Monthly Archives: June 2009

UIPickerView (resizing)

Posted on June 19, 2009 by MXH

One of the prettiest built-in views on the iPhone is the UIPickerView, which presents a slot-machine-like list of options. Unfortunately, this view isn’t particularly easy to use, as its default presentation takes up quite a bit of screen real-estate, and … Continue reading →

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Recommended: The Periodic Table

Posted on June 18, 2009 by MXH

The Periodic Table of Science Fiction, that is. If you’re curious, while I wouldn’t say that Vanadium is my favorite, it is the one I remember the best some 7 years after reading its entry for the first time. Vanadium … Continue reading →

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Accountancy!

Posted on June 16, 2009 by MXH

It’s fun to charter an accountant, And sail the wide accountan-cy. To find, explore the funds offshore, And skirt the shoals of bankruptcy. It can be manly in insurance. We’ll up your premium semi-anually. It’s all tax-deductible, We’re fairly incorruptible. … Continue reading →

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Best Intentions

Posted on June 15, 2009 by MXH

I recently ordered a copy of Dale Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends and Influence People”, for an upcoming Book Club project. Taking Paul Graham’s advice, I ordered a pre-1960’s copy – specifically, a 1938 edition. Being a used book, it … Continue reading →

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No, it isn’t

Posted on June 13, 2009 by MXH
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Deep Copying

Posted on June 12, 2009 by MXH

Yesterday, we discussed loading a (mutable) plist from disk. To review: there are built-in Cocoa functions that load plists, but they return immutable data structures. (Happily, Core Foundation functions exist that can create mutable plists from XML files.) Suppose you … Continue reading →

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Mutable Plists

Posted on June 11, 2009 by MXH

Property Lists, or plists, are collections of strings, numbers, booleans, dates, base64 data, arrays, and dictionaries (associative arrays). They are a standardized, flexible data structure used (among other places) throughout Mac OS X. Plists are stored as XML files on … Continue reading →

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viewWillAppear

Posted on June 9, 2009 by MXH

Some posts are of general interest, some are more narrow in their focus. This is a small post, on a specific question, to which I don’t even have all the answers. But if you’re working with Cocoa on the iPhone, … Continue reading →

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Jornada del Muerto

Posted on June 8, 2009 by MXH

The Trinity test was remarkable in many ways, but the one that stands out for me is the simple fact that it succeeded. The plutonium device detonated in the Trinity test was a novel construction, and it worked – the … Continue reading →

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Speechifying

Posted on June 7, 2009 by MXH

Yesterday was the 65th anniversary of D-Day, and the occasion for another Obama speech. For contrast, I though I’d link to Reagan’s 40th anniversary speech: Obama Reagan

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