I had a fiddle with the Apple iPhone developer kit last week and it was a relatively painless experience. I had an app, albeit a useless one, up and running within an hour, like so. Apple applied the same philosophy to their development tools as they did to their consumer-facing products. It was fun, simple and even a Visual C newbie like me could figure the basic out.

Just done the same to Google’s Android developer platform. Wow, what a difference. Where Apple installs lots of applications, tools and nic-nacs to fiddle with, Android can barely bring itself to unzip the scattering of .jar files and nasty looking anonymous files into a snappily named folder “android-sdk-mac-x86-1.0_r1″.

Hmmm ok. Discarding my own “if you need to look at the manual, it’s not very good” philosophy, I followed the ugly-as-hell installation instructions. What a can of worms I’ve just opened. I need to download a third-party development environment such as Eclipse 3.4. I Google it, visit their website but can’t figure out what to download. Eclipse IDE for Java Developers? Eclipse Classic 3.4.1? Don’t know. Didn’t bother… boredom setting in…

Once you’ve installed Eclipse, you also have to install the Eclipse Plugin (ADT) with it’s own set of tecno-babble installation instructions.

So now I’m ready for my “Hello Android” starter experience. I believe the expression in OMFG! How nasty and difficult can they make it?

Ok, what’s my point? My point is the internet exploded because of two things. Creatives and Flash. Before flash, developers used stuff like C++ or HTML. Some used Javascript but on the whole, they smelled of wee and old pastry and knew the names of all the planets in Star Wars. Coders stayed in their cave and designers stayed in theirs. Then designers found a tool they could play with without too much programming. They could make content for the internet that was fun, irreverent, thought-provoking, high quality and cheap. Tradition coders didn’t get involved as ‘Actions’ were too crude to make anything out of. I loved it and so did many others. I made Flash 4 games, sites, I solved problems and people started to see the internet as a fun place rather than a place where games had interfaces made with grey Windows UI buttons. Here’s the first site I ever made in Flash 4 btw, and it ran off text files! :)

The beauty happens when people cross the lines. The epiphany where code and creativity combine to create something greater than the sum of the parts. Content exploded. Games, videos, animations, crazy (and often pointless) websites popped up at an astonishing rate to feed the new demand of the first dot-com boom. I’d been using the web for 6 years before flash came out and in one year, it was astonishing what was happening.

Spool forward a few years and Flash updated its coding engine to Actionscript, then Actionscript 2… and now Actionscript 3. Coders can come to flash from C++, Java etc. and get developing straight away. Unfortunately, flash has started to get too complex for those pioneers of creativity, the bedroom creatives out there. Coders now have a bigger cave to sit in and designers are too busy playing with their iPhones to notice the gap that’s opening up again. Most are too young to know how it ‘used to be’. Those of us that remember know it was a sterile, fractured, dysfunctional and ugly place to be. If someone has an idea, it’s imperative they have the tools to express themselves without barriers. Creativity isn’t just for designers, it’s for everyone. I can’t express how important it is to offer tools to allow those with ideas to create them, to innovate, to inspire and drive the internet forward.

As an example, look at the winners of Android’s $10 million Developer Challenge. I’m sure they’re very clever, but please, these were judged the best in the world!

What Google have offered in this case is embarrassing and depressing. I’m a big fan of a bunch of their stuff but this smacks of slapping their name on someone else’s technology and turning a blind eye to their values. I cannot use their ‘open platform’ as it’s closed to anyone other than hardcore coders. Ok, you can argue that the Apple Xcode Visual C experience is pretty nasty, but the doors are wide open and welcoming. Google has locked theirs, dug a couple of moats and put a huge, angry robot on guard to quickly beat the enthusiasm out of any passer by.

Maybe that’s why they called it Android…

The new iTunes 8 has been out for a few weeks and I finally got around to installing it. Interface is interesting. I think it’s better… maybe. I’ve yet to try the Genius ‘similar songs’ picker thing as it come with a pretty scary privacy warning. Here’s a taste…

The information sent to Apple includes details about the media in your iTunes library such as track names, play counts, and ratings. This information will be stored with an anonymous Genius ID and not linked to your iTunes Account. When using the iTunes Store or Genius sidebar, Apple will also use your purchase history to give you better recommendations.

Hmmm, not sure just yet.

