Monday, April 28, 2003
Yippee!! The new iPod finally came out. I've been waiting patiently, reading all the rumors sites since before MacWorld SF in January...
In case you haven't already seen it, here it is: http://www.apple.com/ipod/
There have been a few emails at work officially stating how they don't condone use of peer-to-peer file sharing services, so it seems to me the writing is on the wall, and it is only a matter of time before it becomes a terminable offense to have MP3s on your office PC
And rather than risk any potential litigation from the RIAA (yeah, whatever) you'd be out of the door before you had a chance to prove you owned the original CDs for all those files.
And because it is already a terminable offense to not be running SMS (Microsoft's corporate spyware), they already know that I have all those MP3s there.
Putting my distrust of my employer aside for a moment, the new iPods do look really neat... AAC support (better quality than MP3 at the same bitrate), nice backlit keys, plus they fixed one of the complaints with the old one - that it was too easy to hit one of the buttons when using the scroll wheel.
Plus I got to order it with "xmlguy@mac.com" engraved on the back :-)
In case you haven't already seen it, here it is: http://www.apple.com/ipod/
There have been a few emails at work officially stating how they don't condone use of peer-to-peer file sharing services, so it seems to me the writing is on the wall, and it is only a matter of time before it becomes a terminable offense to have MP3s on your office PC
And rather than risk any potential litigation from the RIAA (yeah, whatever) you'd be out of the door before you had a chance to prove you owned the original CDs for all those files.
And because it is already a terminable offense to not be running SMS (Microsoft's corporate spyware), they already know that I have all those MP3s there.
Putting my distrust of my employer aside for a moment, the new iPods do look really neat... AAC support (better quality than MP3 at the same bitrate), nice backlit keys, plus they fixed one of the complaints with the old one - that it was too easy to hit one of the buttons when using the scroll wheel.
Plus I got to order it with "xmlguy@mac.com" engraved on the back :-)
# posted 4/28/2003 06:15:47 AM |
Sunday, April 27, 2003
Sorry for not updating for 6 days ... its been a hectic week ...
At work... finally started development on the project I've been working with the business to design since last May/June. Did some prototyping back in August, and laid a lot of groundwork with the recent release which introduced a lot of new infrastructure, but without changing anything else (did anyone notice that http://www.dell.com changed a lot a month or so ago? No? Good - you weren't supposed to!).
Anyway, I've got three months of development ahead of me, and I'm the tech lead, meaning I get to do all the infrastructure and plumb a lot of the components together that the rest of the team builds. For those of you that see how fast I work... imagine what happens if I'm in development for three months :)
On the iComic front, one user suggested a way to seamlessly integrate proxy support, even allowing it to work with an authenticated proxy. Now I need to segment my home network so the Mac has to go through the proxy I set up on the PC so I can try it out. If I get this working, that feature alone is probably worthy of a 3.1 release...
At work... finally started development on the project I've been working with the business to design since last May/June. Did some prototyping back in August, and laid a lot of groundwork with the recent release which introduced a lot of new infrastructure, but without changing anything else (did anyone notice that http://www.dell.com changed a lot a month or so ago? No? Good - you weren't supposed to!).
Anyway, I've got three months of development ahead of me, and I'm the tech lead, meaning I get to do all the infrastructure and plumb a lot of the components together that the rest of the team builds. For those of you that see how fast I work... imagine what happens if I'm in development for three months :)
On the iComic front, one user suggested a way to seamlessly integrate proxy support, even allowing it to work with an authenticated proxy. Now I need to segment my home network so the Mac has to go through the proxy I set up on the PC so I can try it out. If I get this working, that feature alone is probably worthy of a 3.1 release...
# posted 4/27/2003 06:15:34 AM |
Monday, April 21, 2003
Just posted the King Features mega plugin. Thanks to Chaz for putting in a lot of the work on it. This final version completes the plugin, adding support for Henry, Sam and Silo and a few more that King does a slightly different way.
