I’m just getting back into the swing of things with Interface Builder after a little bit of a gap, and one of the first things I’ve noticed is that somewhere between the 2.2.1 and the most current 3.0 SDK’s, Apple have added a new special colour to the iPhone SDK, called “groupTableViewBackgroundColour”.
Previously it seemed you could only get this when creating your own grouped table view, but they’ve eased things off now so you can use it in regular views too. Nice!
High on excitement from coming back from WWDC, and following the advice given from All About iPhone, I’ve picked up an iPhone 3G S on pay-as-you-go for work.
As is necessary on the day of release of a new handset, here’s the obligatory sample video and photo from the device:
[youtube width="400" height="320"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDp__rDgGS4[/youtube]
(Or watch the same thing on Vimeo, which may or may not look a little bit better.)
The photo test is of some lavender in the garden. There’s clearly some actual depth-of-field going on, and I was able to touch to move the focus to the foreground flower head, just like the demo at the WWDC keynote:
Nine Black Alps have a new single out for free download – you can download a 160kbps MP3 from NME.com or get a nicer 256kbps one from the band’s official site when you sign up.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBFCGEiIuLk[/youtube]
Why this lot aren’t way bigger is beyond me; it’s great to see they’ve dropped their sunshine pop aspirations on this track and are surfacing their inner grunge again. (Shades of “Negative Creep”, anyone?)
I spent last weekend watching my first ever ice hockey game – San Jose Sharks vs. Phoenix Coyotes. Whilst I’ll get round a more detailed write-up some other time, I think it’s quite easy to find one of the reasons for the popularity of the game in North America right here:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LnyvBYwL14[/youtube]
Note that the the referees only get involved once the donkey punch comes into play. As a football fan, it’s absolutely mesmerising to watch the drama unfold live – pull this sort of stunt on a Saturday afternoon in the Premier League and you’d have points deducted and the police involved.
A wonderful example of a single-serving site, Bad Paintings of Barack Obama does exactly what it says on the tin.
(via Why, That’s Delightful.)
I think after about 300 pages in with about another 300 pages to go, I'd simply started to lose interest.
With the previous three books coming in at 300 pages or less, this one was simply too big and impractical to grab and take on the train, plane or whatever.
Installing TV sets on display in a tiny independent electrical retailer at the local shopping parade. Extra bonus points were heading out on my BMX to provide on-site 'technical support' to the old boys who couldn't figure out how to tune in their TV to their VHS (that'll be UHF channel 36, sir).
It was just on Saturdays for a couple of years. I think it probably earned me just enough to buy a couple of cassette albums at Woolworths each week.
Year of the Ox and all that, and another unusually (but seasonally) popular photo on my Flickr photostream.
Ever recall the phrase “When you’re given lemons, you make lemonade”? At Sainsbury’s online shopping service if you’re looking to make grape juice, you’ll get bananas. Or something like that.
See below what happens if you search for grapes:
Search for grapes... get bananas.
I should say that the next few results did take on the more regular vine-grown appearance, but it’s fascinating to imagine what kind of algorithm would determine that a) you probably wanted bananas, and b) you wanted them so much it put them at the top of the list.