Quick review: 12.9” iPad Pro (2018)
I bought the 12.9” iPad Pro with the Apple Pencil back in 2018 and spoiler alert: I still use the iPad almost every day.
My one week with a Tesla
In December of 2023 my girlfriend and I went on an eight day vacation to Iceland, where we wanted to rent a car and travel the south coast. This seemed like the perfect chance to try out living with an electric car, since the charging infrastructure in Iceland is very good, and their electricity very cheap. So we rented a Tesla model 3 and let’s just say I have some opinions.
Vapor 4 vs. Django REST Framework
Over two years ago I wrote an article where I compared Vapor 3 to Django REST Framework. It's time for a rematch with Vapor 4.
My one big complaint working with Vapor 4
I'm trying out Vapor 4 for a side project, and one thing that I am constantly running into is the amount of boilerplate and copy-pasted code. Are there no better solutions for this?
WWDC21 keynote review
A new year, a new WWDC with once again new iOS, iPadOS, macOS and watchOS releases. If you ask me, I think yearly releases are overkill and really not necessary; I’d rather have Apple split off features like Weather, Maps, Notes and more into...
A review of Markdown parsers for Swift
A hugely important part of any static site generator is of course the parsing of Markdown content. The default parser for Saga is Parsley, a custom wrapper around a cmark fork. While I am generally quite happy with it, there are some problems.
Looking at the static site generator Publish
I'm taking a look at the static site generator Publish, written in Swift.
Book review: Thinking in SwiftUI
A while ago I asked on Twitter which Swift-related book I should review next, and overwhelmingly Thinking in SwiftUI by the objc.io guys was chosen. An excellent choice!
Book review: Practical Combine
It's almost exactly 10 years since I wrote my last book review. Time flies! Also, it makes me realize that the way I've been learning has changed dramatically. I am much more guided by autocomplete and documentation within Xcode, and in-depth articles and videos about one particular topic, instead of reading books.
WWDC20 review
A quick review of the keynote and State of the Union talks. Let's see which of my wishes have been fulfilled, and which SwiftUI problems have been solved.
A review of SwiftUI problems
I've been working with SwiftUI for almost half a year now, and in that time I've learned a lot. I love a lot about it, but there are also so many bugs and issues that need workarounds that it's kind of maddening.
User subscriptions on the web
As I am reaching feature-completeness of my side project Critical Notes, I need to add paid subscriptions to it. Users can already subscribe in the iOS app, but of course not everyone uses iOS, so I need to build something for the web client too.
Vapor 3 vs. Django REST Framework
A little while ago I wrote about starting a new side project, where I was using Vapor 3 to build the backend. My initial impressions were extremely positive, but I ended up running into a few issues that made working with the framework a little bit...
Searching for a next gen back end
A while ago I started to think: if I were to build a brand new web app plus back end today, what would I use for the back end, and how would the client talk to it? So far my APIs have been very standard REST affairs: endpoints per model that get/save...
My one weekend with Android
A while ago I decided to get an Android smartphone. Sounds like a very simple decision right, but as somewhat of an Apple fanboy for many years, I kind of shocked myself with this decision. It all started with my desire to buy a smartwatch, and the...
Review roundup: email clients for OS X
Email is a huge part of my my life and I need a client that accommodates my ways and habits. It needs to be fast and user friendly. It needs to support multiple email accounts. And it needs to offer proper Google Mail support: archiving email by...
Searching for a solution to back up all my pictures to the cloud
I have well over 35 GB of pictures, and after almost losing my hard drive (it started to behave very strangely but I was able to salvage all the pictures) I realised that I need to back them up in the cloud. I do usually share my best ones on...
Review roundup: iOS debug tools and inspectors
All of a sudden it seems there’s a big effort to create debugging tools for iOS developers. Some are free, they all have different features… Time for a comparison. PonyDebugger “Remote network and data debugging for your native iOS app using Chrome...
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...
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...
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...
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.
Book review: Don't Make Me Think
Buy this book.
Book review: Effective UI
I bought this book, hoping it would give tips and hints on making effective user interfaces, what works best, what tools to use, how to make effective wireframes, give example screenshots, etc. Let me tell you this first: it's not that kind of book. Instead, this book is about educating you on the advantages of a good user experience (UX), how to generate support (buy-in) from your stakeholders and even a bit about agile methods.
Django 1.2, a great release
I’ve been playing with the Beta release of Django 1.2 (get it here) and I love many of the new improvements. I’d like to list the best and biggest new features, and also some problems I encountered while using it. Smarter if tag I was already using...
My quest for a mockup tool
A while ago I wrote that Goldmund, Wyldebeast & Wunderliebe is going start a new usability department. At the moment I am busy writing marketing texts and thinking about a new website for ourself. Last week I also looked for a nice tool for...
Things I hate about Python and Django
I have been a PHP programmer for the last 9 years, and only in September of 2009 I switched to Python and the Django framework. While I really love the Python language and the Django framework (especially compared to something like the Zend PHP...