iPhone Dev Blog

Hey guys,

It's been a while since my last post; I've been pretty busy with schoolwork and finals! Thankfully, I'm done for the semester.  It's been a rough one, but I've definitely learned a lot!

Anyway, I've been working on mobile application development for the iPhone lately.  I recently got a job, so it's been a pretty fun experience trying to mess with different APIs and the iPhone SDK in general.  It's just so cool to actually put your knowledge towards the real world.  I mean, in classes, you just stick with creating sensible programs that you type through the console in order to receive specified output.  You learn different data structures, multiple strategies on efficiency, and how to just have good coding ethics.  But it all ties together!  When you create programs for companies, for industries, for the consumer, it is important to keep these ideas.  You don't want a simple program that sorts contacts to take 3 seconds because you used an insertion sort algorithm; you want that simple program to be simple.  The abstraction is to make something look simple, even if it might take a complicated algorithm.  Efficiency is almost proportional to difficulty.  A low-efficient program will be very easy to create.  For a program that almost guarantees small data to sort, this would work pretty well.  But what if the program is designed for an industry that requires tabs of employees of every company to be sorted?  Certainly, this wouldn't be an optimal solution.  The point is, as humans in this generation, we expect things to happen instantaneously (unfortunately).  If you click something and it doesn't pop up in less than two seconds, the average consumer will consider it as if the program isn't responding or their phone in general is running slowly.  Of course, for CS majors, we would consider this as either normal (that is, processes in the background could be hogging resources, thus delaying the program to respond in time, etc) or just a tiny bug that can be fixed.  These concepts are important to consider when developing software!

Anyway, I've decided to show off a few pictures of development in my upcoming blogs for a few reasons:

• Keep myself up-to-date with what I've done
• Write notes to myself about what I can do better
• Reflect on initial development and see what changes I can make
• Users can comment and make ideas for me (if they want!)
• Just for fun!

I always feel it fun to post pictures of development so people can see what's going on.  Maybe prospective programmers could get influenced by it; who knows?  I love doing what I do, and I love showing off certain techniques or ways to develop things.  And of course, it helps me learn what I'm doing right, and what things I really would like to improve on.  

Here are a few pictures of my current application I'm working on.  It's an app for the iPhone for a band made by my friends called 'Moonlight Social.' I posted a blog about them a few months ago; you should check that out if you're not familiar with them.  They released an EP just recently and are available on iTunes and Amazon!  Check out their website, too.  Anyway, I've just been working on an app for them for fun!  It's the best way to learn a new language and an SDK.

Initial Home Screen development.  This primarily was just a test to effectively parse the news information from the website correctly.

Updated News Screen development.  Decided to use a UINavigationBar to push/pop news information from one window to another window.   Parsing had a few small ASCII conversion errors, and those have been fixed.  News button seems to be finalized for the most part!

The screen that displays when you press on a News entry.  The outlook of this window isn't finalized, yet!

Blog Tab development.  Blog takes a very similar approach to News, in terms of display.  

Blog entry display.  Again, very similar to the News screen.  In fact, they use the same type of interface!  

Anyway, that's all I have for now.  Comments/suggestions are always appreciated and definitely encouraged!

Until next time,

Corey

Quick tip: How to use Safe Mode for a Windows/Mac-based computer.

Hello all!  This will be a fairly short blog, and I may start posting these more often.  As an avid computer user, I find interesting and neat tricks that users can use in case of certain scenarios.  If a computer doesn't work as intended, most people end up either asking their friends or calling technical support for help.  I frequently get questions asking, "how do you do this?", "what happens if [insert situation here]?", and "will I get a virus from this?"  That's where I come in.

Today's topic involves the situation where your computer just doesn't work as intended.  Maybe there's some weird error message popping up that says that you're lame, but if you buy our software, you'll be the coolest kid on the block.  Maybe your computer has decided that it doesn't like your taste of music and as a result, it just stops wanting to work.  Or maybe your computer really hates you.  Who knows? For the situations that are relatively plausible, however, there's (almost) always a way to save your computer from problems.

Windows and Mac both have an option to boot into a mode called "Safe Mode."  For the most part, this disables services from automatically running at startup so that only the necessary, core processes are only running.  To run this:

For a Windows-based machine, boot up your computer and continually press/hold F8.  You'll get to a menu that looks something like this:

Windows 7's Advanced Boot Options 

If your computer isn't booting up correctly on startup, you can try one of two things.  I would first try using "Last Known Good Configuration," which (as you can tell by the option) boots your computer based on the last configuration that worked successfully.  In the event that this doesn't work, you can try "Repair Your Computer." This runs diagnostic tests on your RAM, checks your system files for any corruption, and helps restore your system files to factory defaults if some system files somehow have disappeared.  