# posted 4/21/2003 06:14:05 AM |
Sunday, April 20, 2003
3.02 update is available
Only a couple of minor changes here:
Only a couple of minor changes here:
- Made it so the selected comic always shows as a tab. Effectively the tabs "scroll", so some of the early comics may end up on the menu, whereas before the early comics were always shown as tabs.
- Fixed the issue with some Penny Arcade strips showing up the size of postage stamps. Turns out the jpeg files were done at 300dpi, and Cocoa was telling me the screen size, not the pixel size. Still, it wasn't hard to go get the pixel size, so I do that now.
- Tweaked the height calculatation to leave a number of pixels, rather than using a % based calculation, as that would leave a lot of unused space of large monitors.
- Allowed the zoom to go down to 80%, again for smaller monitors. Added an "Actual Size" menu entry to return to 100%
# posted 4/20/2003 06:13:43 AM |
Friday, April 18, 2003
3.01 update is available
Numerous bug fixes and a few new features:
I will be posting a link on the iComic forum. I'm looking for a volunteer to just go through and finish it off so I can focus on some of the other feature requests.
What else... The realtor listed the house yesterday, and we got one viewing this morning and another scheduled for tomorrow (Saturday)... If it keeps going like this it shouldn't take too long to sell. Fingers crossed.
Numerous bug fixes and a few new features:
- Fixed some major memory leaks. There are probably still one or two I missed, but the bad ones are fixed now. A few people reported iComic eating up their virtual memory, which should be fixed by this version.
- Added support for referrer URLs, allowing support for King Features comics such as Zippy the Pinhead
- Added a zoom feature. Comics can be zoomed in 20% increments from 100% to 200%
- In 3.0, large comics would add a scrollbar, using a 600 pixel cutoff. This would mean you couldn't see the Comments screen on small screens, and larger screens would sometimes show a scrollbar when their screen was large enough to accomodate the whole image. In 3.01 the cutoff is based on 70% of the screen height, which should improve the situation for both of these camps.
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
exec '/usr/bin/perl', 'KingFeatures.pl', 'zippy', 'Zippy_the_Pinhead';
exit;
I will be posting a link on the iComic forum. I'm looking for a volunteer to just go through and finish it off so I can focus on some of the other feature requests.
What else... The realtor listed the house yesterday, and we got one viewing this morning and another scheduled for tomorrow (Saturday)... If it keeps going like this it shouldn't take too long to sell. Fingers crossed.
# posted 4/18/2003 06:10:45 AM |
Thursday, April 17, 2003
Been taking a breather these past few days. It got pretty intense leading up to the iComic release, working until 1am or 2am every night, then getting up at 7am to get ready to go to work (not that I want to get up at 7am, but if you've got kids, you know how it works...)
The "Get Mobile" phase of the Find a New Job plan comes into full effect tomorrow, when our house is getting listed for sale. Still some painting to do, but nothing too major.
The idea is: if we sell the house quickly, we move into an apartment and put most of our stuff into storage. When the right opportunity comes along, we can move at a moment's notice. If the job comes along before we've sold we can see how things are going and either drop the price, or look for assisted relocation. In any case the end result is the same.
The whole "get mobile" thing feels a little odd for a 37 year old guy with a wife and two kids. Especially seeing as our current house is 3700 sq feet, and we have enough furniture to reasonably fill it. I guess I came to the realization that in this job market you have to be willing to "get on your bike" and go where the work is. For me that means either the Pacific Northwest or Silicon Valley, but the latter is probably too darn expensive. There's Boston's Route 128 corridor too, but after living in Texas for 3 years, I don't think I could stand the winter up there.
There's still also the debate over continuing in .NET or looking for Cocoa jobs. If I even see a Cocoa job that would be a first :-|
Now, where was that Monster.com bookmark...
The "Get Mobile" phase of the Find a New Job plan comes into full effect tomorrow, when our house is getting listed for sale. Still some painting to do, but nothing too major.
The idea is: if we sell the house quickly, we move into an apartment and put most of our stuff into storage. When the right opportunity comes along, we can move at a moment's notice. If the job comes along before we've sold we can see how things are going and either drop the price, or look for assisted relocation. In any case the end result is the same.
