February 2012
6 posts
3 tags
Design & Build a Small Business App: AQGridView →
A nice little tutorial here on the use of AQGridView on iOS 5.0.
5 tags
Readium Open Source Initiative Launched to... →
So here’s the Big News to which I’d earlier alluded. The IDPF has got together a who’s-who of people and companies in the eBook world to work on an open-source implementation of a reference ePub3 reading system and container library. And of course Kobo is putting a ton of weight behind it. Also, me: I’m going to be working on this project full-time here very shortly.
...
3 tags
"Downmarket Genre Fiction" is it?
So the astute Mr. Gemmell earlier today made note of a rather elitist-sounding article over at paidContent:UK. The author of that piece rather laments the fact that eBook consumption is led by ‘genre fiction’. You know— everything that most people read; something — *shudder* — classifiable. Science fiction. Romance. Crime. Horror. Fantasy. Historical.
…
So, is it just me, or does...
So there are Great Things afoot for ePub implementors. I have things being planned out nicely, and I should be able to make an official announcement & call for contributors in about a week, I think. Specifically anything about the frame layout model of WebKit/WebCore would be very useful to have in about a week’s time.
1 tag
I have a meeting tomorrow with a big-name company about helping to set up this ePub Author thing, following which I should be in a position to start getting a community process together and bringing people into the fold.
…so there’s that.
January 2012
6 posts
2 tags
More on ePub Author
In the few days since I suggested it there has been a lot of interest in pursuing the initiative. I’ve had contacts from a few companies looking to invest money, expertise, or people, and I’ve heard from a great many people who would love to see just such an application in the wild.
On Goals
I’ve been thinking more about what the aims and output should be. I see a few...
2 tags
ePub Author Coalition
So a few minutes ago I wrote:
I think there’s enough know-how in the industry outside of Apple to make a competitor
to iBooks Author, by which desktop publishing in the eBook age can be as limitless in
possibility as we can make it, yet not be restricted to a single target platform. I want to
hear from experienced OS X software engineers who are interested in tackling such a
project on...
4 tags
iBooks Author vs. ePub Author
OS X Programmers/Companies: Read This
So, yesterday Apple launched the new iBooks Author application for the Mac. It looks great, produces fantastic dynamic content, and more than one person assumed that it was outputting ePub3 files. However, that was not the case, as is extensively documented by Daniel Glazman (co-chairman of the WC3 CSS working group) on his blog:
A wysiwyg EPUB3...
3 tags
Stanford offering a free Online Human-Computer... →
nikf:
Consider me signed up.
…and what’s more, there’s courses on Cryptography, Natural Language Processing, and Machine Learning. I’ve just signed up the to NLP and Machine Learning, as they’re astonishingly useful in a project I’m working on right now. Not sure if I’ll be doing the coursework or just the read-along version, but dammit I want that stuff in...
December 2011
2 posts
A 3-Year-Old's Subtraction
Olivia: I've got three pierogies left, Tata.
Me: You had eight to begin with, so how many have you eaten?
Olivia: Three.
Me: No, how many did you eat, if you only have three left out of eight?
Olivia: Eight.
Me: But how many of those eight did you eat if there are three left?
Olivia: STOP TALKING.
4 tags
“Bottom-line: the EU thinks the “agency model” constitutes illegal price-fixing.”
– John Gruber of Daring Fireball, commenting on this story from CNNMoney.
I’d say the possible reason for targeting Apple in this case is that Apple is also a platform vendor upon which competing eBook retailers wish to build platforms, and indeed have done so, before Apple. Apple’s...
November 2011
1 post
1 tag
Me & my 3-year-old daughter
Olivia: Father, today we have to go to Chapters and get a big toy animal. A really huge one, like this [stretches her arms out wide], okay?
Me: Well, we shall have to ask Mama first. She's got the car today.
Olivia: That's okay, you can buy a new one if you like, then we can go to Chapters.
