Let’s start to what was I am up to.

I got an idea for an iPhone app. I mapped the idea out and picked up the logo and the background. now for the coding part.

I am planning for a trip to europe this fall. Booked my tickets already but still didn’t map out where to go in Rome.

Trying out google plus is cool, but not a lot of people are on it. mainly Kevin rose and his gang are there. I almost can confirm they are getting paid to post stuff so people don’t get bored and ditch google plus as google buzz and wave failed before.

Oh, And the picture above is a decoration I got from Kuwait to display in my office. I see it as in ENT doctor who’s reviewing an x-ray of a patient who swallowed a an object .. What is it ?

In this episode, Leonard comes up with an idea for his iOS app and derails his friendship with Sheldon.

What’s the App?

It’s a handwriting-recognition based equation solver, or in Sheldon’s way: “The Surprisingly Helpful Equation-Linked Differential Optimized Numerator.” The idea behind this is to use iPhone’s camera to take a picture of the equation, and scan it with handwriting recognition, then run it through a symbolic evaluation engine, and bam.

Learning Cocoa

During the episode, they show several actual Objective-C code snippets and interesting design sketches on white boards, here are some of them:

They have a CRecognition object holds an UIImage instance variable, and sadly they name it _Photo (with underline as prefix), it’s not the naming convention Apple suggested.

The next morning, Sheldon starts his own design, if you look closer, it’s much more considered than Leonard’s.

For example, since this is an utility app, Sheldon comes up with a flip view design that similar to built-in Camera/Stocks app. A full screen SPhotoView with a snapshot button in the middle, and on the other side, it’s SEquationView and a UITableView at the bottom with some buttons.

In here, you can see more details. A UITableView holds the scanned equations, and supports rotation for landscape full screen detail view and portrait detail view. On the right side, Sheldon shows better understanding about UIViewController’s view hierarchy design concept.

Later, Leonard’s team is doing some reference counting. Instead of accessing instance variable directly in -initWithPhoto: and -dealloc, they decide to use retain property self.photo, with class method to return a autoreleased CRecognition object, and claim there’s no leaks.

What a mess, you should always use instance variable directly in -initWithPhoto: and -dealloc when creating/releasing instance object.

Here you see Leonard’s app class hierarchy, mostly MFC-ish (thanks, @lukhnos.) style naming convention for the class names, almost everything starts with letter “C” (is for “Class” I think), CAppDelegate, CMainView, CCameraView, CSymbolicView, etc. They should use prescribed prefix like “LRH,” which means Leonard, Rajesh and Howard.

The beautiful Penny is next to Sheldon, and there’s Facebook API on the white board.

In the end, Penny’s shoes app project. There’re many of them on the AppStore already, and the UI design for this one looks kinda lame.

And Sheldon is working on this project… (for customer from hell?)

Conclusion

I love and enjoy this episode a lot, and the TBBT crew does a great job for all these minor details, they look very convincing to me.

But, they should use Mac when doing the coding, I only saw Raj’s MacBook Pro, and rest of them are using PCs. That’s not right, you can’t run Xcode on PC, well, unless they all use Hackintoshes…

Also, If you want to hire someone for your iOS app project, I highly recommend Sheldon Cooper.

References

The Big Bang Theory: 4×12 The Bus Pants Utilization

Apple: Introduction to Coding Guidelines for Cocoa

[digdog dig]; – To nil, or not to nil, that is the question

via [digdog dig]; — “Actually, Sheldon Has Better Design.” If you’re….

I have been studying for my exams for the past 3 months and as usual ideas (good and bad) come to my mind. I’ve own 5 TLD (.com/.net/.org) and now I own two ccTLD (.at and .MD).

I am facing a problem with these new domains. The DNS record setup isn’t what I expected to be as I’ve been using godaddy to manage my old purchases.

@_bashar suggested domaindns to handle the new ccTLDs but i think there are some issues to be solved for now

Any suggested dimain management sites ?

Update : So DomainDns worked well and my new domains are managed over there. The website is a bit shaky and unstable but it does the job needed. The problem now with google apps. I use their service to set up google service on my domains (website, gmail, docs, calendar, etc.). The domain verification isn’t working and from what I see in the FAQ it is a common problem. This isn’t expected from google. Disappointing.

