hey, can I call you back? I’m in the men’s room brushing my teeth.’. Sure enough he was standing at the urinal taking a wiz, and brushing his teeth?”

What is wrong with this world? Why couldn’t he have just returned the call afterwards. Are we so connected we can’t even use the bathroom without being plugged in. There’s something wrong here. And, brushing your teeth while taking a leak… In the words of Johnny Depp as Willy Wonka. “Ew…”.

It’s a little before 1pm, people are returning from lunch. Like many people after lunch it is a necessity to do natures business. Today I walk into the men’s room on my office floor, and turn to use the urinal (it only has one urinal but 4 stalls, I don’t understand that). The urinal is occupied by a co-worker I don’t know, who is doing his best to balance his cellphone in his left ear while trying to relieve himself. All the while other co-workers are walking in and out of the bathroom, using the stalls and flushing the toilets.

There are a couple things I don’t understand here. First is, it should be quite obvious to the person on the other end that the person they are speaking to is in the bathroom. Why don’t they speak up and put this person in their rightful place. The second is if you have to go to the men’s (or lady’s) room so badly why can’t you ask the person on the other line if you can call them back. Is it so important of an issue that you can’t ask for a pee break? Also, how unprofessional is that? I mean I am not sure he was on a work related call or a personal call, but either way. You look like a total ass, stratling the urinal, or taking from a stall.

The moral of the story is, if you are at work or out in public, put the phone down, do your business and call the person back, or wait until you are done your conversation. You aren’t a 4 year old who doesn’t know any better.

I am in Toronto International Airport. In the wing that contains flights heading to the US. My flight is at 6:40PM EST, and I am departing for Boston. I am writing this blog entry in Textmate a simple text editor for the Macintosh operating system OS X. Why am I mentioning this? Well you would think that with access to Wireless internet, I’d be able to just up and connect to the internet open my blogging software and go go go go go… That however is not the case.

I sit down at my gate, and find the wireless access point I need to connect too. Boingo uses special software; for unknown reasons, the allow you to log into they system. My computer is new, and this is my first trip to an airport with it so I go ahead and download the software. I don’t travel enough to warrant hthe $12/month charge, so I use Boingo’s as-you-go which is $10CAN. The problem, there doesn’t seem to be a way to charge me for the service. I’m logged in. AIM is working, but the web browser isn’t. Was I charged for the access or not? I have internet yet I don’t have internet, and I am really confused. I think maybe I am charged for internet, but something is wrong with DNS so I manually change my DNS IP to GTE’s public server. No change, so I change it back. I log out of Boingo’s application and log back in. Still nothing. I am frustrated. Maybe my account hasn’t charged a credit card, so I create a new account. Finally a connection. I send a Facebook message, browse a couple quick websites, and then suddenly. Nothing. Gone. WTF. I go through the sequence again, even going as far as rebooting my computer. Nothing.

It ends in futility, and me calling Boingo for a refund. Where does Boingo go wrong. First is this “application”. Why do I need to run their stupid little app in order to connect wirelessly. I go to coffee shop after coffee shop, just create an account, and pay for the service. When I return, I log into the account, and pay for the service. I fly Airtran, and I create an account and have internet as I fly, using the same kind of interface that the coffee shop uses. Boingo tries to make things easier with a little application, but instead they fail.

I give Boingo 0 of 5 wifi bars.

Please fix the problems so I can not be bored during a 3-4hr lay over…..