Category Archives: Programming

I Began working on new Blogging Software

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For all the benefits of using WordPress for my blog, there are many more draw-backs. Sometimes I wonder if I would have been better hand-coding my blog! Writing a post like this that only contains your basic text, its fine. You start wanting to embed pictures or perhaps videos and it behaves very badly. I lost a whole long post recently 🙁 .

So, over vacation I started filling out a notebook with designs for my own blogging software. I’ve been doing a lot of content management software at work so doing content management type stuff is fresh in my mind. My goal is to get off of WordPress and get off soon. I want to be able to put together posts efficiently. I want to spend my time writing and refining my posts, not struggling with the technical problems of the platform I am using.

The database I am using is mySQL. I was going to write the blog software in Coldfusion (since that is what I am most comfortable with). But I have decided to use PHP. All nice and open source! 🙂 I’m developing it in a web instance running on my iMac using MAMP.

Goal: That I have a local instance working with basic functionality by this Saturday.

Doing Math in Objective C

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One thing you will find you need to do in any programming language is do math. Here are some useful math functions for the Objective C language. I give a little bit of a comparison to Visual Basic for those who know that language. They are provided in no special order:

  • fabs() – Gets the absolute value of the value in parentheses. Works like ABS() function in Visual Basic. fabs(-123) = 123, fabs(34) = 34.
  • ceil() – Find the ceiling integer. Kind of like rounding up. Same as INT(x+1) in Visual Basic.  ceil(3.1) = 4.
  • floor() – Find the floor integer. Kind of like rounding down. Same as INT(x) in Visual Basic. floor(3.6) = 3.
  • exp() – Find the exponential value.
  • pow() – Raise a number to the power. pow(3,6) = 3^6 in Visual Basic.
  • rand() – Generate a pseudo random number. Function is RND(x) in Visual Basic. A good discussion on random numbers in Objective C can be found here.
  • srandom() – Generate a seed for the random number generator. This is done with the Randomize statement in Visual Basic.
  • sqrt() – Find out the square root of a number. sqrt(x) = x^(1/2) in Visual Basic.

Book Review: RibbonX – Customizing the Office 2007 Ribbon

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My Book Rating: 5 of 5 stars:

Power Users and Developers: Making customized Apps Using Microsoft Office
Those of us who have the responsibility of producing customized Excel workbooks, and Word documents that essentially have become small powerful applications in their own right are always looking for ways to make the tools we build in these Microsoft Office products more powerful, easy to use, and more like actual stand-alone apps. One of the ways I looked at enhancing the “tools” I created was by adding a tool bar to an Excel workbook for example. I first did this myself in Excel 2003. It was tedious but doable. One draw-back in the way tool bars were done back then is that the changes applied to the whole app (Excel or Word), and one screw-up on your part could truly clobber Excel or Word’s tool bars and menus system wide.

A New Way of Doing Tool Bars in Office 2007
In Office 2007, Microsoft changed how their user interface worked. And they changed the scope of the changes. If you were going to screw something up for your tool bars now it would only be with one document file, not the entire system. Customizing this tool bar was more flexible. You could do much more with the new tool bar than the old version (the new tool bar Microsoft calls a ribbon). The Technology behind the ribbon they call RibbonX. Read more

Javascript: The Good Parts – A Collection of Lectures By Douglas Crockford on the Javascript Language

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A few years ago, I am not sure just when or how, I stumbled upon these videos on Yahoo where programming legend Douglas Crockford gave very interesting and insightful lectures on the JavaScript language. It has been a bit tedious to find part X of a lecture and I would think about creating a page on the web that embeds all these videos in a way that makes watching them easier to do. To curate this content as Robert Scoble might say. Well after all this time I am doing just that in this post.  I think that if you are a programmer and you use JavaScript in any fashion that this information is really useful. Both to learn new things, as well as for review. Read more

How to Fix Base SDK Missing Problem in XCode

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In this article I cover how you can fix the Base SDK Missing problem you might have had using the iOS SDK 5.2. The video above is easiest to see in full screen mode.

