Josh's Tech Blog

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Ever since Apple released their SDK for the iPhone, i’ve been more interested in programming on the Mac side of things.  The iPhone was motivation, but programming on OS X sounded interesting as well.  I consider myself a “jack of all trades, master of none” so why not add this knowledge to my belt too?

When going to school, they drilled us with C/C++ until the final year we got to use C#.  My review of Programming in Objective-C 2.0 by Stephen G. Kochan will be from the perspective of a somewhat experienced C/C++/C# user who has never seen Objective-C before.

One thing I’ve learned about C/C++ is that once you have a handle on it, almost every other programming language is the same thing, save for some syntax.  In a nutshell, I see Objective-C is the result of some inbred freak baby that C and C++ created one night.  The language itself has ints, chars, doubles, classes, inheritance, and so on.  The Foundation Toolkit Apple provides is like the STL in Objective-C land.  You have your lists, dictionaries, strings, etc.  Very handy!

That being said, if you know C/C++ and the STL, you know most of Objective-C.  Don’t let you discourage you from buying this book though!  This book makes a great read.  Since I understood most of the concepts, I was plowing right through it, only slowing down to catch the syntax differences.  Most of the book deals with the language itself just like most C/C++ books would.  The 2nd part of the book deals with the Foundation Framework (Apple’s STL).  The ideas are the same as the C++ STL, just syntax differences.

The final section in the book tickles your ass with a feather getting you creating your first iPhone application.  The application they have you create is a calculator application.  It doesn’t go into many advanced iPhone SDK topics, but teaches you just enough to make you say to yourself, “Hmm, this isn’t so bad”  I almost wish there was another iPhone chapter in the book, but I know it’s only in there just for fun.

The good thing about this book though is once you’re finished with it you can move onto an iPhone programming book and won’t be scared away by all that Objective-C code.

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I don’t read books much unless I have to.  It’s usually for work and somewhat technical.  I want to join the ranks of other fellow book readers and start reading recreationally.  To motivate me, I ordered an Amazon Kindle 2.

I wanted to post a few tips I found out the hard way for anyone else out there who is curious:

1. Viewing Blogs through the wireless service costs money, but accessing them though the built in web browser is free.

You have to ask yourself if properly formatted blogs is worth $1 a month.  I guess it could be if I didn’t have a computer. (How many Kindle users don’t have a computer?)

2. username@free.kindle.com

It’s in the fine print.  Blink too fast and you’ll miss it.  If you send a document to convert to username@kindle.com, you’ll have to fork over 10 cents per attachment.  Rather then pay 10 cents per document, just to save the time of plugging in your USB cord and dragging a file, send your documents to username@free.kindle.com and do it yourself.

3. Reset

Ever have an iPod/iPhone lock up completely and you didn’t know what to do?  I had that issue with the Kindle once.  The trick is to hold the power slider in for 15 seconds and let go.  No bubbles, no troubles.

4. Make it pretty

The Macintosh community has rubbed off on me over the past few years.  As such I like to spice up my desktop visually, including all my drive icons.  When I plug in the Kindle 2, I like to see a Kindle 2 that represents the files on the Kindle 2.  It requires less thinking on my part when double clicking icons…..and it looks cool.  (It’s in Mac OS format, but i’ve included the source PNG if you want to make a Windows Icon from it)

• Kindle 2 Mac Icon

Wow, this WordPress software is amazing. I’ve been wondering what the big stink about this software was about. Blame my buddy Paul (http://paulecoyote.wordpress.com) for the curiosity.

In the meantime, we shall see where this goes, if anywhere. I’d like to make this site more interesting then just my daily life. Maybe use it to blog about what I’m working on both at home and work. Either way, should be interesting.