Gus's weblog, adventures in Flying Meat.

Acorn 1.5

Link: 2009.01.03 11:01 AM

Acorn 1.5 is out, with it's awesome (imnsho) new brush designer. 1.5 also includes some other new features, little changes, and bug fixes. The release notes are available for the nitty-gritty.

Say Hello To Pulsar!

Link: 2009.01.02 01:01 PM

Congrats to Rogue Amoeba for releasing a "Public Preview" of Pulsar, an new app which will stream audio from XM and SIRIUS. You can read more about it on Paul's weblog post "Say Hello To Pulsar!".

International Year of Astronomy

Link: 2009.01.01 01:01 PM

International Year of Astronomy.

'''The International Year of Astronomy (IYA2009) will be a global celebration of astronomy and its contributions to society and culture, highlighted by the 400th anniversary of the first use of an astronomical telescope by Galileo Galilei.'''

As APOD says, "Peering through that small window, Galileo discovered that the Moon has craters, Venus has phases, Jupiter has moons, and Saturn has rings."

There's so much we have yet to discover.

Banksy Tours in Bethlehem

Link: 2009.01.01 01:01 PM

Michael Scott Moore in Jerusalem: Taking a 'Banksy Tour' in Bethlehem.

'''Well outside the town we stopped in front of a huge stencil of the "Flower Chucker," one of Banksy's best-known images, on the side of a building that was being demolished. It showed a masked Palestinian hurling a colorful bouquet of flowers. Ahmed said locals had agitated to keep the one wall intact because this image is the best-loved Banksy stencil in Bethlehem. It reminded locals of a bronze angel on a church nearby, he said, at Shepherd's Field. In fact, they called this stencil "The Angel."'''

Acorn 1.5 Beta

Link: 2008.12.27 04:12 PM

Acorn 1.5b1 is ready for testing, for those who like to test such things. You can download it from Flying Meat's latest builds page, and you can also read the beta release notes for the gory details.

The big new feature of 1.5 is a new brush tool, along with the "Brush Designer". The designer lets you make new brushes and change existing ones. It also provides its own little canvas to try out your brush, and as you tweak the settings it will dynamically update your last brush stroke. It's pretty fun to play with and you can find it under the Window menu, or by clicking the new brush selector.

Here's a little movie of me playing with it, using a Wacom tablet.

If you've got any feedback, use the built in reporting tool under the Help menu. And I'd appreciate any you've got!

The App Store Effect

Link: 2008.12.27 12:12 PM

Paul Kafasis: The App Store Effect.

'''Snapper-brand lawn mowers are expensive. Many Snapper products cost thousands of dollars, and even their simplest push mower is hundreds of dollars more than some competing products. Snapper lawn mowers are not cheap. What they are, however, is reliable. They're manufactured well and designed to last for years. Snapper believes that a premium-quality product can command a premium price. They've built their business around that idea, and that business has been around for nearly 120 years.'''

Paul illustrates the very reasons why I haven't written an iPhone app. It simply isn't worth my time. I would rather focus on my existing apps where I know I can charge a fair price and keep on making a decent wage.

(Yes, a VoodooPad reader is coming for the iPhone. Eventually. At some point.)

Update: David Barnard also has a couple of thought provoking posts: Financial Realities of the App Store, and App Store Pricing.

And in case anyone reads this wrong- I'm not whining. I'm just voicing my thoughts, concerns, and reasons why I'm taking a wait and see approach. One of my guiding points of indiehood is doing things conservatively, which obviously doesn't apply to everyone. And yes, it is possible to reasonably price an app and sell a ton of copies. (Go go magic OmniGroup!)

Update to the Update: Touch And Go Pricing from Daniel Jalkut is also required reading. And as usual, I agree with what he as to say. Especially the part about trial versions of software.

Mike Ash on ObjC Blocks

Link: 2008.12.26 11:12 AM

Mike Ash on ObjC Blocks.

OMG YES, I want blocks right now please k, thx.

… (dramatic pause) …

So what the heck is going on with Snow Leopard (aka, 10.6)? I have no idea, and I bet you don't either. The adoption rate for 10.5 was slower than the adoption rate for 10.4, and I'm worried that the upgrades to 10.6 are going to be dramatically lower than that. Why would anyone upgrade to 10.6? It doesn't have any new user-end features, and I'm afraid a Cocoa Finder means nothing to 99.9% of Mac users out there. Yes, there are lots of great new APIs for developlers… but why would anyone go through the trouble? Even if Apple gave it away for free? (HA!).

It's worrying, because I really want to develop for 10.6. But I can't if there's nobody running it to buy my products.

DC Web Stencil Kit

Link: 2008.12.22 03:12 PM

DC Web Stencil Kit. A browser chrome stencil kit + pad o' browser paper.

Wow that's awesome.

What have you tried?

Link: 2008.12.08 11:12 AM

Matt Legend Gemmell: What have you tried?

If you’re a developer and you’re about to ask another developer a technical question (on a forum, via email, on a chat channel, or in person), you’d better be ready to answer the question “What have you tried?”

Python 3.0

Link: 2008.12.03 09:12 PM

Python 3.0 has been released.

I love me some python.

One quick tip- if you are using smtplib to send utf-8 email, it won't work in Python 3 unless you are using email.mime.text, like so:

import smtplib
import email.mime.text

msg = email.mime.text.MIMEText("Ümlaut", _charset="UTF-8")

smtp = smtplib.SMTP('localhost')
smtp.sendmail('foo@foo.com', 'foo@fo.com', "Subject: This is your mail\n" + msg.as_string())
smtp.quit()

VoodooPad 4.0.2

Link: 2008.12.03 12:12 PM

VoodooPad 4.0.2 is out.

The release notes are available, but the short story is that a bunch of bugs are fixed, a couple of tiny new features are introduced, and some changes as well (such as in the WebDAV sync setup sheet).

The Incredible Convenience of Mathematica Image Processing

Link: 2008.12.02 11:12 AM

Wolfram Blog: The Incredible Convenience of Mathematica Image Processing.

As with many extremely nifty technologies, this feature of Mathematica had to wait a while before the killer app for it was discovered. And that killer app is image processing.

Mathematica 7 adds a suite of image processing functions from trivial to highly sophisticated. To apply them to images, you don’t need to use any form of import command or file name references. Just type the command you want to use, then drag and drop the image from your desktop or browser right into the input line.

Whoa. They are doing crazy stuff in Mathematica now.