Tatuaggi time!

Well, after over a year of searching and deliberation, both Skick and I have finally gotten our next round of tattoos. We found some exceptional artists at this year's Seattle Tattoo Expo (still running through the rest of the weekend, for any of you Seattlites), and got inked right there on the spot.

Skick's tattooist of choice was Mike from Smiling Buddha, an artist all the way out from Savannah, Georgia for the event. She ended up in quite a...compromising position due to the location of the tattoo in relation to her existing two, but it was well worth it.

The third rose is equally perfect as the first ones, as you can see. Here's the finished product (a little blurry because of how close the camera had to be).


I ended up going with a sister tattooist pair out of Milan, Italy called Stigmata Tatuaggi. They barely spoke any English so I was a little doubtful at first, but their portfolios were definitely impressive so I gave the one sister, Raffaella, a shot. The sketch she came back with was better even than the image I had in my mind, so I of course said "Let's do it!"


Here's a close-up of the finished product - I'm very pleased (and if you can't tell what body part that is from the photo, it's my shoulder).


All in all a smashing success!

Mac Application Development, Initial Review

I'm about 30 days or so into what I'd consider the "exploratory" phase of learning the Mac OS X programming system, and I have to say it has been quite interesting so far. I'm far from any sort of in-depth understanding of Mac's wide range of core technologies, but with a fairly solid background in C++ as well as a variety of UI-heavy systems like Flash and Flex it was surely easier than it could have been. Even despite all of that, the learning curve in certain areas is unexpectedly steep (and not always necessarily so, from everything I can figure).

First and foremost, the documentation leaves a lot to be desired. One might say, in fact, that it downright sucks. That's not to say that it doesn't define every method and property, but its definitions are rarely more than a brief, enigmatic sentence, and (more importantly) there literally isn't a single example in any of the class documentation. I, as most developers I know, am a 95% learn-by-example kinda guy, which has made the going slow. Incidentally I've even been a bit hard-pressed to find good examples via other sources online, which is probably the most surprising part. Admittedly I've been spoiled from years of web development, but I've definitely gotten used to being able to find examples of even the most obscure sub-class out there in some forum or another. Cocoa development doesn't seem to operate quite the same, however - there are plenty of simple examples but I haven't found more than a handful of advanced code snippets, particularly regarding the UI components. It suffices to say that I have been hammering through these early days on a heavily trial and error basis.

XCode itself, Apple's project development environment, seems to be very well put together. The user interface was extremely intuitive for me from the start, and you really can crank out an app in no time at all without having any prior experience. That is of course to be expected (being an Apple product), as is the solid and simple functionality of the Interface Builder. XCode/ has some similarities in structure to many other recent coding environments such as Eclipse (and thus Flex) and MS Visual Studio, which I'm sure adds to it's accessibility, but I'd have to say overall it's one of the best coding environments I've worked with to date.

And then there's the code itself. I'm pretty torn on first impressions towards Objective-C. In a nutshell it's an object-oriented offshoot of ANSI C, but shooting off in a different direction entirely from C++. That means that it has more in common with C than C++, and has a radically different syntax for about half of anything you may want to do in standard ANSI C. It's definitely simpler than C++, which is a plus most of the time. There are, however, some really weird syntax differences between Objective-C and pretty much anything else I've ever worked with before. I've worked in over a dozen different programming languages over the past decade and a half, and I have never seen anything like this:

[txtOutput setDoubleValue:[numComponent doubleValue]];

That's not to say that there's anything wrong with that, just that it is initially a bit of a maze to decipher what should be a simple line of code. Ok, I take that back - there are a couple of things wrong with it, primarily just that: deciphering it. I don't see any advantage to breaking the left-to-right reading object-method/property system that is used in nearly every other programming language. I am, admittedly, pretty green in this area, and may soon stumble across some hidden advantages yet. In reality, though, I probably won't even notice it after a couple of months (just like every language's quirks).

Lastly, the wide array of built in functionality is truly unbelievable. For example I threw together a quick test app that interacts with (retrieves, updates, the works) a user's iCal in just a few hours, and that's really just the very tip of the iceberg. The frameworks are very well put together and generally speaking (aside from that whole documentation bit) quite easy to use.

All in all, I'm going to reserve judgment for another couple of months of experience, but I'm definitely hooked. I'm generally not as interested in desktop development as I am web development, but there really are some pretty exciting possibilities here that I can't pass up.

Back to work...

Snow in Springtime

I'm a big fan of snow, generally - I think it's pretty and tragically Japanese and all that. But in spring, in Seattle? I'm not sure what to think of this...

Regardless, my third week of business planning is well underway, and goddamn this isn't as easy as they say...ok, never mind, I guess nobody said it would be easy. I haven't even lifted a finger to start up the big business plan project, and I'm already tired. I've plowed most of the way through my first official business book, and have just started trudging through my second - a more concise workbook of sorts. I've got budgeting, market research, financial planning, executive summaries, promotional ideas, taxes and sales tactics coming out my ears. I can confidently say that I have the utmost respect for everyone who has ever attempted this, even if they failed repeatedly (maybe especially so). 'Cause some of this stuff is a real bitch. I'm sure it doesn't help that I'm trying to squeeze all of this into a three hour stretch every day after my regular 9 to 10 hour work-day, but I know that's no excuse.

Next month I'm looking at some trips to the local chamber of commerce, a couple of business schools (hopefully), and my first dive into the wide, somewhat phony world of networking. I hope all of the real business people don't suck the soul out of me before I'm done with all of this...

Starting up the start-up engine

I've been sorely neglecting this blog since - well, it seems since we got back from Germany, which has been quite a while now. Things of many varieties have been keeping me busy, mostly in good ways. I can't remember how many times I've written a post stating something about how "I'm really going to make an effort to start blogging again", so I'll just skip that bullshit this time around and get straight to it.

As some of you may know, I've been harboring a deep-seeded interest in starting my own business for as long as I can remember. My New Year's Resolution (yeah, I try to do those kind of things) this year was to make some serious forward momentum in that direction, so a couple of weeks ago I started hitting the books. I'll be taking some online classes over the course of the next few months, reading some pretty intimidating books (already cracked into the first 750-pager), and generally doing everything I can to get the ball rolling.

So that's that. One of the things I've read over and over again is to (A) Never pass up the opportunity to ask for advice, and that (B) Advice can be found in places you wouldn't initially think. So...

If any of you out there have any advice, even the slightest bit of information you may have overheard, I'm all ears. If you have anyone in your family, or know any friends (or acquaintances or classmates or people you met on the bus or whatever) that have ever started a business (even if it failed miserably), I'd love to talk to them, email them, or contact them in whatever way possible. At this stage, any information at all is pure gold to me.

Thanks in advance!