Me: I'm not sure about that… it costs a lot of money to buy a new car…
Olivia: Maybe you can look upstairs and find some money there, okay Tata?
Me: *cuteness overload*
October 2011
7 posts
“It is not always the job of people shouting outside impressive buildings to...”
– Thirteen Observations made by Lemony Snicket while watching Occupy Wall Street from a Discreet Distance | OccupyWriters.com
How to bring good design to a platform – Marco.org →
HELL. YES.
When I’ve had gripes about an employer or a client, it’s almost always been due to their not enforcing the values in this list.
2 tags
1 tag
I don't have a story
It’s been fascinating to read all the remembrances of Steve Jobs over the past couple of days, and all the inspiring eulogies written by those whose lives he had profoundly affected in some way.
As much as I’d love to, however, I don’t really have any stories like that. Obviously my career would likely not be anything like it is now, and I almost certainly wouldn’t have...
3 tags
The Spark
I got into computers at an early age. I suppose it was only natural— my father had been involved with computers and programming since university in the mid 60’s, and by the time I was about 6 or 7 he was working with programming enough that he had a computer at home, on which I wrote my first BASIC program at the age of 8 or 9. My first real exposure to the whole world of computers, however,...
4 tags
September 2011
1 post
2 tags
August 2011
5 posts
6 tags
Luminary: Using Omni frameworks in Xcode 4, redux →
monoceroi:
Xcode 4 has an awesome feature called implicit dependency finding (in the Edit Schemes sheet). That wreaks havoc, but only at some time. To allow Omni frameworks — namely, faux iOS frameworks — to build reliably and correctly, add the uninstalled products directory to the user header search paths…
Very, very useful. Building Omni frameworks in a plain Xcode project can be...
4 tags
“We are tired of being told we’re autistic idiots who need to be...”
– The Motherfucking Manifesto for Programming, Motherfuckers
Hat tip to Martin Pilkington via Twitter
4 tags
PSA: This is why non-developers shouldn't run iOS... →
Answer these two questions really quickly:
Are you a developer?
Are you running the iOS 5 beta?
If you answered no to the first question and yes to the second, then this post is meant for you. You are doing it wrong, and on behalf of everyone everywhere, please stop.
3 tags
July 2011
6 posts
3 tags
My Review of the Kobo App
Given the immense amount of vitriol in the iTunes Store reviews against Kobo’s “decision” to remove the store from our app, I posted a ‘review’ of my own, explaining the decision. I felt this was about the only way I could let people know that we haven’t just decided, capriciously, to yank features from the app. It’s appeared on the Canadian store, but...
3 tags
“Aside from not having any links to an e-bookstore, you can’t even mention...”
– Kobo’s Michael Serbinis tells C|Net News about the restrictions placed on the Kobo app by Apple’s new rules.
2 tags
[Insert David Bowie Song Title Here]
I’ve hinted over the past couple of weeks that there were big changes coming to the House of Quatermain. This has been in the offing for about the same amount of time—barely two weeks—but those weeks have been full of uncertainty, for one reason or another. The main issue involved my close and extended families, but those have now been resolved, at least for the present.
So...
2 tags
Luminary: Springboard-style AQGridView rotation... →
monoceroi:
Use a subclass. HGGridView.m #import "HGGridView.h" @interface AQGridView (HGGridView_KnownPrivateStuff) - (void) handleGridViewBoundsChanged:(CGRect)oldBounds toNewBounds:(CGRect)bounds; @end @implementation HGGridView - (void) handleGridViewBoundsChanged:(CGRect)oldBounds...
You know, I was talking to Eliza Block of the Springboard team about this at WWDC last year. Never got...
3 tags
rentzsch.tumblr.com: The Dreaded Tappable Link →
rentzsch:
Dan Moren: Some developers have already begun to make the necessary changes. Last month, video-streaming provider Hulu updated its Hulu Plus iOS app, dropping a link that allowed users to visit the company’s website to sign up for a paid subscription. Others, such as Netflix, have exploited a loophole: The login screen for the video-streaming app tells users to “Visit netflix.com to...
