Relaunch of 04064.com
Programming — mGee @ 12:13 am
Well, I finally went ahead and did it. 04064.com is now a dynamic site. Rather than developing it with Ruby On Rails, I decided on PHP. I got pretty fed up with Ruby’s sluggishness and Rails’ habit of crashing. No more RoR development for me. Though I can honestly say that all that time developing blocSonic and nvzion with RoR wasn’t wasted time. One thing RoR did for me was to help me get a grasp of MVC-based development. Bye bye RoR, hello Kohana — a nice PHP framework that strictly adheres to OOP and PHP5 utilizing the Model View Controller application pattern. So check out 04064.com when you get a chance. Also subscribe to the RSS feed to be kept up to date.
nvzion relaunch!
Programming — mGee @ 3:23 pm
It’s been a while since my design company’s site has been updated. Behind the scenes for the past few months, I’ve been redeveloping it using Ruby on Rails and today I finally was able to launch it. You’ll also notice the latest projects that have been completed since last year. Check it out!
Announcing blocSonic!
Programming, blocSonic — mGee @ 8:02 am
Happy new year everyone! It’s been an extremely long time since my last post, but with the new year I’m back with an announcement.
Just launched is my latest project — blocSonic. My first web project using Ruby on Rails. It took a while for me to become “married” to ROR, there were always things I liked about the platform, but at first there were more things that I didn’t like about it. Of course, one of the primary things I didn’t like is the one thing that I love now — the use of command-line throughout development. It’s not that I didn’t like the command line, I actually did quite a bit. It’s just that I was coming from a background in PHP and it seemed like a lazy shortcut to generate your file structure via scripts. It also seemed to add to the learning-curve which also put me off. So in my early exploration of ROR, I also checked out many PHP frameworks that claimed to do for PHP was Rails does for Ruby. After using these PHP frameworks as compared to ROR, it really was a simple decision. There’s absolutely NO PHP framework out there that works like ROR. I’m now a convert. I’ll find it hard to ever go back to PHP.
My only lingering gripe with ROR is the confusion that sets in when trying to figure out how one should deploy an ROR-based website. The Ruby on Rails team really do need to work on DRY’ing that process up.
Anyway… about my project. blocSonic is starting it’s life as a humble blog. Through blocSonic I’ll be releasing monthly/bi-monthly Creative Commons’ released compilations. Available in FLAC, 320kbs MP3 and 192kbs MP3, the comps will feature some of the best music available for free online via netlabels. 10 tracks deep, I focus on quality over quantity. I also focus on diversity. The premier release features the blues, hip-hop, trip-hop, electronic, rock and electro-pop. Every track is extremely addictive. You don’t believe? Go ahead download it and give it a listen. Every release will also boast artwork available in three formats — eps, pdf and tif. Also thrown in is a PDF booklet with full liner-notes.
Hi again
Programming — mGee @ 4:08 pm
Design stuff
It’s been a while since I posted something here. So I thought I’d write a little about what I’ve been up to since February. No rant this time. Just some thoughts about the projects I’ve been working on and the technologies I’ve been learning about.
Well, first off, let me say that on the design side of things… I’ve been keeping busy with CD designs for Slamjamz. Three more projects have been completed and another two will be in the works, beginning next month. You can read more about it at nvzion.com.
Code, code everywhere I see code!
On the side, I’ve also been keeping myself occupied with a couple things. One is considering recoding nvzion from the ground up using a framework. Although whenever I attempt to use one the new PHP frameworks, there’s just so much to learn, that it’s more of a slow down than it is a way of speeding up development. Also, many of the frameworks have interesting features, but each of them lack at least a couple things that would make them truly useful. I’ve tried out Zend, Code Igniter, CakePHP, Symfony and countless others, but none of them have everything that I’m looking for. I came VERY close to settling with code igniter and even began to code a new version of nvzion with it. Though when it came to creating custom ‘helper’ classes. Weird bugs started to creep in and some files had access to them, while others couldn’t access them. I eventually threw in the towel.
It’s gotten so that I’m actually succumbing to the hype surrounding Ruby on Rails and learning a bit about it. So far, it’s quite amazing what can be done with Rails. The ActiveRecord features alone, make me drool. There’s a bit of relearning needed for it’s strange syntax and I’m not completely in love with Ruby’s lack of {brackets} usage. Though overall, Ruby on Rails is looking very promising. It also has a large devoted community which is actively adding third-party libraries to increase Rails’ functionality. The only other thing that kept me from delving into Raildom, were the lack of decent hosts. Though now, Dreamhost has a sweet deal and it supports PHP4, PHP5 and Ruby on Rails. When ready, I’ll be utilizing them for all my hosting needs.
