A Scrum of One

I’m a bit overdue keeping up with the blog lately, so here’s just a quick update on the goings-on (going-ons?).

file_wrangler_2

Lots of good progress has been made over the past two weeks with file_wrangler_2’s user interface. Some big breakthroughs, some design reconsiderations, some learning… it all amounts to a pretty interesting way of dealing with files and filters and renaming procedures. The long and the short of it is that Macintosh users have certain expectations on “how things should work” and I want to adhere to those expectations as much as possible. This means digging into areas of Cocoa that formerly weren’t so important to me. It has been a lot of work, but I believe the payoff was well worth the effort. What I have now is a toolbox of modules that represent filtering and renaming tasks (or intentions, as I think of them when developing). Clicking on a tool adds a miniature interface to the main window in a “well” devoted to one category of task. So “filtering” has its own “well”. These miniature interfaces look like little blocks, similar to Dashboard widgets I suppose (that’s a bit of a stretch) and the blocks may be reordered and rearranged by drag-and-drop, similar to how the slide ordering in Keynote works. Blocks move and slide out of the way to make room for your drop location. Changes to the well are instantly reflected in the file list, which is big, front-and-center, and clearly the dominant focus of the app.

A speaking arrangement

I will be giving a 10-15 minute talk tomorrow at the inaugural get together for a new Meetup group called “Spoilrr” started by Robert Pratten. I’ll be speaking about “How creators get their content onto the iPhone & iPad – a look at the development process, timescales and revenue flows”. Creating content and getting that content into consumer hands are very different processes. In the realm of transmedia, many wish to leverage technology to tell their stories in new ways. My talk will be a kind of primer for storytellers about how to work with a developer to make, distribute, and make money off of these new media explorations. We’ll be at Sandbox Suites on Tuesday, April 27 starting at 6:30 p.m.

Reviews

Two impending reviews in the works. Recently bought two new computers and I’d like to share my findings, especially as compared to one another. First up, Apple’s new Core i7 17″ MacBook Pro represents the latest-greatest of the high end of things and has been quite a dream so far. That will be followed by the absolute opposite end of the spectrum with a 4-bit computer that must be programmed in machine code and is giving me newfound appreciation for what happens inside the computer. I wish to understand at a more fundamental level what my code does to the machine, and I have to say I’m enjoying beyond expectations the older architecture.