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September 21, 2009

iPhone Demo App

iPhone App Demo from dustin eichler on Vimeo.

I've been playing around with the iPhone SDK for a while now. I'm on my way to putting out an App, finally. I have a few I'm rotating through, but at least now I have something to show for it. Basic layout and minor functionality worked out including all the API calls I need. I've yet to implement LibXML Parser and collate that data into the respective UITableViews. If you haven't guessed, it's a simple Twitter client. It's no mistake however that it looks like the Mail client included. The name, "Birdsong" is the name I'm currently going with, although I have one other. I've spent enough time using the service, I figured it was time I contributed something back. There's enough twitter clients, but I wanted one of my own. 

Release early and release often. Feedback?

What I can't find right now is the right icon set, used by Apple in the mail client. If you know of any similar please let me know. 

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August 10, 2009

Assembly not required

I've been messing around with x86 intel nasm assembly lately. I have no real reason too other than pure educational purposes. I have no intention of reverse engineering anything, I just like knowing I can if I want too. Aside from that, it's a please to write code with such a low level language. Lately, I've been harboring, resenting, gripping about web programming languages. My first complaint came way back when, while I was doing a lot of Perl programming at eBay. I hated using some of these dumb PPM or CPAN modules. Although you hardly needed to know how they implemented the class to use it, I had to know. I had to know why, so when I'd look over the code, I'd often slam my face against my desk at the otherwise automated procedures they laid before me. While great for the programmer and maintainer of the module because they did all the initial work upfront, its use hardly seemed worth it. The magic method took all the fun and understanding out of programming for me. Ruby does that to me too. While Rails is an exceptional framework and I work twice as fast, programming as a whole is going to the way of 'Plug and Play'. API programming is not programming, I hate to break the bad news, but it's true. I like writing instructions and dwelling on problems, that's me... but as a whole of an industry, do we really want to go this way. We're eliminating ourselves from the very jobs we love. If I see one more magic parser, I'm going to freak the "F" out. Well in truth maybe not, but at the very least the next person I talk to better know what's going on behind the scenes. That's why I'm loving Objective-C and additionally moved to Assembly. At this point, it's purely for fun, nothing more like I said. There's valuable information to be had if decisions weren't already decided for us. If I'm ever to design a new language and do something with Assembly, it'd be to place a restriction on what you can and can't do with modules. 

;end of rant!

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July 14, 2009

Mobile history

         

It's been a while since I last wrote something here, I've been distracted to say the least. Blogging is tough enough, but admittedly... I've been lazy. Writing is a good mental exercise, but so is programming.

Anyways, I've been relearning and working on the iPhone SDK a lot. Making my app and drilling down ideas. I've been thinking a lot lately about the phones I've previously had. See photos above. I noticed that while I've had service first with Sprint, Verizon and now AT&T, my patiance has only lasted 2 years over 2 different evolutions of phones. I've had a few minor replacements inbetween my critical purchases, but here are the main mobile phones I remember. Looking back, it's funny how big these phones were but at the time I was loving it. I'm realizing though, if Apple goes to task on establishing it's form factor and focusing solely on developing it's internals, including OS... then I might stick around for several generations of phones. My recent history doesn't seem to agree, but I think it's a huge step forward where Desktop computing was leap forward several generations ago.

Mobile computing is the future, I use my phone more than I care to admit and sometimes feel far more teather to it than it is to me. Sad? Maybe, but I know I'm not alone in this hyper connected world. Subsequently, 'Luddite' is one of my favorite words. Good scrabble word too.

Do you remember your old phones? Can't be worse then mine.

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March 24, 2009

Color schemes

I love looking at code (most of the time). It's really beautiful when you want it to be. I'm not sure if that resonates with anyone else, but programming to me is as much an artistic skill as painting, as colorful too. I've been writing a bunch of jQuery lately as one of my weaker skills to work on. Here's a screen shot from an interview question where I had to build a dynamic photo gallery, pretty neat. Anyways, I enjoy chaining among other aspects of this process.

Have you ever seen code photographed as art?

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