SVG is an awesome image format thats widely used, works in all browsers. SVG graphics make better apps and better games – and automatically “upgrade” themselves for future devices. This post explains how you can use SVGKit – the open-source SVG implementation for iOS/OS X in your own apps (NB: […]
Yearly Archives: 2012
83 posts
SVG is an awesome image format thats widely used, works in all browsers. SVG graphics make better apps and better games – and automatically “upgrade” themselves for future devices. This post explains the underlying code architecture of SVGKit – the open-source SVG implementation for iOS/OS X; the target audience is […]
Windows 8 It’s great, it’s beautifully presented, and the best OS I’ve used in the last 20 years or so. It makes OS X look clunky (which, let’s face it – for Microsoft – is one hell of an achievement) The upgrade My primary windows machine (used to) run XP. […]
Why does the login URL for internet banking: http://www.hsbc.co.uk/1/2/marketing/businessinternetbanking …redirect to the newsletter for global investors: https://investments.hsbc.co.uk/article/world-selection-newsletter ? Do you *want* people to think your website has been hacked? Or do you just not know what a cool URI is? I think your VP Marketing / Marketing Director needs a […]
“Commander of the third reich, and a little known fact: Also dope on the mic!” EDIT: in case you missed it: “… of the people … by the people … for the people … EAGLE!”
Abstract classes: saving programmers from each other For trivial apps, no-one cares. But most libraries take huge advantage of the concept of “subclassing”, and programmers using those libraries need to make intelligent choices about “which subclass do I use?”. Thanks to auto-complete, or “because it sounded what I needed at […]
(background: after 8 years as one of the world’s mid-tier MMO games, City of Heroes (+ City of Villains) is being shut down. The community banded together to ask if they could take over running the world that meant so much to them; NCsoft (the publisher, and a company I […]
Are you having this problem? “I tell Firefox to ask before quitting, but it always quits without asking” Especially on Macs, where cmd-w (close tab) and cmd-q (close window) are immediately next to each other… Solution It looks as though Firefox won’t fix this. It’s been 3 years, and it’s […]
As a developer, I’ve been using iPhone’s since they first came out. I have to test my apps on every version! iOS 6 is the first version of iOS “post Steve Jobs”. But it’s terrible – it seems to be a 2nd-rate product rushed out by a small team of […]
How slow is making iPhone apps using native code? You have to write HTML5, right, if you want FAST app development on iPhone? Or Unity? Or cocos2d? Right? Or … write it in Objective-C … a beginner-friendly “native” language: 2 hrs and 15 mins to create the artwork, design the […]
35 years of game-consoles, and their original retail price, adjusted for inflation: i.e. a (reasonably) direct comparison of how expensive they were at the time they were launched. Some quick observations: NeoGeo and 3DO/Jaguar were insanely expensive – and, of course, sold very poorly and went bye-bye. Until the Wii […]
I’ve just updated my script that adds a missing feature to Xcode – making your libraries automatically work on Simulator and on Devices, with no manual intervention: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3520977/build-fat-static-library-device-simulator-using-xcode-and-sdk-4 …and I’ve also put the script itself into GitHub as a gist you can easily copy/paste: https://gist.github.com/3705459
Just lost some work because Google staff still don’t understand this idea that “the internet is a non-reliable network”. (Google Docs simply deletes your data – retroactively – if the internet connection goes away. It’s that “retroactively” part that’s the killer) Makes you wonder what calibre of engineer they’re employing […]
Screenshot taken straight from the official blog post: You see, they wanted to add a feature where you could “watch” a repository. Only … due to some weak design (or perhaps: technology-led) decisions in the past, they already had a feature with this name, which didn’t really do what it […]
I just ran into a 2004 piece of FREE software that I wanted to use, but can’t, because of poor choices by the original author. I’m posting this because I think the ideological reasons behind those choices are now “of historical interest only” and I’m liable to forget them completely […]
After trying 4 or 5 things from this several-years-old page on Firefox’s support forums, I finally hit upon one that worked: “For the heck of it tonight I clicked on Gmail in my calendar and it finally went to my gmail inbox.” In my case, I just went to Google […]
At 27″, it’s too big to “simply” take in to the Apple store. In desperation, I followed this support article from Apple that’s for older iMacs and officially no longer supported. Which is a pity, because in typical Apple fashion, they’ve deprecated an article that’s still accurate and useful. Following […]
Jon just published an interesting letter about the current state of cert processes for game consoles / platforms. There are some real problems with certification today. Unfortunately, Jon’s post doesn’t really touch upon them, and seems to go instead after the IMHO untrue and unhelpful claim that iOS is better […]
Building and Dismantling the Windows Advantage – a great article, telling the story in a mix of words and graphs. “The consequences are dire for Microsoft. The wiping out of any platform advantage around Windows will render it vulnerable to direct competition. This is not something it had to worry […]
In the past, I’ve had terrible advice from brilliant people. The best way to avoid that is to be careful to research the brilliant person and tailor your questions to avoid their weaknesses. Tomorrow I’ll be meeting a bunch of people at Google London’s open day. I started by writing […]