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	<title>AndyDev - iOS Developer Andrew Yates</title>
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		<title>New Environment, New Habits</title>
		<link>http://www.andydev.co.uk/blog/new-environment-new-habits/</link>
		<comments>http://www.andydev.co.uk/blog/new-environment-new-habits/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 10 May 2013 18:29:19 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Andrew Yates</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Blog]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.andydev.co.uk/?p=938</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[<p>I&#8217;ve been in Gran Canaria now coming up for nearly 3 weeks, I&#8217;ve got one more full week left before I head back to Birmingham and then onto San Francisco for WWDC/altWWDC. Before setting off for Gran Canaria I decided I was going to try out the Slow Carb Diet found in Tim Ferris&#8217; 4 <a class="more-link" href="http://www.andydev.co.uk/blog/new-environment-new-habits/">- Read More -</a></p><p>The post <a href="http://www.andydev.co.uk/blog/new-environment-new-habits/">New Environment, New Habits</a> appeared first on <a href="http://www.andydev.co.uk">AndyDev - iOS Developer Andrew Yates</a>.</p>]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>I&#8217;ve been in Gran Canaria now coming up for nearly 3 weeks, I&#8217;ve got one more full week left before I head back to Birmingham and then onto San Francisco for WWDC/altWWDC. </p>
<p>Before setting off for Gran Canaria I decided I was going to try out the Slow Carb Diet found in Tim Ferris&#8217; 4 Hour Body. I had read a few blog posts about it before getting the book and decided i&#8217;d give it a go. </p>
<p><span id="more-938"></span></p>
<p>I was that set on ensuring I was going to follow the diet, I had also gone out and purchased a set of Withings Scales, they connect to your iPhone via bluetooth and keep a nice graph of your progress day to day. Plus they fit perfectly inside my suitcase and for some reason having a gadget to use to accomplish my goal makes it more likely i&#8217;m going to stick to it.</p>
<p>I&#8217;ve never been one to manage to stick to a diet for very long but I was going to be in Gran Canaria by myself without the temptation of going out with friends, family and only had local food and drink to tempt me away from the Slow Carb Diet. This felt like a perfect time to make a few changes to my diet.</p>
<p>While flying to Gran Canaria I read through relevant sections about the Slow Carb Diet and started a shopping list in my head ready for my arrival. Shortly after arriving at my apartment I headed off to the supermarket with a small shopping list consisting of items I was allowed on my new diet.</p>
<ul>
<li>Chicken</li>
<li>Beef</li>
<li>Tuna</li>
<li>Eggs</li>
<li>Asparagus</li>
<li>Spinach</li>
<li>Peas</li>
<li>Lentils</li>
<li>Beans</li>
<li>&#038; Lots of water</li>
</ul>
<p>I hadn&#8217;t cooked for myself in a long time, probably before Tel Aviv last year. Wherever I was I would always opt to eat out so why would Gran Canaria be any different? Truth is, I don&#8217;t know any Spanish at all and i&#8217;ve been using that to ensure I don&#8217;t venture out to too many places to eat out every night. It&#8217;s much easier to go to the supermarket and pick up the items I need and pay than it is to get lost in translation ordering food. Bit of a silly excuse but it&#8217;s been working well and i&#8217;ve rediscovered that I love cooking which is also a bonus.</p>
<p>Meals using the above shopping list do end up being somewhat similar day to day, but thats not necessarily a bad thing and is actually advised in the book. I find myself using things like Garlic, Pepper, Chillis and Herbs to add more flavour to the meals especially when using Lentils (not a huge fan). I&#8217;m yet to grow bored of the same foods over and over again.</p>
<p>On the slow carb diet you have a cheat day, the first cheat day I had I walked around the coast of Las Palmas and found a restaurant by the beach and picked out a meal. Cheat day stops your body from going into starvation mode and actually help you lose weight over the coming week. The morning after my first cheat day and I had a head in hands moment discovering I was back to square one. I took to Google and found that it was to be expected and after a day or two you&#8217;d be back below your pre cheat day weight. Sounds obvious really.</p>
<p>I can safely say that coming away with the slow carb diet as a goal for my time here has worked really well. I am 100% certain that anywhere else I would have stopped shortly after starting the diet. Now that I have had a couple of weeks of progress and can see that it works I am more focused to continue it when i&#8217;m back in Birmingham and San Francisco. Although I know they won&#8217;t be easy places to keep on the straight and narrow.</p>
<p>Within only a couple of days I was seeing results from my scales, seeing results only motivates you to carry on as you are doing and now i&#8217;m about to start week 4 which will also be my last full week in Gran Canaria. </p>