If your computer does boot successfully, but you get slow-down issues/bugs to fix, then consider running it in "Safe Mode." As mentioned above, only the core processes will run.  This is particularly useful if you have any form of malware, be it spyware, adware, viruses, trojan horses, etc. Run a scanner in safe mode to thoroughly clean up problems.

The process is similar for a Mac-based computer.  Boot up your computer and hold down the Shift key once your hear the startup sound.  You can release it once you see the Apple logo and progress indicator as shown below:

Once you see the progress indicator, you can release the Shift key.

Once you get into safe mode, you can diagnose your computer the same way you would with a Windows-based computer.  While you don't get a plethora of options, the core services still run so you can fix any problems you might find at startup.

That does it for this blog! Post your comments/questions below! As always, be sure to subscribe for more techie news!

Until next time,

Corey

Software Review: Windows Live Essentials 2011

Yep guys, it's that time again! Another blog post. This time, we're going to be looking at some software! I figure that I should jump on the bandwagon and go ahead and review some software that I have found to be very useful to me personally.  People who are afraid to use new software for fear that it will "bloat" their computer and make it slow, fear no more! I'm here to help you figure out what software will work best for your computer!

One piece of software that I've found to be extremely versatile is one made by Microsoft, called Windows Live Essentials.

It is a collection of programs that I have found to be very useful.  In it contains Messenger, Photo Gallery, Movie Maker, Live Mesh, Writer, Family Safety, Mail, and Messenger Companion.  I will only talk about the first four programs, as they are the meat of this package.

Starting it off:

Windows Live Messenger

Windows Live Messenger is an instant messenger client for users who have a Hotmail/Live account.  It is essentially MSN Messenger polished up, for you people who remember that back in the day.  However, Microsoft has taken their instant messenger to the next level by incorporating the use of interacting with friends through social networks (e.g. Facebook).  This is incredibly and surprisingly useful and very easy to use.  By adding your social networking account details, you can view news updates, pictures, almost anything from your social network through Windows Live Messenger.  Furthermore, you can chat with people through your social network.  This is very helpful for those who get frustrated with Facebook's chat program.  You can also do audio/video chats with those who have Live accounts!  Very simple, pretty, and easy to use.

Viewing Facebook updates through Windows Live Messenger, along with those who are online. Incredibly easy, intuitive, and simple to use!

My good buddy Miles wasn't online, but this is an example of how the chat window looks like through Windows Live Messenger.

Windows Live Photo Gallery

Windows Live Photo Gallery is a photo organizer for your computer.  Windows fans, rejoice! We finally have a photo library program that doesn't have to be incorporated through Windows Media Center/Player! :) This program is similar to Google's Picasa program, and it works very well.  You can organize your images, edit them, share them with friends, tag people in pictures, add tags; just about anything you need to do to an image.  The editing tools are nowhere near as sophisticated as Adobe's Photoshop, but they are solid for a free program.  From straightening the picture, to adjusting the color or exposure, you have many common editing tools at your fingertips.  And if you're lazy, you can even use the Auto Adjust feature, which edits the image based on its conditions.  It's proven to be pretty accurate, but I prefer to edit my images manually.  Also, if you don't like your editing, you can simply revert the image back to its normal state! Windows Photo Gallery keeps the original copy in hand in case you ever need to go back to the original.  Fancy, huh?  There's also tools, such as creating panoramic images, fusing multiple pictures together (very useful post about this tool here), and many more options.  You should definitely check this out if you're into organizing and editing your images.

Photo tagging in Windows Photo Gallery; so useful to find pictures of me or anyone else!

Oh no! I've edited too much and I'm not happy with the results! No matter, after pressing the "Revert to original" button...

The photo is back to normal!

Windows Live Movie Maker

Windows Live Movie Maker is a movie maker/editor; plain and simple.  Like the other products in this suite, it is nowhere as amazing as advanced movie editors, like Sony's Vegas Pro or Adobe's After Effects; still, for beginning to intermediate users, this software works very well.  I haven't used it very much (if at all) since I use After Effects for video editing, but I do know that it is extremely easy to use.  Need to add an intro? It has it.  Need to add text/video/audio effects? It's there.  Need to add credits? Done.  You can record video from your webcam for an easy vlog entry, or you can incorporate multiple videos from your digital camera and music from your media library.  You can also pause videos and take snapshots of them; very useful tool.  It also has transition effects for combining multiple videos to make your movie more smooth.  There are certain visual effects you can apply that will change the tone and color of the movie.  Again, very common but powerful tools used by many, brought to you in one simple program.

