maniacal rage

You know how everyone was afraid the iPhone keyboard sucked, and how people were saying it'll take weeks to master it? Well, it's BS. I was able to use the keyboard right away without issue and I've typed this whole post with two thumbs faster than I've ever typed on my Treo in the past. This thing is amazing.

I'll have a lot more to say about it once I play with it for a few days, but for now I'll just say it was worth every penny and the wait in line.

Happy iPhone Day, everyone! You might find the stock checker handy today, although something tells me anyone who wants one will be standing in line. I know I will be. See you on the other side... in the future, man.

For some strange reason, every time I travel (in the US), I end up watching a lot of Discovery channel TV in my hotel. The last two times I visited Seattle, I watched marathons of Man Vs. Wild and MythBusters—two fantastic shows that I never watch at home. When I got back to NYC this week, I finally made the effort to set both of these shows to record.

Discovery HD Theater is my favorite HD channel, but these SD-formatted shows still kick ass.

The first episode of the re-branded podcast was released earlier today. Check it out. We've already recorded another episode for release real soon.

I've taken care of most of the name change (the iTunes page is updated, Odeo, et cetera). We'll need to tweak the site a little in the near future, though, and I'm waiting for a few domains to resolve too.

I've been traveling for the past few weeks. It's been fun and tiring and I'm glad to be home. Two weeks ago I was in San Francisco for WWDC, where I spoke in a session that went very, very well. Got to see the keynote in person for the first time (nerd!) and hung out with lots of awesome people. Brian and I spent nearly every night that week with Sean Madden, Cindy Li and Mark Trammell and had a blast. I spent far more time at bars than I did in sessions, although everything I saw regarding Leopard was pretty neat. Not thrilled with the transparent menu bar, but someone has already written an app to get rid of it.

Last week I was in Seattle, working and hanging out with the rest of Blue Flavor. I hadn't seen everyone since SXSW in March, so it was nice to the in the office for nearly a full week and to welcome Jeff to the family. On Friday night, we threw the AEA Seattle closing party and played some Guitar Hero II on the big screen. Loads of fun. I also got to hang out with my friend Erin a few times which was great.

It was a nice two weeks, but it's good to be home. Back to work, back to pining constantly for the iPhone. I'll be in Atlantic City this Friday and I'm hoping that Apple Store isn't too crowded. Until then I'll be catching up on email, working on the podcast name change-over, and trying to reset my body's internal clock for EDT.

One day, your computer will be a big ass table. This is funny and true. Surface is a cool tech demo, but who the hell wants this thing sitting in their living room?

We've finally announced the podcast contest winners and the new name. I won't spoil the surprise for you—go hear it for yourself.

It's a new beginning. We are recording the first new episode tonight! Thanks again to everyone who entered the contest and our sponsors. Now it's time to get back to making episodes!

I'll be in Seattle for the rest of this week, but when I get back we'll start changing things over to the new name (the site, links, feeds, et cetera).

Good idea #2304: When you know you'll be speaking at a conference (say, for instance, WWDC), forget to bring any business cards. At all.

It has been a while since I updated everyone on the plans for SimpleLog. I sort of fell into a huge project at work and I'm just getting finished with things so I've started working again. Here's the plan:

• Patch SimpleLog 2.x with bugfixes submitted and found over the past few months
• Release as 2.1
• Open to the public for contribution with providing some management and guidance

At the same time, I've begun SimpleLog 3. It's a complete rewrite. I know how that sounds, but it's a good idea. I've learned a lot about Rails and Ruby the last year and I need to apply a lot of that knowledge to SimpleLog to make it a better application. I also need to strip a lot of the bloat I've created for myself code-wise. The plan:

• Work on SL3 for a few months
• Begin beta testing (more on this later)
• Release SL3 to public (again, open source, but no contributors to begin with)

More details will come over the next few weeks.

A quick reminder: I'll be at WWDC from the 10-14th. I'll be presenting a session called Iterative Cocoa and Web Application Development, on Wednesday, June 13 at 9AM in the North Beach room. If you're attending, please do pop in and say hello.

Very short movie reviews from recent viewings:

Spider-Man 3: Not good. Way too long, way too sappy, way too many shots of Tobey Maguire on the verge of tears, way too many coincidences, way too many villains, did I mention way too long?

28 Weeks Later: One of the best sequels I've ever seen. Stays true to the original and builds on it. One annoying little aspect (the same character keeps popping up everywhere), but generally just a solid movie.

Hot Fuzz: Almost the exact opposite of Shaun of the Dead, this movie is 75% seriousish and 25% action parody. Even still, this was a damned good movie and very funny.

Fracture: Not actually as suspenseful as it could have been, but still enjoyable. Not too long, a good turn at the end, good performances all around (Hopkins is nice and creepy).

We've got contest winners! We'll be announcing them soon. The new name is selected, the two second-prize winners have also been randomly selected. All winners will be notified and confirmed and we'll announce all the details in the coming days.

We want to thank our sponsors for this contest: Blue Flavor, DS Buttons, Method Arts and Wishingline DS.

And in case you're curious, here's how I chose the two random second-prize winners (and two backups):

e = []
e << "Johnny Contest <johnny@contest.com>"
# etc...

winners = []
4.times do |i|
  winners[i] = e[rand(e.size)]
  e.delete(winners[i])
end

Have I mentioned how much I love Ruby?

Thanks to everyone who entered—this was a really successful contest and we're really happy with the outcome! More soon.

Camino 1.5 is out. I've been using Camino as my primary browser for a almost two years now and I love it. This release is just more of the same—new features, even faster—and you should check it out.

Um... the Halo 3 beta is good. Really good. Really, really, really good. On my HDTV it almost looks too crisp, if that's possible. New controls make more sense, new weapons and such are a lot of fun. Honestly, it's worth buying Crackdown to get it.