BrowserMetrics

I can't be like onelittleseedling and match his review of The DaVinci Code, but let me put my thoughts in.

It was long. An hour too long. I was bored by it. Plus, those Opus Dei guys are creepy. And it all became a search for the holy grail. In France. Don't they already have one?

Yet, Audrey Tautou was super cute in it. Even when she was angry. Or threatening. I felt like hugging her. I hope they don't blame the failure of the script on her. She deserves more cute roles in more american films.

2 of 5 stars.

Labels: movies, review

Final day is just half a day. What can be crammed in too my brain in this last 4 hours. It seems plenty already, but we have barely scratched the surface. We learn about NSTextView. The class I really need to get familiar with in order to get my program out and running.

We get a quick overview of some advanced Objective-C. It's a little bit too much to know about. It seems that the reference count is not handled by the root NSObject but shuttled off into a data structure that holds only those of retained by 2 or more objects. We also learn about the mysterious way key-value observing works. It seems that at runtime Objective-C creates a proxy object to handle the object observing. This is rather scary, but it works. And we also learn that even though your instance variables are supposedely protected, they can be accessed through key-value coding. Bye-bye protected. Hello globally available.

We also built a framework and a palette. Things that may not be useful now but in the future when I become a Cocoa master. It will be a long road. I must get started.

Anyway, we finished the class with lunch, put on the bus to the airport, and are ready to bring our new skills to our daily tasks. I still have to wait several hours before my flight. I am sitting in the atrium of the ATL airport. It is now 4:00PM, five hours before my flight. I am watching young christian missionaries gather to go spread the word of God wherever. They are like us pilgrims to Aaron's class. Cocoa addicts who must now evangelize the greatest that is Apple. Let me tell you about it when I ship my software.

Labels: objective-C, software development, travel log, vacation

Finally, I discussed my program with Aaron. Not as bad as I thought. Basically, he explained that I should have delegate of the NSTextView handle changes to NSAttributedString. How this may work is very confusing to me. I guess I'll have to start pushing the bits. Hopefully this will be working out very well. Soon. If I just only...

Anyway class is winding down and my mind is basically full of Cocoa goodness. Full to the brim. Today we did some OpenGL and more CoreData. I hate both of these. OpenGLis just plain confusing, and CoreData has not too much programming. CoreData looks to be there version of CORBA.

There has been a lot to learn. Frameworks are always so hard to pick up because of the depth and breadth of them. I program in C++ without any crutch like a framework, but that is the way we are going. Away from the raw and onto something more plastic and man made. It takes real programmers to create a framework. OS X has plenty. Even though it's summed up in Cocoa. there is a great deal to learn. Printing, graphics, sound, widgets. There's a lot to it. Frameworks is the next thing. This is the first chance I have gotten with one. It's been fun, but somewhat intimidating.

Also, staying here are a group of journalists taking a "Hostile environment" survival course. Most of the journalists are from CBC (Canada), CNN, NPR (?!) and are on there way to many hot spots of the world. We pass each other at meal times. They call us nerds. It's funny. We almost had a rumble: they wanted to challenge us to a volleyball game. We may have done it if it was virtual volleyball, but the game neveer came to be. It was stupid. I think we just wanted there chicks. The one from CNN was kind of cute (on air personality I think name of Jace something?).

Turns out Aaron is also a fellow Cane. He was there for a couple of years left when I got there and stayed in the same residential colleg as me. Rather interesting.

Tomorrow we wind down. I really need to get things working on my program.

Sleep.

Labels: objective-C, software development, travel log, vacation

Hump day and the time here is getting short. We've so far covered another seven chapters in the book plus and additional CoreData chapter that Aaron has put together. A lot of it today being keyboard input, mouse events, and custom views. Unfortunately, my application is not coming along as I don't have the heart to dive into the TextStorageLayer or discern the intricacies of NSTextContainers. I really wanted to learn the design of a GUI application, but I don't feel that I have gotten it so far. Do you put objects in their proper place through code or through design? I feel that writing an application like the way we've been learning will result in a massive re-write or re-factoring for a 2.0 version. This is a mystery. I need it solved.

Also, on the daily hike, we enjoyed a nice dip in the river out back. We froliced in the shallows enjoying the cool cascade of water after the hike. On each daily hike the mass of Big Nerds has been dwindling. Today, with the announcement of a swim after the hike, we had a wholesale bailout of about a almost half of our numbers, and even then it was only six of us who braved the river. I like doing these things. Swimming in a local place is always much fun. It feels like I had been there. There are no pictures because the batteries of my camera died.

