Uncomplicated

Sure enough, I had to give up on that brilliant idea of color table entries. After having put all of the work into implementing it, it just looked stoopid. But I'd have probably wanted to move the contents of the table into a .plist file, anyway, so it's not as though the work was all for naught.

Unintended fun with Xcode 4.

I was working on a project, when something went very wrong -- in retrospect, I'm not sure it was even an error that I had introduced -- and once again, I had to restore my project files from a back-up.

I tried restoring the project files from three different sources, all, inexplicably, with the same errors! -- before I realized that the problem seemed to be that I was opening them from the same location as the project that had gone wrong (having copied over the project folders). When I opened those files from other locations, there were no errors.

Eventually, I chose to rename the project folder, and that solved the problem. (Who knows -- that might even have solved the problem with the original project files, as well.) Later on I was able to restore the original folder name, and while the error messages came up again, briefly, the project did build successfully.

I don't understand why Xcode seems so completely and utterly dependent on file locations. (At one point I had tried to reorganize some files outside of the program, just putting them in folders, but relinking to them proved to be so much trouble that I gave up on the whole idea.)

Debugging

I had set up UIModalTransitionStylePartialCurl as a sort of detail view, but without an explicit way to dismiss it, because just touching the screen seemed enough. But with iOS 5 (NDA, I know, I know -- but really, who reads this?), it just does -- nothing. It just sits there if you don't set up a method to dismiss it.

In the process of implementing one (a big ol' invisible full-screen button), I discovered that the page curl responds to the position of the button, so I can exercise some control over the result. The smaller the button, the smaller the size of the view that's revealed.

Complicated

...And it gets ever more complicated, as I discover there might just be a way to have each of a series of table entries rendered in different text colors. (I only hope after all the time I put into implementing this that I still end up using it.)

Developing

I had wanted to document my development process, but I've been so deep into it that it's been difficult to find the time to write about it. That, and because of my relative inexperience, even the basic, simple stuff has taken twice as long as it probably should. But I have been making progress.

I started out with (what I thought was) a reasonably simple, reasonably basic idea -- and promptly filled four or five sketchbook pages (maybe six) with ideas as to how it might be implemented, first on the iPhone, and then on the iPad. I decided to start with the iPad version.

In the end, it's taken about two weeks, off and on. I'm not finished yet, but I'm getting there. And I've learned a lot. Part of the delay has been in going back in and reworking code (and reworking it again) as I've discovered there was a better way. Lots of time has been spent implementing additional features and mechanisms and whatnot I didn't know I'd need 'till I had a working prototype. And then, there's the fine-tuning and attention-to-detail stuff that I just can't let pass.

When all is said and done, it will probably have taken much more time than will ever be returned in sales. But I had to start somewhere, even if somewhere quickly became much more complicated than I had anticipated.

Unproductive

I had better things to do today than deal with the ill effects of a corrupted font cache.

The Accidental Fart App

Now I understand this mania for fart apps -- they're so easy to create, even for the relative novice. (Well, that, and they appeal to the eight-year-old in us.) I didn't set out to make one, I really didn't, but after completing a second project -- which I'm going to remain quiet about, for the time being, as the basic idea might prove useful for a real product -- my eight-year-old specifically asked for one, and gave me glorious details of what it ought to look like.

While I did not implement his ideas for what it ought to look like (to keep it in reasonably good taste), I did create his fart app. I even added some additional non-fart sounds, just to make it more interesting.

I'm now looking forward to creating apps for more than just one eight-year-old. (Two if you count me.)