iPhone(E) Baloney

Creating my website design with iWeb

Posted by: Hacksaw on: October 26, 2009

It’s done. I finished the preliminary design of my website using iWeb, and it took only a few hours. I am happy with the results, and what’s even better is that I will be able to edit it a month from now without any hassles.

In a recent post I was a little puzzled as to how I would publish everything once I was finished, but it turned out to be no big deal. You can publish your site if you have a Mobile Me subscription just by hitting a button, but I don’t have a Mobile Me subscription so I just went to the help files in iWeb and searched the publish files and found the instructions on how to do it. I can’t remember the exact method, but it was real easy (I think I just had to right-click on one of the page icons in the left sidebar and pick the “Publish to Folder” option. I browsed to the folder I want to publish in and that’s it.

Check out the site at http://www.justinhackett.com

If you want to ask any questions about how I did certain things in the design just leave a comment. Also, if you have any suggestions for improvement let me know.

Designing my website with iWeb

Posted by: Hacksaw on: October 16, 2009

This new Macbook Pro is too much fun.  I bought the thing to program for the iPhone and record my music in Logic Express, but so far I have not really done much of that.  There is just too many other fun things to do with this thing.

My latest time consumer has been re-working my tired and boring webpage Justin Hackett.com. And how’s that going? Great, although I like to do it sitting in my recliner with a sleeping 11 month old baby sleeping on my chest. It could go a lot faster too if I would use a mouse, but the trackpad on these new Macs is wicked fun. I think I mentioned that in my last post. The main thing slowing me down, besides having a hard time breathing with this weight on my chest, is learning all the buttons and functions in iWeb. But really it’s pretty user-friendly to figure out.

I watched one tutorial movie on Apple’s website about iWeb and I haven’t had to search for any other information to get the results I want. I’m sure I’m missing a lot of features that the application is capable of, but for just jumping right in an designing a webpage this is the easiest thing I’ve tried. It’s looking pretty good too, if I might add.

You can add all kinds of pre-made widgets in your page, and the possibilities are endless for customization. I’m curious about how to change the default text of the page tabs, though. I can edit the font style for the text in the actual page, but when I try to edit the page tab font style, I’m stuck. No biggie, I’ll figure it out or figure out it’s impossible.

The other thing I’ll have to research is how to publish the thing. I think you just hit publish and pick the folder where you want it to go, but I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it.

Other than that, I’ve been reading the Logic Express tutorial (the PDF that comes with the application) and performing the steps in my Logic application. Wow, what a program. It’s way cooler than Cubase. I can’t wait to jump in with some real projects.

I Got it! – New MacBook Pro

Posted by: Hacksaw on: October 14, 2009

I got the new Macbook Pro in the mail last week.  I haven’t posted about it because I’ve been busy playing with it, and fixing it.  It was a real bummer to have to work on my new computer, especially since time is limited.  I can only do so much between diaper changes and breaking up fights between the boys (oh, and dealing with a little stomach bug, but you don’t want to know about that do you?).

I order the MBP with Logic Express loaded by Apple.  I don’t mind installing this stuff myself, but I thought why not just have them do it and save me some time.  Big mistake.  I will never again have them install an application for me at the factory.

In the tracking slip for the computer I noticed it took the long journey from China, to Anchorage, to Memphis, to my home.  Somewhere in between it got a bug in the Logic Express installation.  Every time I would try to launch the app it would crash.  Sometimes I would get it to launch, only to have it crash when opening a new project.  This really stunk.

I scoured the internet for all kinds of fixes and tried them all.  You can reset the RAM, you can start in safe mode and launch it then log in again and try it.  You can create another user for the computer and log out, log into the new user, and then log back in as yourself and try it.  You can delete the caches in various places, you can re-install Logic Express.  You can download all the updates for Snow Leopard and Logic Express and give it a go.

Finally you can just re-install the OS from the disk they send with your computer, then re-install Logic Express from it’s disk and it will run just fine.  My recommendation is that you just do the re-install of the OS and skip all the headaches of the other stuff.

Thanks to all the people on the internet with the other tips though, I learned a lot about Snow Leopard and some of it’s quirks while doing my research.

Now I am very happy with my compooter.  It’s awesome.

As a musician, I find Logic Express totally killer compared to the Cubase I have always used.  I really love the Snow Leopard OS, and the really cool white LED’s that light up my keyboard are the best.

A word of advice for anyone buying a Macbook Pro: If the peripherals you plan to use with your new computer are firewire 400 peripherals, you are going to need to buy a firewire 800 to 400 adapter.  I missed this little detail and now I can’t use my pre-amp until I buy an adapter.  They are around $10 to $20 dollars, so if you maxed out your credit card buying the machine you may have to get into your kids piggy bank to buy an adapter.

The trackpad on these new Macs is excellent.  You can do so many things with your fingers, like turn pages, go back and forward in Safari, re-size windows, scroll the browser and other things I haven’t discovered yet.  The applications support all kinds of functions using the trackpad too, like moving sliders on the mixer in Logic Express, and turning knobs in virtual amplifiers.  I really like it, it’s similar to the way the iPhone interface works.