I have finished "Spin." It has been a very good read. I hadn't read science fiction in a long time, but this book is as thrilling as any of the classics. It was a Hugo Award finalist. I'll lend it to you when I get back.

Sleep.

Labels: objective-C, software development, travel log, vacation

Another day. Another byte in the program. We've so far gone through another 5 chapters of Aaron's book. Will we get to the finish in time? There are another 20 or so chapters left and I haven't gotten to the last few during the time I tried his book. If we don't, I think I will be somewhat disappointed.

My fellow classmates are an interesting bunch. They are a geekiness that I did not know existed. They are a more worldly geek. They know lots of differing programming paradigms, because they come from various industries and worked on many different projects throughout there work. But it is a beautiful sight to see all these Macs pounding out code.

My TiBook is the grandfather in the place. Besides the ancient cube running as a server and a few of the Big Nerd Ranch's iMacs, everyone has a more recent Apple computer. Several Mac Book Pros are in the crowd. There rest are AlBooks. I even think that some of the iMacs are recent. Needless to say my compile time is definitely slower than the rest.

I did work on my project. It's not going so well. I have read some of his code, but I am still stuck on the design of a GUI program. My first attempt at it I hated. This time I am starting from the data structures up. GUI and desktop applications are a strange beast. You seem to be constrained by the layouut and functionality inherent in your GUI. It is what it is and it drives how the program can work.

One of the reasons for a programming vacation was to learn more about GUI and desktop application design. I feel that I have not yet reached that point. I had broached that subject with Aaron and he did bring it up in class ("start with the windows"), but it all seems wrong. I am trained as a software engineer. I don't think I can get the hang of this very well. Let's see about today.

We've been introduced to CoreData. It's rather neat. We first built up an application without CoreData. It used some bindings and NSArrayControllers but it took some time to code. The CoreData version started off with a model. Using ER notation we modeled the data of our application. Then we dragged and dropped our entity onto a window and voila, our application was done. Compile and link and it had the same functionality as our previous version.

We hiked in the woods again, but this time the humidity was down so it was not so bad. Again, I must complain about how out of shape I am. I feel this activity in my legs. Food was good today. Steak for dinner.

I am almost done reading "Spin." I should've brought another book. I had one at home but feared that I wouldn't get through this one. How wrong I was.

Sleep.

Labels: objective-C, software development, travel log, vacation

Up early for a vacation: 7:00 AM. I am so ready to do some programming. Breakfast was adequate. It's sausage, eggs, bacon, grits and a biscuit. Is grits a southern thing. It's not bad. It's edible.

Then it's off to start the programming. For those playing along, we did the first five chapters of Aaron's Cocoa Programming book. I've already did it, but the code is on my mini at home, so I miss all my programming tricks to do. I like Cocoa. Anyway the class so far has been an introduction to Cocoa. It's just what you can do with the tools and the framework. I have some experience.

I also asked Aaron about my application. He tells me it may be over my head. Whatever. How hard is programming? Not really hard. You just have to know how things are put together.

We also get food and lodging. The food so far is okay. Everything tastes good. The deserts though are awesome. I thought that I would lose some weight while I was here, but I am eating a lot and drinking plenty of soda. The accomodations are cool. It's at Banning Mills, a restored paper mill. I keep thinking that there are ghosts around here. It gets dark in the room, and some noises creep me out. I wonder if the ghosts will ever come around.

We also went for a hike. I am out of shape as I felt it going up a hill. This summer's bike riding will be brutal. Hopefully, when I get back, I'll be training and lose these extra pounds.

"Spin" has been a fun read. I am almost half way through it.

Sleep.

Labels: objective-C, software development, travel log, vacation

Arrived in Atlanta around 3:00 pm. Watched the luggage carousel revolve for 20 minutes before my bag finally fell off the conveyor. Met the nerds around 5 minutes later. It's just a bunch of guys, programmers and fellow Apple enthusiasts. After a ride in a rickety bus, we make it to the Historical Banning Mill. We mill about the place, eat dinner at 6:30, shoot some pool and go to back to our rooms around early. I end up reading my book, Robert Wilson's "Spin."

Sleep. Then onto several days of pure Cocoa pleasure.

Labels: objective-C, software development, travel log, vacation

I am now in Atlanta participating in a big nerd fest. I am learning some Cocoa. And this is the type of vaction you have when you're a geek.

Nowadays, you don't nee to come up with a good conspiracy theory to explain the fucked up nature of the country. Reality does just fine. Bring back Mulder and Scully. And be still my beating heart.

