I’m a fairly decent web designer. I’m not great by any stretch of the imagination, but I’m not really visually creative. I tend to express my creativity in the apps I build, as well as in my writing. So given the fact that I’m really proficient in CSS and HTML, I can make simple web applications look good if I don’t have the help of a designer. That being said nothing replaces a great UI designer, who are worth their weight in gold!

Last night while watching TV I had a conversation with my wife Deanna that made me realize that she is, as far as I’m concerned, a Jedi Knight. I never really have that much of an appetite, and it’s not uncommon for me to skip meals altogether. Since yesterday we had a late lunch, I ended up skipping dinner. Normally it wouldn’t be a big deal, except that I thought I’d forage for a little snack in the evening.

While developing myDrumPad, I came across an interesting problem for my in-app purchase support. The app allows users to download additional packs of sounds (referred to as “sound packs” in the app) that they can use to tap out songs and rhythms. The sound packs themselves were a collection of CAF-encoded uncompressed PCM audio files, with a single configuration file describing the labels and arrangement of the sound files on the drum pad’s grid of buttons.

I wanted to be able to add additional sound packs without issuing a new release of the app, but since the information describing the sound packs is largely static, I didn’t want to have to worry about maintaining a dynamic server for the app to continue functioning. I wanted it to largely be “fire and forget”.

What I came up with is, I think, a best of both worlds. The app functions without needing me to maintain a server, but I can still dynamically add additional resources to the app instantly.  Read on to find out more.

Today, I’m proud to announce that I’m officially a Canadian Citizen! I’ve lived in Canada for 7 years now and almost all of my family lives here, but since I was born in California, I’ve technically been an American for all that time…until today. No longer will I have to sheepishly explain myself when US teams play against the Canucks. No longer will I have to carry a stupid Permanent Resident card with me when flying home to Canada.

I’ve been working recently on getting more exposure to my existing apps, especially myDrumPad.  It’s a fun app, and I have a few more updates that are in the works when I get a couple of free weekends, but frankly I’d like to see its sales figures climb a bit higher than they are now.  Of course, if you’re an iOS developer, you’ll know the biggest thing that can improve your sales rankings is to be featured on the AppStore.  A large part of getting featured is left up to lucky chance, but to improve your odds, one of the things you can do is to target Apple employees with Facebook ads of your application.  Read on to see the results I’ve had so far.

I’ve been considering starting a new project recently, and have been torn: Should I create my project using Three20, or should I use UIKit directly? I know Three20 is supposed to help by making applications easier to develop, but what does it really buy me as a developer? In my experience, most of my time with Three20 has been spent working around its various quirks. And from what I can tell from my recent research, it doesn’t seem so straight-forward to support Universal applications across iPhone and iPad devices.

Because of my friend Chris Simmons, I’m going to try my hand at NaBloPoMo, the National Blog Posting Month. As if people didn’t write enough drivel on the Internet when they have something substantial to say, people are encouraged to blog even more with nothing at all to motivate them. Okay…I’ll bite. I’ve been meaning to be more consistent in my blogging lately anyway. So starting today, I’m going to attempt to blog every day for the duration of this month.

Some of you who follow me on Twitter may have noticed recently that I’ve been talking about working for a new company. This week is my first week working for Salesforce.com. I’m really excited about the move for a number of reasons, some of which I’ll go into here. As of this past Monday, I’m now a full-time iOS developer, instead of being limited to evenings and weekends. I’m a new addition to an amazing team of developers at Salesforce.

I’m an avid “Idea Man”. I love coming up with new ideas; for iPhone apps, for web apps, and even for real-world inventions. Most of my ideas only sound great in my head, but when I open my mouth the idea seems to turn sour. A smaller number of ideas manage to survive the thought-to-word boundary. An even smaller minority of those ideas manage to make it down onto my “Idea Book” that I use to keep track of all the potential projects I’m going to work on.

Help overlay showing the Parking Mobility quick start help As part of the Parking Mobility iPhone app I’ve been building, I wanted to integrate a simple “Quick Start” help guide to show people how to use the app without being intrusive. I wanted to use the project’s branding as much as possible, and give the user a feeling like they haven’t left the main portion of the app. So I wanted the user to be comfortable with it, and always have a quick way to close the help window to get back to the app.