Year: 2013

Categories
Fun iPhone app

iTunes, iCloud, Dropbox, wd 2go

Reading Time: < 1 minute

Last Updated on August 29, 2013 by omaha

Krugman, the Nobel economics laureate recently penned an article basically saying Apple is no good. I think he has one valid point on iTunes and the relatively closeness of Apple ecosystem. This reminds me of one thing, the cloud storage for consumers. Apple has this iCloud going for a few years, it can be used to back up iDevices (photos, videos, documents, etc.), but not as flexible as Dropbox (or Box.net, and many others), both Apple and Dropbox has the subscription plan, for iCloud, it’s $20 for 10Gb additional (5Gb is free) per year, and for Dropbox, it’s $10 for 500 GB per month (2Gb is free, and there are other ways to earn free storage).

Then I came across this wd 2go, it is probably the cheapest (if we ignore the electricity, and bandwidth cost), basically it’s free with the WD My Book Live purchase. My Book Live costs about $129. There is no recurring fees. I have not got this one yet, but I’m thinking about it as I have 2 iPhones’ worth of pictures/videos, and need to store it someway. Was wondering if I could just transfer from iTunes to the WD My Book drive.

While I went through all these, what’s my point? Personally I think the openness rankings of those 3, from most close to open: iTunes/iCloud, Dropbox, wd 2go. Of course I understand one can argue security wise, the ranking might be different 🙂

Categories
Fun

People are more important

Reading Time: < 1 minute

Last Updated on August 6, 2013 by omaha

Was at a friend’s house last night, watching the July 4th fireworks display at his house, as the house has a perfect view. We talked about things since we have not seen each other for a while. When asked by a friend what is the things gave me impressions on my first employer (I worked there for 8 years), I thought about it, and said “people”. Yes it was the people in Unigraphics Solutions (UGS, EDS PLM Solutions, and last Siemens PLM Software) help me jump started my career, and you all know who I meant. I still keep in touch with some of them.

The paragraph above was written about a month ago. This past Saturday I happened to bump into my old colleague at local license office. I knew he changed job couple times in recent years, after both of us left the company (me in 2008, him in 2009). He told me some unpleasant development in the company lately: downsizing, layoff etc. I know at this time my capability is fairly limited, but my thoughts and prayers are with my former coworkers.

Yes, human beings are always the most important.

Categories
Uncategorized

How it all got started?

Reading Time: < 1 minute

Last Updated on July 30, 2013 by majorxu

A few years ago, when I was a Java developer with a focus on JSF front end, one of my task is the paging of many pages of data, using Richfaces. Like many open source framework, Richfaces is a powerful tool, but it has its flaws (or limitations) if we don’t implement it carefully.

Here is one question I had at the time, and I answered by myself.

Of course, the real pain is when I tried to add and delete an entry (a row), and which causes the total number of pages to change, it just could not get the page number right 🙁

I have left the client since, but I have not got away with the data grid and data table. The very first iOS project I worked at my next employer involves mimic the Excel spreadsheet on iPad, the data grid is the center piece of all this because it will be used to input data, replacing the paper process. The other piece is to hook up with database (via web service) so that we eliminate the paper process completely.

Categories
Fun

Two jokes

Reading Time: < 1 minute

Last Updated on July 28, 2013 by omaha

From CocoaChina.

一、
一个人坐在热气球上飞行，突然发现自己迷路了。他降低高度，发现下面有个人。他把气球降的更低，大声向下面的人问路，“请问，你能告诉我我在哪吗？”

下面的人说：“当然，你在一个热气球上，距离地面30英尺高。”

“你一定是个搞技术的，”热气球里的人说。

“没错”这人回答道。“你怎么知道的？”

“很简单，”热气球里的人说，“所有你告诉我的东西在技术上都是正确的，但对我一点用处也没有。”

下面的人回复说，“你一定是个项目经理。”

“没错，”热气球里的人说，“你怎么知道的？”

“很简单”，下面的人说，“你经常找不到北，或者不知道该去哪，你希望别人能够帮助你。在遇到我之前你也是这样，但现在是我犯了个错误。”

二、
从前，有一牧羊人，他在一条荒废的公路边照看他的羊群。突然，路上一辆崭新的保时捷嘎然来了一个急刹车。车主，一个穿着阿曼尼的西装，Cerutti的鞋子，带着Ray-Ban太阳镜，TAG-Heuer腕表，系着一条范思哲领带的年轻人走了出来，问牧羊人：“如果我能告诉你这里一共有多少只羊，你能给我一只吗？”

牧羊人看看这个年轻人，然后又看看他那成群的在牧场上吃草的羊，说：“行。”

