Chris Boyd
I’ve worked on software of all shapes and sizes. One of the world’s largest open source projects. Small, back-office projects that never saw the light of day. All points in between. There really has never been a dull moment, because I love challenges, and as a developer I’m always faced with challenges new and old every day.
Yesterday I gave my small contribution to the SOPA STRIKE movement by blacking out my site using a design I created to reflect the eventual outcome of SOPA. It was a notice from the FTC that the site had been disabled for violations of the SOPA Act, and suggested that if the user desired more information they could file a Freedom of Information Act request, BY MAIL ONLY, at a snail mail address.
Right now as I’m writing this I’m about to board JetBlue Flight 620 to JFK. Like several other people, I’m using the airport’s free WIFI access point to get onto the internet. Free, public WIFI is something that’s become somewhat of an expected luxury in the 10′s. I’m rarely in a place that isn’t near some sort of open WIFI network.
2011 was certainly an interesting year for me: personally, professionally, politically, emotionally, the whole spectrum. In almost all areas, it began with peril, and ended with triumph. But I guess that’s kindof the way I like it.
Gothamist reports that some amazingly talented people calling themselves Girl Walk are releasing an epic music video connected to Girl Talk. It chronicles one girl’s misadventures throughout one day in New York City, all choreographed to Girl Talk’s 2010 release All Day.
Nike+ and Spotify users rejoice: You can definitely use Spotify as your music player while doing a Nike+ run. I discovered this last night out of necessity, I was trying to run to a playlist I’d created on Spotify earlier in the day, but every time I started the run, Nike+ would take over and get all commandeering about the music.
My dad has this theory about how music repeats itself every 20 years. For the most part, I have to agree with him. The 90′s brought echoes of Led Zeppelin and The Doors. With the Aughts came slivers of inspiration from The Cars, New Order, and a myriad of one-hit-wonders.
AllThingsD reports that Facebook is indeed working on a phone after all. It is codenamed Buffy, and is still 18 months from delivery. Which begs the question: Why? I’m of the belief that in 5-10 years, we’re all going to be laughing about the fact that we used to sit down at our computers, open up a browser, and type in URLs or click bookmarks to go to websites.
With the new iOS Data Storage Guidelines that arrived with iCloud and iOS 5, it’s muy importante to pay attention to where you place any preloaded data and file caches. The Documents directory is now only for data that’s been initialized by the user, an important distinction.
Last week I started a new web-based app project that requires a couple of JavaScript files to be bundled in with the app and run locally in a UIWebView. After getting everything prepped, I ran the project and expected to see cool stuff. No cool stuff appeared.