<p>And i&#8217;ll finish with something a coworker <a href="https://twitter.com/nystroms">Åsa</a> said while we were discussing Gran Canaria and the Slow Carb Diet, &#8220;going somewhere new is awesome to switch your routine up and change some bad habits too&#8221; and I totally agree. </p>
<p>The post <a href="http://www.andydev.co.uk/blog/new-environment-new-habits/">New Environment, New Habits</a> appeared first on <a href="http://www.andydev.co.uk">AndyDev - iOS Developer Andrew Yates</a>.</p>]]></content:encoded>
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		<title>iOS 7 inter-app linking</title>
		<link>http://www.andydev.co.uk/blog/ios-7-inter-app-linking/</link>
		<comments>http://www.andydev.co.uk/blog/ios-7-inter-app-linking/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 07 May 2013 07:48:10 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Andrew Yates</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Blog]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.andydev.co.uk/?p=947</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[<p>Fraser Speirs posted his thoughts on how iOS 7 could be improved for power users allowing iOS to take over more of the complex tasks that are currently done by desktop computers. Fraser mentioned how iOS needs a generalised &#8220;send this piece of data to apps that claim to handle it&#8221; service, just like Android. <a class="more-link" href="http://www.andydev.co.uk/blog/ios-7-inter-app-linking/">- Read More -</a></p><p>The post <a href="http://www.andydev.co.uk/blog/ios-7-inter-app-linking/">iOS 7 inter-app linking</a> appeared first on <a href="http://www.andydev.co.uk">AndyDev - iOS Developer Andrew Yates</a>.</p>]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://speirs.org/">Fraser Speirs</a> posted his thoughts on how <a href="http://speirs.org/blog/2013/5/6/the-ios-7-power-user-challenge.html">iOS 7 could be improved for power users</a> allowing iOS to take over more of the complex tasks that are currently done by desktop computers.</p>
<p>Fraser mentioned how iOS needs a generalised &#8220;send this piece of data to apps that claim to handle it&#8221; service, just like Android. </p>
<p>This would be something hugely beneficial for Buffer allowing us to integrate in apps that make use of the new inter-app linking features of iOS 7 without the need to get in touch with the developers. Allowing users to install apps they use on a day to day basis to control which apps display in a new sharing menu.<br />
<span id="more-947"></span><br />
Each version of iOS brings us better sharing functionality, last year Apple released UIActivity&#8217;s while these needed to be included by the apps they offered some help at quickly integrating sharing options within apps albeit without linking to them. We quickly developed one for Buffer and got it integrated in a whole stream of apps ever since, this has then developed into the SDK we have today allowing you to present the same sheet directly or through a UIActivity. </p>
<p>Hopefully iOS 7 allows us to set what data an app accepts through an inter-app integration system. Whether thats text, links, images or videos. One solution that could possibly work, would be something similar to the system that is used within Apple&#8217;s Maps app to display routing options from installed apps. When you develop an app you set which routing services it supports which tell the Maps app which options to display to the user at a given time. I&#8217;d hope to see a similar section in Xcode which could allow you to select which data your app accepts.</p>
<p><img src="http://www.andydev.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Screen-Shot-2013-05-06-at-23.27.35.png" alt="Screen Shot 2013-05-06 at 23.27.35" width="612" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-948" /></p>
<p>Apps that handle inter-app linking options would be able to handle the different data types via the <strong><em>application:openURL:sourceApplication:annotation:</em></strong> method as routing apps do with the Apple Maps app. </p>
<p>iOS would ideally also need to make the sharing menu available in all apps somehow rather than waiting for apps to integrate a specific sharing menu to truly solve the problem. This would open up inter-app linking straight from the start and would mean people didn&#8217;t need to wait for apps to include the dynamic linking menu. Maybe another option along the long press select, copy, paste, define menu which then opens a modal with the app options. </p>
<p><img src="http://www.andydev.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Share-Screenshot-Device.png" alt="Share-Screenshot-Device" width="332" height="700" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-957" /></p>
