tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-344424522012-01-27T15:39:32.778-06:00Colin Wheelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010768305821496589noreply@blogger.comBlogger821100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34442452.post-12682571555736817692011-04-07T14:55:00.000-05:002011-04-07T16:23:48.395-05:00

This post feels a bit odd, as generally I fully agree with Dave Dribin on how wrong singletons are and that you should avoid them if possible. However on Stack Overflow i've seen far too many people write bad code that is horrible for several reasons. Basic ExampleSingletons are fairly easy to create. Here is a basic example... +(MyClass *)singleton { static MyClass *shared = nil; if(shared

Colin Wheelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010768305821496589noreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34442452.post-75110609723528819262011-03-09T18:55:00.001-06:002011-03-10T12:55:37.409-06:00

The Xcode 4 Keyboard Shortcuts are now available. I've decided to make forking it and creating your own version easier by putting it up on Github. This will make it easier to browse forks and merge new formats in. Additionally it makes it easy to have a consistent go to place that doesn't change for updates to the shortcuts. You can download the Xcode 4 keyboard shortcuts here: Xcode Keyboard

Colin Wheelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010768305821496589noreply@blogger.com21tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34442452.post-28087317719293388822011-02-23T18:18:00.001-06:002011-03-02T17:05:50.289-06:00

IntroductionWhen Mac OS X 10.6 was introduced, the Mac got a very powerful duo of developer tools that made development on a lot easier. With iOS 4.0 developers finally got access to these tools as well. These tools are known as Blocks & Grand Central Dispatch. This article is not an introduction to these technologies as i've already covered them before here http://cocoasamurai.blogspot.com/2009/

Colin Wheelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010768305821496589noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34442452.post-3575666786213878512010-12-28T20:35:00.002-06:002010-12-28T21:29:36.041-06:00

This article started out as a presentation I did for the Des Moines Cocoaheads. IntroductionObjective-C Memory Management is something i've seen new people to Cocoa & Objective-C mess up in ways I could just not conceive of on my own. In reality Objective-C memory management is not that hard. You simply need to be aware of some rules and follow a couple of good development practices. Good memory

Colin Wheelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010768305821496589noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34442452.post-31271434364374121032010-11-17T16:02:00.001-06:002010-11-27T18:31:34.131-06:00

The built in Xcode Documentation browser is okay, and the stuff Apple does to bring some bits of documentation lookup into the code in IDE is not bad. However, until the full documentation browser is it's own app, I don't think it'll ever reach its full potential. One day I saw Peter Hosey use OmniWeb and do a brief run through of what he did to browse documentation. Since then, I've only made a

Colin Wheelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010768305821496589noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34442452.post-59431903717758851242010-09-05T11:37:00.001-05:002010-09-05T11:37:31.069-05:00

Mike Ash recently complained about the restrictions on the Cocoa-Dev Mailing list. There are also many things people would like to discuss that Apple just doesn't allow (as part of their policy) on their mailing lists. So Brent Simmons created the Cocoa Unbound mailing list where developers can discuss items that Apple doesn't allow on their mailing lists. Go & join up and have happy sane un(

Colin Wheelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010768305821496589noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34442452.post-22141860520418749552010-08-11T12:26:00.001-05:002010-08-11T12:28:21.508-05:00

Recently on twitter I asked about enumerating over the lines of a string concurrently using a block. I couldn't see an API to deal with this issue directly. If you look through the Mac OS X 10.6 SDK you'll see this - (void)enumerateLinesUsingBlock:(void (^)(NSString *line, BOOL *stop))blockWhich is a synchronous operation processing each line ( the components separated by \n ) one by one until

Colin Wheelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010768305821496589noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34442452.post-33169498210539049052010-06-09T16:09:00.001-05:002010-11-27T18:50:16.314-06:00

Good user interface design can make or break your application, it's not just visual appearance but workflow & accessibility. An application that is visually appealing but not well designed will lose out to an application that isn't as visually appealing but has a well designed user interface. I am not even going to be able to write as much as I'd like here on the topic of UI design, because to be

Colin Wheelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010768305821496589noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34442452.post-16486504717422373932010-04-04T13:37:00.001-05:002010-04-04T13:37:07.756-05:00

http://cocoaheads.org/us/DesMoinesIowa/index.html Thursday, April 8 at 7 pm at the Impromptu Studio in Des Moines,IA (see link above for Map & directions) I recently became the group leader of the Des Moines CocoaHeads, and to get the ball rolling I will be giving a presentation this week on Good User Interface Design in Cocoa & Touch. I thought this would be a good time to do this as several

Colin Wheelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010768305821496589noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34442452.post-41033461481335491132010-02-01T18:35:00.001-06:002010-02-02T10:21:13.050-06:00

The Project Page for this articles project is on github at http://github.com/Machx/FeedViewer you can grab the source code with git by entering the following command in terminal.... git clone git://github.com/Machx/FeedViewer.git The PubSub Framework is one of those lesser known Frameworks that Apple introduced in Leopard. It has the ability to parse RSS & ATOM feeds and automatically generate

