“A great leap in the dark” — Thomas Hobbs
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Fraction: Does not recognize selector forward::
If you’re crazy like me you love reading really good primers on programming. Not just to learn about a particular language but to enjoy well written technical prose. (Yeah, I said I was crazy). Yesterday, I started reading Stephen Kochan’s classic Programming in Objective-C (original edition), which was published in 2003. What I like about…
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My Life in Playlists: Delran High School 1976 to 1979
Too much has been written about High School, that American institution of adolescence, yearning, and despair. And so I’ll let the music tell most of the story. But to set the stage: I started 9th grade in the fall that followed the Bicentennial celebration of my nation’s birth; I ran with a prototype of the…
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Hey It’s Easier Than You Think (Xcode 4 and Subversion)
I love how the new Xcode 4 shows you code changes side-by-side with it’s version editor view. But I had a little problem. I’m a subversion fan. Yes, I know, totally not cool. I keep this flaw a secret and I don’t force my preference on my co-workers nor do I tweet about it. I’m…
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Don’t Cry For Me Ubuntu (Cry for Sata 6G)
Apparently Ubuntu is not for me 🙁 I have have this commodity PC that I snapped together to play Windows games. (Gaming is about all that Windows is good for these days.) So I though I would install Ubuntu and find some other fun things to do besides killing trolls and jumping through portals. Every…
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Cocos2d Tip#3: Making Your iPhone Game Fast
My first iPhone game, that might actually make it to the App Store, is just about done. (Not done done but almost ready for testing and tweaking.) With the idea that other people beside me might actually play my game I’ve started to do a very dangerous and high risk activity: Optimization! The all the…
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Cocos2d Tip #2: Using CCTimer in Your iPhone Game
If you’re writing almost any type of game, from a puzzler to a FPS to an RTS, tracking time is critical element of the game play. (Except for Angry Birds. You can ponder an Angry Birds level until your iPhone battery runs dry without penalty.) Cocos2d-iPhone provides several means for tracking time in your game…
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Objective-C Memory Management For Newbies
Below you will find a list of memory management rules that will make your Coco2d game coding experience easier and your games less buggy. But before you dive in please read the caveats below: These rules are based on several sources written by engineers with much more experienced than me in Objective-C and Cocos2D development.…
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Cocos2d Tip #1: Changing a Sprite’s Image Simply
I’m writing an iPhone game using the Cocos2d-iPhone framework. It’s been smooth sailing except for one little detail: I want a sprite to change it’s image based on a touch. I think the problem is that there are a dozen ways to do this in Cocos2d. I wanted to find the simplest way to do…
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I Bought A New MacBook Pro and Didn’t Pay an Arm and Leg!
Apple had a sale over the Thanksgiving weekend. The savings we’re exactly in Crazy Edie territory but $101 off a new MacBook Pro just about covers the tax (in NJ). My last MBP has been sitting in pieces on the bookshelf behind my desk at home. I bought it in 2008 and two years of…
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The Three Laws of Agile Process
As early as 2007 Agile practitioners, or at least people who blog about Agile, began to observe that we live in a post-agile world. I’m not sure what means but Agile is a conversation about the best way to manage the software development process that has been going on for a long time. Has it…
Got any book recommendations?