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.

Wow, I’ve just discovered Applescript… after 15 years!

If you have a Mac and you’re even remotely drawn towards programming or fiddling, you’ve got to have a fiddle with Applescript. Never really though about it but had one of those nagging “I wish I could just…” issues with resizing images to send via email or post to blogs.

All I wanted was a simple drag-and-drop utility to resize my images ready for posting. After a few searches, I found a thread about using Applescript to do it and some sample script. I looked in my Applications folder and there it was, the Applescript editor. A copy-paste later, a bit of editing and saving the code as an application later… I had a desktop app to resize my images! Yay!

I do have plans to make one app that asks you what size you want before starting the batch, but I haven’t found the time to fiddle some more. In the meantime, I thought I’d share the ‘drop-apps’ I created from the script mentioned above. I’ve got these on my desktop and I just drag an image on to resize it. The app will save the new image in the same location but prefix the filename with the new size.

There is an app for each of the sizes I regularly require. If you need a different size, just drag the app onto your Applescript editor and change the “set the target_width to 640″ to whatever you need.

Here are the ones I use:

Resize to 240 pixels

Resize to 320 pixels

Resize to 640 pixels

Resize to 800 pixels

I also experimented with an app that converted PC remote VPN filepaths from our work server and opened the file on your desktop. All very cool. You’ll be surprised just how powerful it is so give it a go!

Hope it comes in handy!