Editing in Movie Maker; very simple to use! Let's change the color...

Gives our video a completely different feel! Looks cool, and all I had to do was press a button!

Windows Live Mesh

Last but not least, Windows Live Mesh is a synchronization program that helps manage files from multiple computers.  This program is incredibly helpful for those (such as myself) who have more than one computer and need to keep things synchronized.  I personally use this to make sure that I always have access to my college stuff on any computer.  As long as that computer has Live Mesh installed with your credentials, you can specify which folders you want to keep synchronized.  You must have a Live account in order to to this (it's simple and free!).  It's very versatile and I highly recommend it if you have multiple computers.  You could also use this to keep files synchronized with other users if you wanted to use a Live account to share files in real time (of course, using Dropbox would be much easier to use for this type of purpose).  You must be wondering; how does this work? Microsoft stores your files securely in the cloud. With a Live account, you get 5 GB of free space to store your data in the cloud.  Then, when you register another computer with your credentials to use Live Mesh, the program retrieves the data from the cloud and places it onto your computer.  It's very useful for keeping documents in sync everywhere! You can also access these files online, which is great if you're using a computer without Live Mesh.

Windows Live Mesh syncing my files into the cloud!

I can view the computers that are syncing certain folders. Anyone see the Final Fantasy XIII references?

That's Windows Live Essential in a nutshell.  These programs are highly intuitive and easy to use.  All it takes is a simple installation and you're good to go!  To download this for your Windows computer, just click here! Windows Live Essentials is available for 32-bit or 64-bit versions of Windows 7 and Windows Vista.  There is also a separate link for the Windows XP version here. Note that the XP version does not contain Movie Maker and Live Mesh.

If you have any questions about these programs, place them in a comment and I'll answer them!

Until next time,

Corey

Keep 'em Close.

Did you ever get hear this from your teachers or parents when you were in high school?

"Once you get out of college, you're going to meet new friends who will replace the ones you have now!"

Or at least something along the lines of losing touch with your old friends?  I know I did.  I heard it from both my parents and some teachers.  In high school, I never thought that would be true.  I seriously had some pretty cool friends.  Around my senior year, I seriously had so many friends that I would converse with daily.  Maybe it was just because the school I went to was so small, you practically would know everybody within a year.  

Anyway, I remember reading through my senior yearbook and my memories book a few weeks ago, and I read all of the comments my friends gave me.

"Good luck at UT! Keep in touch!"

"I'm so glad I'm such a close friend to you! Never lose contact of me!"

"Stay close and let's hang out often next year!"

I'll be polite to you here and stop, but the list does go on and on.  Out of these people who told me these things, guess how many times I have talked to them in my years in college? If I could give you a reasonable number, I'd say 10.  In the past three years, I've said words to these people (in whole!) about 10 times.

Honestly, out of all the people in my graduating class, I only talk to one person, and that's my best friend Arron.  Out of Smithville, I talk to a handful of people.  What my teachers and my parents told me were undeniably true.  

The people I've met in college have been amazing.  It is truly an outstanding feeling to know that almost everyone you know is intelligent in their own way.  Take for instance, band.  In Smithville, not everyone was exactly coherent with playing their instrument or reading music.  Not many people had the desire to play, nor did they have much desire to practice.  In college, it's different.  People understand rhythms, notes, how to play, different methods of playing, different styles of playing, how to play different instruments; just everything! People here have a passion to play, and it is just incredible.

I've met so many incredible people here.  It's just phenomenal.  I can't explain the feeling until you experience it for yourself.  Of course, this isn't to say that I'm not friends with those back from high school, because I am.  Again, there are just a small handful of people (like the ones who have subscribed to my blog) that I keep in contact with because they are true friends to me.  Despite distance, despite the past, despite collegiate passion, despite whatever, we still stick together.  And that in itself is pretty amazing.

Take-home lesson of the day: Keep those who endure through everything with you, close.

This would be a good time to reference a blog post made by my friend, Cheryl.  She had a post today that talked about the same thing in a sense, so I'd advise you to go read it! Here's a link to the post.

Until next time,

Corey

Need an SVN host?

I've been trying to find a decent Subversion host for the longest time, but most of them require a monthly contract for hosting, and they come with cool quirks that aren't very necessary for a student like me.  Yesterday, my partner introduced me to this cool site called Assembla.  This website offers completely free SVN hosting, for up to 2 GB of space.  They also have paid services, but at this moment in time they aren't very necessary to me.  SVN provides a great way to edit files and commit changes with other people if you're working in a team environment.  Check it out!