However, I had a wow-moment when I saw the new Visualizer (the old one is still there if you like it btw). If you don’t know what it is, it’s a real-time ‘screensaver’ that reacts to your music. It’s under the iTunes ‘view’ menu or Apple-M on a mac fires it into life. The new version is simply awesome. It’s the ultimate proof that in the right hands, maths can be excruciatingly beautiful. If you have it running, press ‘M’ to go tough all of the various styles. My kids spent about an hour staring at it, that’s longer than they spent the entire weekend watching TV!

Incidentally, I’ve been playing with the Apple developers kit and the ‘Quartz’ compiler is amazing. Quartz is the environment used to create visual effects such as screensavers, iTunes visualizers, graphic filters and so on. Literally drag and drop coding and the results make the eyebrows of even the most hardened anti-Mac fan boy rise a few feet above their egg-shaped foreheads. Will post something soon.

STOP PRESS

Complete coincidence but the day after writing this post, I attended a presentation by the the creator of the new iTunes visualiser, Robert Hodgin at Flash On the Beach in Brighton. One of the brightest people you are ever going to meet. I dare you to watch his render of Magnetosphere and disagree. All built in Processing… if I had a cloning machine, my clever alter-ego would be learning Processing as we speak. Simply mind-blowing in the right hands!

Here’s the latest in the series of my “I fixed it and here’s how I did it” articles. This time it’s a Samsung RS21JGRS fridge freezer. The ice dispenser ‘flap’ came loose and stopped the ice coming out. Quick search on t’internet didn’t yeald much so in the spirit of sharing, here’s how it’s done. This is also the way to get to the water nozzle, change the face plate etc. and is relevant for most RS21 models I guess.

Have a look at the Samsung UK site here to see the sorts of Samsung fridge freezers it applies to…

Incidentally, this was the closest to an answer I found on  ukwhitegoods.co.uk:

You should also know I’m not a freezer engineer, this will mess with your warranty, I’m not liable for any damage or harm you cause etc. Use this as a guide, what you do with it is up to you. The photos below show the electricity being on… you should probably switch yours off! It only takes 10 mins or so to do the whole procedure, so nothing will defrost in that time. Remember, safety first kids!

Step 1: The freezer door of your fridge/freezer should look something like this… with water dispenser on left and ice on the right.

Step 2: First up, push the tip of the water tube backwards to release it from the plastic housing. It kinds pops out but don’t push it too far back, it’s just to release it.

Step 3: Use a blunt, fat screwdriver blade and insert it in any of the two slots under the main faceplate. It’s important the screwdriver (or other tool) isn’t too sharp or scratchy as it may mark the main fridge surface if it slips. Very gently but firmly, lever the panel outwards (pull screwdriver handle towards you). It should make a loud pop as the tabs let go. Try not to twist the screwdriver as this may cause small dents in the plastic. It’s a bit disconcerting at first but it does work.

Step 4: Work your war around. There are four on each side. See the image on step 6, the notches are there the ‘pops’ should happen.

Step 5: Wiggle the panel out. There is an electronic connector at the back with a clip holding it on. Lever up the clip and push the connector apart. This will separate the panel completely. Put it somewhere safe.

Step 6: Should look something like this…

Step 7: Undo the two (maybe three) screws holding the plastic panel in place and hinge it out as shown. You can unclip the wires if you like, but you really don’t have to with this technique.

Step 8: To get the panel out of the way, I taped it to the handle…

Step 9: The ice flap has a long hinge pivot on the left and a short on on the right. If you need to remove the flap, push the right side towards the left (or prise it with the big screwdriver you used earlier) to free the right-had pivot.

Step 10: Once free, pull it towards you a little and to the right to release the longer left pivot. Watch out for the little spring thing. Put your finger under it to stop it going ping. Be careful to pull the flap directly towards you once free, as the funny white lever on the left hand side needs to slip out of the hole without snagging.

Step 11: Flap removed…

Step 12: And finally: When you reassemble, you have to be careful to do three things at once while refitting the flat. First, put the funny lever on the left in the hole. Second, make sure the spring lever is pulled back and has some tension on it… and is to the left of the slight fin on the roof of the housing. Lastly, make sure the left pivot (the longer sire) goes in first. Once you have all three checked off, just push in the right side to engage the right pivot. Job done! Now assuming you’ve switched off the electricity, you may notice the strange lever on the left won’t go in the hone. This is the delay mechanism you hear after it dispenses ice. It will only release when there’s power and the microswitch on the panel has been activated (i.e. when it’s all back together again). If it stays out as pictured, just push it upwards to release the ratchet thing and the flap should pop back flush to seal the hole.

