SpinSlide is now live! The best damn slide tile puzzle ever!
Watch a video demo, read my previous post about it, or just go buy it!
Archive for May, 2009
SpinSlide is Live!
May 28
The Nintendo DSi has support for WiFi networks, including WPA. Most personal WPA networks use a passphrase instead of the hexadecimal keys used in older WEP setups. The WPA standard supports passphrases of 8 to 63 printable ASCII characters, which are converted to a 64 digit hexadecimal number using a hash of the passphrase and the SSID (see more at WikiPedia).
Unfortunately, the DSi does not allow you to enter a passphrase, you have to enter the 64 digit hexadecimal key. If your router doesn’t show the key (mine doesn’t), you can calculate it using the WPA PSK Generator from the authors of Wireshark (a great network analysis tool).
If you have access to a Linux system with the wpa_supplicant tools installed, you can do this at the command line using:
wpa_passphrase ssid passphrase
iPhone Application Packaging
May 24
When developing for the iPhone it’s often necessary to build the application in a form that can be easily installed by collaborators and testers. For ease of installation, the app should be distributed as a .ipa (iPhone Application) file. Unfortunately, XCode does not include a way to do this, so I wrote a bash script to automate the process.
Additionally, in any build that leaves the developer’s desk it is especially important to include version information so that bug reports can be traced back to the correct version of the source, and to ensure that any distributed version can be located in the version control system. I use git for source control (installed with MacPorts), though the script should be easily adaptible to CVS or SVN.
The goals for this script were:
- Automatically tag the project with a unique build number before each build.
- Build all supported configurations with a single command. Sometimes compiler errors or warnings are only revealed with certain preprocessor flags or optimization settings.
- Ensure any build created for distribution is cleanly committed to version control and tagged.
- Name tags so that they can be easily correlated to user-visible version information.
Balsamiq Mockups
May 21
I’ve heard good things about Balsamiq Mockups so I thought I’d give it a try. The desktop version is currently just $79, and installs in moments from the Mockups site. The app is based on Adobe Air, so if you don’t have Air installed already, you’ll need to do that first. Mockups runs on OS X, Windows, and Linux. There is also a web version. This review uses the OS X desktop version. You can try out the desktop version for free, but to save or export designs you’ll need a license key.
June 4 Update: Added Loopt Mixer and Developer/Artist Meetup. Thanks LooptChris and Steve Weller!
There are a number of events going on around WWDC this year. Brandon Kwaselow has the most comprehensive list I’ve seen so far, it even includes Three Wolf Tuesday!
WWDC Parties/events – WWDC 2009 – Brandon “Quazie” Kwaselow’s Blog.
Google Calendar with the events: