Here are the details:

BCIT
ROOM 353 - 555 Seymour Street

Vancouver BC
Thursday November 20 : 6:30PM - 8:00PM

Topics
- iPhone OS
- iPhone game programming experience and demos
- Introduction to Interface Builder

Admin
- how we can help can newcomers more easily find this group
- where and when we should meet next

Translink iPhone App

The App uses PhoneGap to bridge the data that Translink has on the web onto the iPhone.  I had a very, very, very small hand in fixing some bugs in the project.

I’m part way through rewriting the PhoneGap iPhone client.  I plan on release this rewrite to the community once I am done.  I can’t promise a timeline at the moment as this is a side project for myself.

BCIT Downtown Campus

555 Seymour Street

Room 353

Thursday, October 16, 2008

6:30PM - 8:00PM

This is the agenda that Steve sent for the meeting:

It’s open to anyone who is interested in iPhone development, in particular just getting up to speed with XCode, Objective-C, memory management, and some of the more important classes and frameworks.

1. Introductions
2. Discuss idea of an iPhone developer’s group in Vancouver
3. Walk through a hello world app using interface builder
4. Next steps: set a follow-up meeting etc.

Autumn

There is a chill in the air.  I put on my fedora and rain jacket before stepping out the door.  The sky is gray and there are leaves on the sidewalk.  It is fall.

It’s amazing how fast the year has raced by.

There is something special about autumn.  It is a transitory season. I always find myself in an introspective mood.  Last year, I jumped on my motorcycle and disappeared for two weeks to think about where I was in life.

The answer did not exist on the beautful places that the motorcycle took me to.  The answer existed in the person that was guiding the motorcycle.

Mountains

I’ve always had mountains in my life.  The small town I grew up in was snuggled in a valley.  My childhood home was located on the Fraser River.  Across the muddy Fraser was a mountain.  It always loomed large through the picture window in the living room.

The mountain had been carved out of the landscape many years ago when the glaciers retreated after the last ice age.  It took an epic event to put that mountain there.

Mountains exist to remind one of the epic.

The North Shore Mountains sit directly north of the downtown core.  I always turn north after I put on my fedora and rain jacket and step out the door.  I take the time to pause for just a moment before I head out on my way.

Mountains remind me not to accept bullshit in my life.

I went to school at Simon Fraser University.  Choosing to go to school on top of a mountain just felt right.

I was 18 my freshman year of university.  Although the legal drinking age in my jurisdiction is 19, I was crafty enough to sneak by the bouncers at the university pub.

I recall walking back to my dorm room after one night at the university pub.  I recall standing on top of that mountain and looking down on the city.  I recall not wanting to be the person I had been the first 18 years of my life.  I recall wanting to be better.

I have been fairly successful over the last ten years.  But it was time to redefine my definition of success.

My last epic encounter with a mountain was at the Pemberton Music Festival.  Pemberton is also snuggled in a valley.  The house I was staying at was located on the slopes of Mount Currie.

I sat on the slopes of that mountain one night after bands had left the stage.  It was just myself, the Japanese Husky that lived in the house I was staying at, and the mountain.

I took out my Moleskine notebook and on the left page I wrote everything in my life that was unacceptable.  On the right I wrote everything that I believed in and everything that I’ve aspired to be.

Moleskine

I decided then and there to be better.

Investor Confidence

Recently, I have been told that the problem with the markets has been ”investor confidence”.  That doesn’t sound like a problem with the markets.  That sounds like a problem with the investor.

The biggest investment in one’s life is one’s life itself.

It’s taken me a year to gain conifidence in what I believe in.

Magnitudes Better

I want to be better.  Magnitudes better.  That’s why I will only work on things that I believe in.

I write this here because I want to hold myself to that promise.  Hold me to that promise.

Allow me to fail.  But don’t allow me not to try.

This is what a method looks like in Objective-C:

- (ret-type) keyword:(arg-type)arg-name keyword:(arg-type)arg-name

It is much easier to read if it is typed as such:

- (ret-type) keyword:(arg-type)arg-name
             keyword:(arg-type)arg-name

In the above signature, the minus sign implies that the method is an instance method.  Class methods are prepended with a plus sign.

The first keyword can be thought of as the method name.  In concrete terms, a method would look like this:

- (void) insertObject:(id)anObject atIndex:(NSUInteger)index

This is much easier to grok, if it is pictured like this:

- (void) insertObject:(id)anObject
         atIndex:(NSUInteger)index

And it can be read as “insert an object of type id at an index”.  This is easier to read at the point where a method is called.

