The MacBook is neat. I would replace my current laptop entirely if only the screen were larger. Maybe I'll get a MacBook Pro at some point in the future. For now it's good enough to handle my pictures, movies, and of course, iPhone development.

I'm going through Apple's tutorial videos at the moment. I have a tentative plan of applications to write to get a handle on the environment. The first will be a small app - nothing too ambitious. I'll give more details as I make progress on it. It's not a game, though, so don't get your hopes up :)

The second app is more ambitious and is a proper game. I probably won't start on it until much later this year. That's all I'll say for the moment as I have a habit of changing plans quite often.

More frequent postings will resume as soon as I get started actually coding.

Life has been in "hunker down" mode for a while now. The economy is in the toilet and I've had to focus on work above all to ensure I keep my job. Don't want to get let go at a time like this.

Especially since we're in the middle of a big house addition project. Follow along with the fun here. Each row corresponds to a particular day. We were stalled for a good month waiting for the city to get their thumbs out and approve a minor change (that they requested). Things seem to be moving now, thankfully. Just in time for the holidays, but oh well.

I finally broke down and ordered a MacBook. One with those new-fangled NVIDIA chips in 'em. I still don't have an iPhone, but at least this is a step in the right direction as far as development goes. I can use the simulator for the time being.

Happy Holidays everyone! Here's to 2009 being better than 2008.

There goes my page rank when people search for DSI.

Just a few things to post about.

NUON programming has gone by the wayside lately due to lack of time. It's not likely to pick up again any time soon. We are embarking on a big house remodel project that will suck up all my spare cycles for the next 5-6 months.

In other news, I should point out that I am pretty active on EOJ Manager. I don't play the game that often (see above about lack of time), but I do help out the site by organizing contests & tournaments. If you have a PS3 and like trading card games you'll love EOJ. The next expansion is set to release next month. That will be a good time to jump in as I think they plan to release a version of the game that includes the updates for both Set 2 and Set 3, which you normally get off PSN as DLC. (TLA anyone?)

A while back my out-of-warranty import DS Lite acquired the infamous hinge crack. The crack eventually led to a full break with the two screens hanging on by one hinge. I found a replacement shell online and set about to transplant the guts of my old one to the new (using this repair guide). It's time consuming and intricate work, but I finally had the thing done only to find out I had FUBARed the touch screen. Thankfully those aren't too expensive so I'm waiting for a replacement to arrive before finishing the operation.

I'm giving away NUON pens for the cost of shipping. See this forum post for details.

I finally completed the web host transfer and am testing my news submission script. Let's see if this shows up.

Edit: Wohoo! I eventually plan to migrate everything to a WordPress blog. I'll make another post soonish to bring everyone up to date on current happenings.

A while back my email account here at DragonShadow started behaving strangely. I finally figured out that when I sent an email sometimes it just wouldn't go out. Every time I send a mail I must bcc myself at a separate account (work or other) to make sure I receive it. Fun, huh?

I contacted my web host Web.com (formerly Interland) and they looked into it. They claimed to fix it and certainly it seemed better, but I still had issues. In fact I proved to them that it was still broken. I gave them the login name & password for a dummy Yahoo account I set up for testing purposes. I showed them that only 2 of 5 mails were being received. They basically said yes they did fix it and nyah nyah nyah - sticking their virtual fingers in their ears.

Didn't leave me much choice to be honest. I'm changing providers. While looking around I was investigating the WordPress site and they have a list of recommended web hosts. That is where I found LaughingSquid, a decidedly unique web host. Whereas everyone else has their nice sterile hosting plans and web pages, LaughingSquid's site is minimalist and unique. I wasn't surprised to find that it is based near me in San Francisco - it has that bay area feeling to it.

Anyway, the switch should happen in the next week or two. Sorry in advance for any outage. Hopefully you won't even notice.