Colin Wheelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010768305821496589noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34442452.post-54344552884923190662010-01-20T15:53:00.003-06:002010-12-01T11:26:17.881-06:00

The Objective-C Runtime is one of the overlooked features of Objective-C initially when people are generally introduced to Cocoa/Objective-C. The reason for this is that while Objective-C (the language) is easy to pick up in only a couple hours, newcomers to Cocoa spend most of their time wrapping their heads around the Cocoa Framework and adjusting to how it works. However the runtime is

Colin Wheelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010768305821496589noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34442452.post-71070589049118390252010-01-10T16:12:00.001-06:002010-01-10T16:12:36.067-06:00

http://cocoaheads.org/us/DesMoinesIowa/index.html Where: Impromptu Studios in Downtown Des Moines, IA 300 SW 5th St, Suite 220 When : Thursday, January 14 @ 7pm I will be doing a talk this Thursday at the Des Moines Cocoaheads on Understanding the Objective-C Runtime. The talk is applicable to both Mac OS X & iPhone Developers and will cover a range of beginner to advanced materials. We'll go

Colin Wheelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010768305821496589noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34442452.post-42877593655360915852009-10-12T10:26:00.001-05:002010-11-27T18:53:28.227-06:00

The Cocoa Design Patterns Book is one I've been anticipating for a while now and the first Cocoa book i've gotten in my hands that I've been really excited to read (i just finally got Bill Dudneys iPhone SDK book and Marcus Zarra's Core Data Book after I already started reading this.) Mac & iPhone Developers face a unique challenge when learning Cocoa in that you are learning 2 things at once,

Colin Wheelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010768305821496589noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34442452.post-29602338589667913902009-09-30T20:29:00.001-05:002010-11-27T18:54:49.100-06:00

If you used Leopard and DTrace, then came to Snow Leopard there is a big treat for you (if you haven't used DTrace you can read my previous article Debugging Cocoa With DTrace Guide, go on read it and come back here... I'll wait), on Leopard on any given run I ran dtrace -l | wc -l I got about 23,000 probes on average. On Snow Leopard anytime I do the probe count I get about 66,000 (76,000 right

Colin Wheelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010768305821496589noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34442452.post-63587412542450447642009-09-21T08:54:00.001-05:002009-09-21T08:54:29.018-05:00

Today I am releasing the original pages documents for the Xcode Shortcuts under the Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution License. Basically you can do with it, whatever you want as long as I am attributed as being the original author somewhere, and that's it. I've gotten many requests to alter the Xcode shortcuts to many desktop sizes and other various custom sizes and unfortunately I don't have

Colin Wheelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010768305821496589noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34442452.post-45786464982778345262009-09-17T09:18:00.001-05:002009-09-17T11:27:50.824-05:00

For my last article I posted, I realized that when coming up with code examples that I had been writing examples with NSOperation using it the same way I had been writing code with NSOperation before, namely creating a NSOperation object and adding it to the Queue. However, I overlooked that NSOperationQueue in 10.6 contains a -addOperationWithBlock: method. Using that you could indeed write code

Colin Wheelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010768305821496589noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34442452.post-48832264268755409512009-09-16T15:07:00.001-05:002009-09-16T15:25:57.224-05:00

Intro As you may or may not know I recently did a talk at the Des Moines Cocoaheads in which I reviewed Blocks and Grand Central Dispatch. I have tried to capture the content of that talk and a lot more here in this article. The talk encompassedBlocks Grand Central Dispatch GCD Design Patterns Cocoa API's using GCD and BlocksAll of the content of this article applies only to Mac OS X 10.6 Snow

Colin Wheelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010768305821496589noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34442452.post-14349851400733120172009-09-07T15:16:00.000-05:002009-09-09T08:29:13.252-05:00

This Thursday I will be doing a presentation at the Des Moines Cocoaheads (at Iowa State University Campus Howe Hall Room 20. It's on the lower level of Howe, just go down the main stairs by the front door and you'll see room 20 straight ahead.) on Blocks & Grand Central Dispatch and how you can use them with Cocoa, if your in or near central Iowa come by and say hello to the other Iowa

Colin Wheelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010768305821496589noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34442452.post-21723722520366670662009-08-28T09:39:00.000-05:002009-09-21T09:19:05.560-05:00

Xcode Shortcuts (PDF) Xcode Shortcuts (Black & White) (PDF) Update The original Pages Documents used to make this are now freely available under the Creative Commons License, see more info here I've gone ahead and updated the Xcode Shortcuts list for Xcode 3.2 on Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. Although I go to great lengths to ensure accuracy and correctness it could have the rare error. If you

Colin Wheelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010768305821496589noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34442452.post-34704630666696715322009-06-06T11:32:00.001-05:002009-06-06T11:32:18.308-05:00

I am taking just a few minutes to write this in the middle of packing my things for WWDC. This will be my 3rd time going to WWDC and my last time officially as a student. Already I have learned a great deal of things from the previous times i've gone. I've made an effort to get up earlier to get used to what will be a normal time to get up in a different time zone. Also I know Kevin Hoctor

