Lots of people have been quick to point out that Apple’s new iPad (a name which could have been better chosen) will lack multitasking support – just like the iPhone. I don’t think that this is going to be a problem.
Firstly, what kinds of activities were Apple showing off in the keynote? Let’s see:
Reading a book
Watching a film
Answering/Writing email
Browsing the web
Playing a video game
Listening to music
With the exception of the last item, I don’t think I’d want to combine any of those two tasks, especially on the same device. Who watches a movie while they’re trying to read a book? Even if I do want to switch between two such activities – Look up the name of an actor in the movie I’m watching for example – I’d have to pause/save/bookmark my movie/game/page in order to do so. Even if I could keep my movie playing while I did a search on the web, I wouldn’t want to: I’d miss some of the action!
Music is an exception that should be addressed, and indeed already has. Like the iPhone, you can play music ‘in the background’ while you do other things. Problem solved! The same can be said for services that need notification; Mail, Twitter, etc. Can all notify you that a message has arrived without interrupting the current task.
The iPad is definitely not for everyone, but anyone who is on the fence shouldn’t be too concerned by the lack of multi-tasking. When you’re buried in your favourite book or watching the climactic scene of a movie you won’t care.
Last time I posted about the wp-reactions plugin, I said that I planned on having a new version released by the end of the year.
The good news is that I’ve made considerable progress over the last six weeks overhauling the back-end to make it easier to maintain and expand. I’ve also learned a lot more about relational databases in the process, which is good for me if not the plugin users.
The bad news is that this process isn’t finished yet, so it’ll be a little while longer before there is a new version available. I hope that anyone out there who is waiting for a new release isn’t too disappointed.
I have a new job! This means that instead of being gainfully unemployed, I now get to spend my time working on Gazaro.com. I’ve not worked in a start-up before, and the atmosphere is a refreshing change. There are no clients to deal with, no stifling management to report to and tonnes of new technologies to learn. To give you an idea, here’s a list of all the new stuff I’ve worked with since I started there last week:
Python
Google App Engine
Google Protocol Buffers
Google DataStore
Amazon’s SimpleDB
Django templates
Git
Feeling that my skillset was stagnating was one of the reasons that I left my last job, so being exposed to so many new ideas and methods is perfect. That’s all I have to say on the matter right now, but I’m sure I’ll have updates over the next weeks and months on any cool stuff that I do while I’m there.
As stated in the update on my previous blog post, there is already a Lighthouse-related app called Lighthouse Keeper. Bummer.
Still, not to worry. To avoid confusion and general awkwardness, I’m going to change the name of the app to Limelight. I’m pretty sure that there are no existing apps in the same domain with that name. Pretty sure. Not 100%. So if there are any app developers out there developing a Lighthouse app called Limelight… I’m sorry in advance. Hopefully I’ll be ok this time though.
I’m going to release a new version of the app with the changed name in the next couple of days.
Update: Oops! It looks like there is already a Lighthouse-related app called Lighthouse Keeper (it can be found here). Future versions of my app will have a different name to avoid confusion.
Lighthouse is a lightweight hosted bug-tracker produced by entp. It’s advertised as “Beautifully Simple Issue Tracking”.
Lighthouse Keeper is a small AIR app produced by me. It allows you to export Lighthouse ticket info to a csv file.
Background
I learned about the existence of Lighthouse earlier this week at a job interview. I’ve used a couple of bug-trackers before, but Lighthouse had never appeared on my radar. The two guys interviewing me got into a spirited conversation with each other about the various pros and cons of different bug tracking solutions, but Lighthouse in particular. One of their comments was
I wish there was a way to export my tickets as a csv file.
Maybe someone will come up with something using the API.
Over the last few days I’ve been playing an awful lot of Torchlight. There’s nothing I can say about it that hasn’t already been said by people far more qualified than me on the subject, but I thought I’d add my voice to the discussion by saying: It’s Awesome. Here’s my character, whose name is Ivan (click to embiggen):
I’m sad to admit that I’ve somewhat neglected my wp-reactions WordPress Plugin over the last few months. All the usual reasons apply: Work, real life, laziness.
It seems though that there is still interest in the plugin, so over the next few weeks I’m going to give it an overhaul. It’s been a long time coming, and since I first wrote the original code I’ve learned a lot about the ‘correct’ way to program web apps.
The current code is not very flexible: In order to implement the new features that are in the roadmap, I’m going to have to start again from scratch. This time I’m going to give the plugin a proper DB back-end, so that reaction text can be updated without resetting the count, and so that posts in different categories can have different reaction options (and a lot of other things, too!). This should also make it a lot easier to maintain and add further features to.
So, if you use wp-reactions, or are holding off until some of the features you want are available, rejoice! I expect to have a new version available by the end of the year.
Since posting my Gravatar how-to the other day, I’ve been thinking more about avatars in general. Specifically, I’ve been trying to figure out what makes a really effective avatar. I’ve distilled my musings into a 3 step avatar-creation process that I think will give great results. Continue reading →
First off: If you don’t know what a Gravatar is, watch this video:
Here’s a nice feature I didn’t know Gravatar had: The url of your avatar image is static. It’s not even a ‘feature’ as such, but what it does mean is that when using websites/forums that don’t support Gravatar you can give them this url and your avatar should update along with the cached version on the Gravatar server. Neat, eh? Continue reading →
