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Tag Archives | Cocoa

Been neglecting my geek muscle…

By on April 22, 2009 in Technology

I’ve been neglecting my geek muscles way too much lately. It’s time to get back in the game and immerse myself in the new stuff that is hitting the market. Basically do stuff for The Plan minus the Open University stuff which I’ve dropped.

From a infrastructure technology point of view I plan to dive in deep and dirty with:

On the development front I will be reading the small mountain of books I have on:

On a personal front I will be finally studying some mathematics and reading through the huge pile of unread books I have bought over the last year.

Books to read Books to read. Click for larger view

This weeks events in Belfast (DevDays and BarCampBelfast) will be a good springboard to get back in the geek game…

New stuff from Macworld Expo 2009

By on January 5, 2009 in Technology

This entry will be a place to find the new hardware and software that gets released this week to coincide with Macworld 2009 and CES 09. Check back over the next week or so as this page gets updated with stuff that catches my eye.

Productivity Applications

Apple iLife ’09 – Latest version of the best available consumer media suite.

Apple iWork ’09 – Update to Apple’s productivity suite. Nice additions to Keynote and Pages. Endnote and MathType integration with Pages is a nice addition. I’ll be using Endnote and Mathtype a lot for courses I’m doing. This might mean I don’t have to use Microsoft Word.

Microsoft announce that they will make it easier for Office for Macintosh 2008 to connect to and use SharePoint services.

Music Creation

Toontrack Drumtracker – Convert audio drum recordings into drum midi data.

Development Tools

Widget Press ModelBaker – Web development app to quickly build web apps, iPhone & iPod touch web apps and Android web apps.

FileMaker Pro 10 – latest iteration of the easy to use database application.

Odds and Sods

Xsilva Lightspeed – Mac based Point-of-sale system. Run your retail business on Mac!

Plastic Logic eReader – Upcoming ebook device. Loots very nice.

The plan

By on August 31, 2008 in General, Science, Writing

I like to set goals. I’m not that keen on keeping to them, but I like setting them as targets and frameworks to work with. I’ve got a set of personal and work related goals that want to work to over the next few years. Sort of my own personal Soviet style 5-year plan.

Work Stuff

Become the go-to guy for VMware VI3 questions and also for Mac OS X integration into Windows environments. Also be the person people search out when they have questions about current and new technology.

Personal Stuff

Learn mathematics. Using this selection of self study books:

mathbooks Click picture for larger view

I want to be able to read Penrose’s The Road to Reality and understand the mathematics in it.

Do several Open University courses to finish a BSc I’m doing with them:

S366 Evolution

SXN390 Science in Society Project

Do the Open University MSc Science and Society. As long as they let me in. [Update: They did!] I’ve pulled out a few courses recently and they have a rule that stops you registering for new courses. Which is fair enough. They don’t get paid by the government if people don’t complete the courses. In any event I’ll be doing something in the science communication field (including many more posts here on the Soapbox) as we need to fight the hoards of superstitious nut jobs. We can’t cede any of the ground won in the last 400 years with rationality and the scientific method.

Continue to work on some science fiction stories I’m writing. One is set in a space opera scale universe and the other is set in the Frank Herbert Hellstrom’s Hive universe.

Music – I’ve got about dozen songs in various stages of work (all have full lyrics). I want to continue to work on them and maybe package them together as an actual album. That’d be cool 🙂

Write a cricket match scoring system for Macintosh and iPhone using Cocoa. Unless someone else develops on that meets my needs first. I’d be happy if they did. Programming projects always bore the tits of me after the initial requirements specification and design are done! [Update: I’ve also had an idea for an app that uses the Twitter API]

We’ll see how I get on…

Northern Ireland Cocoa Developers

By on June 18, 2008 in General

Some of us from Northern Ireland, who were at WWDC, are thinking of setting up a local Cocoa developers group to met and discuss development and technologies related to the Mac OS X and iPhone/iPod touch platform. It is envisioned that there will be periodic meetings, a mailing list, a web page, possibly guest speakers, etc. All this is still to be determined. The following 5 domains have been registered for the group to use:

nicocoadev (.org, .net, .com, .co.uk)

nicod.org

If you would be interested in participating in the group then email me using the contact link in the sidebar on the right of this page.

Feel free to pass this information on to anyone else who you think might be interested.