Colin Wheelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010768305821496589noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34442452.post-79162807887975175502009-04-18T22:34:00.001-05:002009-04-18T22:34:45.382-05:00

In Part I of Distributed Version Control & Git, I showed you why you should switch to Distributed Version Control and explained part of what makes Git a compelling Distributed Version Control System. In Part 2 and the final part of this miniseries, I show you an overview of git and the basics and guide you through how you setup a git repository, doing commits, branches, merging, resolving

Colin Wheelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010768305821496589noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34442452.post-33378800941954322732009-04-13T21:56:00.001-05:002009-04-13T21:56:22.070-05:00

This is a video based off a talk I gave on Distributed Version Control for the Des Moines Cocoaheads and gave an example of how to use it in the context of git. The premise of my talk was showing why you should switch to distributed version control and showing off some cool things it can do. Today I seriously believe that with few rare exceptions do we really need centralized version control,

Colin Wheelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010768305821496589noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34442452.post-464855904594538902009-03-26T11:17:00.001-05:002009-03-26T12:29:41.345-05:00

If your new to Cocoa you've probably not heard of Carbon, on the other hand if you've been developing for the Mac for a while now you've probably at least heard of Carbon and if you're really experienced you've probably used carbon. If you've used carbon at all this article really isn't for you. What I want to do is gently introduce you to carbon events, the 1 scenario where we'd use it for in

Colin Wheelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010768305821496589noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34442452.post-71733294012456276522009-03-16T00:25:00.001-05:002009-03-16T00:25:50.401-05:00

In what may be become the first in a series of reviews, I thought i'd share some of my thoughts and some insights into various Computer Science/Programming/Developer related books. I am always reading something so I thought i'd provide some thoughts on these books as I read them. Pragmatic Thinking & Learning is a book that I came across in an unusual way, basically Bill Dudney said he was

Colin Wheelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010768305821496589noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34442452.post-1358994012348549382009-02-25T14:02:00.001-06:002009-02-25T15:37:03.720-06:00

Everybody has been bashing Safari 4's Tab design like crazy and so I thought I'd try and be a sane middle of the ground response, offering my honest opinion here. Honestly I am a bit mixed on them, one would think that seeing Google Chrome with this type of UI that I would be prepared for a User Interface like this. So What's different? Well one thing I noticed is that Google Chrome has a

Colin Wheelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010768305821496589noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34442452.post-28055351283626897102009-02-18T11:10:00.001-06:002009-02-18T11:10:46.138-06:00

If you haven't heard already Scotty is putting together a Mac Developer conference for Europe called NSConference which will be April 16-17 in Hatfield, UK. I would love to go to this, but I am at an odd stage where I am still really a student and am trying to figure out what I am going to do to transition to a full time job in Mac Development, so $1,000+ for a few days in Europe is really

Colin Wheelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010768305821496589noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34442452.post-75643631370549451402009-01-22T10:59:00.001-06:002009-01-22T10:59:27.035-06:00

Last week I recorded an episode of Late Night Cocoa with Scotty in which I discuss DTrace (why it was created & how it works) and reveal the origin of the name "Cocoa Samurai", you can listen to it here: http://www.mac-developer-network.com/podcasts/lnc/lnc038/ I realize listing to my conversation I left 1 big thing hanging. Mainly I mentioned that it'd be great if the OmniGroup had DTrace

Colin Wheelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010768305821496589noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34442452.post-32172658155401991702009-01-21T13:22:00.001-06:002009-01-21T20:06:38.374-06:00

Debugging Cocoa with DTrace Guide Finally today I can finally reveal my Debugging Cocoa with DTrace guide to you. I had originally meant that this be a quick article on this site, but I kept adding and adding to it and finally by the time I knew what I had gotten myself into it was 40+ pages long. This guide isn't as comprehensive as I would like even at the length that it is. It covers many

Colin Wheelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010768305821496589noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34442452.post-40340010076721683822009-01-09T00:22:00.001-06:002009-01-13T08:40:06.205-06:00

UPDATE: The DTrace TextMate Bundle is now on Beta 3 and I am no longer hosting it, it is on GitHub and will be updated there. You should also go to GitHub to get the latest version and fixes for the bundle. I've been working for a little while on a DTrace Bundle for TextMate to make life writing DTrace Scripts a lot easier and now you can download Beta 1 of the DTrace TextMate Bundle. Now I

Colin Wheelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010768305821496589noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34442452.post-40014117024611319212009-01-06T13:37:00.001-06:002009-01-06T13:43:32.099-06:00

I've been working on this for a little while and it's still a relatively early work in progress, but the idea it to make scripts that you intend to run from Terminal much easier and even write scripts that mirror what's available in Instruments so you can make your own custom modifications if you want to. Stay tuned for more word on when this will be available....

