That was Anticlimactic

A little after nine this morning, Super Secret Project X (also known to some as the Here API) went live — by which I mean I posted a quick "Introducing the Here API" message to the site's blog, tweeted a link to it and then deleted the site's old index.html.

I've also begun my search for a co-founder. I really can't see this site going far with just me running between the helm and the engine room. I began with a quick add on cofoundr.com and I intend to walk the thin line between circulation and spam as I roll it out across other sites over the next days and weeks.

(And by the way, if you're intending to respond to the ad and have found your way here by Googling either me or hereapi.com then well done, you've earned yourself some extra points. To claim them just slip the word "artichoke" into your e-mail.)

I'm not sure how I'll choose who's going to fill the role, but like having to scale your site, it's a really nice problem to have. I'm hoping that I get at least one half-descent candidate. I'd like to be up and running at full speed for the Future of Web Apps conference in early October. So here's hoping.

Cocoa Touch 2.0

My experience with the iPod Touch v2.0 firmware update was the same as everyone else's: a day of hitting the "Check for Update" button, the result of which flip-flopped between "1.1.4 is the latest version" and "the iTunes store is unable to complete this request". The little tease. But by Saturday morning it had sorted itself out and I was able to upgrade. The £5.99 price tag even seemed fair-ish, since it's pretty much the $9.95 plus Ireland-rate VAT.

My first impressions are that the App Store is a really rather slick way of getting applications, and, apart from the face that with each download it kicks you back to the launch screen, a joy to use. I can't help wondering however what all those developers who were denied a place in the store make of the likes of Hold On and Cow Toss.

Some other quick observations: there seemed to be about a dozen tip calculators and a few flashlight apps; those pug-ugly apps from Steves-wossname software made it through the vetting process; and then there was TruPhone, a VOIP app which I haven't seen mentioned anywhere else. This surprised me the most, since I wasn't sure it would be allowed.

I Want My 2.0

42: The approximate number of times I've checked for the OS X Touch 2.0 update for the iPod Touch so far this morning. Yes, I really am that desperate for another gouging from Apple. (I just thought I'd blog a quick note as a break from pumping the "Check for Update" button in iTunes.)

Why I Achieved Nothing Today

I'm not sure where to direct the thunderhead of frustration I've built up today: at web development in general, or at Internet Explorer in particular.

I am not a web developer — as I have spent the last ten hours proving — and more importantly the Here API is not a web application. It is, however, a tool which I hope will be extremely useful to web application developers, which is why a Javascript library to access the service was one of our highest priorities and which is why I've wasted the entire day trying to get a demo app up and running.

Or, rather, up and running on Windows. Resources here are a little limited and today was my first chance to spend serious time on the (singular) PC. But not to worry, because the demo app's been doing its thing on both Safari and Firefox under OS X for a couple of weeks now, so there shouldn't be much work that needs doing.

Of course I was wrong. For a start, in Firefox it looked utter arse, buttons and textareas which had been carefully — and tediously — manoeuvred into position via CSS vanishing off the screen. But at least it displayed in Firefox. It took a good half hour of fiddling to get IE to show anything at all. This was partly my fault, having missed the "Microsoft doesn't believe Javascript need consts" warning in the Mozila docs. Mostly, I blame the Javascript "debugger" in IE, because 1) its error messages call everything a syntax error (boy, I swear I haven't met them since the days of Spectrum BASIC), and 2) when it gives a line number you have to a) guess which included file the error occurred in, and then b) subtract the number of lines down the original HTML page the <script> tag came from the line number in the error to work out where it was.

And of course when something was displayed it i) didn't work, and ii) looked like total arse.

"Bugger this for a game of soldiers!" thought I, and off I went looking for a nice cross-platform framework to do the hard stuff for me. The demo app as it stands uses Prototype and Scriptaculous (the Javascript client libraries at its heart — remember, this is why I'm doing this — has no dependencies), but what I needed was something to do widgets.

Being the Apple drone I am, Sproutcore was my first port of call. I'd only ever heard it discussed on MacBreak Weekly, but it had drawn favourable comparisons to the Second Coming so I thought it might be worth a look. And it certainly looked promising, right up to the point where the demo borked under IE. Back to Google. (I don't need to link Google, right?)

