iPhone Code #4: The Mac OS X keyboard Cheat Sheet

As mentioned earlier, iPhone applications can be developed only in the Mac OS X computers. Personally, having worked in Windows for more than a decade, I really found it hard to work on the Mac Computer. The change from Windows world to Mac world is a great challenge for me

So here is a list of some of the shortcuts used in Mac OS. I hope to keep extending this cheat sheet in the future. In case, if any of the important item had beem missed out, please do mention in in the comments section.

iPhone Code #3 : Hardware and Software Requirements

Here are the list of basic hardware and software requirements for developing an iPhone application:

1. A Mac Computer
This is the foremost requirement, because iPhone applications can be developed only in an Intel based Apple X OS computer. So you ll need a Mac Book or even a Mac Mini or any other Mac computer running the Leopard 10.5.4 or later version.

2. iPhone SDK
This is the software used to write, compile and run the iPhone applications. The iPhone SDK can be downloaded from the Apple's website after registering as a developer there. This software suite includes - the XCode IDE, the Interface Builder for iPhone , the iPhone Simulator and few more tools useful for the app development (More details about these software will be covered in forthcoming posts)

3. an iPhone
Well this is not a mandatory requirement - we can manage with the iPhone Simulator that comes as a part of the iPhone SDK. Anyways, having an iPhone (or even an iTouch) will be really useful to do some real case testing for the app (in slow network, etc)

Cars - the Top 5 close to my heart.....

Though I am not a perfect automobile fanatic, Cars have always been a fascinating thing to me, right from my childhood. Today, I was thinking about my favorite car models and here are the top 5 that immediately flashed inside my mind:


1. Maruti 800

Seeing Maruti 800 in this list might sound funny to few people, today. But to me cars meant Maruti 800s only during my school days. In the early 1990's only very few people in our town had cars and all of them were Maruti 800s. Then started my love for the Maruti cars - which is still the largest selling name plate in the Indian market.

At that age, All I wanted was to buy a Maruti 800 car, when I grow big. Something, that didn't happen till today :-(

2. Tata Indica

I started liking this car, when I first heard that all components for this Tata Indica were manufactured in India!!! I don't belong to the Swadesi group, but still I can't understand why this fact, made me like this car.

Moreover, personally I feel Tata Indica provides more interior space than any other hatchback cars available in India.


3. McLaren

The reason why I like this car, is indeed very funny to me. This is the car I liked the most in the computer game "Need for Speed"!!!!!

Even in that game, there were other cars with better performance(!!!) and designs, but still this was very close to my heart.

Hope I'll see at least one McLaren car in my lifetime.


4. Honda Civic

This is my latest crush. First time, I saw this gigantic car near a traffic signal in Chennai. It literally appeared like a ship to me then - I know this is too much - but thats what I felt then :-)

Later after reading/hearing more and more good things about this car, did increase my fascination about this model.

Hope I ll buy (or at least drive) an Honda Civic car in the future.



5. Toyota Fortuner

I like this car- just for one single reason - its Appearance!!!!

If the Honda Civic appeared like a ship to me, this SUV from Toyota, appears like a beast (especially a bison) to me. Once I had an opportunity to just sit in the driver seat of this Fortuner and phewww I have to agree this car is indeed a beast!!!

So whats the top 5 cars that come in your mind????

iPhone Code #2 : Where to Start????

When I started searching the internet to learn about the iPhone app development, as always it happens there were plenty of information with a very simple problem - I didn't know where to start from.

As I was glancing though the URLs, I found one interesting blog post from Dale Dietrich @ "iPhone App Development - Where to Start?" The title itself, explains it all. Dale has put down very useful information for a beginner in this post.

So, if you are beginner and don't know where to start the iPhone app development, go right here :

"iPhone App Development - Where to Start?"

iPhone Code #1: Hello (iPhone App Develpment) World!!!!

I am really happy the way, I have worked in the last 5+ years.

First for more than a year, I was coding in C/C++ and then for sometimes it was pure server side Java coding. Later for sometimes, I was putting my bugs in VBScripts and then it was again back to Java, but this time more focus was on the front-end involving JavaScript, Ajax, jQuery, etc.

and here comes the next in this list - iPhone application development!!!

So for sometimes, its going to be ..... hmmm whats that, objective-c? Cocoa?? xCode??? Whatever it is, I hope to have a wonderful time putting bugs in that little gadget.

I will be posting my iPhone coding experience, things I find interesting, etc here @ iPhone Code

Toy Story 3

In short - Toy Story 3 is an amazing movie. Entertainment guaranteed!!!

8.9 rating by the IMDB users (Toy Story 3 is at Top 6) says it all about the movie. If you would like to watch a funny movie and feel the kid within yourself - go watch Toy Story 3!!!

Few useful jQuery resources and links

Here are few links about jQuery, I found very useful to me:

1. jQuery Fundamentals by Rebecca Murphey - a very useful link/content for beginners wanting to learn jQuery

2. jQuery API Browser - another very useful searchable version of the API browser for jQuery

3. Visual jQuery - another very good resource with good search feature and an interactive UI .

VBScript to list all Windows Domain in your network

Today when cleaning some old unused folders in my computer, found few VB Scripts which I wrote few years back. I am planning to post them here, regularly. Hope these scripts will be useful for others.

-----

' This vbscript will list all the Windows Domain in the network - using the WinNT namespace

' author email : prathees dot r at gmail dot com

Set nameSpaceObject = GetObject("WinNT:")
For Each domainObject In nameSpaceObject
   WScript.Echo domainObject.Name
Next

-----

How to run the script:

1. Copy the above script to a file - say ListDomain.vbs

2. Execute the script using CScript program. Eg:

C:\> CSCRIPT ListDomain.vbs

and this too shall pass...

30th of June 2010, Wednesday - a day I will never ever forget in my life!!!

Our team got a call from an irate customer, who was angry that his data was missing - yes that was a very serious problem!!! Even before, we finished introducing ourselves in the phone call, he started yelling at us. His tone showed, how frustrated he was. If at all, that was a face-to-face conversation, I fear he would have certainly slapped us.

We promised to resolve the problem and convinced him saying we would give him a call in another 30 minutes, after looking into the log files. We searched this log file, that log file and all possible log files for his session, but nothing helped us.. When all these were happening, we forgot about that 30 minutes timeline - he called us after 45 minutes and the music started again.

Definitely, it was not our day :-(

The problem started at 8 pm IST and went on till the next day morning. The user (though he was from USA) was also awake after his day time - that showed how important that missing data was to him. At regular intervals, we called him or he called us.

Almost after 14 hours, the next day, we some how found the reason of the problem. It wasn't an application bug. It was because of a very silly mistake - both by the user and a usability problem on our side. Thankfully, the user was so kind enough to understand what really happened and also realized what mistake he did. We promised to address that usability in our next update.

and what happened next, was a sweet surprise to us all. He started praising us and promised to recommend our software to his clients :-) We are also happy that we learned, a new way to look into similar problems in the future.


The show started smoothly, had lots of tensions/thrills/pain or what ever you can call them as and finally had a very happy ending. What seemed like an end of life a 10 hours ago, turned out to be a good learning for life time at the end.

and we know even this shall pass by...