A Ninja Scientist's Blog

I came across Timehop a week ago. The idea behind it was so simple and sounded way too fun that i signed up instantly, who would not want to be reminded of the past(except for the embarrasing moments)? Basically it sends you an email of all your social network(s) activity for the same date of the last year. So its like a time machine that reminds you what were you upto last year the very same day. It does not spam you(Thank God), one email a day is not overkill. As a matter of fact I find myself waiting for my morning’s dose of Time Travel back to my facebook and twitter feeds from an year ago.

Its a great idea and I would really like to see it grow into Mobile Apps and a manual timeline browser someday. Still reading? go Timehop a little, jog your memory.

If you are an iOS developer then you do know that iOS doest not have a checbox control. Yes, you can can use the UISwitch to work out for you but still, we all know how cool checkboxes can be. So here is a little Gist of code to help you implement your own UICheckbox Control. You can use it in your Custom TableView Cells even. Enjoy:

As 2011 comes to an end, I look back at it while sipping my tea. I see a pattern, a path, a plan becoming clearer. All the awesome movies are coming out in 2012 you now, The dark knight rises, Avengers and Spider-Man to name a few. They say the world might end as well, well if thats true I am gonna try to be sure to leave a mark behind or build a nuke proof bunker for shelter. It might not be useful but it will be worth a try. Enough with the textbook narcissm, this post is for my friends and family to wish them a very happy new year. I hope and I pray that may all of you may succeed in whatever plans you have for this year. Have a great 2012. Live long and prosper.
:)

Getting that nasty EXC_BAD_ACCESS Exception and your app crashes? and let me guess you cannot detect the cause behind it? Fear not my ninja developer buddies. This exception occurs when a message is being sent to a deallocated or released object. To find the little culprit all we need is a little NSZombieEnabled Environment Variable. It keeps a copy of the deallocated object.

To make this work you need to do the following:

• In Xcode go to Project>Edit Active Executible
• Select Arguments.
• Now add a Environment Variable called NSZombieEnabled as shown in the screenshot.
• Now run your project and analyse it in the Console.

You should now see whats causing the problem(you can check the stack trace if needed). Once you have discovered and fixed it make sure you uncheck this Environment Variable. So there you have i,t a very simple yet Ninja Level tip for making sure your app does not crash due to EXC_BAD_ACCESS Exception.

Hope it proves helpful.

Research proves that people who have lesser choices have the most peace of mind. On the other hand people who have lots of choices and find themselves confused within them, have more restless minds. However choices choices involved in creating computer software are a seperate story. There are a number of factors which have to be looked into before choosing the framework or language you will start coding in. I am not here to bore you with these factors, I am just trying to make a point about the restless/peaceful mind of the developer.

Developers who know how to create software using a number of platforms, are usually happy. They are sure that if one thing does not work they can try the other. These devs are jacks of all and masters of none. While devs who know only one platform are sometimes troubled by the limitations it has but it does not mean they are not happy. These people are uber devs in their platform of choice and if required functionality is not provided in it, they build it. Example? Cocoa’s Async Socket library. Why? Because iOS did not have Socket Programming support by default.

My point? Doesn’t matter if you know one or a bazzillion platforms, if you have the motivation and dedication you will make it work somehow. Devs Rule!