Colin Wheelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010768305821496589noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34442452.post-11280589337319159372009-01-06T13:03:00.001-06:002009-01-06T13:03:38.477-06:00

A couple weeks ago I was graciously invited on to be a guest for the Mac Developer Roundtable where the topic was "Getting Started with Cocoa" and I had a good discussion with Danny, Scotty, Brent, Mich and Justin about what it took to get started in Cocoa and what we wish we had paid attention to when we were starting out. I haven't listened to it yet, but if scotty can clean up my performance

Colin Wheelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010768305821496589noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34442452.post-19233406545737952642008-12-11T09:46:00.001-06:002008-12-11T13:02:31.741-06:00

Tonight at the Des Moines Cocoaheads I will be doing a talk in which I will describe how DTrace can be the perfect compliment to your debugging session and help you find bugs quicker regardless of if you are using DTrace through the Terminal or Instruments. Topics that will be covered are * Brief review of DTrace & how it works * What DTrace can do for you * DTrace and the Objective-C Provider

Colin Wheelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010768305821496589noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34442452.post-15683652448498855612008-10-17T20:33:00.001-05:002008-10-18T08:21:48.097-05:00

A while back Marcus Zarra did a good article on working with libXML2 and xmlTextReader to parse XML Data without loading the whole thing into memory. However the tutorial failed my needs only for 1 reason... he used a file on Disk. In his call to xmlReaderForMemory() he passes a path to the resource on disk (yes I know it makes for an easy self contained project that's easy to demonstrate, but

Colin Wheelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010768305821496589noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34442452.post-24577574378100649242008-10-01T14:01:00.001-05:002008-10-01T14:10:30.662-05:00

Apple FINALLY did the right thing today and publicly recognized what pretty much all iPhone developers and the public that have been paying attention to the news have known for a long time now, that the iPhone NDA was doing much more harm than good. From their page ( http://developer.apple.com/iphone/program/ ) "To Our Developers We have decided to drop the non-disclosure agreement (NDA) for

Colin Wheelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010768305821496589noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34442452.post-33614424302648473502008-09-22T15:24:00.001-05:002008-09-23T15:03:35.361-05:00

I am starting NSCoder night in Ames, IA. The first meeting will be at The Stomping Grounds at 7pm on Tuesday the 23rd. If people want the location can change, just email me or tell me in person at the first NSCoder Night in Ames. Come and bring your Cocoa Projects and I'll see you then. Here is a link to the NSCoder Night site explaining what NSCoder Night is about: http://nscodernight.com/

Colin Wheelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010768305821496589noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34442452.post-27599705466829990052008-08-19T12:15:00.001-05:002008-08-19T12:21:57.341-05:00

I am hardly one to hold something back from the Mac Developer Community when I think I have something that will benefit everybody. As such I am finally doing something I've wanted to do for a while. My Xcode Shortcuts guide has a ton of downloads and is one of the most popular articles of all time on my site, and I think many people would like to use the content in various different formats to

Colin Wheelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010768305821496589noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34442452.post-14293143765029055882008-08-03T14:30:00.001-05:002008-08-03T18:08:41.076-05:00

Recently Gus Mueller posted about how VMware with a virtualized instance of Mac OS X is a dream come true for him. It's also a dream come true for me. The ability to run Mac OS X on a virtual machine instance has been something that's been on my wish-list for a while now. Backing up all my data and reinstalling all my apps so that I can install the current version of Mac OS X and then create

Colin Wheelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010768305821496589noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34442452.post-86113723907554656962008-06-19T13:30:00.001-05:002008-06-19T16:40:41.147-05:00

There seem to be at least 2 camps of GIT Users on OS X, those who installed git with the Mac OS X Package installer and those who installed it from Mac Ports. On my new project Gitty (a Git Repo inspector/manager just beginning development), I didn't want to discriminate, but at the same time I didn't know perl well enough to modify Marcus Zarra's Build Script beyond changing /opt/local/bin/git

Colin Wheelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010768305821496589noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34442452.post-27001171286446877252008-06-14T23:09:00.001-05:002008-06-14T23:09:29.117-05:00

Thank you! I meet up with a bunch of people who actively follow me on this blog and on twitter and it was great to talk to every one of you from all over the world. You guys are what made WWDC great for me this year. I myself finally got to meet up with some people who i've been talking to for a while like Scotty, Scott Stevenson, Deric Horn and all the great people in Apple Developer Technical

Colin Wheelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010768305821496589noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34442452.post-16947864858583716412008-05-27T21:42:00.002-05:002010-11-27T19:01:43.425-06:00

Update: Sorry people I didn't know the default Viddler downloading permissions. If you logged in and tried to download the video and couldn't before, login again and you should be able to download it now. So in this Screencast Im going to show you how to use DTrace and how to ultimately turn that knowledge into a custom DTrace Instrument for Instruments. Honestly I would login and download the

Colin Wheelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010768305821496589noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34442452.post-49706525562118268322008-05-09T10:16:00.001-05:002008-05-09T11:05:20.352-05:00

