Sometimes you need to tweak a website’s CSS to work with an iOS device. Instead of pulling out your iPhone or iPad, you can just use the iOS simulator without even opening Xcode. That includes Xcode 4.3 which sandboxes the old /Developer location too.

Yeah, of course, this is no revelation – but it does surprise me how many people do think the simulator cannot be run by it’s lonesome. To do this for Xcode 4.3:

1. Go to ~/Applications, and right-click Xcode. Select “Show Package Contents”.

2. Go through to Contents/Developer/Platforms/iPhoneSimulator.platform/Developer/Applications

3. Open “iOS Simulator.app” – in fact, go ahead and drag it to the dock if you so wish.

The simulator will sit there with not much to it – unless you have developed apps and previously run them on the simulator. Either way, you can change between the different devices with the usual application menus, and of course rotate the device.

The ability to Inspect Element would be a VERY welcome bonus to this. Fortunately, a solution does seem to be making headway thanks to iWebInspector - just, at time of writing, it supports Xcode 4.2 (which is no complaint seeing as Xcode 4.3 has only just come out, and has relocated the usual developer resources).

Codeigniter is a damn good PHP framework. Very quick, and very easy. Great.

The problem though, was getting into it. Examples are typically a tiny blog application with minimal functionality – ok it gets you started, but when it comes to following the MVC structure, one problem very quickly arose - repetitive code.

Lets say you have a site with a more reasonable number of pages. Sticking to the pattern, controller functions do not call other controller functions – just models, and passing results into views (simplified explanation). Now, this quickly lead to masses of repeated code to gather data for the page header, left, and right columns.

Of course they can go into a library, but even then there are contrasting opinions – libraries can make a large task much easier (and of course, stripping out repetitive code), but when it comes to the task which the Controller should handle, then comes the dilemma of an “ugly pattern which breaks the rules” or the same code pasted again and again into various controller functions just to build the common parts.

After trying to be strict with the pattern, the result was a huge mess of similar code everywhere. Not acceptable.

Phil Sturgeon (one of the legends behind the framework) posted on his blog about extending the Core Controller class to handle common tasks such as whether the user can view the page (with admin permissions). I took this further, and implemented another layer – a “layout” controller.

This controller handles the common views – the left column, right column, the header, and footer. Each controller method calls just one function, which in turn calls the left, right, header, footer functions to construct the page, then the controller function itself handles the logic dedicated to the actual page in question.

This approach has shaved off 70% of the code for the controllers. None of the controller code is repeated, so when it does come to making a “quick change”, it is done in one place, not potentially ten or more.

At this point I don’t care if it breaks some strict rule of patterns – it makes the job much more efficient for the development team, and the code is still very predictable. I would rather spend the time creating new functionality than carefully duplicating the same fixes into the same copies of code throughout the controllers – a framework is supposed to handle the typical support code to let the coder get straight into productive development work. Codeigniter does a very good job of this.

Rest assured though, I do not blame Codeigniter for this – nor anyone in particular. It was my dilemma of trying to be strict and follow ‘standards’/rules, vs doing The Right Thing. I fail to see how drastically simplifying the code and improving efficiency dramatically is a bad thing.

Thank you, royal family, for allowing a bank holiday to be issued for the royal wedding. Personally I won’t sit and watch it – weddings don’t interest me, and i’m sure with all the people obsessing over the lives of two people, they certainly don’t need one more person joining the fray. What does interest me though, is the much needed break.

Taking just a couple days off work means that, this bank holiday weekend, the weekend days itself, and the royal wedding day, means that there is a stretch of 11 days to relax, and do the things I enjoy the most. Coding.

Sounds strange? I get time off from my day job of coding, just to “relax” by doing the same thing? Well the error with the question is the word “same”. Even using the same languages and technologies, it is not the same when you are working on a different project. In fact it is usually more fun, and full of it’s own little challenges.

Work’s Project

The project in work started very early this year – about a week into January. It was released fully featured two months later, and then promoted. All in a fun stretch of coding. The problem now though, is that it is not fun – because the site has gone through a re-design which, to be fair, was required. The problem for me is that I now have to essentially sit there tediously re-arranging a working system, to work for a completely different front end.

That has to be my weakest area of programming. I can blitz through new projects without stopping for breath, but when it comes to re-arranging and dramatically changing a system I spent months getting to work in the first place, that’s when it stops being a creative exercise, and becomes just moving parts around. In a perfect world, it would be  quick job – the programmer filled with the enthusiasm to get it done quickly, but for me, I slow down quite dramatically and lose interest.

The plus side is that, with the extra scrutinising of the code, I pick out and improve on some areas. A small number of parts had been coded specifically for one purpose, or done quickly to fix a bug whilst the site was going through a promotional event – now it’s been fixed properly, and improved. Because I built the system with re-usability in mind (which to be fair, most sane developers would), any mass changes of the core system won’t effect other parts too much because the location of any calling code is so predictable.

Maybe I should think of it more as an in-depth personal code review, than a re-arrange, but when you have just finished developing a system, developing it AGAIN straight after is about as fun as being given 50 maths exercises on the same exact topic.

With all that said though, the re-design of the site is quite exciting, much more flexible, and much more user-friendly and powerful. It will be worth any monotony associated with gruelling over the same code.

Xbox Live brought about a way for gamers to prove their individual successes with any game on the console. Some were easy – part of the storyline of the game, some were rewards for going above and beyond – some were rewards for doing something very secretive. The end-result is that some gamers tried to milk every last drop from their game in order to collect all the achievements for a game, and thus, a higher gamerscore for their profile.