Background:
I downloaded Apple’s iOS SDK 5.2 and installed it on my Mac. After that process was over , I decided to load an existing project of mine into XCode. Ok, good. Then I tried to do a build. Kaboom! It did not work! No worries I thought, I will just go to the drop-down and pick the latest SDK 5.2. But the option was not there! The thought came to me that I might have to create a new project and import all my files from my existing project just to get it to work. Not a very nice thought to say the least! Read more

How to Create Class Categories in Objective C

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Note: Video is Best Viewed in Full Screen Mode

As I began refining some sample code for making Universal Apps for the iPhone and iPad, I sought a way to make my code as concise as possible. I needed to determine if the app was running on an iPad or iPhone/iPod Touch and use it to my advantage. This basic information is contained in the UIDevice class.

Unfortunately, using:

Read more

iPhone Cookbook

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I got one of my books on iPhone programming from Amazon.com. The iPhone Developer’s Cookbook by Erica Sadun. It’s been about two days now. I’ve been pouring over it at home and riding the train to and from work. I am finding it helpful. Will I realize my dream of getting an app in the iPhone App Store?

A Little Update

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Well, it’s been a long time since I’ve posted to my blog here. There have been a few storms in my life I’ve had to work through. Things have relatively settled down now and there are various projects that I am working on, some having to do with this site!

One thing of note is that due to certain changes in my life now, I am free to move out of the area I’m in (if I so choose). If I wanted to interview for a new job would I be prepared? I’ve had a little site:  http://orville.chomer.com/ which contained information about me and included my resume to download. When I checked, the site was down! I had been messing around months ago with it and forgot all about it! Read more

June 27, 2008

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There’s so many things rattling around in my brain right now (as usual) and its hard to know what to pick out to talk about. And I want to write. Many times during these brain log-jams, I just throw in the towel and I don’t write a thing.

I think the best thing to do is start typing. Just start typing into the blog.

My attempts at programming the iPhone are kinda so so. I have fits of programming attempts. My main road-block seems to be learning how to use XCode properly.

I’ve talked to people who work in the Oakbrook Apple store and the big Michigan Avenue Apple store in downtown Chicago. Not suprisingly, beyond knowing how to use the iPhone, they don’t have any info/help on how to program the thing. Gosh, I wish I had gone to the developer conference Apple just had in San Fran!

I didfind out about a programmer’s group in the Chicagoland area that meets once a month at the Michigan Avenue Apple Store. The Cocoaheads. I saw some stuff out there about iPhone programming. I am planning on going to their July meeting. Wish me luck!

I finally took my first 1to1 course at the Apple store on Finalcut Express. Pretty good! Sadly, I’ve had the membership for a while now and have wasted several weeks. I am all signed up for another 1to1 though.

Are you an iPhone developer? Do you know XCode pretty well? Do you mind if I bother you with questions? Let me know.

“Cree cree creee creee…”   sound of crickets…

I got to come up with a written list of my current iPhone questions to:

  • Bring to that meeting in July.
  • To give via email addresses shown at the end of the Apple “how-to” videos.

Am I babbling? Probably.

My health (panic attack and anxiety issues) has been gradually improving as I have been:

  • Staying away from caffiene
  • Taking GABA (An amino acid)
  • Taking 5-HTP.
  • Taking B Vitamins & Magnesium.
  • Trying to eat right.
  • Taking a multiple vitamin.
  • Trying to recollect what I did right for the day not what I did wrong.
  • Trying to recollect what I completed, as opposed to what I didn’t complete.
  • Not only let my body rest, but my thoughts rest too.

One thing that has been therapeutic, has been gardening.  I’ve created this whole new garden bed in my back yard. It’s got this nice edging, cedar mulch, and I’ve planted 3 new bushes! I hope that they survive.

The bushes have some new holes in allot of the leaves. I looked on the underside of the leaves… no bugs were found. I’ve now added flowers and garden lights to my garden bed (some flowers have not been planted yet). Oh, and I have one tomato plant.

I still have dreams of living in Hawaii some day (on the beach). Okay, I don’t want much do I? 😛

Visited my dad at the nursing home. He was quite lucid. Haven’t seen him that lucid in quite some time. I know its not something I can expect regularly. If I had my druthers, I would live by the ocean in Hawaii and my dad would live with us and we would have in-home healthcare for him. I don’t know if my dad would live long enough for this to happen. I can dream.

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