UPDATE  2 :  Issues resolved , now I own 7 domains and 7 emails !

Again .. m7ad gali !

Can you guess ?

H.H Mohammad Bin Rashid of Dubai and H.H Hammad bin Jassim of Qatar !

I’ll leave you the comments

My wife chose a loafer shoe for me, which I wasn’t a fan off due to the fact I enjoy the luxury of sweaty feet. I got the shoe and decided to wear it in well air-conditioned malls for short walks only.

I remembered that there was a “revolutionary” sock mentioned at diggnation once before that suits these low ankle shoes but it was out of stock (Thanks for the plug by keven rose) anyway, I found the site link at uncreat and ordered a set to be shipped to aramex uk.

Also I went thru and order some junk from amazon.co.uk (a retro Casio watch , some hp ink cartilages, an ipad cover, and an autoscope).

I am the sort of guy who uses one password fits all guy. My email , fb, and bank account share the same password. my godaddy, wordpress, forums share another password. and that’s it. I think I am subscribed to PlayStation network from the days of psp and since the hacking incident they had I started to worry about my passwords. Basically if someone got access to my gmail my life will be ruined.

So on that basis, I had a discussion with a friend about 1password as i remember it had good reviews by teckzilla people and when I checked it out I found it was too expensive to try on. My friend did a quick google search and recommended lastpass (free). So far it’s doing the job quite well. I started changing few passwords as I log in and using lastpass random password generator. There is also a trick to use it on safari’s iOS browser. I give it the thumbs up

If anyone has an amazon wish-list I’d be delighted to browse it and get few idea’s since i am in a shopping spree!

Update: I am still recieving my amazon shoppung from uk. They lost my casio retro watch. I contacted them and they foynd it. Its on its way to me.

I am a proud owner of an iPhone among the rest of my family (except my mother) and I describe myself a happy one so far. What’s makes me happy is the popularity and the apps available on it.

I admit my daily use of apps range from checking facebook,whatsapp , playing few games, youtube, ipod, email , checking google/wikipedia to fact-check some of the statements I say/hear every once in a while. But recently, I discovered viber.app a good VOIP app that erased the laggy experience in my mind from the old Skype day’s to summarize .. it’s amazing.

Now on the other hand, Android looks good but from what I hear/know that updates are not standarized across hardware and those phones come loaded with crapwear as dells used to arrive. I know few people who jumped on the android wagon and abandoned it 6 months later for the same reason.

One other drawback is the lack of the few apps that I use daily on their market. I wasn’t sure about that info but I didn’t like the facebook app on android and just recently Viber.app released a beta for android. WTF !

So, While browsing the only decent tech blog site that is still around (techcrunch) I found this article were they state that the android app market will surpass the apple app store in august 2011 ! I wounder what apps are filling the android market if they have just recently added an important app as viber to it.

I’ve always considered myself as a gadget freak apple fanboy web programmer that read all the php forums out there. Nowadays i deleted my twitter, started to like pages on facebook and downloading style and cars magazines on my iPad for a past time. Strange feeling it is. I visit UnCrate more  than techcrunch for good’s sake !

Even the change in gizmodo’s layout didn’t bother me much.

Maybe gardening is will be my next interest ? who knows !

Yesterday I’ve been to a coffee shop in Jeddah and found a bunch of guys with the latest Macbook Pro’s and Nikon/Canon DSLR at the same age group as I am. I started to wounder what happened to the days where I used to buy myself new gadgets every now and then?

My BlackBook has been serving me well (beside the unusable battery and the constantly out of space hard drive) for the past 4 years, and I’ve been thinking about getting a new cam but i never get out for sight seeing much.

I’ve got myself an iPad 32 wifi last year and an iPhone 4. hopefully the iPhone 5 that’s coming out this year isn’t life changing otherwise I’ll spend my gadget money on it rather than a new laptop and/or DSLR

It takes 3 days to be done. 6 days for regular shipping to my shop&ship address.

Once it arrived I applied it on. Fits perfectly and quite difficult to take it off. The material is “strong plastic” and diffently not of the “cheap” feeling ones. Easy access to the charging doc and volume buttons as they are not covered.

An extra to the order they sent me a 20% discount code for my next order.

Total coast : $34 + KD4 for delivery