Oops. Bracket!
This is a screen cap of my espn.com brackets for the 2006 NCAA. I just had to post this because it says Syracuse won there game which they didn’t. It must be true that all Syracuse broadcasting grads do end up at ESPN.
NSStringFromRect
While teaching myself how to program Cocoa (can you smell the delicious?) via Aaron Hillegass’s Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X, I ran into some difficulties with a challenge he gives in the book. This particular challenge occurs, for those following along, in chapter 15 “Images and Mouse Events.” He would like us to create an application using NSBezierPath in a custom NSView to draw ovals on the screen.
I have a faulty implementation. It works but damn is it a hack. I don’t know how much memory it leaks. I don’t know how efficient it runs. I don’t know if it follows the proper idioms for Mac programming. It works. Let’s leave it at that.
Yet, I would like to clean it up and make it a simple demo program (save, delete, undos, etc.). One issue is the use of document based application for the base. I don’t think I am following the Model-View-Controller paradigm. I have the view doing all the work. I would like to separate that by having the MyDocument class save and manage the NSRects in an NSMutableArray. Yet the NSArray holds objects and NSRect is a struct. What to do?
This article perfectly describes a solution to my problem. It is also well written. Damn. Programming for the Mac is fun.
Once you become accustomed to NSLogging everything under the sun, it can come as quite a surprise that a few common Objective-C types don’t bend so easily as the rest. Examples of such types are NSRect, NSSize, and NSRange. These compromised “objects” are implemented as plain C-structs rather than as proper objects, presumably as a performance consideration. Since they’re not objects, there is no freebie “description” method enabling them to be effortlessly passed as arguments to NSLog.
It also turns out I could’ve used NSValue. That is beautiful.
Referential Integrity
Database class in school is for suckas. If I have to know third normal form once again, I think I’ll shoot someone. Damn, I should’ve placed out of this damn class.
Amazing Race 9: Brazil to Russia
They had a lot of those crazy Russia nesting dolls in this one.
The mother-daughter team will be cracking up soon.
I don’t like the frat boyz.
Forget your clothes but not that Amazing bag with your passports. I am looking at you Pinks.
Movie Review: Failure To Launch
I have been a home owner for coming on three years now. So basically, I left home when I was 32. Matthew McConaughey’s character is still living at home in Failure To Launch at the age of “35.” Sarah Jessica Parker is supposed to lure him from that situation, but instead falls in love with him. Some things happen. Other things happen. He gets bitten by animals. And Zooey Deschanel steals the show.
I liked this film better than I expected to. It was the first time in a long while that Sarah Jessica Parker was not in a role that made her be an uptight shrew. She was decent.
They wrapped the romantic comedy around some nut job action that is similar to Something About Mary or Wedding Crashers. Unlike Wedding Crashers which started as comedy and ended in mush. Failure to Launch starts out mushy and ends in some hilarity.
3 of 5 stars.
Adventures from my Netflix queue: 13 Going On 30
Just wrapped up watching 13 Going on 30. In my $0.02 summary, I said it was an “unbelievable story, but it sucks you in.”
First, it was hard to believe. For one thing, I don’t think a 13 year old in 1987 would’ve been dancing to Micheal Jackson’s Thriller. Didn’t that come out in 1982? She was a couple of years behind the curve. Perhaps the original writer placed it then, but then the movie wasn’t produced until later and the Thriller scenes were key so they kept it in. See. It is hard to believe that teen girls would still be interested in Micheal in 1987. It would’ve been better if they did Bad.
Second, it was hard to believe that the magazine would’ve wanted to do her idea. Especially, something so drastic. Plus, what demographic was Poise targetting? It looked like 16 magazine, yet that other girl’s other idea seemed to be targeted at young adults. Hunh?
Lastly, I get sucked into these remorseful, wistful stories. I always like looking back. I felt it right here. That thread keeps this movie from sinking to 2 stars. And Jennifer Garner was totally cute in it.
3 of 5 stars.
Guess who’s back?
The Amazing Race! I missed the first leg, but then got Tivo to start recording the rest of the season. They’ve already lost two teams, and I’ve already started to hate Eric & Jeremy.
Are there any hotties? With just one episode seen I like the mom and daughter combo, Wanda & Desiree. The daughter is cute.
When approaching this season, I was wary. What has become amazing has now become routine. Nothing surprising anymore. Like your favorite tshirt. It just fits great. But watching it always, always gets me up and going. Fun times to be had on Tuesdays at 10pm EST on CBS.
Vertiginous
There’s a point in Vertigo where the story turns for the worst. If you haven’t seen it yet, please stop reading as this is SPOILER material.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Just after Jimmy Stewart’s character runs into Kim Novak’s non-blonde, hick from the sticks, he asks her out on a date. She agrees, and he leaves allowing her to get ready for the date. At this point, Hitchcock segues to the murder, and we find out she is really her with whom Jimmy Stewart’s character fell in love. She decides to leave town. Yet, she doesn’t and the movie runs to its sad conclusion.
Within these few minutes of Vertigo, Rear Window fades to second in my list. Anyway, I bought the DVD today and just had to watch that part as well as the suit buying scene. Barabara Bel Geddes appears in this film. She died this past year and was part of the rollcoll of the dead at this year’s academy awards.
Obsession can be deadly. Deceit can be maddening. Lies are always not what they appear to be.
Fuck you, Scotty. You’re an ass.
Blog as post it note
Just posting this stuff here so that I can access this information from work. This is for CS 774 Human Computer Interactions, and it is for a paper that I have to write. I didn’t post the previous assignment, because I thought it would’ve bored you. This I am posting so that I can search on it tomorrow because it is on IEEE site which we have free access at work. This is a list of citations I would like to read up on.
Image-browser taxonomy and guidelines for designers
Plaisant, C.; Carr, D.; Shneiderman, B.
Software, IEEE
Volume 12, Issue 2, Mar 1995
Visualization methods for personal photo collections: browsing and searching in the PhotoFinder
Hyunmo Kang; Shneiderman, B.;
Multimedia and Expo, 2000. ICME 2000. 2000 IEEE International Conference on
Volume 3, 30 July-2 Aug. 2000