New Version of iPhone SDK

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I apologize for getting off the topic, but I just got notified that there’s a new version of iPhone SDK. It now includes Interface Builder(?). The problem is, the servers are jammed and I can’t download it. Guess will have to wait…

BTW, if you need to brush up on Objective-C, get the documents from Apple site. The existing books are now outdated enough to cause annoyances.

March 27, 2008 | Filed Under Rant

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I Hate Daylight Savings Time!!!

I can’t think of anything that disrupts your life like the daylight savings time. First of all, it does NOT save energy. Not these days in age. It might have been beneficial during the times of Ben Franklin when the economy was based on agricultural output. I think we live in different age; people haven’t caught up to the time yet.

Anyways, it presents more problems for me as developer. Because DST is not universally accepted, I have to take DST into account when presenting the users with their local time. There’s a way to take educated guess using browser’s country setting. Then there’s a way to call it from client-side JavaScript using getTimeZoneOffset() method, but it has to be invoked by the client.

The solution? Have the users define it.

It sounds stupid, but this is probably the most accurate way to do it. Once you capture it, save it to the user’s information. However, be extremely careful not to store GMT + or - value. Yes, I have seen this. This is because cities like Phoenix, AZ and Tucson, AZ do not practice DST.

Once you have it, use tzinfo GEM. It’s extremely easy to use and best of all, it automatically adjusts to DST. All you have to do is pass the date/time stamp in UTC format and you’re good to go.

You can simply install it by sudo gem install tzinfo. Just make sure you install it on the server as even the tzinfo plugin requires it.

March 19, 2008 | Filed Under Rant, Tutorial

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Show Your Penguin When You Pay

usbank-card.jpgIt was awesome seeing the employees at Apple store when I paid with a credit card with Linux on it. I had this card since last year when it was revamped and it’s a way for me to contribute to FOSS. I really wish I had more time to contribute code, but that’s not happening until my daughters move out of the house and get married.

I urge everyone to get this card by going to http://www.linuxfund.org. Just one important caveat, do not carry any balances on this card as it has really high interest rate. I got one year 0% interest, but I really don’t carry any balances on my credit cards and it’s too easy to sucked in.

March 15, 2008 | Filed Under Rant

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Opera Browser

* This only applies to Ubuntu Linux!

I just love the speed of Opera browser. That’s the reason why I was hoping that it could replace buggy Firefox as the browser of my choice. I still use Firefox for Firebug, but hate the fact that it’s so unstable.

After playing with Opera for few days, I found out why it was so much faster than Firefox. It’s faster because nothing works! It just renders HTML and can’t do anything else we got used to such as audio, video, and Flash. It does have useless and irritating widgets feature. BUT, it’s fast if the bandwidth isn’t a factor.

However, it’s not all bad. I learned a valuable lesson from Opera. It dawned on me that in order to make my apps faster, all I have to do is start removing features and kill anything that consumes CPU and memory resource. That’s in line with keeping things simple.

March 1, 2008 | Filed Under Rant

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