I was an invited guest on the Mac Developer Roundtable and came on to talk Source Code Management and to advocate for GIT. It was my first time ever on a podcast and I was a bit nervous, still listening to the first part of it right now, but it sounds pretty good so far. Please forgive all the "uhs" I do, Im normally a lot more confident speaking publicly, but I didn't know what to expect on the

Colin Wheelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010768305821496589noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34442452.post-88700675779192026562008-04-15T14:05:00.001-05:002008-04-15T14:13:28.192-05:00

Reader Simon Chimed in on my Last article about threading in Leopard: Worth mentioning as well is the OSSpinLock{Lock, Unlock} combination; these busy-wait, but are by far the cheapest to acquire/release. In the case of many resources and lightweight access (very few threads, and/or little work being done per access), they may pay off significantly. Consider the set/get methods for 10000

Colin Wheelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010768305821496589noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34442452.post-5518308028755544802008-04-13T11:26:00.001-05:002008-04-13T13:17:31.269-05:00

Authors Note: This is a campanion article to the talk I gave @ CocoaHeads on Thursday April 10, 2008. You can download the a copy of the talks from http://www.1729.us/cocoasamurai/Leopard%20Threads.pdf. Intro to Threading It's becoming abundantly clear that one big way you can increase application performance is multithreading, this is because increasing processor speeds are no longer a viable

Colin Wheelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010768305821496589noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34442452.post-17771053611858938832008-04-06T21:16:00.001-05:002008-04-06T21:22:24.568-05:00

This week at CocoaHeads I will be making a presentation on multithreading in Cocoa with NSThread, NSOperation, etc and my good friend Jim from Startly will be doing a talk on how Cocoa Bindings work. Shortly after this talk i'll publish a corresponding article here on Cocoa Samurai that goes into detail about the things I talked about and will have a copy of the slides as well. Reposted from

Colin Wheelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010768305821496589noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34442452.post-33588353360844096362008-03-28T15:29:00.001-05:002008-03-28T15:31:51.274-05:00

Apple has announced the Student Scholarships for WWDC and the WWDC Student Page is up now. To find out details and apply for a scholarship you need only go to http://developer.apple.com/wwdc/students/

Colin Wheelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010768305821496589noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34442452.post-7431725911301762532008-03-14T13:40:00.001-05:002008-03-14T14:35:24.378-05:00

So after a long time of wondering when Apple will ever announce WWDC it has finally been announced and will be from June 9 - 13 in Moscone West in San Francisco. I will be making it out to WWDC this year and it seems everybody from the AmesMUG and Des Moines CocoaHeads will be making it out as well. Already on twitter i've seen many developers start scheduling their flights and hotels. iPhone

Colin Wheelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010768305821496589noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34442452.post-61542713124187101862008-03-13T17:06:00.001-05:002008-03-13T17:09:00.397-05:00

Eric Roccasecca of Startly fame will be doing a guide of Run Loops reposted from http://cocoaheads.org/us/DesMoinesIowa/index.html The next CocoaHeads: Thursday March 13, 2008 07:00 PM CST at DMACC's West Des Moines campus - Ask front desk for Room #. Directions: DMACC's West Des Moines campus is located at 5959 Grand Ave in West Des Moines [Google Maps][DMACC's directions] Agenda: Run Loops

Colin Wheelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010768305821496589noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34442452.post-4529497086124389402008-03-06T16:43:00.000-06:002008-03-06T17:56:18.847-06:00

So the iPhone SDK is finally here. I'm glad (but not surprised) that we can download the SDK, but can't actually ship our apps for while. The servers still seem a bit glitchy as Daniel Jalkut put it "We are experiencing a distributed denial of iPhone SDK." [via twitter]. In a nutshell, that's what we did once the event was over, developers the world over practically DDOS'd apples servers. One

Colin Wheelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010768305821496589noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34442452.post-28318662580580941602008-02-25T19:52:00.001-06:002009-11-01T18:36:51.161-06:00

Update: This document is for Xcode on Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. If you are using the latest Xcode 3.2 on Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard then you should instead go to the Xcode Shortcuts for 3.2 on Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard instead. Xcode Shortcuts (PNG) Xcode Shortcuts (PDF) Xcode Shortcuts (Black & White PNG) Xcode Shortcuts (Black & White PDF) Inspired by the Des Moines Cocoaheads Group discussion

Colin Wheelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010768305821496589noreply@blogger.com33tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34442452.post-16265604415277127472008-01-31T21:38:00.000-06:002008-01-31T22:09:55.609-06:00

I saw that Mark Dalrymple made an appearance on the Late Night Cocoa Podcast discussing threading and just now had a chance to listen to it on my MBP and I must say it was a really nice to finally hear someone (other than MacResearch) give some time to discussion on NSOperation, plus I was just curious what he thought about it. Mark is one of my heros because his book Advanced Mac OS X

Colin Wheelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010768305821496589noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34442452.post-45195393035746885052007-12-03T22:03:00.000-06:002007-12-03T22:40:56.209-06:00

As finals are next week for me and I've finished all my work for 1 of my 5 classes this term and I am finally beginning to get some free time as I try and get my work done early, I thought I'd take some time out of my day quickly and express thanks to those developers who have made my life as a student on a Mac much easier. A BIG thank you goes out to Parallels who makes it possible for me to

