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November 16, 2012

Adventures in Unity

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Constructing our next internal video game (Whack Attack) in the Unity software system has been a joyful experience and a return to my roots as a video game programmer. Instead of dealing with tables and lists for an enterprise web application, I find myself programming mole AI and hit reactions. As an internal project, the few hours a week I get to spend making cartoon mammals run around my phone are a welcome diversion, and makes my return to client work that much more satisfying.

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November 9, 2012

Testing UI in iOS….and some Gotchas

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Most times in your application  a solid unit test trumps testing your UI. But that’s no reason to neglect your UI from having to endure the same rigorous testing you give your models. “But I don’t have time to sit around and tap every part of my application.”, you say. Enter Automation…

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November 6, 2012

Turn Your Macbook into a Blender

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A decade or so ago the idea of running a full 3D software suite on a mac laptop was pretty much unheard of. Processor speed and memory were the greatest obstacles, and the aggregate of 3D software for the Macintosh platform was rather limited, as well as expensive.

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November 5, 2012

Unit vs. Acceptance Testing (Part 1)

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You don’t know the power of Test Driven Development

As a recent convert to Test Driven Development (or TDD as his friends call him), I was surprised to hear that there were in fact 2 kinds of developer driven testing.  The standard one that everyone knows of is unit testing:  writing little testXXX methods that test a single publicly exposed method.  But the lesser known – but just as important – are acceptance tests:  tests which verify that  a group of classes working together properly fulfill some functionality.

So this first post will take a closer look at the first type of testing, unit tests, and will go into the value it provides to you as a developer.

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November 2, 2012

A Lightweight jQuery Notification Bar

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Notifying users with quick messages and alerts in a website is one of the most recurring needs of a web developer.
Every time I need to implement something like that, I start looking around the web hoping to find some Javascript/jQuery plugin that would do the work for me.
The good thing is that a lot of people have already faced this problem.
The bad thing is that the results of the search are way too many and often very confusing.
Chances are that most of the time, you don’t really need a 3MB-super-fancy-hyper-customizable-highly-priced plugin, but you just want something that works, and that you can quickly incorporate into your code.

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October 31, 2012

Basic AppEngine Asynchronous Tasks

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Google’s AppEngine is a very useful platform in the way it allows developers to have an application server up and running within 10 minutes.
It leverages the Google infrastructure, too, offering high speed, high capacity, etc.

Wow (Awesome!)

However (Hmm), AE does not allow for the usual multi-threading mechanisms…

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October 15, 2012

Customizing the Facebook iOS SDK FBFriendPickerViewController; Adding a Search Bar

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As Facebook integration into iOS comes along, it feels like all applications must integrate social features. Having the ability to review your Facebook friends list within your app is one of the most important social features. Sharing the app or posts from within the app with friends is one of the best ways to virally spread the product among several people.

One of my recent projects required upgrading the Facebook SDK to the latest version, 3.1. It was using Version 2.0.

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October 9, 2012

Zend DB Config.ini for Oracle DB options

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Anyone who has worked much with the Zend framework much will be familiar with the framework’s reliance on config files. I recently worked on a project where I needed to set some database configurations in a Zend config file and it took me some time to figure out the correct syntax for them. 

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September 20, 2012

How to Tell When a Meeting is Pointless

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Lame Meeting

Meetings. When used correctly, they lead to synchronized teams, informed stakeholders, and better requirements. They help to identify issues affecting an organization. They’re great for resource planning, sharing vision, and all kinds of useful stuff.

A clear, focused meeting energizes the participants. These meetings are a force for good. These meetings make the office smile.

Then there are those other meetings. 

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