The whole "get mobile" thing feels a little odd for a 37 year old guy with a wife and two kids. Especially seeing as our current house is 3700 sq feet, and we have enough furniture to reasonably fill it. I guess I came to the realization that in this job market you have to be willing to "get on your bike" and go where the work is. For me that means either the Pacific Northwest or Silicon Valley, but the latter is probably too darn expensive. There's Boston's Route 128 corridor too, but after living in Texas for 3 years, I don't think I could stand the winter up there.
There's still also the debate over continuing in .NET or looking for Cocoa jobs. If I even see a Cocoa job that would be a first :-|
Now, where was that Monster.com bookmark...
# posted 4/17/2003 06:08:42 AM |
Monday, April 14, 2003
3.0 final (not beta) version is live!!!
OK, so I technically missed my Sunday goal. Though it is still Sunday in Cupertino, I'm in Austin, TX, and its 1:30am Monday here.
Well, the important thing is, I've updated the build... but rather than put out a release candidate, I just went straight to the final release!!
I've been really impressed with the amount and quality of user feedback, almost all of which has been really constructive, and iComic is a far better product for it.
Anyway, lets look what changed between beta 2 and the final build:
OK, so I technically missed my Sunday goal. Though it is still Sunday in Cupertino, I'm in Austin, TX, and its 1:30am Monday here.
Well, the important thing is, I've updated the build... but rather than put out a release candidate, I just went straight to the final release!!
I've been really impressed with the amount and quality of user feedback, almost all of which has been really constructive, and iComic is a far better product for it.
Anyway, lets look what changed between beta 2 and the final build:
- Favorites screen implemented (finally!)
- Implemented the Save feature
- Added a Pending Actions window to show the list of queued images.
- Fred also gave permission for the MegaTokyo plugin to be included "out of the box".
- The main window, floating calendar window and Pending Actions window all remember where you left them.
- The Calendar view, Favorites and Pending Actions window all remember if they were open when the app quit, and automatically reopen themselves.
- Fixed some really nasty bugs around the pending queue, that only became obvious once I implemented the Pending Actions screen.
- Fixed a bug that meant comments were pretty much broken in b2. The MegaTokyo is one of the few I know of that actually downloads comments.
- Added a basic Help screen. Apple Help sucks (sorry), and after fighting it for the better part of a day, I went to a fairly basic help setup. I'll be looking to build this out in a point release, but I didn't want to hold the build up any longer.
- Put all the hooks in to localize the app. To test it, I localized it into Japanese. Why? Because its cool... and because I could :)
I have had offers to help localize into a few other European languages... If you are one of the folks that offered, I'll most likely be contacting you in a few days to take you up on the offer.
New icon, inspired by MegaTokyo. The image on the icon was used with Fred Gallagher's kind permission.
The main complaint with the old one was that it didn't follow the Apple guidelines for what an app icon should look like. This one does :)
Here's a blown up version of the icon image:
- More/better help
- Ability to pause the Pending Actions queue, and re-order items in it.
- Adding a Refresh button to the toolbar. There is a Refresh item on the View menu (and Cmd-R works too).
- A way to handle author-provided content. This will definitely be in 3.1, most likely as a "message of the day" style popup window. This is intended as a way to give authors a channel through which to address iComic users, and keep them involved in the comic community.
- There is a bug if you save an image as a gif when it started out as something else... The image gets quite messed up. I don't know if its something I'm doing wrong, or if its just a bug in Cocoa... Hopefully one of you knows why it does that, so I can get it fixed...
# posted 4/14/2003 06:01:37 AM |
Thursday, April 10, 2003
Wow... is it the 10th already :o
Release Candidate 1 is basically done. I've got pretty much all the functionality I have time for done and ready to go. The biggest new thing is Favorites, but I've done some work to improve stability and startup performance... Feeling pretty good about this one.
Apple Help is a pain in the behind. I've got some basic help working, but I couldn't get a frameset working for the life of me... At first I thought it was me, cos I haven't done frames in years, but my content came up fine in Safari -- just wouldn't link right in Apple Help.
