Thoughts on present iOS development

6 September 2014 ⋅ 4 min read ⋅ iOS

Now the time for iOS has come and I’m putting together these notes basing on my recent experience with XCode 6 Beta, Beta 6 and Beta 7.

What I like about present Android development

6 September 2014 ⋅ 2 min read ⋅ android

Here are some thought on good things in Android development at its present state.

Constraints aware soft keyboard compensation on iOS

30 August 2014 ⋅ 3 min read ⋅ iOS

A while ago Apple introduced constraints-based layouts for Mac OS X and iOS user interface designs. It’s a huge and logical step forward from pixel-perfect fully manual laying out of things. The line of devices grows and creating all possible variations of interfaces has become a seriously tedious task.

One piece still missing from the puzzle is the set of tools for proper compensation for the soft keyboard. (It’s when the keyboard slides up from the bottom of the screen.) There’s a good chance that on a non-scrollable page your text fields at the bottom of it will become hidden by the keyboard. At this point you are on your own.

Working on Another Piece

16 October 2008 ⋅ 3 min read ⋅ music

Spent a good deal of yesterday’s evening working on another piece for my future live set. Several amusing ideas came in the process.

Analog sounding. Why they still continue to argue about the digital vs analog sound. Where the hell can you still hear it in the original analog form? Almost everything that is recorded these days is distributed on a digital media, which is bits and bytes in its essence. Having that, it all comes down to creating the “correct” analog-sounding sequence of bytes to reproduce that unique sound that you still want to hear on your iPod. Am I right or am I right? What about vinyl records? What about them? I love vinyl and have the collection of my own. Nothing can beat a great grind and especially in techno domain, but… from a producer standpoint, hey, you still need to get the sounds to someone who cuts the plates. Do you use magnetic tapes for that?

Music The Way I Do It

7 October 2008 ⋅ 6 min read ⋅ music

Several days ago I was totally bedazzled by Wesen’s openness and the willingness to share information when he laid down all tiniest details of his techno music construction workflow to the readers of his blog. He posted a carefully crafted PDF file with textual information accompanied by the set of loops, samples and sysex data ready for immediate action. You can take it all, play with it, feel it the way he felt and get all inspiration you can.

Upgrading to Mac OS X 10.5.5

19 September 2008 ⋅ 1 min read ⋅ mac

The upgrading to Mac OS X 10.5.5 went fine. Downloading and installing 340Mb update was a breeze and a matter of 20 minutes, but then. Immediately after the restart neither the keyboard nor the touch pad worked. Putting into sleep (it was late night and I postponed the investigation until morning) and getting back to normal unfreezed the keyboard and mouse pointer, but the touch pad button still didn’t work.

Another reboot helped and now everything is working. One thing I noticed though, it was accessing the hard drive a LOT more during the startup. Maybe it was just installing / indexing changed parts, who knows… we’ll see.

Remember

If you see oddities right after upgrading, don’t panic. The reboot may help.
If your mouse isn’t working,use the power button (hardware) to call the reboot / sleep / shutdown dialog and the “space” key to select the Reboot option.
If your keyboard isn’t working, try closing your laptop to sleep.

Monome: Built and Ready

17 September 2008 ⋅ 5 min read ⋅ music diy

Two weeks ago my dad has finished another project for me — Monome clone. I wanted it to be different from what’s offered by the respected authors in some ways, and it is obviously cheaper to build it than purchasing the read-made piece from them (of course if you have all necessary tools to carve nice rubber buttons, case, face plates etc).

The Light And The Land: Something you must see

15 September 2008 ⋅ 1 min read ⋅ personal photography

There’s something you should see, or better yet, experience. This morning I came across a fascinating photography project The Light And Land by Bruce Percy that touched me, and touched me deeply.

… image went missing over time …

My first acquaitance with his creative work was on the pages of his podcast which is essentially a smooth slideshow accompanied and narrated by Bruce himself. It was something that I haven’t seen for ages - thoughtful, well-planned, incredibly simple and up to the chase at the same time, that comes to you as a breeze, entertains and makes you tear off your daily routine. It makes you put your life into a different dimension and re-examinate the surrounding carefully, on your own pace.

For impatient, I’m giving the direct podcast link, but still… make sure to check the portfolio section. It’s whole new world that grabs your attention entirely. You will never see it with the same eyes again.

Promise.

CaterokBags.com are up and running

14 September 2008 ⋅ 1 min read ⋅ personal

I never told you guys, but my sweetheart has finally opened her first very own web-store - Caterok Bags. She is into practical and durable bags design and production, and now everyone can see and purchase them on the Net.

Here’s the front page:

… image went missing over time …

Here’s the product page:

… image went missing over time …

New items are added all the time. Kate spends days behind the drawing board designing simple, yet sparky things. Any feedback is greatly appreciated. If you feel that someone else can be interested, just let them know. Who knows, it could be right what they are looking for. Several times when people were looking for presents, they were excited to discover these cool looking pieces.

If nothing else, enjoy browsing through the collection!

Godaddy.com - the most irresponsible hosting

14 September 2008 ⋅ 2 min read ⋅ personal

The subject says it all. It’s fine to buy domains from them, but if you want to host your site or app, don’t do it. Everything that is more complex than a “Hello, world!” plain text page will be a trouble sooner or later. Even simple Wordpress with custom permalinks is almost impossible to configure. And if you are lucky, they will Upgrade your account to break it.

To make it worse, the moment it happens, you won’t be able to fix it because a simple change to disable their ugly File Not Found page is reported to take from 30 minutes to 24 hours, but really takes more than 3 days (it is still in progress, so I can’t give you the correct time). Maybe it’s because they are using Microsoft IIS? Probably.

Now check this cute “Page Not Found” message. What a style, don’t you find?

… image went missing over time …

To reiterate, DON’T DO IT. Save your time and nerve cells.