Have a look.

However, a couple of them responded almost instantaneously. One being @SteveStreza and the other being @mattgemmell.

The tweet itself was asking about what their magic UIAnimation length was. Steve replied 0.3 seconds and Matt replied 0.2. It was up to me on what to decide was my magic number (I had previously been using 0.4 seconds) and I chose to give Steve’s a shot first. The motion was fluid and almost in tie with my swipe down, but Matt’s suggestion was a lot more “choppy” and instantaneous, it wasn’t pretty in other words.
I must mention that Matt did state that he didn’t look at the code itself and did only guess 0.2 as a spur of the moment answer to my question.

I still haven’t played with UIAnimations enough within blocks to make the jump so unfortunately for me (it makes my code messy and I hate messy code with a passion) I’m still building them the old school way like below. I may make the jump soon though and play around with the block style of UIAnimations within the near future.

[UIView beginAnimations:nil context:nil];
[UIView setAnimationDuration:0.3];
// Change the frame of what you want to make animate.
[UIView commitAnimations];


Until then, 0.3 seconds is the magic number for a UIAnimation duration.

Naming her after the first game I played on the Nintendo 64, I think you can guess what it was called, I have fallen in love with a car. Obviously not the same sort of love I have for my misses, but it is a bond between car and owner. Zelda is a 1303 (otherwise known as an L bug) and was born in 1973. Her McPherson strut front end makes it a very sought after car for those Germanlook beetles. Zelda however, has seen a few different changes over the past seven or so months…

Originally looking like something out of the mid 80′s, she had been fitted with a (Holden) Torana kit that was available in the 80′s from somewhere in Australia.

Her and I have gone through a lot, she is a bit of a lemon and I continue to fix things that don’t need to be fixed. Typical case of “catching the bug”. As most people say, Beetle’s are more addictive than drugs. But back to it, Zelda had a bit of a leak and that needed to be fixed. Unfortunately, due to the bulbos front lid and the new style of dash that was installed in the 1303 there was a need for what is called an airbox. This is underneath the front lid, and unfortunately it was a massive design flaw from VW. Thankfully, with a bit of initiative, I was able to fix this leak and restore Zelda to a nice daily driver.

Then came the sound system. What daily driver car of a seventeen year old doesn’t have a sound system, regardless of the age of the car? It happened and bloody hell it is a good sound system. Solely two speakers from JVC and a Fusion Active subwoofer, it is one of the loudest sound systems within our group, in a bug!

But of course, that caused more problems. There was more strain put on the old 1500 single port (supposed to be a 1600 dual port engine in this model but has obviously changed at some period of her life) as it only had a generator and not an alternator. So that was the next upgrade that I did to her.

I then took off the rear bumper as that was a bit dicky. I drove her around without a rear bumper up until the other week. But that is jumping ahead, next came the ripping off of the exterior chrome trim. That was quite fun to tell you the truth, filling in the holes and then spraying some primer onto her. Making it look like someone had put toothpaste down the side.

She then had a ventless decklid on for a tiny second.

She then had a popped vent decklid on for a bit too. About a day and a half.

And then it happened. Zelda died for about three weeks and I had given up hope. But then I got my act into gear and fixed her. Then, I got her all looking original and very pretty indeed.

But then I had to leave her. That previous photo is one of the last ones I was able to take before heading overseas. I’m excited for when I get back home as I’ve got more in store for Zelda. She’s got some new wheels coming down and some new adjustable coil overs. I wanted to get some air bags for her but it isn’t as simple to do so on a 1303, due to the McPherson strut front end.

After spending two days, three nights, in Singapore and a massive flight over to London, we finally arrived to be thrown into a massive immigration line. I took a heap of photos in Singapore, with the new Nikon D3100 that I bought, so they’ll be popping up every now and then when I finally sit down and sort them. Everything has been rushrushrush lately, have done a lot of sightseeing and just haven’t stopped yet, been working as well, reading the Steve Jobs biography and taking lots of photos.

I have to admit though, although we’re here for eight days the place is a little, well, little. I have to sleep on the couch which is kinda balls, but it’ll do for now. After those eight days we head to Paris on the EuroStar which will also be an adventure, so to speak.

The only issue is that I have to go from WiFi spot to WiFi spot to keep connected to texting the misses. It sucks quite a bit, but I think we’re coping. Now the next issue is time differences, but I’m pretty sure we’ll get through it…

I just want to be home.

Well, you have definitely come to the right place!
There are multiple versions that are currently floating around, but want the latest one?

Just download it from here.
It is, for the last time, only a Mac application. I’m pretty sure there are Windows applications that achieve the same thing, but seriously don’t understand why people download it and expect it to work on a Windows machine even though it is clearly a Mac application.