Until next time,

Corey

Moonlight Social

Hey guys.  I have two pretty special, awesome friends that I've met through the Longhorn Band over the past few years, and they are both incredibly talented and gifted with the art of singing and performing.  They've created completely original songs together, and they are continuously producing new ones!  They are called

Moonlight Social.

Jennica Scott and Jeremy Burchard are Moonlight Social.

They are a local band in Austin, Texas.  If you're around, stop by and watch them perform! They have a schedule of their current shows on their website (linked up top).  They're also creating an EP with a few songs on it relatively soon, and I'll post that on here when it comes out. 

The website is still a work in progress, but it was just released a few days ago.  So, go check it out, go check their music out, and go check THEM out, because they are pretty amazing at what they do.  I have some videos of their most recent performance, and I'll upload them once I edit a few things.

But for real, go check 'em out. You will NOT be disappointed. :) Here's the link again, in case you missed it: link!

Until next time,

Corey

Final Fantasy XIII-2!

Yep, you read it correctly!  Square Enix announced about a week ago that they are making a sequel to Final Fantasy XIII!  This is ridiculously exciting news...I'm a huge FFXIII fan.  Not many veteran Final Fantasy gamers were excited about the game, or this news for that matter.  A lot of people criticized XIII for its linear gameplay as well as some annoyances of the voice acting/dubbing.  I didn't really know this until today, but apparently there is a huge difference in the style of games between the West and the East.

We (being the US) are known to produce games that invoke multiplayer capability and are more focused on quick, fancy, and dramatic gameplay.  That is, with franchises such as Halo, Call of Duty, World at Warcraft, etc., the dimension of social gameplay is slowly shadowing over solo-only games, like Zelda.  The East, on the other hand, focuses on quality, plot, and development of the story and characters throughout the game.  This is where differences tend to collide.  Many gamers were not very happy with the result of Final Fantasy XIII because it lacked a lot of components that are almost seemingly required in games now days.  Furthermore, the English dubbing was a bit much at times.  I can't recall how many times I would get annoyed with Hope's annoying remarks, let alone his voice.  However, in the East, this is completely different.  The voice acting, the lines, everything is remarkable.  In the Asian countries, these voice actors are almost literally celebrities.  They are very well-known for the roles they play voices for.  You look back at us, and voice actors are sometimes almost unknown to us.  I mean, yeah, you might know Ali Hillis, who played Lightning's voice, but have you ever heard of Georgia van Cuylenburg, who played Vanille's voice?

Anyway, I'm pretty pumped about this.  Square Enix has already announced that the world of the next installment will be "dark and mysterious," and the game is set to begin right where you left off, on Gran Pulse.  So, this is already a promising sign of more freedom right from the beginning.  Who knows?  I guess we'll just have to wait for more information out of Square Enix.  In the mean time, here's a screenshot of the new Lightning in seemingly Valkyrie armor:

So awesome.

Until next time,

Corey

Making Ringtones for your iPhone.

As an avid PC user, it's always difficult trying to find programs that work the way I want them to, especially when it comes with importing things into iTunes.  Such things include importing videos to fit the dimensions of your iDevice, removing restrictions on certain songs, and worst of all, ringtones.  After messing around, I have compiled the steps that are needed to create any ringtone of your desire.


What you'll need:

• iTunes (duh)
• An audio editor (there are many freeware applications, such as Audacity.  My personal favorite is GoldWave.  There is a free trial with this program, but you'll have to pay for a license [or illegally obtain a key code :P])
• iPhone of any model

Instructions:

1. First, open up iTunes and pick out a song that you want to edit.

I'm a big FFXIII fan, so I'll choose this song, "Blinded by Light."
2.  Next, open up your audio editor and drag the song onto the application.

If only I could make this my ENTIRE ringtone...
3. Trim the segment that you'd like to hear as a ringtone.  For iPhone users, the limit is 30 seconds.