The rest of my day was spent dismissing Javascript GUI frameworks. Qooxdoo (which they tell me is pronounced "[`ku:ksdu:]" — no, honestly, they think that that's helping), MooTools, the Yahoo! User Interface library ... none of them had that certain get-this-done-today something that I was looking for. (And what the hell is with this needing an external tool chain to build your Javascript library?) I almost went with Dojo — I'd played with it in the past, mainly for testing our JSON-RPC servers — but then it hit me that whichever of these I chose my app would end up looking like a Swing e-mail client. My current "design" — you can actually see the air-quotes when you look at it — may look like total arse, but at least it has a little character.

So it's back to my original code. I'm going to have to wait till my go on the PC comes around again and sweat through the code the old-fashioned way. The problem of getting a design to look the same cross-browser must have been solved a thousand times before — so why can't I find a simple solution? (It's at times like these I really wish this blog got some readers so I could get a few suggestions ... oh, well.)

Misc. Clippage

Since I've had to bugger about with the page template to fit that ChannelFlip movie, I thought I may as well post a couple of other clips. So here's the final — and most interesting — part of the 1999 BBC Comic Relief Doctor Who skit The Curse of Fatal Death.



This came between the attempted Paul McGann restart and the Christopher Eccleston reboot, and was written by Steven Moffat, who's just been handed the show's reins. Richard E. Grant's non-canon spell as the ninth Doctor (following his Withnail partner) can be found here.

I remember seeing The Curse of Fatal Death when it was first on, but somehow Time Crash slipped by me. (Sorry, the BBC don't want it embedded.) Another jolly fun little Moffat skit from a BBC charity evening. Now, when do we get to see the seven living Doctors together?

Mac Games for Mac Users

Elfin Princess Katherine Fletcher is currently presenting a short series about gaming on the Mac over at ChannelFlip Games. I mention this only because of my fervent wish to embed her.



Of course, by "gaming on the Mac" she mostly means "playing PC games through Windows running on the Mac" — and yet it doesn't have me spitting bile... see where a little cute can get you, PCW? — which brings me back to a rant I published elsewhere (but don't bother looking, I've re-imaged the server).

I'm not the world's biggest gamer (although if I could get back all the time I've lost to Quinn or — god help me — Zuma Deluxe I'd be able to write a couple of those novels I've been planning), but in my ever so humble opinion what we really need are not more ports of two year old PC games, but some original Mac titles.

What is a Mac game? In the same way that there's something quintessentially, recognisably Mac-like about written-for-the-Mac-by-people-who-understand-the-Mac applications, Mac games should have that certain something which sets them apart from their PC or console counterparts. I think that Marathon is the best — and, okay, almost only — example of this.

Superficially, Marathon is just another Doom clone. But it has the great little touches, the technical innovations and — probably most importantly — the engaging plot to set it apart from the other knock-offs. I don't know if anyone at the time called it "the thinking man's Doom", but that's what I'm doing here.

The main impediment to a Mac-only games industry is that it now appears necessary for PC titles to cost the same as Hollywood movies / small developing nations. To which I would tentatively suggest replacing cash and head count with, say, talent and creativity. Think Indie flicks versus the summer blockbusters.

So how about an open-source-style effort to get the ball rolling. The DIM3 engine is probably a good starting point, and I'd happily donate my so-so coding skills. So what do you say?

Doktor Wer und der Daleks

So another season of Doctor Who has come to an end. Ho hum. How can I find the end of the universe dull? Maybe because we've seen the exact same thing (with minor variations) at the end of ever other season and then again at Christmas. Actually, who am I kidding? We see the same almost-apocalypse every other episode. Too many cop-outs and "with one bound they were free" moments. They could have run this episode the usual length and not missed anything important, just trimmed a bit of the soap opera at the end.

Nevertheless, this episode will go down in history for one very important reason: German Daleks.

Let me just type that again incase you missed it. German Daleks.

German. Daleks.

German Daleks!

It is at times like this that I can only curse the short-sightedness which lead to the deprecation of the <blink> tag. (I've included it anyway on the off chance that your browser's author still keeps the faith.)

Russell T. Davies, OBE? The man deserves a Peerage. A Knighthood at the very least. It would be more than a fair swap for German Daleks.

Oh, and for bringing Bernard Cribbins back to our screens.

Bernard Cribbins and German Daleks — so why wasn't this the greatest 65 minutes of television ever?

These Points of Data Form a Beautiful Line

I know you aren't really interested but I'm going to explain why I haven't posted for a while. It's known as "laziness". I can highly recommend it as a lifestyle choice.

I have also been hard at work at my latest stab at an Internet Start-Up. The Here API — "the answer to all your location-based service needs" — will be launched (into beta) in the very near future.

You heard it here first.

