I’m on my way to WWDC (as I just stated with my post) and we were able to pick our airline so I chose to give Virgin a try since I’ve heard so many good things about it. First I have to say that I’m writing this post and my last too. It’s pretty cool to have an airline with 100% wifi coverage in their fleet. Also, how many airlines can you say that has AC power instead of the DC power most usually have. They also have 2 power outlets per set of 3 seats, where most only have a few in select seats. There “RED” entertainment system is nice for long flights. They have a decent collection of music, though I will say that I usually bring my own, so why do I need there’s. They have live TV, mainly news channels, but include some other more common channels, USA, FX, FOX, ESPN, etc. Their movie collection is small (smaller than I thought) but pricey at $8.00 a movie. Not worth it; I’ll bring my own! You can also order snacks, drinks, food through the system, which makes it pretty handy. The mood lighting is an interesting concept, but I’m not sure I get it. Perhaps after a return trip I’ll have a better understanding of why/what it does to the person as they’re traveling. Stay tuned for my post wrap-up about Virgin America.
Category Archives: Software
Growl Notifications in Tweetie
If found it a little difficult yesterday to figure out how to get growl notifications working until @colognerunner told me how he got it working. Figured there were others that were having problems, so I make a quick little screencast showing you what I did.
Objective Resource for Faster iPhone Development
I recently came across Objective Resource for developing iPhone applications that talk with a Rails backed website. According to the site,
ObjectiveResource is an Objective-C port of Ruby on Rails’ ActiveResource. It provides a way to serialize objects to and from Rails’ standard RESTful web-services (via XML or JSON) and handles much of the complexity involved with invoking web-services of any language from the iPhone.
I’ve had a chance to play with it this weekend and have found it to be pretty easy to work with. The developers of Objective Resource have created a pretty good Getting Started Guide you can follow, or you can watch a screencast of it as well. They even offer an example project for you to work with that gives you both the iPhone app (via Xcode) and the Rails app so you can see how everything works together.
One thing the example project does not include is accessing a Rails app that has authentication. Of course I was thinking I was all setup for this, but soon realized that I did not add my Active Resource functions in so that my app would work with XML/JSON requests. Luckily, while I was out in Denver, CO for iPhone Development Training (by Pragmatic Studio) I was able to get my hands on a copy of Advanced Rails Recipes by Mike Clark. I was extremely pleased that Mike graciously gave me the copy he had laying there for free. The particular recipe in the book that helped me was the Authenticate REST Clients. After I rewrote my authentication piece of my Rails app, I was getting data back and into my iPhone app. It was a very good feeling!
I thought I would include the screencast that the Objective Resource developers created. It runs about 6 minutes and is definitely worth a watch if you are looking at using Objective Resource for your next iPhone app backed by a Rails app.
Getting Started with Objective Resource from Josh Vickery on Vimeo.
Jing Pro
I’ve been playing around with Jing Pro since it was released and have to say that it’s pretty impressive. First off I absolutely love that you can produce a H.264 video. It’s a very nice feature! I also like that you can upload to some of the popular video hosting services like YouTube, Viddler, etc. I was hoping there would be some sort of simple editing capabilities in it, maybe “enhance” the audio a bit, or trim off the beginning or end of the video. But at least if you produce with the H.264 you can edit the video in something else. Maybe I’m be make a video showing you some new features of it and what not. We’ll see!
My Setup and Software
I saw a post like this last weekend and thought that it’s time that I do one of these again myself. Everyone seems to change what they use every now and then, so I though by updating this maybe it would get other people to look at what they use and maybe make a post like this as well.
What Hardware?
Below is a picture of my desk. It’s not my whole desk, but rather the spot I use the most of. I try to keep this area as clean as possible so that when I’m working I’m focused on what I’m doing. Head on over to flickr to see some notes on the photo.
My computer is a 1st Generation 15″ Macbook Pro (I know it’s old, but still gets the job done!). It has 2GB or Ram, a 2.0 GHz Core Duo, and is running leopard. I use a Apple Wireless Keyboard, Dell optical mouse, and a Dell 24″ monitor. Probably my most favorite piece on my desk (or not one my desk in this picture) would have to be my iPhone 3G. Whether dealing with clients or trying to find somewhere to eat for lunch, it is a lifesaver when I’m not in my office and I’m not sure what I would do with out it!
I also wanted to touch on the fact that I also have a MSIWind Netbook running Mac OS X Leopard. I LOVE this thing! I mainly use if for traveling to and from work, when I’m hanging out at the coffee shop, or when I’m on the road and don’t feel like bringing my MBP with me. I can do some coding on it, so I’ve installed Rails, TextMate, all the usual programming-focused applications that I’ll describe below.
My Software
Well I spend most of my time in TextMate, and Firefox. I do also use terminal.app a lot. For email I use both Gmail and Mail.app for both work and personal/client work. Everything gets setup with Google’s SMTP server though, so that it saves my emails in Gmail.
I prefer Firefox over Safari, though I tend to use both. I also use CSSEdit for any CSS styles I need to create, although I’m not a designer so I either have someone else do that work for me, or I try and make something really simple and let my clients decide. I also use Photoshop when I try to do some graphic work (however it’s not on my Hackbook! 
).
Other than that, I try to keep it pretty simple. When I’m not programming I have all sorts of programs I use, MS Office (the occasional paper writing that needs to be done), Handbrake, Adium (chat), Skype, etc.
What do you use?
New MacHeist Bundle
It’s that time of year again!!! That’s right, it’s MacHeist Bundle time!! You can get 10 great apps for a very small amount of money. This year’s lineup includes some programs that are worth getting, like CSSEdit and Pixelmator! Last year’s bundle sold 16,000 in one week and made a wave in the Mac community. This year they hope to “shatter” last year’s numbers ($200,000). Some other programs include 1password, Cha-Ching, TaskPaper, Awaken, and more! So go on over to MacHeist and order you bundle today!!