Colin Wheelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010768305821496589noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34442452.post-74898765121259246732007-10-15T14:50:00.001-05:002007-10-16T11:21:08.859-05:00

Last week I gave a talk at the Des Moines CocoaHeads (Google Groups link) on how Quartz works in Cocoa and an intro to the C Based Core Graphics API's. Some of the topics I got started on was based off of Scott Stevenson's topics raised on Intro to Quartz Part I and II on Cocoa Dev Central and a couple of the Core Graphics examples were based off of samples from the Quartz book written by

Colin Wheelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010768305821496589noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34442452.post-54236808345137627412007-10-03T11:50:00.001-05:002007-10-03T12:02:17.830-05:00

The next CocoaHeads meeting will be close to home in Ames @ Iowa State University. I will be giving a presentation about Quartz and specifically using it with Cocoa. Once the meeting is up I will post the Keynote presentation and source code so you can download it. Reposted from http://cocoaheads.org/us/DesMoinesIowa/index.html The next CocoaHeads: Thursday October 11, 2007 07:00 PM CST at Howe

Colin Wheelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010768305821496589noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34442452.post-90911513266378041562007-09-10T21:27:00.000-05:002007-09-10T21:34:27.110-05:00

Info reposted from http://cocoaheads.org/us/DesMoinesIowa/index.html Schedule: The next CocoaHeads: Thursday September 13, 2007 07:00 PM CST at Kirkendall Public Library. Directions: 1210 NW Prairie Ridge Dr Ankeny, IA 50023 [map] Note that this is a new location as Panera was a bit noisy. Internet access is available, but the librarians tell me it can be "spotty" in the room we'll be in.

Colin Wheelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010768305821496589noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34442452.post-58554946394791909882007-08-22T20:24:00.000-05:002007-08-22T20:35:36.975-05:00

Every time Apple releases a new version of Mac OS X, Developers get shafted a little bit. We develop the apps that complement and enhance Mac OS X and make it great and what do we get for this? Releases of Mac OS X about a month after everybody else. It’s no secret that with paid ADC accounts we get a free copy of Mac OS X as it’s stated clearly on the ADC Site ( http://developer.apple.com/

Colin Wheelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010768305821496589noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34442452.post-60655354862842382292007-07-18T17:57:00.000-05:002007-07-18T18:08:41.107-05:00

Bout time! :D The first meeting of CocoaHeads chapter in Des Moines, Iowa is starting up. Im planning on attending and if your in the area come on by! When: August 2 @ 7-9pm Where: Panera Bread on 86th in Urbandale Google Maps Link Why: Meet local Cocoa developers like you who want to know more about Cocoa and voice your opinion about what you'd like to learn about in future meetings

Colin Wheelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010768305821496589noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34442452.post-6618005063845970832007-06-07T17:32:00.000-05:002007-06-07T17:46:07.731-05:00

Well I am not going to WWDC this time around. But chances are if you are reading this you are... or at least you just wanna know what all the fuss is about. Scott Stevenson posted his thoughts on CocoaDevCentral and as a first time attendee I thought i’d give you some tips from things I learned at WWDC 06. Students Generally speaking students get the Sunday before the Keynote to go through a

Colin Wheelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010768305821496589noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34442452.post-47170026214832867962007-06-04T15:28:00.000-05:002007-06-04T15:36:42.579-05:00

Well the Mac News & Rumor sites are abuzz with news of a potential iPhone SDK at WWDC 07. Personally I never know what to trust when these types of rumors come out. I do believe though that there is usually an element of truth behind the rumors. Since writing my original iPhone SDK analysis shortly after Steve’s keynote i’ve had some time to reflect on this and I must say I still stand by it. To

Colin Wheelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010768305821496589noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34442452.post-1393235561837782372007-05-01T00:49:00.000-05:002007-05-01T01:34:40.777-05:00

Finals are finally done with, all my big projects are over with, all my homework is turned in I can refocus all my energy again!!! :D Don't' get me wrong I like learning in detail about algorithms and some finite math, but after a few months of doing big projects it gets tiring very fast. Most importantly im gonna get back on track on writing here regularly. Advanced Cocoa Book I don't usually

Colin Wheelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010768305821496589noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34442452.post-32407798909359133392007-02-25T00:00:00.000-06:002007-02-25T14:44:30.722-06:00

Man it's been a while since i've last posted and im really sorry for that. Anyway i've been starting on a 2nd Open Source Project I call Red Flag (name is meant to be a joke at the stereotype that Open Source is Socialist/Communist) which is going to be a Del.icio.us client for Mac OS X that offers more organizational and browsing abilities than Cocoalicious offers. I like Cocoalicious, I just

Colin Wheelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010768305821496589noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34442452.post-77403188024880227142007-01-21T00:38:00.000-06:002007-01-21T14:25:44.938-06:00

