Core Animation has fork in it...
I have a tech review pass over the chapter on the [REDACTED] chapter and an errata pass as well. That should all be simple stuff. The book also had a title change, now its Core Animation for OSX and iPhone. I'm really excited to be done, and very much looking forward to seeing it @ my local Borders :).
Also the iPhone book is in 'pub review' which means it will be hitting beta RSN, can't wait.
Permalink Add A CommentWWDC Bound...
I'm about to head to the airport. Here is hoping the SDK NDA is lifted as I can't wait to share some of the fun and cool stuff I've been working on. Watch this space...
Permalink Add A CommentiPhone chapter in the bag...
I have finally finished the iPhone chapter for the book. I've also taken an additional editing pass and finally gotten rid of all the parens at the end of ObjC method names. That was the single most pointed out flaw in the book (not sure if that is good or bad :). And finally I added a full section on CATiledLayer. I will post a blog entry about that shortly that has some of what I learned.
So, the book is getting very close to being done. If you are going to be at WWDC I'd love to meet face to face.
Permalink 5 Comments - Add YoursBoulder CocoaHeads Tonight
Tonight I'll be discussing Core Animation at the Trident Cafe with the fine folks @ the Boulder CocoaHeads. If you are in the area would be great to see you!
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Late Night Cocoa - CA Podcast Online
Scotty of Late Night Cocoa podcast was kind enough to have me on. His interview of me is online here.
We talked about a ton of stuff but mostly Core Animation.
Permalink Add A CommentHe's dead Jim!
Just checked in the last errata pass, last chapter, last verse. It's finito. I still have the iPhone chapter to do but i'm going to take a breather for a few days and get in some very nice spring skiing at Breck.
Permalink 3 Comments - Add YoursMaking Sausage er um a Book
Making a book is always a huge undertaking. The reviewers really help make the book, helping the author notice where a faulty assumption is made or some such. I have been very fortunate to have a great set of reviewers for my Core Animation book. I wanted to say a special thanks though to Chris Adamson for really digging into the QuickTime capture layer code and helping me make the best example possible.
Thanks Chris!
Permalink Add A CommentMac Developer Round Table
Scotty was kind enough to have me on the Mac Developer Roundtable tonight. If you are interested in WWDC or iPhone SDK please have a listen. It was tons of fun! Thanks again Scotty!
Permalink Add A CommentNew Beta Release
Well on the way to being done a new beta of the book has just been pushed. Everyone who has bought the book (thanks, BTW!) you can grab an updated copy on your account page here. For everyone else you can grab a copy here.
I'm hard at work on the last chapter covering what is different in the newly announced SDK and the existing CA stuff on Leopard. Can't say more but you should check out the announcement.
Permalink 6 Comments - Add YoursInstead of writing...
On Tuesday of last week I checked in the final chapter, there is still plenty to do (like roll in all the great feedback I've gotten from the tech reviewers) but I figured a little R&R was in order today. So this morning I hoped on the bus with my lovely wife and we skied from 8:30 (first tracks :) till around 11:00. It was a great day! Here is a photo of one of the runs with the valley our house is in in the background. I highly recommend Breck if you can make it out you should.
New Mini Online...
Finally, my new mini is online and serving pages. Here is hoping that I get as much out of this new mini as I did from the old.
If you notice anything missing please don't hesitate to ping me and let me know so I can fix it asap.
Permalink Add A CommentNew Beta Available
We pushed a new beta today. Most of the existing errata was addressed as well as adding a new chapter 'Core Animation' in which you will learn all about layer hosting views and building UI's with CA.
Permalink Add A CommentOnly one more chapter to go...
I just checked in the last changes on Chapter 8, Chapter 9 has been done for a while so now I'm on to Chapter 10 and then I'll be wrapped up.
After Chap 10 is in the bag its off to fix all the stuff the tech reviewers are finding. I can't say enough how thankful I am to this group of folks for doing such a great job in giving me feedback.
Permalink Add A CommentIntermittent Blog Failures...
My blog is dying every 1 to 5 hrs and I'm not sure what is happening (it suddenly started to run out of db connections about a week ago). I'm looking into it and hopefully will get that fixed shortly. Sorry for the lack of responsiveness.
Update:
It appears that the success of my lovely wife's iPhone games are to blame. This site has been hosted on a mac-mini since June of 2005. The box never had any problems serving up quite a bit of content from my java blog even when I was near the center of a tempest in a teapot about JBoss and was getting thousands of hits a day for about a week my mini never complained. The average hit count per day was between seven and ten thousand hits a day. Then...
A friend of mine wrote two very cool iPhone apps, Connect4 Touch and Tic Tac Toe. While my wife and I were in the theatre waiting for National Treasure 2 to start a couple in front of us way playing Connect 4. Two days later I start getting AIM hits from my wife asking how to do this or that with Javascript.
The result has been a bit of an increase in the traffic on dudney.net and the little mini that could. December's daily average hit count was 7,700, Janurary was 55,000 and so far in February the daily average is 130,000. And all that from a mac mini. The culprits are iKala (mancala), Ball Blast (which is currently in the top 10 games on Apple.com, way to go!) and the latest Alien Defeat. If you are so inclined go check them out.
One of the coolest things about getting into this is that it's been a family affair. My 12 year old son wrote about half the code for Alien Defeat and came up with the idea. He also made the icon (which is one of the coolest icons ever for an iPhone app IMO ;). And my 10 year old made the background images for both Alien Defeat and iKala with Blender. The Dudney software factory is in full swing :)
Back to the tech: from what I can tell Apache was consuming all the memory (because of my config, fixed now I hope) and causing mysql and java to swap out. Then every hit on my blog was causing a massive bit of swap activity, and causing mysql hits to timeout, and boom my blog would croak.
I think I have apache limited now so that my blog has enough breathing room. Lets hope so anyway, my wife is about to release a fourth game in the next week or so, might be in the market soon for an XServe :)
Update 2:
Ordered a new intel mac mini to replace the G4 mini. its just not able to keep up...
Permalink 2 Comments - Add YoursBeta here we are!
I am totally stoked to report that Core Animation for OS X: Creating Dynamic Compelling User Interfaces is finally in beta!
If you buy a copy of the beta you can get the content now and then a full version when the book ships.
You can read all about it here. Permalink Add A Comment