A Brief List of Grievances

Since PCW is a little too parochial to attract the attention of Defenders of the Mac Faith such as Chairman Gruber, I shall take it upon myself to provide a page-by-page list of the slights inflicted by its September issue (plus it's raining out and when I decide to suddenly start updating again I really suddenly start updating again).

Grap a copy and read along at home!

Cover story: "Buy a Mac, get a PC" Oh, boy. It seems as far as PCW is concerned, the only good Mac is a Windows-running Mac. Cue six pages dedicated to installing Windows via Boot Camp. OS X — constantly referred to as "OSX" throughout — gets a thin side-box, where Cover Flow, Quick Look and Spotlight are highlighted. Seriously. Those are the highlights of OS X? Not at all superficial, then.

p.7: Editorial Editor Kelvyn Taylor doesn't like the "bouncy icons" or "odd menu system".

p.8: The iPhone is described as "revolutionary" ... hold on, that sounded complimentary.

p.9: Okay. Analysts are quoted dismissing it as "no market changer". Normal service has been restored.

p.13 (among many others): I give up: what exactly is an "iTouch"?

p.14: Ahem: "The iHype over iPods and iPhones leaves the impression that iApple started the iFashion for putting a small i in front of everything." Do you see what they've done there? "In fact, Compaq started it back in April 2000 with the launch of its iPaq handheld." That would be the April 2000 which occurred before the May 1998 when the iMac was launched, would it?

p.19 (top): "... the old Apple disease of form overriding function." Of course, some would argue that the two were inseparable.

p.19 (bottom): Where Clive Akass explains how the fact that Cubase 1) inflicts draconian — and quaintly old-fashioned — dongle-based DRM on its users, while 2) apparently not making a PDF version of their manual easily accessible on the Mac proves that the Mac is "not a user-friendly operating system".

And ... this is about the point where I'm starting to lose the will to live. Oh, look! It's stopped raining.

State of the Chart

I'm not sure what's worse when technology let's me down — the disappointment or the another-glimpse-of-beachball-and-I-smash-you-to-pieces frustration. It's probably a little of each.

I've just had such a painful experience. The task was simple: I needed some charts (or "graphs" as I'm sure we used to call them). Nothing too fancy, just two series of around 1,400 observations each, plotted against a third containing dates. How hard can that be for a dual 2GHz machine with 2Gb of RAM?

(You may have already guessed the answer.)

First up: Numbers. I bought iWork mainly for Pages, mainly because it always feels so damn fast when typing, which weirdly is the first thing I look for in a word processor. Numbers has until now been sat gathering dust in my Applications folder (apart from the odd occasion when it comes bouncing forward offering to handle a .xls file for me. I always politely decline). After today it's unlikely to see much more action. After producing the first chart I dragged it up the page. Cue five minutes of beach ball. Force Quit and next, please.

In case you're not familiar with NeoOffice, it's a version of the OpenOffice.org code made more Mac-like. It's been doing stirling work opening Office files for a few years now, and I've used it to produce charts many times in the past. Putting my silly dalliance with Pages behind me, it was back to good old dependable NeoOffice.

But only for a quarter of an hour or so. And if it hadn't taken so long to do anything it would have been a lot less. It took over ten second for the chart to first appear, and the same length of time after each alteration. And there weren't many of them, since selecting the correct part of the chart (axis labels but not axis line; legend but not just the surrounding box) was a black art I obviously need far more practice to master.

Finally, I turned to the genuine(-ish) article, OpenOffice.org (yes, the .org appears to be a required part of its name). I'd move from it to NeoOffice a while ago, mainly because, yes, NeoOffice really is more Mac-like. OpenOffice.org requires X11 to run — of course, being a proper geek I had this already installed. After the slowest 185Mb download I've experienced in a long while it was one drag-to-Applications and we were away.

OpenOffice.org behaves like its *nix equivalent, in-window tool bar and all, but that is only a small inconvenience. (I also have a bit of a soft-spot for ugly X11 GUIs — I think it's a nostalgia thing.) The app made short work of producing the four charts I needed: they appeared almost instantly and were equally quick to update. This was helped by the simple black-on-white colour scheme they used by default — NeoOffice seems to take the "being like MicroSoft Office" thing to the extent of copying their fugly grey-background pre-set — meaning there was less in need of tinkering. There was a small hiccup when I couldn't copy and paste them into Pages, but exporting the destination document soon took care of that.

So a couple of short hours later I have my four charts and my heart rate has returned to its overweight normal. I blame Java for NeoOffice's failings, but despite today's little setback I'm going to keep it as my free Office-like suite of choice.