For now I punted, and did it in one page. I don't have enough content right now for that to be a problem.
Started thinking about graphics and icons. Thats the last thing to be fixed. I'm also considering moving the "Steve's Cup of Cocoa" site over to the ISP where my personal sites are right now, primarily so I can do some dynamic stuff, use server side includes, and make the content data driven instead of the manual way I'm forced to do it on mac.com. I already complained to Apple that Mac.com needs at least server-side includes but so far they've done diddly squat.
I already have the design for the new site done in my head. The annoying part is that there's a lot of iComic links out there that will break, though I ought to be able to do redirects for most of it...
Release Candidate 1 is basically done. I've got pretty much all the functionality I have time for done and ready to go. The biggest new thing is Favorites, but I've done some work to improve stability and startup performance... Feeling pretty good about this one.
Apple Help is a pain in the behind. I've got some basic help working, but I couldn't get a frameset working for the life of me... At first I thought it was me, cos I haven't done frames in years, but my content came up fine in Safari -- just wouldn't link right in Apple Help.
For now I punted, and did it in one page. I don't have enough content right now for that to be a problem.
Started thinking about graphics and icons. Thats the last thing to be fixed. I'm also considering moving the "Steve's Cup of Cocoa" site over to the ISP where my personal sites are right now, primarily so I can do some dynamic stuff, use server side includes, and make the content data driven instead of the manual way I'm forced to do it on mac.com. I already complained to Apple that Mac.com needs at least server-side includes but so far they've done diddly squat.
I already have the design for the new site done in my head. The annoying part is that there's a lot of iComic links out there that will break, though I ought to be able to do redirects for most of it...
# posted 4/10/2003 06:01:30 AM |
Sunday, April 06, 2003
Beta 2 is live!!!
Pretty much got everything done except the Favorites screen...
Pretty much got everything done except the Favorites screen...
- Ability to add plugins via the Add button in the Subscriptions screen.
- Ability to add plugins add plugins by double-clicking the .comic file in the Finder. Both this and the Add button automatically copy the plugin to the ~/Library/iComic/plugins folder, then load it and select it. So now, if you download a comic plugin file you can just double-click the .comic file to install/show it.
- Ability to empty the cache (via the Subscriptions screen). Also shows how much disk space the cache is taking.
- Fixed a few stability issues when starting up with ill-behaved plugins. Still some work left to do here.
- Added a splash screen so the app comes up quickly, while the first strip is being downloaded.
- Finished the Preferences screens. The following options now working:
- Option to go to the last strip viewed, instead of going to today's strip when starting up
- Size to fit vs. avoid resizing (for each comic, iComic remembers the largest size that comic ever needed, and sticks with that)
- Automatic updating (allows refresh to be performed at regular intervals)
# posted 4/06/2003 05:57:51 AM |
Saturday, April 05, 2003
The iComic beta is live!!!
Tracked down the two nasty bugs that had been hounding me the last few days while I was trying to finish off the Subscription functionality. One of the new things I'd put in (to restrict the number of strips that came down) had introduced an issue where some dates didn't get registered internally, and caused the refresh system to go haywire. Phew!
There are still some features to finish off, such as Favorites and automatic timed refreshes. I also need to finish off the piece around returning to the last strip viewed — I'm probably going to bolster this area up to support the idea of remembering the strips you've seen and allowing you to go to the first unseen one.
And at some point I better get on and submit my taxes. All roads lead to April 15th!
Tracked down the two nasty bugs that had been hounding me the last few days while I was trying to finish off the Subscription functionality. One of the new things I'd put in (to restrict the number of strips that came down) had introduced an issue where some dates didn't get registered internally, and caused the refresh system to go haywire. Phew!
There are still some features to finish off, such as Favorites and automatic timed refreshes. I also need to finish off the piece around returning to the last strip viewed — I'm probably going to bolster this area up to support the idea of remembering the strips you've seen and allowing you to go to the first unseen one.
And at some point I better get on and submit my taxes. All roads lead to April 15th!