As I am finishing up my other article I thought id take on a challenge and do what nobody has done yet in doing an in depth analysis of the iPhone software and what it'd take to develop for it should Apple ever allow it. Hey I am up for a good challenge Ok lets get off on even ground here and briefly cover what Apple has said about the iPhone and Mac OS X on it. The iPhone will use a touch

Colin Wheelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010768305821496589noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34442452.post-48111361541426477922007-01-18T01:49:00.000-06:002007-01-18T02:59:48.128-06:00

Well it had to happen at some point and while I would have liked to have done this much sooner than later, but I finally got my Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro and have finally got my hands on the Beta of Parallels which im using now to run Windows XP for school so I can get rid of my HP Laptop once and for all. Coming from a 1.25Ghz PowerBook G4 this thing is blazingly fast and I love finally having an

Colin Wheelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010768305821496589noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34442452.post-41860761282355629322006-12-23T02:53:00.000-06:002006-12-23T03:11:47.554-06:00

Well everybody it’s the holidays and I hope your all doing OK. I just wanted to wish you all well and let you all know what’s coming up. It seems this blog as been doing extraordinarily well from the statistics I’ve seen on Google Analytics. But I hope starting in January I can make it do even better. When I first started this blog it was really just something for me and a few of my friends

Colin Wheelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010768305821496589noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34442452.post-11244619721528300202006-12-14T15:15:00.000-06:002006-12-15T00:50:07.468-06:00

If you'll forgive me for not posting something totally mac development related... I just thought since there was a Digg article earlier trying to rally people to this that I should do something and try and get the word out even further if I can Were just past the halfway point in the MacHeist Bundle sale if I heard correctly and NewsFire has been unlocked as we reached $50,000 donated to

Colin Wheelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010768305821496589noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34442452.post-41573107011133476492006-12-08T12:42:00.000-06:002006-12-08T14:41:45.218-06:00

Just thought i'd post a playful little tidbit. One of the things you should be as a programmer is playful and experimental. And todays tip I originally learned from Aaron Hillegass (yes the guy who write Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X) at the Student WWDC 06 Session, though you can find it documented on Apples site easily. One of the things I do is play around with parts of a language i don't

Colin Wheelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010768305821496589noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34442452.post-66237009837996431002006-12-06T10:03:00.000-06:002006-12-06T10:24:32.907-06:00

Well this week I’m a bit under the weather, but definitely getting better and still managing to get some coding done so I thought I’d indulge you with this bit of commentary that's been on my mind for a while. Before I do so I want you to know that Im working on a small something that mostly beginner Cocoa programmers may find very useful, though veterans may find it useful as well. I was amazed

Colin Wheelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010768305821496589noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34442452.post-31834274843978308252006-11-21T16:55:00.000-06:002006-11-21T20:18:09.588-06:00

Well things are a little busy this week, but im also getting things done fortunitely. I can finally fully walk around in my closet now thanks to my cleaning session I decided to do on my day off... hey it had to get done sometime. One thing I decided to do is to continue going through my C Book and finally get through coding all the exercises which leads me to my quick commentary on TextMate. [

Colin Wheelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010768305821496589noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34442452.post-34370978354158726692006-11-11T17:07:00.000-06:002006-11-11T17:22:11.767-06:00

Well I am back people! This whole past couple weeks have just been crazy at work and in combination with hunting bugs in my first early Beta of AssignmentTracker X I haven't had much time for this blog lately, but now I am back and things have settled down and I am already full of stuff to post. Hey I'm just a student people, give me a break. Well for today I am gonna post 2 things that made my

Colin Wheelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010768305821496589noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34442452.post-897819800649200772006-10-29T23:32:00.000-06:002006-10-30T01:12:07.820-06:00

After posting about Docoa browser a couple people suggested I try AppKiDo which looked like a decent alternative. After testing it out for a while I thought I'd post some thoughts about it. Upon launching it, AppKiDo takes a minute and begins parsing your documentation files, unfortunately this happens EVERY time you launch it. Upon completing this the documentation browser is launched. Right

Colin Wheelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010768305821496589noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34442452.post-44468254040353951932006-10-27T09:08:00.000-05:002006-10-27T09:28:07.099-05:00

Hello everybody! I just wanted to post something you may find interesting. Docoa Browser (based on Cocoa Browser from a LONG time ago) has been updated to run on the most recent documentation from Apple! If you don’t know what Docoa Browser is, it’s basically a slim and fast documentation browser which allows you to browse most documentation by browsing through a simple column view which you

Colin Wheelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010768305821496589noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34442452.post-19630190134227055452006-10-24T16:48:00.000-05:002006-10-24T17:14:38.062-05:00

Im working on my next tutorial which will appear soon, but for now i’d thought I’d share a few thoughts and see what you all think. Ok once again there seems to be a big topic on everybody’s minds and this time it’s the Human Interface Guidelines. Scott has some insightful commentary on this. I believe early on when I first started learning Cocoa, I took a look at this document. As far as I can

Colin Wheelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010768305821496589noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34442452.post-53151626685441827502006-10-16T09:09:00.000-05:002006-10-16T09:13:52.561-05:00