Array* array = [[Array alloc] init]];
[array inserObject:anObject
       atIndex:0];

The above can be read as “insert an object into array at index 0″.  Objective-C is designed to be a self-documenting language.  Interfaces are generally designed such that they can be read in real English.

We know that money comes and goes.  We know that possessions become a burden.  They really become a burden.  But story, story is so valuable and is painless to carry with us and it’s something that we share.  And the pixies were pure story.  And my grandparents, at this point, are pure story.  Because six months after my grandmother died my grandfather died.  And I would venture that ultimately the most important things in your life are going to be stories.

This is the central theme that The War of Art expounds.  An artist can not expect to create art.  All an artist has is her work ethic.

Pressfield invokes Godwin’s Law early:

You know, Hitler wanted to be an artist.  At eighteen he took his inheritance, seven hundred kronen, and moved to Vienna to live and study.  He applied to the Academy of Fine Arts and later to the School of Architecture.  Ever see one of his paintings?  Neither have I.  Resistance beat him.  Call it overstatement but I’ll say it anyway:  it was easier for Hitler to start World War II than it was for him to face a blank square of canvas

Forgive Pressfield for this particular fallacy in his logic because the rest of the book is fantastic.

The book is written in short chapters that have been laid out in easy to read bits.  It is a book that can be read in an afternoon.

Resistance

Resistance is portrayed as an invisible force that arises from within oneself.  It is never directly defined.  This is because Resistance manifests itself in different forms in different people.  Procrastination, fear, hedonism in excess, and substance abuse are all forms of Resistance.

Resistance can only be felt; it can not be directly pointed to.  It shows its face only when there is an important task at hand.

As a corollary, if Resistance is not felt when attempting a feat, then that task is truly not important.

Combating Resistance

Turning professional is the solution that is offered to combating Resistance.  A pro commits fully to her craft.  She is able to disassociate her ego from her work.  This allows her to ignore criticism while exercising her craft.

An artist focuses on ruthless execution.  Ruthless execution is the best way to combat Resistance.

Beyond Resistance

Pressfield has written a number of novels detailing Greek history.  It is no wonder that he introduces the concept of the Muses to move beyond Resistance.  In Greek mythology, the Muses are the nine daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne, the goddess of memory.  The Muses are thought to inspire great art.

An artist must reap inspiration from somewhere.  Pressfield uses the Muses as a label or placeholder for this inspiration.  The important point is that an artist must acquire inspiration from a divine source to create great art.

The job of the artist is to define what divine means for herself.  The best way for an artist to do this is to put her head down and work on her craft every single day.

The iPhone SDK has been updated at a blistering pace and the documentation has not kept up with the API changes as quick as it could be.  Some of the information from Apple is inconsistent or incomplete.

Why do you have to create a Cocoa Touch application?

It’s not really possible to have command-line applications on the iPhone.  So, you need to have some sort of view that can talk to the window manager on the iPhone.

What’s a XIB file?

XIB stands for XCode Interface Builder.  It is the filetype that is spit out by the Interface Builder application.

http://developer.apple.com/tools/interfacebuilder.html

NIB stands for NextStep Interface Builder.  It is the legacy filetype and name.  Back in the day, when Steve was banished from Apple, he started a company called NeXT.  It was eventually purchased by Apple.  But a ton of work on Mac OS X, Cocoa, Objective-C came from NeXT.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeXT

What’s up with all of this Objective-C stuff?

The best cheat sheet I’ve seen for Objective-C is here:

http://developer.apple.com/iphone/gettingstarted/docs/objectivecprimer.action

You need to be logged in as a registered Apple Developer to access that page.

The general rule is that if you see an @ sign, it is a directive to the compiler.  If you see lines of code wrapped in square brackets, [...], then it is a message to a Objective-C object.

What’s a framework?

A framework is kind of like a class library in the Java sense.  Here is the Framework Programming Guide:

http://developer.apple.com/documentation/MacOSX/Conceptual/BPFrameworks/Frameworks.html

Whenever you have a question about a high-level concept, you can search for the accompanying guide here:

http://developer.apple.com/documentation/DeveloperTools/Xcode-date.html 

Why do class names start with ‘NS’?

NS stands for NeXTSTEP.  Objective-C doesn’t have namespaces, so classes in frameworks get prefixes.

Newer frameworks get CF for Core Framework, CA for Core Audio, CM for Core Media, etc.