Parts: If you need to replace the flap, it looks like this…

Yep… I make my first iPhone app and it really is that simple to compile. No reason for the Chuck Norris image really, I had to use something. I don’t actually have an iPhone yet so I even find the emulator fun to play with at the moment.

The Xcode development platform absolutely rocks but if I’m honest, I only get half of it. It really is a half and half thing. The half I get is the interface constructor, the UI libraries and so on. The half I don’t get is the slightl weird Visual C syntax of the code. If you know C or maybe even AS2 or 3, some of it will be familiar but the rest is propper strange. Most of the answers to “why?” are “because you have to”. Still, I fully realise its my lack of cleverness rather than Apple’s dev platform. They seem to have done pretty well with it so far.

Anyway, I’m off to get some more skill, so watch this space.

Everyone knows every part of Microsoft Office is terribe. It’s well documented so I won’t launch into a rant here. However, couldn’t help notice it being extra useless the other day. I was emailing a colleague about an updated Powerpoint presentation and started my email …

Just made an amend to the ‘intro’ section.

Nothing weird about that except that Word underlined the words ‘an amend’ and helpfully offered that my grammar was incorrect. It suggested swapping the words around, so now I had.

Just made amend an to the ‘intro’ section.

It then underlined ‘an’ suggesting I consider substituting it with ‘a’. So now I have…

Just made amend a to the ‘intro’ section.

Then it stopped underlining things, seemingly happy with the result. I believe the correct response using todays grammar would be, WTF?

Went on a snowboarding jolly to St Anton in Austria in 2004. Met some great people in the chalet. One of them was called Lars. He struck a chord because he kinda did the same thing as my sister. My sister does important stuff in helicopters for the Royal Navy.

Here’s Lars on holiday…

Turned on my TV this morning and a program came on about air sea recsue and who should be the feature pilot hero chappie…

Lars… although I think they spelt his name wrong (think it was Lars Brazier?)

Good work fella!

I deal with these guys a lot at Digital Outlook but never actually embedded their Arcade widget… easily rectified. It’s not rocket science, just go here, choose a game and get the code… except the embeddable flash apps are bigger than the ‘standard’ 450 pixel width of WordPress (this blog). You can alter the flash tags to be 450 width but it does come out a bit small. Works though…

You can do it to single games too…

Here’s an embeddable promo for a game we did for Mr. Men. Last time we checked it had done 32 million game plays in about a year. Not bad! Why not add a few to the total…

Mr Men Pinball Activate multiple targets for bonus points in Mr Bump Pinball!

Play this free game now!!

There was a news article a few weeks back about the classic ‘Yeti’ mystery being little more then a man in a ‘monkey suit’. Maybe this pic of my sister circa 1978 may shed some light on the situation. Ok, the original footage was shot in 1967, 2 years before she was born, but that just goes to make it even more mysterious. Or not.

Still, uncanny likeness nonetheless, let’s leave it at that.

I did Chemistry exams when I was at school. I love the idea of chemistry but sadly, when it came to the nitty-gritty of the exam questions, my intelligence wasn’t quite up to the job. If I’m honest, I loved chemistry for the chemicals. Magnesium ribbon, sulphur powder, hydrochloric acid and real sodium that went bang in water. Brilliant stuff. I was the same with physics although slightly more successful.

I think there needs to be a separate strand of exams based on enthusiasm. I’d have passed chemistry with a A+ and I still would today. I think it says something about the explorer spirit more the the technicial. My kids love impromptu ‘kitchen chemistry’ sessions where I invariably blow something up or make something change colour. If I could pass an ‘enthusiasm exam’, I’d love to teach kids about the fun bits, the useful bits, the bits we’d need if we had to fend for ourselves in the middle ages. We’d all know how to vulcanise rubber, make gun powder, make stainless steel from iron, construct batteries or even refine oil into petroleum.

I’m seemingly not alone. A recent explosion (no pun intended) of popular science programmes on TV as well as a fair few internet crazes have brought ‘enthusiastic science’ to the masses. I salute you (and list you below by-the-way)…

• Mini-videos of all the chemicals in the periodic table from Nottingham University.
• Mythbusters TV show in the US
• Brainiacs TV show in the UK
• The Mentos and Cola thing
• QI (Quite Interesting) from the BBC
• HowStuffWorks website
• Curious Minds web shop in the UK
• And of course, the internet… but not sure what the link is!

Still loving PGR4 on Xbox 360 even if it is old news. Did this image mashup a while back when I unlocked the Ducati 996… looks pretty much like me! Ok, there’s a bit of Photoshopping to match the colours and add the background but you get the idea. If only I got a free go after a crash in real life…