Sorry I haven't written for a little bit, first I was surprised that I was picked up by CocoaDevCentral and then I kept spending lots of time working on AssignmentTracker X. The Good news is im planning on an expansion into the LicenseKeeper app and will show you how to auto sort items in Core Data and always restore the length of columns the user sets them to in tables, and maybe a couple other

Colin Wheelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010768305821496589noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34442452.post-14044071486724385762006-10-09T19:26:00.000-05:002006-10-09T19:27:19.007-05:00

I was taking a random look at the performance of my sites and realized I never looked at how my brand new blog Cocoa Samurai is doing. When I saw the chart I saw a huge surge of visitors to the page, when looking at where the visitors where coming from I saw CocoaDevCentral on the list. When I visited the page I saw my name right next to Wil Shipley.

Colin Wheelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010768305821496589noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34442452.post-66589112341080929882006-10-07T00:49:00.000-05:002006-10-07T01:49:49.242-05:00

Wil Shipley seems to have started what eventually would become a big rolling snowball with his entry linked in my previous entry. It's gotten Daring Fireball and Scott Stevenson talking. What's going on here is a grievance against the fact that several frameworks Cocoa programmers must use are only available in Carbon. Why is this a big grief? Carbon frameworks are written in procedural C style

Colin Wheelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010768305821496589noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34442452.post-30529033820754474402006-10-05T11:17:00.000-05:002006-10-05T11:23:28.172-05:00

Wil Shipley on Carbon vs Cocoa Our good friend Wil Shipley has written up a good article on why some frameworks desperately need to be moved from Carbon to Cocoa: http://wilshipley.com/blog/2006/10/pimp-my-code-part-12-frozen-in.html Scott Stevenson on searching for code with Google Code Scott Stevenson has written up a good starter intro to searching for code under specific programming

Colin Wheelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010768305821496589noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34442452.post-1159826214752834802006-10-02T15:04:00.000-05:002006-10-02T17:00:59.030-05:00

Well today's tutorial isn't specific to Cocoa, but it's a good tool Mac Developers should use. Doxygen is a simple tool that goes through your source code and auto generates documentation which you can browse through in several formats. If you've browsed through Xcodes menu's you'll have noticed in the Script menu there is a category for HeaderDoc which Xcode provides the ability to insert

Colin Wheelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010768305821496589noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34442452.post-1158818730956759142006-09-21T01:03:00.000-05:002006-09-21T02:10:50.780-05:00

Well I've just been frustrated today by several things going on including getting a wireless ethernet adapter to work so to get my mind off everything I thought i'd just post an easy quick tip before going to bed. One thing many new people aren't aware of in Xcode is the Pragma mark in source code. Pragma mark is simply a way to organize your methods in the method list pop up button in Xcode (as

Colin Wheelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010768305821496589noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34442452.post-1158714222044562202006-09-19T19:55:00.000-05:002006-09-19T20:03:42.090-05:00

Just thought I'd quickly post this while coding tonight. If you haven't seen Scott Stevensons Blog Theocacao you should as he posts a lot of great tips. Recently he posted about using delayed messages in Cocoa, specifically within the context of awakeFromNib methods (though this can be used anywhere) which is called right after all the contents of the nib are loaded off of disk or at least

Colin Wheelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010768305821496589noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34442452.post-1158688376364427702006-09-19T12:48:00.000-05:002006-09-19T12:52:56.373-05:00

In my first tutorial I realized I made one significant mistake and left something out For the NSTextView in order to bind it to "value" you must uncheck "Multiple Fonts allowed" otherwise it assumes you are working with a NSAttributedString (string with attributes like bold, italic,etc) vs a plain NSString. Sorry for any confusion this may have caused.

Colin Wheelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010768305821496589noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34442452.post-1158605368284328282006-09-18T13:25:00.000-05:002006-09-18T14:34:58.590-05:00

Now this is a classic question. One of the strange things you see just learning Cocoa/Objective-C is this thing called the Enumerator loop which looks something like NSArray *anArray = // ... ; NSEnumerator *enumerator = [anArray objectEnumerator]; id object; while ((object = [enumerator nextObject])) { // do something with object... } and naturally people ask if using NSEnumerator is

Colin Wheelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010768305821496589noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34442452.post-1158453193984199802006-09-16T18:15:00.000-05:002006-09-17T14:31:52.080-05:00

Introduction Welcome everybody! I find most tutorials out there are really good, but sometimes they leave out some better ways to do one part of the tutorial or I just find nobody really explains how to do various little things. That's why I started this blog, I wanted to post various tips, tricks and tutorials on how to do various tasks that all Cocoa Programmers go through and at the same

Colin Wheelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010768305821496589noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34442452.post-1158304603021868892006-09-15T02:15:00.000-05:002006-09-15T02:16:43.030-05:00

Soon I'll open this blog and begin bringing you some great Cocoa/Xcode/Developer Tool tips!

Colin Wheelerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16010768305821496589noreply@blogger.com0