In a last minute dash of experiment, I decided to make an Xbox Live Achievements system for a website, starting with a section that hasn’t officially been released yet. The idea is that:

• Members collect points for contributing to the site
• Members can see just how much they’ve helped, even compared to other members
• Members who earn over an X amount of points get rewarded

This provides the user with a few basic reward mechanisms. For completing an achievement, the achievement pops up top centre of the screen for a few seconds, showing how many points it earned them, and which achievement it actually is. Their forum profile lists a table of all their current achievements, and totals.

How successful this does is yet to be seen. Aside from the obvious gimmickry, it provides the site’s staff the ability to easily reward members with valuable rewards, and the quick ability to show other members exactly why one of their fellow members are about to receive a brand new iPad, or a £20 iTunes voucher, or something to say thank you in a big way. (for the record though, such rewards haven’t been decided – I am not going to promise an iPad for getting 5000 points just to find out someone Slashdot’s this, and suddenly 200 people qualify. Not that someone would do that anyway).

There are basic rules to define an achievement – an achievement:

• Must be obtainable by anyone. An achievement to be the author of 50% of the articles on a site is going to be near impossible if there are 200 articles on the site.
• Must have a value to indicate the effort required for the achievement – reviewing 100 maps just for 5 points is just daft, especially if another member just gained a prize for adding three galleries for 10 points.
• Can’t be revoked. If someone achieves something, they shouldn’t have it taken away from them, even if they become an aggressive troll.

Now, I certainly don’t think this is going to transform the site overnight, if at all. A lot of members seemed to like the idea, but a lot are also Xbox owners. The system is built in such a way that it is not dominating – if someone doesn’t like the achievements, chances are they won’t see much of the system anyway, but it is there for those who do. Implementation was quick and straightforward, so if this does nothing in the long run, then it’s not the world’s biggest shame.

Before, I expressed a problem I had with designing a website. Now, I am writing in a better, more confident mood about it.

Actually, the hardest part was finding colours that work together. A problem here is that it is relative. But a counter to that is that if someone is looking for particular content, they won’t sit and review the site’s theme. But again, to counter that, first impressions mean a lot.

The obvious is for the theme to look clear, so that the individual can find what they want as quickly an efficiently as possible. That would be one good first impression. No one likes visiting a site they haven’t been to before, and spending even minutes trying to find what they are looking for.

People who regularly come back to the site also don’t want to sit in front of a theme that makes their eyes bleed. For the background of the site, it was a tough choice – to go against the site’s main use of blue and peach, I tapped into green’s range, ever so slightly. The result was less taxing on the eyes than the same almost-grey-but-purple shade.

I’m also suprised at the detail added by simple drop shadows and rounded rectangles. They are small details, but they make a suprising difference. When using the old theme, the site feels old. The new theme makes it feel fresh, and also more robust, as if the quality of the theme reflects the quality of the functionality.

These are still beginner approaches, but they do make a difference. This has given me an interest in image editing to some degree. Finding my way around GIMP and Photoshop would make things a lot nicer when it comes to editing textures for the game engine.

Can’t Wait for Christmas

Ah yes, Christmas is not too far off. But i’m not looking forward to it for the presents and feasts – my partner in crime and I have decided to set aside a few weeks to work full time on the game engine. The result should be a significant part of a small RPG engine. That is, we should have procedurally generated terrain, with realistic grass, omni-directional shadow maps, a nice particle engine, an inventory system, convincing water, vegetation, and detailed texture mapping on the terrain (with the vegetation following suit). Anything less than the majority of those features would cause a bitter resent for the time and how it was used.

29th September. Time’s ticking by, and the site has really taken shape. Is it ready for the public? Can it survive the public scrutiny? Are the bugs ironed out?

Time will tell.

Either way, the site has been released at long last.

To give it a nice, memorable date, I spent the remaining 5 hours of Wednesday making sure everything was going smooth. The site was then uploaded, the database cleared of test data, and the countdown began – the idea being to initialise the site as close to midnight as possible. The site’s “birthday” then being 1st October 2009.

As I type, there are now 11 events. After hours of data inputting, I came across a rather serious dilemma. You see, Britain is divided into counties. These counties have changed over the years, some changed during another change. We are now left with some nice large, general counties, some sub-divided counties, some created to help the Post Office, others created to serve lieutenancies. The trouble here is that I don’t know which county sets to use. One idea is to use all of them, but different sources of information provide conflicting data on which county’s serve which purpose.

In the end, I didn’t see much harm in adding all county’s. Except when you try to find all towns/cities in, say, Wales, and the data there is different to how you know it. Take Swansea – it should go in the County of Swansea, yet Yahoo’s directory lists it under West Glamorgan. Which is correct depending on how you look at it, but will someone searching via county get the results they expect?

In an ideal world, people would be fully aware that Swansea (and County of Swansea) is in West Glamorgan, which is in turn, in Glamorgan – the original county. But will people select those? That’s not even the entire point – the point is, this is adding a complication to what should be a very quick way of getting information. If someone is trying to find Singleton Hospital, then one would assume they would select Swansea as a county. But in this case, the user would not find the event, as the event is listed under West Glamorgan.

So here comes the solution – parenting. County of Swansea is added as a child county to Mid Glamorgan, which is in turn a child county of Glamorgan. Selecting either in this relationship shows the necessary events. But this adds a problem that I, as an individual, am not going to know accurately about, say, Scottish county’s. Information online seems rather disagreeable too. A best guess is to take various maps of the county’s from different years, and compare positions.

Towns have also added a problem. Penarth, and Sully were added as towns. Yet an event in Sully is addressed as Penarth. This is apparently, correct. So now, there’s the problem that there is a lot of towns that are part of other towns. As far as I am aware, Sully is a rather small area and cannot really be regarded as a town.

As people add events, hopefully this will filter out which towns can be discarded. All I have learned from this is that Yahoo’s directory could be a bit sharper.