年轻人停好他的车，用笔记本连上无线网络，接入美国宇航局的服务，用GPS扫描地面，然后进入数据库，导出60张填满了算法数据和校验数据表的Excel，然后用他的高科技的微型打印机打印出一份150页的报告。他转过头来对牧羊人说：“你不多不少一共有1586只羊。”

牧羊人非常高兴，说，“非常正确，你可以拿走一只羊。”

年轻人选了一只，放进保时捷的后备箱。牧羊人看着他，问：“如果我能猜出你的职业，你能把后备箱里的那只动物还给我吗？”

年轻人回答：“当然，为什么不呢？”

牧羊人：“你是一个IT顾问。”

年轻人：“你怎么知道的？”

牧羊人：“非常简单。首先，你不请自来。第二，你让我花钱来换取我已经知道的事情，三，你根本不知道我是干什么的…现在你能把那只狗还给我了吗？”

Categories
iOS

The modified GMGridViewDemo

Reading Time: < 1 minute

Last Updated on July 27, 2013 by majorxu

I added the 3rd tab has the excel like data table, the screen shot shown below. I can provide the source code if needed. Just email me at minjie dot xu AT gmail dot com

spreadsheet on iPad

Categories
iOS

Announcing iDataGrid ~ a place dedicated to data grid table on iOS

Reading Time: < 1 minute

Last Updated on July 25, 2013 by majorxu

A little over a year ago, I started working full time as iOS developer for a mining company. One of the first projects is create spreadsheet like application on iPad. At that time there is no UICollectionView, and I found GMGridView to be interesting. I did look at an existing product called iOS Data Grid Table but there are two limitations which prevents me from using it: 1) It displays the values only (read only); 2) Perhaps more important, at that time I don’t recall it includes source code. So I ends up creating my own spreadsheet like tables based on GMGridView. I also read the nice work done by Tom Thompson. Of course that time my knowledge on UITextField (and UITableView for that matter) is not very good, and I did not understand all good work he did. I did used the UIPicker in my project, as it helps the user input data in many cases (simplify/ease input, reduce validation), I believe I borrow some idea from RayWenderlich’s tutorial too (UIPopupController and UIPicker).

A year and half later, when I took another look at this thing, I found at least four new things which are interesting, the shinobi controls (commerical), the MDSpeadView (looks like read only, github, open source), nucliOS (by Infragistics, commercial) and UICollectionView (Apple iOS native, tutorial by RayWenderlich.com)

Categories
Uncategorized

Hello world!

Reading Time: < 1 minute

Last Updated on July 25, 2013 by major_xu@yahoo.com

Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!

Categories
iPhone app

iOS training classes in St. Louis area

Reading Time: < 1 minute

Last Updated on July 27, 2013 by stlplace

Disclaimer: not including any commercial providers here, as they are usually more expensive. With today’s online learning resources (raywenderlich.com tutorial, stackoverflow to say a few), it’s fairly straightforward for an experienced developer to pick up Objective C and UIKit, etc. I think the value of classes is mostly from interaction with instructors, and do some real life projects.

wustl

slu

umsl

St. Charles Community College

Last but not least, the St. Louis iOS group led by Brian Coyner. The format is different from the training class, but it’s a good place to hang out with fellow iOS developers in the area. For that matter, there is a mobile dev group with an emphasis on Android (led by Heath Borders) as well.

Categories
iPhone app

iOS 7 articles

Reading Time: < 1 minute

Last Updated on July 24, 2013 by stlplace

http://mattgemmell.com/2013/06/12/ios-7/

http://blog.mengto.com/ios-7-transition-flat/

http://designmodo.com/flat-design-principles/

http://www.marco.org/2013/06/27/ios7-as-defense

http://whoo.ps/2013/05/12/flat-design-is-great-for-mediocre-designers-like-me

Categories
iPhone app

5 ways to do the callbacks in objective C and iOS dev

Reading Time: < 1 minute

Last Updated on June 29, 2013 by stlplace

1. Selector
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3482344/what-actually-is-a-selector

An example
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10758926/add-selector-to-uibutton
[button addTarget:yourObject action:@selector(yourMethod:) forControlEvents:UIControlEventTouchUpInside];

2. NSNotifications
In a way (and in syntax too) it’s similar to Selector, but used in different settings.

example here
http://www.cocoanetics.com/2009/08/love-to-be-notified/

3. Delegate methods
e.g., UIAlert view, UITextField delegate

customized method (example)
http://www.raywenderlich.com/29474/ipad-for-iphone-developers-101-in-ios-6-custom-input-view-tutorial

4. Blocks
https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#featuredarticles/BuildingWithBlocks/_index.html

example
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7180552/implementing-a-method-taking-a-block-to-use-as-callback

5. GCD
My favorite example here.
http://www.fieryrobot.com/blog/2010/07/10/a-watchdog-timer-in-gcd/

Combinations of some of the above, e.g, blocks (GCD) with notification