Poseidon

This film had no heart. It should've cranked up the camp factor, but tried to play it straight. Plus, it was confusing as to who was the Gene Hackman character, Josh Lucas or Kurt Russell. And both of them played their roles as if they were Ernest Borgnine. When you wish for Shelley Winters to save the day, you know you've reached rock bottom.

May this Titanic wreck of a movie sink to the depths from which it came.

2 of 5 stars

Labels: movies, review

Brick

This film felt like a Cohen brothers flick. When the car drives by the protagonist, I kept waiting for old guy to point at the character and give him a thumbs up a la Blood Simple. And the movie was straight up similar in plot to The Big Lebowski. In fact, I think that The Big Lebowski did a better detective story than Brick.

Overall, this film was trying to hard. You can see where it was being clever. The dialogue was hard to understand, not for the lingo, but because the mix was muddled. I never did get what he said in the end.

3 of 5 stars

Labels: movies, review

Halle Berry is spreading rumors of want to do Catwoman 2. It can only work if Pitof is going to direct.

Come on Apple. Release an intel desktop soon. Because these damn laptops are looking mighty inviting.

Labels: Apple, want

If you happen to peek at my Netflix queue, you'll see a majority of foreign films. And when you think foreign films, you think of French cinema, chinese action flicks, and somber swedish films. But not too often do you think of Indian films. I can't imagine why considering that Bollywood is the largest producer of movies in the world.

So, it is rather strange that I have yet to watch any movie from that country until now. I just finished watching Lagaan and was thoroughly pleased with the movie. It was a eye opener. And it was very enjoyable.

When I had opened the Netflix package and saw that it was a 4 hour epic. I was disheartened. When the film opened with what appears to be a love story plot, I was dreading the next three hours. I was wrong. And I am glad that I spent the previous two days to sit and watch the whole thing.

The story is convoluted. There was the love story. There was the plight of the downtrodden people plot. There was the forbidden love angle. There was the uprising of the people. There was the musical numbers. And there was cricket. Yes, cricket!

It was a mashup of many movies, yet it comes together to tell an amusing tale. There was the "Bad News Bears" theme where the ragtag team must come together and win. "Seven Samurai" echoed throughout the choosing of the team. I can't believe that the sports theme can be found in many countries. Brilliant.

Also, it is true about Bollywood with the singing. The movie doesn't get to a song until 25 minutes elapsed. I didn't think the musical numbers would appear and then, the whole village began to sing. It was funny and wonderful at the same time.

4 of 5 stars

Labels: movies, Netflix Queue, review

An American Haunting. The only thing scary about this flick was why I paid money to see it on the first night.

I wanted to be scared.

Except this wasn't the flick to do it. When the ghosts turn out to have been someone's imagination/projection, then it ruins all creepiness that could've been had from the film. An actual explanation turns the hokum into hokum. It's like the screenwriters had no conviction in their scary story.

Find something better.

1 of 5 stars

Labels: movies, review

Mission Impossible III. Where's the McGuffin? Where's the McGuffin? Where's the Rabbi.. McGuffin?

That is the movie in a nut shell.

While I went into the theatre hoping for some of that magical summer movie magic, this film did not deliver. It was more like the magic found on the boob tube. That can be the case since the director, JJ Abrams, was responsible for "Lost" and "Alias." Speaking of which, I had the distinct feeling that if they spent anymore time at the IMF headquarters, they'd find Sydney Bristow somewhere in the back.

A lot of the tropes, Abrams used was straight out of his television series. For example, the opening sequence harkens back to Alias's first episode. Whatever?!


2 of 5 stars

Labels: movies, review

I didn't do this last year, but today makes it two years since I started
up this blog. Now that there are readers, I hope they have the chance
to look through my archives to read all things BrowserMetrics.

Amanda Congdon does the daily RocketBoom, a video blog about nothing and everything in general.

I find her cute.

Get yourself down to the comic book store on Saturday to participate in the free comic book day.

Labels: comics, go there now

Is a movie about ghostly hauntings as scary as Tom Cruise spouting about Scientology? I don't know, but I am damn sure wanting to find out this weekend. Or when I get some free time. Definitely soon.

Based on true events that took place in Tennessee during the 1800s, An American Haunting tells the story of the only documented case in U.S. history (validated by the State of Tennessee) in which a spirit caused a person’s death. With over 20 books written on the subject, and a town that still lives in fear of the spiritës return, the story is terrifying.