JobControl is six years old
I absolutely love open source software. I use all kinds of third party libraries for iOS for example (installed via the open source CocoaPods project of course), which makes my life as a developer a whole lot easier. And in return I open source some...
Apple's worst iOS framework: MediaPlayer
When I started to work on Last.fm’s Scrobbler for iOS, I though it would be quite an easy app to create. After all, it’s basically a couple of lists of artists, albums and tracks, and all actual music playback will be done using the MediaPlayer...
The software I used in 2012
As a software developer, I use a lot of software and tools to help me in my job. In this post I’d like to list some of my most used software of the last year. Hopefully there are some gems that can help you as well! Xcode As an iOS developer, this...
A new (static) website
More than a year ago I was playing around with static site generators because I wanted to simplify my code and ultimately get rid of my server. My reasons back then were performance, version control and integration with GitHub. I tried a few...
Looking back at 2012
On January 2 I moved to Iceland with two suitcases and a job contract. My new title: iOS developer at Gangverk, a small company creating iPhone- and Android apps for CBS in the United States. This was the beginning of an amazing year for me, both...
MPVolumeView (Airplay button) on an UIBarButtonItem
In an app I’m currently building, the client wants an Airplay button in the navigation bar, with a nice background like so: After trying some things, the solution seems to be to loop over the subviews. It feels a bit hacky, but works perfectly:...
Why is there no perfect browser?
I’ve used Firefox for a long, long time, back when I still used Windows pc’s, until the summer 2007. Chrome didn’t exist yet, Internet Explorer sucked and Safari was still Mac-only. Since then, I’ve switched browsers many times: from Firefox to...
Playing around with static site generators
Even though I’m quite happy with this website and its code, I want to rebuild it using a static site generator: you write your posts and pages with Markdown, write a couple of page html templates, and simply by pushing a new file to Git, your new...
Designing my very own ideal programming language
In 2009 I made the switch to Python, after having worked exclusively with PHP and Javascript for almost a decade. I really like the language, much more than I ever liked PHP. Of course it’s not perfect (see one of my first posts called Things I hate...
Review roundup: the search for the perfect Python IDE (for Django)
When I first started working with Python in September 2009, I needed a good IDE. I quickly settled for Netbeans and I’ve been using it ever since, even though there are some things that really irritate me. But at least it works, and fits well in my...
My wishes for iOS 5
In June 2010 Apple finally added multitasking to the iPhone (the iPad had to wait ’til November to get iOS version 4) and with this resolved one of my biggest complaints about the operating system. And while I really enjoy iOS on the iPhone and the...
Django-CMS backend usability
Yesterday I wrote an article comparing Django-CMS, FeinCMS and Mezzanine. One of the conclusions was that while Django-CMS is the best CMS on paper, I don’t like its backend interface that much. I thought it would be a good idea to properly explain...
Django-CMS vs. FeinCMS vs. Mezzanine
When you need a content management system for Django, there is enough choice. Maybe even too much: the very helpful site djangopackages.com lists 13. Some are mature and very feature-complete, while others are barely more than a basic model and a...
Looking for a Django CMS which suits my needs
I need to build a content-based website for a client, in Django. Well, that’s easy right? Pick one of the content management systems available, build some templates and css, and ta-da, done. Since I have used Django-CMS in previous projects, that...
My thoughts after having completed my first Appcelerator project
A while ago I set out to build my third mobile application. Only this time the client wanted not only an iPhone app, but one for Android too. So that’s why I turned to Appcelerator once again, after my failed first attempt. In case you don’t know...
Serving 5000 pages per second with Django
Okay, this website wasn’t slow and will never need to serve 5000 pages per second, but hey, it’s possible now! Oh right, and it was fun to play around with a nice caching system. Almost everything on mixedCase.nl needs to come from the database: the...
Once again I turn to Appcelerator
After I decided to create iPhone apps using just the iPhone SDK and the Objective-C language, I’ve created two iPhone apps that are available in the Dutch App Store. Development for app number three has started today, but no longer will I be using...
Book review: Beginning iPhone 3 Development
My sixth book review, and the second one about iPhone development. The previous book was a great read, but since it only talked about the basics it left me wanting for (much) more. I needed more information about searchbars, core data, multitouch and the accelerometer. This time I actually read some reviews before buying a new book, and "Beginning iPhone 3 Development" seemed like a winner.
Book review: Head First iPhone Development
In a previous blogentry I wrote about some great online resources I found to get started with iPhone development. I read the C and Objective-C introductions, watched the first 12 or so episodes of the Stanford courses and did the assignments that went along with it. Well, at least I tried to do all the assignments, but they were not easy with just the information from the taped lectures. There is a ton of information in them, but are kind of boring to watch, and you don't learn that well from slides.
Getting started with iPhone app development
For a pretty long time I wanted to make an iPhone app, ever since the App Store opened really. But, I’ve never programmed for Mac OS, never done any C or C++ (let alone Objective-C). In fact, I’ve never created a desktop application, only working on...