Anyway, good luck in whatever you are using RecBoot for and if you need a hand, I’ll try and lend a hand.

Using NSNotificationCenter, you can actually do some very cool stuff.
Take for example, you’re doing a web service request and what it returns, determines the next screen that you want to show in your iPhone application.

What you’d want to do is setup some observers on the view that starts the request. This is quite easy. We’ll setup two NSNotificationCenter observers, one for a fail and one for a success. I usually do this in the initWithNibName:(NSString *)nibNameOrNil bundle:(NSBundle *)nibBundleOrNil function.

- (id)initWithNibName:(NSString *)nibNameOrNil bundle:(NSBundle *)nibBundleOrNil
{
    self = [super initWithNibName:nibNameOrNil bundle:nibBundleOrNil];
    if (self) {
        // Custom initialization
        self.navigationItem.title = @"NSNotificationCenter Demo";
        [[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] addObserver:self
                                                 selector:@selector(success:)
                                                     name:@"webServiceSuccess"
                                                   object:nil];

        [[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] addObserver:self
                                                 selector:@selector(fail:)
                                                     name:@"webServiceFail"
                                                   object:nil];
    }
    return self;
}

The next thing we want to do is setup the functions that the observers point too. Basically create two new functions and determine what you want them to do. In this case, I’ll show a UIAlertView.

- (void)success:(NSNotification *)notification {
UIAlertView *alert = [[UIAlertView alloc] initWithTitle:@"Notification"
                                                        message:@"We received a success notification!"
                                                       delegate:self
                                              cancelButtonTitle:@"Okay"
                                              otherButtonTitles:nil];

[alert show];
[alert release];
}

Now, obviously the above code is very similar to the code we’d use for the failure UIAlertView so I’m not going to document that as thoroughly. Basically just create another function with the correct name that you have set in the selector for the NSNotificationCenter observer.

Don’t forget, in your – (void)dealloc method, make sure you remove the UIViewController’s observers!

- (void)dealloc {
[[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] removeObserver:self];
[super dealloc];
}

I usually do all my web service requests through a custom NSObject that I setup with methods and so forth. For the sake of this, I’m going to assume you know how to setup connections and send requests to a web service. When you get a response, you’ll want to add in the following so that the NSNotificationCenter observers we just set up get called.

If the return of the request was successful, you’ll want to add this to the function that you determine whether or not the actual request was a success.

[[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] postNotificationName:@"webServiceSuccess" object:nil];

Similarily, in the error response you’ll want to add this.

[[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] postNotificationName:@"webServiceFail" object:nil];

And there you have it, a quick run through on the ways to use NSNotificationCenter when coupled with web service requests and responses. Hopefully this helps someone out there!

It basically lists all the commonly used iPhone/iPad Application URL Schemes.
You can check the website out here.

Keep an eye on this space for more helpful information and tutorials!

I don’t understand what the massive hoopla is about when it comes to drinking alcohol, partying hard and getting with as many girls as possible. It just doesn’t make sense. People play games that are disgusting, people “pick up chicks” for a one night stand. I don’t get it.

Unfortunately I tend to have a few mates that actually are like this, every weekend. One in particular can be a bit of a handful and no doubt, come next Monday/Tuesday there will be a million stories about what he did over this weekend. In some ways it makes me sick, in some ways I just laugh at his stupidity. I wish he could find himself someone that he could care for and love.

To me, I’ve found the one person I want to spend the rest of my life with. Yeah, I’m only seventeen, but seriously, after spending the last four (almost) years with my girlfriend, I can truly say that I do love her. I love her with my whole being, and I don’t think there is anything that could tear us apart. I have already promised her that I will marry her one day, and it is definitely a promise that I am not going to break. It is something that we both want, albeit I think sometimes I want it a little more than she does, but then again I still know that when it comes to it, we’re both going to be together for a long time yet.

Anyway, back to the main issue. This weekend is “Schoolies”, a annual celebration for teenagers that have finished their final year of school here in Australia. They party hard, get absolutely fucked up and then return to normal lives after. But for some people it is completely different. I have heard way too many stories about schoolies trips going wrong, people ending up pregnant, in jail, all sorts of things. Over dosing on drugs is also a large one, even getting stomachs pumped at the local hospital is seen as a funny thing when everyone is absolutely pissed out of their mind.

I don’t feel the need to experience any of that. At eighteenths that I have gone too, a couple of Red Bull’s help me get through the night. Most of the time I am there to drive my drunk mates home or back to mine so they can crash.

I’m not a drinker, I’m nothing but a programmer. This is where I’ll let off steam, post great little coding snippets and share my adventures across Europe. Which is another story altogether.