alexbrie . com

Because I am still working hard recoding one of my most important apps, and hoping I’ll be ready in a week or two, I won’t do a iOS development post just yet. Instead, I am going to take my turn reviewing the new iPad, in the shortest manner possible:

When did I get it?
As promised by Apple, on the 23rd of March. It was a shock for everyone that Apple really kept their word on the international release date – unlike their previous device launches, there were indeed enough iPads in stock to make sure early risers could get one.

How much did it cost?
Although there is no official Apple store in this small part of Europe, prices at authorized Apple sellers had been set up by Apple – the 16GB Wifi cost 2199 RON, which is 501 Euros, which is 668 USD. Significantly more than in the US, but a comparable price with the rest of EU prices (12euros more, probably due to VAT difference). This is the first time Apple does this, and I hope it won’t be the last – I’m sick and tired of Romanian prices for Apple products being 30-50% more than elsewhere.

Which model did I buy?
I had initially wanted to get a 4G one with a larger capacity, aiming to turn it into my main mobile device. But eventually I chickened out and went for the cheapest version I could get, justifying the purchase as an investment – I do need the latest iOS devices at hand, if I am to develop apps for them. I also hope that future versions will add better battery life on top of the extraordinary screen.
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This post is dedicated to Tibi, my parent's godson, who asked me the above question, in a somewhat different form. A bright student now in his 2nd year of high school, he loves computers and sometimes feels that he should be taking advantage more of the opportunities that his generation takes for granted(you know, everyone having computers, internet, access to information). To be honest, his question was actually how can I earn some money after school. I twisted it around trying to cover a more useful area.

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I had heard about TinyLetter from some online sources(Daring Fireball, among others), and it looked interesting enough to worth a look today: a free newsletter manager software, capable of sending thousands of emails at once, so interesting that it got purchased by Mailchimp. Being the curious early adopter that I am, I created an account and started playing with it.

I didn’t really want to create a newsletter, I just wanted to see how it manages a longer list of contacts. So I figured I could import the  contacts from my Gmail account.

Big mistake. Big. Huge.

It imported the contacts, that’s for sure. But it also, without asking me first, without asking confirmation, without even warning me, sent out an “Thanks for subscribing to my newsletter” email to all the people I had ever contacted on Gmail: ex-boses, ex-girlfriends, business partners, teachers, friends, unknown others.

Shit.

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Title says it all – I’m looking for the best value for price iPhone headphones(that is with volume control and button), preferably ones that are also available in Romanian shops What are your suggestions?

Once a year or so, I get the urge to change something  major. You might remember my similar attempts to refresh my blog(s) in the past, so this shouldn’t come as a too big surprise for you:

Here it is:

I am from now on merging my existing blogs into the same one. Let it be “alexbrie.com”. So, from now on (and until the domain registration expires), alexbrie.net and brie.ro will both redirect to alexbrie.com . I might continue to use brie.ro as a url shortener service, but that’s about it.

Also, both blog feeds(http://feeds.feedburner.com/alexbrie and http://feeds.feedburner.com/alexbriecom) will point to the same source; I would actually prefer that you unsubscribed from the later and subscribe to the first one(the one without the com suffix).

Why the change?

I initially started alexbrie.net back in 2004 to continue my blogger.com blog and become my online identity. A couple of years later, domain squatters registered alexbrie.com trying to profit from the incoming google traffic. So, when I got alexbrie.com, I decided to hold onto it and turn it into my programmer’s blog, written in English for my international readers.

Fast forward a couple of years, and I discover that blogging, a daily pleasure a few years back, has become a chore for me. After lots of pondering and self analyzing, I came to the conclusion that one of the reasons for this was the artificial separation between Romanian and English posts, between casual blogging and specialized(programming) one.

Hence the solution you see before you: I am now merging all these into a single blog, just as it should be. Just like @alexbrie has become my main Twitter identity, alexbrie.com will become my online one. I probably should have chosen alexbrie.net for this, but I want the domain name  change to reflect the language change as well:

From now on, I’ll try to only blog in English.

Yep, English. Not because I wouldn’t care for my native tongue, Romanian, but because of my belief that we are all children of the same planet and we should try to use the most popular language to understand each other. Easy as that.

Is this all?

Not exactly. I also intend to change the blogging platform and move away from WordPress. I have been toying with nanoc, a static website generator, in the past half year and would love to start using it instead of the php+mysql WordPress. I want, however, to take a bit of time with it and migrate as many of the previous existing posts to it before making any more radical changes.

Also, I will be blogging a lot more often, and not only programming-related stuff. I will blog about what I like, what I think is interesting and worth visiting on the web, about my opinions(political, technological or personal) and overall turn this blog into what it should had always been: the place for my online scribbles.

Two weeks ago I didn’t write anything for my #idevblogaday entry. There were two non-reasons for that: for starters, it had been my birthday and I thought I deserved a “break”. For seconds, I didn’t know what to write about, as I hadn’t been doing much coding progress, nor discovered any new programming tips.

The problem is, I was just about to do it again. No birthday, this time, but still nothing much to write about.

I’ve been a bit out of shape this year. The two new apps I launched in January and beginning of February were commercial failures, although IMHO they were interesting, polished and quite reasonably priced(one was free, another was $1). Want to know their names? QuickPins and TinyJournal . Quite the demotivator to see that the app that you’ve worked for for weeks and thought is worth thousands if not more, is not even selling one coffee cup per day. It happens, nothing to feel bad about.

I’ve also been keeping busy learning more about visual representations, learning a bit more of OpenGL and toying with the Processing programming environment, which I find to be a quite interesting prototyping tool for visual apps. Sure, what I’d actually love for prototyping would be an interactive instant-result IDE such as the one that Bret Victor was displaying in his now famous CUSEC 2012 talk. Needless to say, his video changed quite a lot the way I feel about programming and made me realize that I’ve been doing it wrong  - and that I need a new tool – too bad it doesn’t exist, for me at least.

Anyways, that’s about it for my programming life lately. Like I said, nothing much happened in the last month. I very much hope things will be different in the next fortnight.

There once was an email

and a curious fellow..

who is this domain owner, he asks?

and he gets answers

and what does he do for a living?

and just for the fun of it.. what’s he like?

The end.

Like everyone else, when I saw the iPhone shown by Steve Jobs on stage back in January 2007, I realized it would change everything. I just had no idea how much it would change me – I’d earn my living creating apps for it, I’d surround myself with Apple-made gadgets and services and, most importantly, I’d never leave home without it.
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Parca ieri eram in iulie. Din ce in ce mai des, sfarsitul de an vine subit, anuntat doar de un Craciun pripit si, inainte de asta, de un Halloween vazut pe la TV. Imi doresc ades sa fiu din nou copil, fie si doar pentru a mai percepe altfel timpul. Mai pe indestulate.

Dar nu despre asta voiam sa scriu. De luni intregi incerc sa povestesc despre cele 3 experimente pe care le-am intreprins anul acesta.

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