On January 24th, 1984, Steve Jobs pulled a 128K Mac out of its case in front of a crowd of reporters, turned it on, and let the computer introduce itself to the world. The rest, as they say, is history.
On January 25th, 1982, I was born.
It’s kind of sad that I am only 2 years older then the Mac.
The book that I was the Technical Editor for, Cocoa Touch for iPhone OS 3, is now shipping from Amazon.com and should also be in (hopefully) most Barnes and Nobles.
View it at Amazon.com by clicking here.
This book is great for new iPhone developers as well as experienced ones.
You will need some Objective-C knowledge, but if you have some OOP (Object Oriented Programming) experience you should be ok with picking up an Objective-C book as well for as you work through the book.
If you are in a B&N stroll into the Geek, err, I mean Computer Programming section and look for the book.
Feel free to buy a copy to support my good friend and author of the book, Jiva DeVoe.
If you can’t get yourself to that level of geek, at least pick it up and look at the ‘Credits’ page, right before the Table of Contents and then you can go around to all the geeks in that area and say, “I KNOW THIS GUY!” 
This makes 2 iPhone development books that I have been involved in, each one with more of a role than the last, however I can safely say it will be my last as after being involved with the book writing processes and having the author be a close friend of mine, I don’t really have a desire to write one myself (unless it’s an offer I just can’t refuse).
After pending review for more than 8 months, we are happy to announce that KidFlix was officially approved for sale today!
KidFlix is for parents with small children. KidFlix stops kids from accidentally activating the on-screen controls while listening to audio or watching videos on your iPhone or iPod Touch. Therefore eliminating accidental exits, fast-forwards, etc and therefore eliminating the need for you to constantly fix the problem.
KidFlix is not meant to be a substitute for proper child care, but instead to be a helping hand in keeping your child entertained.
As a parent of a young child I know how valuable of a tool this program can be when you are at say a restaurant and your child starts getting bored.
You can purchase KidFlix for $1.99, directly from the App Store by following the URL:
itms://itunes.apple.com/us/app/kidflix/id307595676?mt=8
Today marks the end of an era…
Today we mark the end of GeoCities! 
GeoCities was the premiere place to get your own personal “web space” back circa-1995.
GeoCities provide the initial playground for many of today’s web professionals (including myself).
I remember many-a-night hacking away on my GeoCities page.
Having informal feuds with others on who could do the best site with the latest and greatest web technologies of the times, like frame and guest books!
GeoCities has therefore always been, and continued to today’s closure, the ultimate place to find the worst looking webpages with the most crap and the worst code.
In honor of the closing I took it on myself to throw everything I know from doing professional web development for 12 years, out the window and come put together the following for your enjoyment.
I got an email earlier this month from Macworld, letting me know that iDeskCal had received coverage in the October 2009 issue.
Needless to say it is the first issue I was eagerly awaiting to show up in the mail.
(not that it’s not a good magazine normally, just not as good as with me in it)
When it finally came I was even happier to find that it was mentioned not only once, but twice in the same Months magazine!
The first was what I was expecting, a review of iDeskCal.
(If you have been following this site for a while, you will remember that several months ago Macworld had done an online review of iDeskCal)
(click image for full size version)
The second mention was smaller, but still nice…
It was in a section they did this month called “Budget Mac”.
The idea was for three Mac users to build their ultimate setup for $300.
iDeskCal showed up in the “Student’s” setup.
I took the liberty to create a little collage of the main items.
For the full text please pick up a copy of the magazine.
(click image for full size version)
The White House website has a section that you send a message to the President of the United States.
I am sure he does not see every message that is sent, but I thought I would submit a letter since I can not sleep, and maybe just perhaps the President will see it.
I also thought I would go ahead and share that letter here, so here it is.
Let me start by saying that I am not a Democrat, nor a Republican.
I personally do not like the close minded nature to the “other side” that both parties seem to show.
Instead I would consider myself a Constitutionalist or more towards a Libertarian.
As such, I am usually in favor of less government, however when it comes to health care reform I am in favor of anything that will truly fix such a important yet broken system.
If you would allow I would like to explain my circumstances to help better explain how imperative it is that something is done, and fast!
My son, Tyler, now 4 years-old, was born 3 months early at 25 weeks gestation.
He weighed under 2 pounds.
As a result of being so early, he had to have heart surgery the day after being born and he had what is called a brain bleed, which is basically a stroke.
Tyler spent the next 3 months in the hospital and running up a medical bill of around 1 Million dollars.
As a result of the brain bleed, part of the brain was killed.
It also resulted in Spinal fluid not being to drain correctly so he had to receive a Shunt, which allows the Spinal fluid to drain from his brain into his stomach.
In 4 years of life Tyler has had heart surgery, eye surgery, and about 7 brain/head surgeries including a total skull reconstructions.
Tyler has Cerebral Palsy as a result of the brain that was killed off.
He walks with a major limp, and does not talk, however he is mentally very aware and smart.