June 2011
7 posts
3 tags
Apple to make TVs?
Well, they are if you believe CNN.
My thoughts? If anything, Apple would be most likely to release a large computer monitor with a built-in AppleTV. No regular TV inputs except an HDMI port, but essentially a regular monitor with an AppleTV built in.
I doubt they’d go after the home TV market, but they might think about an AppleTV-with-a-screen.
Anonymous asked: Can I buy the GridView?
Life at Kobo
Richard: So is this one of those things that only Jim can fix?
Me: Nah, it's pretty simple. It's just a wrapper around CFBitVector with a couple of custom methods for comparing different ranges, etc.
Richard: So it's definitely one of those things that only Jim can fix.
“You know what would be worse than having few women in the industry? Having lots...”
– Mike Lee
We should all know by now that diversity of any kind can’t be made to happen. We’ve made a decent start at removing the obstacles having the greatest effect, and that will mature in time.
The most important thing we have to do now is forget about the whole...
2 tags
Steve Jobs Confirms Discontinuation of iWeb in... →
Q. Dear Mr. Jobs,
Will I need to find an alternative website builder and someone to host my sites?
…
A. Yep.
Looks like this round goes to Karelia Software and Sandvox.
3 tags
Fun with Objective-C: Parsing Mathematical... →
funwithobjc:
A while ago, I was looking for a library to parse NSString objects as mathematical expressions. I wanted to be able to take a string like @"2+3*4" and get back 14. I found two easy ways to do this: GCMathParser and NSPredicate (of course!). GCMathParser is a library by Graham Cox for…
There’s so much awesome in this post that I think I just peed myself.
2 tags
“What Microsoft revealed this week is that they do not believe there is a post-PC...”
– Daring Fireball: Ice Water Enthusiast
That’s the crux of it alright, and it seems like it’s a Ballmer-inspired move. It certainly fits with the idea of using any new technology to build a levee around the existing Windows and Office user bases: by shipping less-capable a tablet-only OS...
May 2011
13 posts
1966 Prediction of the Home Computer →
“What the wife selects on her console will be paid for by the husband at his counterpart console.”
(via Jim Coudal, courtesy of Daring Fireball)
7 tags
Luminary: Custom modal UIViewController... →
monoceroi:
Just a snippet. Note: Don’t push or remove view controllers with non-opaque views. The underlying view of the parent view controller is removed. [CATransaction begin]; CATransition *transition = [CATransition animation];
transition.type = kCATransitionFade;
transition.duration = animated ? 0.5f...
Is it entirely inappropriate for me to say rowr at this point?
"Literally Unbelievable" →
nikf:
Single-purpose Tumblr Of The Week, it’s a blog dedicated to “Stories from The Onion as interpreted by Facebook”.
Scary, scary reading.
Oh … my … God. Really.
“My name is Alycea. I am five-years-old and I go to elementary school. I like...”
– Awesome kid interviewed at Meridian Hill Park. (via mayafish)
I like the cut of this kid’s jib.
2 tags
2 tags
“[Kobo CEO Michael] Serbinis … declined to comment on rumours that Apple...”
– $139 Kobo e-reader takes aim at Kindle - thestar.com
Er, the who to the what now?
3 tags
Regarding Objective-C & Copland 2010 →
Objective-C continues to evolve, and in directions I believe will be increasingly important in the future. I don’t believe we’re anywhere near the level of crisis that Apple hit with Classic Mac OS and I don’t believe that a total second-system re-write without a clear goal is the best prescription for the platform.
— Guy English (via Neven Mrgan)
Fantastic article debunking some of the...
Help Support Kobo and the Writers, NOT Apple! →
This Get Satisfaction poster seems like a nice chap.
4 tags
“According to Lauwaert, everone seems to be content with USB 3.0 so they...”
– Hewlett Packard Not Convinced of the Value of Thunderbolt - MacRumors.com
“640KB of RAM ought to be enough for anyone, right?”