Next up, I’ve been learning to program compiled applications with the intention of eventually developing some very useful apps for OSX. I have four ideas to start with, which I won’t elaborate on until I have something to show. I wouldn’t want to jinx them ;)
I began my OSX programming education at the most immediately obvious place, after searching the web as a guide on where to begin. That place was Objective-C. Although I was very comfortable with object-oriented programming with PHP, I found I wasn’t quite ready for Objective-C and the MVC (Model-View-Controller) paradigm. I first stepped back to learn C++ in hopes that it would help me understand Objective-C better. I got a couple books to learn that and they helped clarify things, but never really made me comfortable with the language. So then after reading in the C++ books that it would be helpful to get a firm grasp of C, I began to do just that. Of course, not all books are created equal and not everyone learns the same. I went through a few different C books before finally finding one that opened me up and really helped me to finally understand some key concepts such as binary operations and pointers. So far, so good. Things are looking up and I believe that I’m about ready to go back to Objective-C. I’ve reviewed the MVC pattern all the while and even played around with it while experimenting the PHP frameworks which all utilize some form of MVC. I finally ‘get it’!
These various projects and studies have all fed each other and thanks to sticking with everything, all the pieces are falling into place.
So keep an eye here or here, and maybe in late 2007 you’ll find an app you’ve been waiting for all your life… or perhaps one that you didn’t know you were waiting for.
Cocoa, Dynamic Flash and AJAX
Programming, nvzion — mGee @ 12:36 pm
Well, it’s been quite a while since my last post and there’s been a lot going on. I’ve been going forward with learning OS X application programming and there’s one thing that bugs me about it. The mac programming community is seriously lacking in resources. There are maybe 4 introductory books about Cocoa programming and only one of those are current. The remaining of them were written prior to OS X Panther and as such, leave a lot to be desired when you are using Xcode to develop. The online resources seem to have stopped growing since about 2001. Where are all the so-called experts in the field and why aren’t the existing books updated more often? Possibly because Apple pumps out OSs like Hershey pumps out Kisses? Could be… but it makes it very hard for newbies to learn. I’m pigheaded though and don’t get deterred easily. I picked up Hillegass’ excellent book “Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X” and have learned a hell of a lot so far. Now, I’m waiting for Hillegass’ second book to arrive in the mail, so I can continue. “Advanced Mac OS X Programming” continues where the previous and other books leave off. If interested, the books can be found at Big Nerd Ranch.
Aside from that complaint though, developing applications for OS X looks like a good choice. I have a strong suspicion that Apple’s market share in the PC market is going to explode once the intel-based OS is formally released. I think this will happen because I suspect Apple will finally sell its OS separately, allowing users to install OS X on normal PC boxes. I know, I know, Apple has officially stated that they’ll never do such a thing. “Apple is a hardware company… blah blah blah”. I don’t buy it. Apple also was not a music company, it is now becoming one on a certain level. They also would “never sell a video iPod”. Again, their public statement regarding the latter was a contradiction of what has actually happened. Let’s face it, Apple makes announcements and public statements to throw the public off the scent of the real story. You can’t honestly think that a corporation isn’t looking to expand it’s market share and are satisfied remaining where they are without any growth? If they package up the OS and allow it to be installed on every PC in the world, that will be one hell of an incentive for millions of PC users to switch. One of the biggest reasons, some users haven’t switched is due to cost restrictions. Apple’s hardware is expensive, especially for a long-time PC user who is used to being able to taylor-build their own systems cheaply. So yeah, OS X looks very promising and I look forward to finally begin work on the application ideas I have in mind.
Aside from learning to program apps, I’ve finally learned to develop Flash apps which are dynamically loaded via php/mysql. It’s not all that difficult, only a bit confusing initially since you essentially need to keep track of php and actionscript code. I’ve also played around learning AJAX which works in a very similar way to dynamic flash content. I picked up sitepoint.com’s “DHTML Utopia: Modern Web Design” to learn the latter. The book does a good job of detailing the use of Javascript and HTTPRequest to asyncronously load html content. You can find it at Sitepoint.com.
As for design projects, a couple things have been released in the past couple months and I’m currently working on three which I’ll announce in the coming month or two. As always, you can visit nvzion for complete project info.
Making that jump…
Programming — mGee @ 1:48 pm
It’s been a minute since I posted anything, so I thought I’d hit you with an update. Lately, I’ve been keeping busy with a couple more design projects and in between time, I’ve been taking my programming skills to the next level.
After a long time considering the possibility and usually deciding not to, I finally decided to try my hand at software programming. Right now I’ve begun my quest by first learning the basics using C++ and plan to eventually move on to Objective-C/Cocoa (the mac native language).
The initial goal for this is so I can finally have the music cataloging software I have been seeking for the mac, for so long. It seems that mac users are settling for the inadequate iTunes and no developers want to compete.
I have specific needs, as I’m trying to completely leave the PC platform on my desktop, yet need to find an alternative to my current PC music cataloging/playing software, J.River Media Center.
So, shortly, down the road, I’ll be taking on the development of such an app. Whether I’ll be successful remains to be seen. So far I’m finding the transition from PHP coding to C++ to be quite easy.
I still haven’t decided whether the app I develop will be made public. It most-likely will be quite a long time before I get to the point where I need to worry about that, but I’ll keep you all informed.
Peace and hair grease, I’m outtie….