So that’s about all I know right now.  One more thing, it’s great having an Intel based machine now so the iPhone SDK will run without having to hack a bunch of stuff.  The new SDK cannot be forced to run on a PPC anyway.  I already loaded the latest iPhone SDK and can’t wait to find the time to start my apps.

Ahhh, just living the dream.  I still love Apple.

Buying my new Macbook Pro

Posted by: Hacksaw on: September 29, 2009

O.k.  It’s official, I went to the Apple store and purchased my new shiny Macbook Pro 13″, 2.26, 4GB computer, with neoprene case, and Logic Express 9 (I am a budding musician, you see).  Yeehaw.  All I have to do is pay for it in 12 months or the whole world explodes.

And for all of you who did not know this, the education discounts that Apple offers (I think it’s 10%), it also applies to those families who homeschool their kids.  My wife and I are going the homeschool route, so I was jazzed about this (yes, I will let the senior junior use the computer as well, plus the kids will be able to use my somewhat outdated Mini for school stuff).

Another little trick I learned today: As I mentioned before in anther post, I signed up for the Barclaycard 12 month no payments, not interest deal-e-0.  Well, when you sign up for that and get your application approved on the Apple store, you get a notification that if you make your purchase now without navigating away from the website, or being inactive for more than 15 minutes or something, you’re good to go.  If you do happen to navigate away, or wait too long (like your’s truly) then you have to wait the 3 or so days for your card to come in the mail to make your purchase.

So, I’ve been waiting for like 5 days and still no card.  I went back to the Apple store and logged in.  I clicked on the link to see the status of your credit application with Barclaycard.  You then get a login screen for Barclaycard, which you enter the same Apple ID login you just did a moment ago to get into your Apple account.  From there you get the same warning that you can purchase your stuff on the Apple store now, or wait the 3 days for your card (they try to prevent fraud this way, and it involves the 4-digit security code on the back of the card and other really high-tech stuff).

I was happy.  I have been ready to buy buy buy, and now I can.  So, it’s important that you go right from the Barclaycard page via it’s links to shop and not try and open a different Apple store window to do your shopping.  If you do, when you get to the checkout you’ll see you can’t use your Barclaycard.  If you go right from the Barclaycard shop-link, when you checkout you’ll see they entered your card number (which you haven’t yet received in the mail) for you.

Then all that’s left to do is spend your heart out (of course, only spend what you can afford to pay off in the next 12 months, and better yet, have the cash already saved up so there is no doubt you can do this thing on time).

This is actually a huge purchase for my family, and though I am not thinking I will make any money selling whatever app I develop, I have a lot of ideas of how to make the new computer pay for itself.  So, after all of this consumin’, I called my pastor and asked him to be praying for me.

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Must Needs New Mac

Posted by: Hacksaw on: September 24, 2009

Well, like I said in my last post, I’m out of luck for development on the current Mac that I have because it’s not an Intel model.  I also noticed the other day that the audio editing software I was going to purchase (Logic Express) also does not go PPC, so that’s another good reason to upgrade.

Apple has a pretty sweet deal right now through their online store with Barclaycard.  You can do the whole one year no interest and no payments thing on any purchase over $900.  I almost bit the bullet yesterday, but I’ll think on it for a couple of days.

It’s a bummer the whole PPC/Intel thing is making so much of what I want to do on my Mac obsolete.  Do you suppose Apple is trying to sell computers?  Dumb question right?

In the meantime there is plenty of reading material out there to keep me busy.  I have pretty much decided it’s an unwise move to think you are going to make hundreds or thousands of dollars in the App Store.  I read a good article online yesterday about a guy who wrote a pretty good application, and so far his earnings are nothing to write home about (I think they are pretty good, but if you are trying to get rich or even decently compensated it’s pretty disappointing).

It’s something to do if you enjoy it, but that’s probably about it.

iPhone 3.0 Programming Snag

Posted by: Hacksaw on: September 21, 2009

Until now I have been developing for the iPhone on my little Mac Mini, G4, ppc machine.  Over the weekend I upgraded the SDK to the new 3.0 stuff and guess what?  Interface Builder no longer works, and believe me when I say it’s never going to work either.  I pretty much blew the whole weekend trying to hack the thing as we used to do with earlier releases of the SDK, but the folks at Apple have really locked the thing up this time.  Unless there is some super-duper fix I have not found yet, the only solution is to get an Intel Mac.

That’s just great.

For now all I can do is write Xcode programs and compile them, but gone are the sunny days of running them in the simulator, or even using Interface Builder since the IBCocoaTouchPlugin will not load into IB.  That’s not real fun if you ask me.

So I’m out of commission until I limber up the credit card and buy a new machine.  My wife and I are praying about that right now (maybe someone will write me after this post and offer me a solution i.e. a new computer).   Until then I will continue the reading of selected programming reference books.

By the way, I was able to hack selected portions of the install so that I could at least get all the versions of the iPhone SDK to load, it’s just the Interface Builder (and Simulator) stuff that’s a no-go.  If you want to know how I did it just ask.  I ended up using a hybrid of a bunch of different methods I found of the internet.  But it’s no good if you can’t play with the Interface Builder, at least for me.

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