What better snippet to use than the main melody of the entire game?
4. As soon as you're done, save the segment as an MP3.  Now, open up iTunes again and drag the song into your library.  To make sure we do the conversion right, we will make sure that the settings are correct.  In iTunes, Go to Edit and click Preferences.... Within the middle of the window, there should be a setting that says When you insert a CD, and the Import Settings button should be to the right of it.  Click that button and make sure that the import setting is on AAC Encoder, as shown below:
5. Now, right-click on your media file, and click Create AAC Version.  After iTunes chugs its engines, it'll spit out a new file with the same metadata, except its new extension is .m4a!  Now, drag this file out of iTunes and onto your desktop. Make sure your extensions are visible (to do this, open up Windows Explorer, click on Organize on the top left corner, and click Folder and search options. Then click on the View tab, and uncheck "Hide extensions for known file types.")  Right-click on the file, and click Rename.  Change the .m4a extension to m4r (r for ringtone).  You'll get some pesky error message saying:

In this case, it will not render the file unusable.  Click yes.  Now, drag this under your iTunes library, specifically under Ringtones.  The file should show up!  Now all that's left is to sync your phone, and voila! You have a custom-made ringtone for your iDevice!

Now, I'm sure there are programs that are out there that allow you to create ringtones with easier steps; however, I have found that these programs are typically shareware, and/or they produce inadequate sound quality (by means of doing some weird converion process from mp3 directly to m4r).  So, this is the easiest method I have created that will produce high-quality ringtones on Windows machines.  Of course, Macs have it easy since this is right up their alley, and converting mp3 to m4r is a breeze with GarageBand.

Have you found other ways to make ringtones?  Send me your ideas!

Until next time,

Corey 

Green Machine

So, my videos are currently being uploaded, so I might as well blog to multi-task.  Anyway, here are some pictures of my machine:

Cable management at its finest.

A clean computer is a better-ventilated computer!

That green cathode really makes the room light up.  You can't really see it in this picture, but it is BRIGHT.

View of the back panel.  Still, the green cathode radiates vividly.

View of the front side.  Those green fans look great.

The result of a successfully modded 200mm "Big Boy" fan! :) I'm glad the LEDs I bought matched the colors already in the Antec fans.

View of the side panel.  Cables begone!...for the most part.

And of course, a view of the desktop with the lights on.  It's still fairly bright.

People still ask me though...why green? Why not stay with blue?  

Easy enough. Green is easily my favorite color.  That's my reasoning.  Yes, it did cost me a bit of money and time to successfully make my machine green, and it was definitely worth it!  A lot of people buy this specific case because it's nice, has great airflow, and cable management is great.  I don't like being the same (well most of the time), and so I decided to change the colors.  After seeing many people configure their machines with colors like red or orange, I convinced myself that I would re-design my machine to be green.  And besides, who doesn't like looking at a green machine in the dark? :)

Now I know a lot of you might be wondering...why not do school colors? Burnt orange?  Well, luckily for you, I made a video of what my machine would look like if I had installed such colors:

Anyway, here is my video. Enjoy, and post comments below if you have any questions or comments!

How to save plenty of money on HDMI cables!

Hey guys.  In this generation that we are living in, things are becoming more "high-def." Starting off with 6-channel, gray-scaled televisions, to the analog color television, and now with flat-screen digital televisions, we expect to receive sharper and more vivid images coming from the screen.  With resolutions, contrast ratios, and framerates gradually increasing, technology demands more powerful wiring to transmit data from peripherals, such as your DVD/Blu-Ray player, or your game consoles.  Meet the HDMI cable.

so simple, yet so powerful!

This little wire can transmit both audio and video at a typical rate of 2 Gbps (think about sending about a quarter of a movie to your computer in a second [a typical movie in DVD format is about 8 Gigabytes]), and a high speed rate of 10.2 Gbps (smaller wires).  These wires are powerful, but a plethora of manufacturers sell them at high prices for even the shortest wires.  Take a look: 

Best Buy sells a 6.6 foot cable for almost $40. Monster brand.

Fry's Electronics sells a 6 foot cable for almost $25. Belkin brand.

Walmart sells a 4 meter (approx. 13.12 feet) cable for $20. TreQue brand.

I got fooled by this a while back when buying an HDMI cable; that is, my parents had bought me a Monster brand HDMI cable from Walmart (sold for about $35!).  However, take a look at this:

Amazon sells a 2 meter (approx 6.6 feet) cable for $2.84. DVI Gear brand.

Isn't that astonishing? It even shows the list price being about $40, and yet the price is cut down 93%! I find that incredible.  This is by far the number one selling HDMI cable on Amazon, and if you need one, I strongly recommend this.  All HDMI cables are virtually the same...brand does not matter.  Some companies (such as Monster) claim faster speeds and better picture quality, but the differences in how the cable is made are subtle, and not even noticeable.

So, next time you need a hi-def cable...buy it off of Amazon cheap! :)

That's all for now. I'll post another blog revolving around my Green Machine eventually!

Corey