However, he is like a 1 year-old in a 4 year-old body.
All of that being said….
I am self employed as a Apple Mac and iPhone software developer, and my family and I would qualify as “Middle Class”.
With being self employed we are desperately searching for a health insurance plan, however the second any of the private health insurance companies look at my son, we are immediately rejected. Even the so called “non-profit” companies reject us, some times before even submitting an application.
Since we are middle class citizens we do not qualify for any of the current government plans because we “make too much money.”
We are willing an trying to pay upwards of $600+ a month for health insurance, yet no one will accept us.
This means that if my son gets sick we can’t take him to his pediatrician unless we can afford to pay the entire bill upfront.
If he has another shunt failure (which he has had 4 of) the hospital will only do what they are required by law to due, and “make sure he is stable”, which means he will not receive the care he desperately needs, and would most likely die.
That entire hospital visit will be billed to us and with being upwards of $10K for a shunt failure, we would be unable to pay.
(We received many bills during Tyler’s stay in the hospital, yet the kicker was a Single bill of Over $100K that we received)
So here we are, Middle Class Americans, willing to pay extreme rates if only we could get health insurance, and all because of a medical condition that my son did not ask for, and makes everyday already more difficult than normal.
I apologize for the length of this message, however I hope it helps show how desperately we need some kind of health care reform and soon.
There have been talks about things like just capping the amount someone can sue a doctor for malpractice.
The problem with something like this, is that while it may change some things, it would not help someone like me, as the health insurance companies would still refuse to give us coverage.
Thank you for taking the time out of your busy schedule to read this letter.
Please feel free to use Tyler’s story if you think it would help.
Sincerely,
-Dallas Brown
It is now official!
I no longer work for PayPal and I am now an independent Mac and iPhone developer!
Along with this change, me and my wife have decided to move us and our son back to Utah so we can be closer to family.
We move into our new place in Utah on Sept 1 (1 1/2 weeks from now).
We are really excited about both changes.
Since the last car “incident”, we have been down to 1 car.
Only having one car is a major pain since Nancy and Tyler have so many appointments and therapies.
The other day we decided to take some time and go see if we could rectify the situation.
That lead us to our new purchase….
A 2009 Toyota Camry Hybrid!
Now for those that know me well, you know I have a deep issue with hippies, so you might be saying “YOU got a hybrid???”
Well I can assure you that there is ‘Nothing Hippie About It’!
Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t have any problem with helping the environment, but that is just a bonus for me having a hybrid.
The main reason for the hybrid is simply the gas mileage!
My round trip commute to work is 78 miles!
Getting 40 MPG instead of the 14-17 MPG in the Jeep is the reason for the hybrid!
That means the round trip commute takes 2 gallons instead of 5.2 at 15MPG!
The car has 6 disc MP3 changer in dash, bluetooth hands-free phone connection, tinted windows, and they will be coming out to install Lo-Jack in it.
To make things even better we have fixed my credit enough that I was able to finance the car alone!
iDeskCal was recently reviewed in the French Mac magazine, VVMac and received 4.5 out of 5 stars!
The issue is on news stands for the next two months.
As my last post mentioned I went to WWDC a couple of weeks ago, well while I headed to San Fran to get my Geek on, Nancy and Tyler took a trip to Utah to visit family.
The first part of the week they visited Nancy’s family and then the last part of the week they visited mine.
Right before Nancy and Tyler were going to fly home, Nancy tells me that Tyler is throwing up.
Great…. throwing up is not good in our house for more then the normal reasons, as Tyler throwing up only once has not been a sign of a Shunt malfunction.
Well now it is twice… it was not a shunt malfunction.
Good news right? Yes, and no.
Yes because he doesn’t deserve to go through another brain surgery.
Why bad?
Well as I was getting ready to leave to go pick them up at the airport my mom informs me that my little sister (who they just spent half a week with, mind you) has been diagnosed with the Swine Flu!
Yes… that’s right… the Swine Flu!
We immediately head from the airport to a night time pediatrics office and they put Tyler on some medication called Tamiflu which is supposed to help you get over the Swine Flu faster.
Tyler was pretty sick for about 2 days and then was back to good old normal happy Tyler.
Well around day 2 Nancy and I started feeling gross.
Another trip to the doctors and Nancy and I are also put on Tamiflu.
Unfortunately for us we didn’t get Tyler’s 2 day version and instead we are BOTH STILL sick!
At least at this point we don’t feel like we are going to die.
All the same symptoms still but just lessened to the normal “being sick” level.
According to the CDC we are supposed to stay away from people for at minimum 7 days, more if you still have symptoms. They say at least 24 hours after ALL your symptoms are gone.
So we are all still locked up in the house, feeling like crap.
I guess it serves me right for joking about the Swine Flu when it first came out….
Anyways, if you live nearby and want to bring us some food we will pay you and you don’t have to come in if you don’t want (food options are getting really boring).
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