# posted 4/05/2003 06:55:27 AM |
Friday, April 04, 2003
So, I came really close to putting out the beta tonight... but there's still a few niggling bugs that I want to fix. Balancing between providing folks with cool new features, and annoying them so much that they stop using iComic entirely, I erred on the side of caution :-)
Just so you can see its not totally vaporware, here's a show of the current build, showing the calendar panel and comments panels opened up. Notice too how it isn't showing all the usual plugins, because I deactivated several of them through the new Subscriptions screen.
I'll put some more time into it tomorrow and try to hammer out the worst issues, and get it out. I want to get folks using it so I can roll the feedback in ASAP. I'm trying to get it all done so I can get a submission in to the Apple Design Awards, which has a deadline of April 15th. First prize is a 17" PowerBook... The local Fry's here in Austin just got one in, and its pretty darn cool, if a little bulky. Anyway, if you hadn't guessed already, thats why I've been frantically trying to finish the thing off!
OK... on a different tack. In my other life -- the one where I do .NET stuff, I just got an article published in MSDN's Extreme XML column (MSDN = Microsoft Developer Network). Its based on an idea I had to use XPath and XSLT directly against an object graph. XSLT is at heart a tree-to-tree transformation language, and an object hierarchy is really just a tree at the end of the day. Anyone who has ever opened a plist file will know what I'm talking about here.
Anyway, if you're interested in reading about stuff from "the dark side", you might want to take a read. The article is titled XPath Querying Over Objects with ObjectXPathNavigator.
Just so you can see its not totally vaporware, here's a show of the current build, showing the calendar panel and comments panels opened up. Notice too how it isn't showing all the usual plugins, because I deactivated several of them through the new Subscriptions screen.
I'll put some more time into it tomorrow and try to hammer out the worst issues, and get it out. I want to get folks using it so I can roll the feedback in ASAP. I'm trying to get it all done so I can get a submission in to the Apple Design Awards, which has a deadline of April 15th. First prize is a 17" PowerBook... The local Fry's here in Austin just got one in, and its pretty darn cool, if a little bulky. Anyway, if you hadn't guessed already, thats why I've been frantically trying to finish the thing off!
OK... on a different tack. In my other life -- the one where I do .NET stuff, I just got an article published in MSDN's Extreme XML column (MSDN = Microsoft Developer Network). Its based on an idea I had to use XPath and XSLT directly against an object graph. XSLT is at heart a tree-to-tree transformation language, and an object hierarchy is really just a tree at the end of the day. Anyone who has ever opened a plist file will know what I'm talking about here.
Anyway, if you're interested in reading about stuff from "the dark side", you might want to take a read. The article is titled XPath Querying Over Objects with ObjectXPathNavigator.
# posted 4/04/2003 06:35:01 AM |
Thursday, April 03, 2003
Phew... Been working like mad the past few days trying to get the Subscriptions screen working well. I'm basicaly done - updates the main display properly, you can add/remove/reorder... I just need to make it persist between sessions (which isn't all that hard).
I still have Favorites to do after this, but I'm thinking to put the first beta together tomorrow. There are still a number of kinks to iron out, but thats what beta testing is for, right? :-)
What else... Getting kind of annoyed with where things are going at work. We're already planning to put the house on the market... may be the idea time to just up and go somewhere else. Biggest question I'm facing is what to do next: I could carry on being "the man" on .NET programming (their words, not mine)... or try a switch into Mac programming full time.
The latter raises a kind of dilemma --
I still have Favorites to do after this, but I'm thinking to put the first beta together tomorrow. There are still a number of kinks to iron out, but thats what beta testing is for, right? :-)
What else... Getting kind of annoyed with where things are going at work. We're already planning to put the house on the market... may be the idea time to just up and go somewhere else. Biggest question I'm facing is what to do next: I could carry on being "the man" on .NET programming (their words, not mine)... or try a switch into Mac programming full time.
The latter raises a kind of dilemma --
- will it still be fun if I'm doing it as a day job, and...
- do Cocoa-based programming jobs even exist?
# posted 4/03/2003 06:34:43 AM |
