It’s been an interesting week.
- 35 hours at work. I took vacation relief shifts after the pick was over to bump my status hours so I could get some more vacation for the summer, thinking they would never get used like usual. WRONG. 2 weeks in a row I’ve worked 20 hour weekends.
- 4.0. YAY! And hey, I don’t even have to go back to school this summer! *grumble*
- I read through Stephan Kochan’s Programming in C as I prepare to really take the Cocoa plunge this summer. My plan is to create an easy-to-use application to aid music instructors in figuring out a working schedule between them, students, and accompanists. For the first version, I just want to get it to avoid conflicts; hopefully afterwards I can implement some prioritization. I’d also like to implement a feature allowing students to visit a website and enter their schedule, and then have an XML data file e-mailed to the teacher that s/he can import into the program, to avoid having to enter it by hand. Surprisingly, the toughest part so far has been trying to decide how to lay out the user interface; Core Data makes things THAT easy.
- So, I don’t think I’ve chronicled on here the journey that the HTPC box has taken recently. I got sick and tired of trying to get ATI Multimedia Center to work right, so I decided to give MythTV a try. I caved and bought a Hauppauge WinTV-PVR card since it looked like it might still be forever and a day until my ATI All-in-Wonder was supported. I tried it with about 4 different distros, and finally settled on Fedora, as it seemed to work the best. Got it all fixed up, and bought a universal learning remote, so now the computer, receiver, and TV run off one remote. MythTV beats the pants off of anything else I’ve ever seen in the HTPC arena. The frosting on the cake? I found a universal binary of the Myth frontend last night and decided to put it on my MacBook Pro for giggles. Less than half an hour later I was watching the Edmonton-San Jose playoff game from the comfort of bed. All I can say is, wow. Tossing around the idea of getting a mini just to run the frontend, and sticking that ugly big box in a closet or something.
- John/Gaila/Colin/Whoever else is around–how does a game and movie night sound soon? We could head out and take advantage of the deserted MU Rec Room for some bowling and/or pool, and then head back to one of our places for a movie or something?
Ok first off for you app, don’t get locked down into an assumption of how it will work, are your students on multiple platforms and thats why your assembling the XML file through a website? Or are they connecting through a few Macs in your music rooms/isu campus if the latter is correct then the Cocoa apps should just be able to send their XML file easily enough.
Your app sounds like it’ll take a little bit of work to get working correctly even though it’s in Core Data. You see Core data uses a central NSManagedObjectContex object to store it’s data in. Bringing in multiple XML files created by Core Data or otherwise means creating an additional NSManagedObjectContext and appropriately merging data in. The only things about an app that worry me for someone new to this is keeping track of memory management and parsing of XML files created by external apps like your website. If I sound critical or mean im not trying to be, what im saying is even though this is a lot easier on Mac OS X thanks to core data your gonna have a lot to consider when initially planning the app so take that into consideration, I cannot stress how much good planning will save you time coding and debugging, Good luck!
A good night out sounds great to honest, ESPECIALLY after the stress encoured on Tech Support for Coach house on Mothers Day weekend. A good thing we need to do is see X-Men: The Last Stand, I know me and john were definitely talking about seeing it. Other than that im all ears
The teachers (the ones actually using this app) are all on Macs. I want the students (who need to send their schedules to the teacher) to just be able to go to a website, fill out a form, and a click a button to send it to the teacher. I know I’ll have to code a parser/merger/etc., but it’ll be the most seamless way to do this.
Yeah, I know it’s not going to be easy easy, I was comparing my experience to trying to do all of this “by hand” like the Cocoa Programming book shows you. This is fly-by easy compared to that.
Hmm, that’s a good idea. When John and Gaila get back (are they back yet?) we can get that figured out. The Da Vinci code would be a good one to see too, and maybe a little bit more significant-other friendly, if you catch my drift.
I should state more clearly, all of the teachers are on macs running 10.4 or above, otherwise I wouldn’t have even considered Core Data as an option.
Ok yeah if the teachers are all running 10.4 or later it should just be as easy as starting up another NSManagedObjectContext,NSPersistentStoreManager,etc and then merging them together and properly dealloc’ing the old NSManagedObjectContext. This is already the procedure you use if you are adding extra atrributes onto a data model and need to merge and old version.
Ok maybe I need to read the book but Im afraid I don’t get your drift in the context of the Da Vinci code, that’s like saying Star Treck movies are chick flicks…maybe what I should say is are you familiar with the phrase “DOES NOT COMPUTE!” In any case Idk why im talking about this since I don’t have a girlfriend
In any case this week would probably not be the best week to see the Davinci code anyway as it will be so busy. I’d wait till next week X-Men The last stand will be out then too.
Yeah, John’s busy this weekend too, and I’ll be busy next weekend, so maybe the weekend after. Weekdays aren’t really an option at the moment, since both Maggie and I have to work. And I guess as far as the movie goes, we should just try to find something to go see that everybody will enjoy, and I know that X-Men won’t really be Maggie’s cup of tea.
Time to crack the Cocoa book again… do you know of any books out now that are new enough to have Core Data sections? I mean I have a basic grasp, but that’s it… basic.
I don’t believe I know of any books that have Core Data info yet, the newest ones have cocoa bindings though. As for core data rescources the best ones i’ve found are
Apple ADC Developer Videos : Building A Core Data app (download these and then play them together on a playlist on VLC )
http://developer.apple.com/cocoa/coredatatutorial/index.html
Core Data Classes Overview
http://www.cocoadevcentral.com/articles/000086.php
Building a Small Core Data app
http://www.cocoadevcentral.com/articles/000085.php
CocoaDev has many great discussions over a variety of topics including Core Data, you can also ask for help here and don’t be afraid to say your a newbie (people will be more forgiving and willing to explain foundation concepts)
http://www.cocoadev.com/index.pl?CoreData
Theocacao blog has posted some good core data stuff in the past though lately he’s started posting a lot of developer commentary
http://theocacao.com
and as always look around for open source projects using core data, as AssignmentTracker X 2.0 comes further along here i’ll send you a snapshot and show you what to pay attention to (im starting to code a lot for custom views and drag n drop alongside core data code which im cleaning up and seperating
And as for the movie I don’t care really what we see, i’ve wanted to see X-men and the da vinci code so whatever we see whenever is ok with me as long as im not working when we go see it