<p>At Buffer we have included <a href="http://x-callback-url.com/">x-callback-url</a> support in v2.4 which as of writing is in review with Apple. x-callback-url is a specification which aims to provide a standard means for developers to link to other apps has made some great advances in improving linking between apps recently with a few apps starting to support it over the past few months. The new Buffer support allows apps to open the Buffer composer within the Buffer iPhone app along with text and a link just like our normal URL Scheme. However when it is closed when an update is shared or the composer closed the source application is opened with a success or failure message. This would be an added bonus but depends on the app being linked to performing an action rather than simply &#8220;opening&#8221; a link for instance.</p>
<p>I&#8217;m personally excited to see what Apple do in iOS 7 around this subject. Just like last year i&#8217;ll be looking at the documentation straight away to find out what is possible and no doubt start building something while keeping up with videos from WWDC. Fingers crossed Apple include some of the power features Fraser mentions.</p>
<p>The post <a href="http://www.andydev.co.uk/blog/ios-7-inter-app-linking/">iOS 7 inter-app linking</a> appeared first on <a href="http://www.andydev.co.uk">AndyDev - iOS Developer Andrew Yates</a>.</p>]]></content:encoded>
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		<title>Don&#8217;t be afraid to step back</title>
		<link>http://www.andydev.co.uk/blog/dont-be-afraid-to-step-back/</link>
		<comments>http://www.andydev.co.uk/blog/dont-be-afraid-to-step-back/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 02 May 2013 16:20:36 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Andrew Yates</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Blog]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.andydev.co.uk/?p=902</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[<p>I&#8217;ve been working on a Buffer iOS SDK for the past few months and along the way we&#8217;ve hit a few issues with certain features we wanted to include in it. Our aim for the SDK has been to create it in such a way that it can be dragged into a 3rd parties Xcode <a class="more-link" href="http://www.andydev.co.uk/blog/dont-be-afraid-to-step-back/">- Read More -</a></p><p>The post <a href="http://www.andydev.co.uk/blog/dont-be-afraid-to-step-back/">Don&#8217;t be afraid to step back</a> appeared first on <a href="http://www.andydev.co.uk">AndyDev - iOS Developer Andrew Yates</a>.</p>]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>I&#8217;ve been working on a <a href="https://github.com/bufferapp/buffer-ios-sdk">Buffer iOS SDK</a> for the past few months and along the way we&#8217;ve hit a few issues with certain features we wanted to include in it. Our aim for the SDK has been to create it in such a way that it can be dragged into a 3rd parties Xcode project and hooked up to display a Buffer composer with a small number of steps.</p>
<p><span id="more-902"></span></p>
<p>We also wanted to make authorising the composer with Buffer a breeze, with auth options for Buffer, Facebook and Twitter. Using native authorisation available within iOS available where possible. Providing this in a 3rd party app is rather tricky but we fortunately figured it out. The main problem we had was in fact with our own Buffer authorisation, our plan was to allow it to open the Buffer iPhone app if the user had it to authorise the 3rd party app access to their Buffer account. </p>
<p><img src="http://www.andydev.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/BufferSDK.png" alt="BufferSDK" width="704" height="700" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-913" /></p>
<p>Normally when you hit issues like the ones we were faced with you will sit and think until you have a solution. We did sit and think about the problem for sometime before deciding to move on and revisit it later. So we left those issues to one side and continued with the development of the SDK which in itself without the functionality we were having issues with would be a huge step up from the offering we had.</p>
<p>After about a month I had a brainwave while sat drinking coffee working on the Buffer iPhone app, I grabbed my Moleskine out of my bag and started drawing out a flow of the solution that I had in my head and started to pick it apart to find a fault. A fault that I was sure i&#8217;d find as it was a simple solution that none of us had come up with, yet here it was a month later out of nowhere while working on the Buffer iPhone app rather than the SDK.</p>
<p>Once I was somewhat confident that the solution was water tight I got another developer to check it over, he paused and once again checked for any faults. Both of us were surprised the solution was so easy &#038; glad that we had finally figured it out. Despite not actively working on solving the problem.</p>
<p>We managed to solve the issue not through sitting and pondering over the issue but by stepping back and continuing development of other areas until a solution came up. Obviously a solution won&#8217;t just appear for all issues and you will need to sit and figure it out but stepping away for a bit in some cases can provide great solutions if timescales permit it.</p>
<p>The post <a href="http://www.andydev.co.uk/blog/dont-be-afraid-to-step-back/">Don&#8217;t be afraid to step back</a> appeared first on <a href="http://www.andydev.co.uk">AndyDev - iOS Developer Andrew Yates</a>.</p>]]></content:encoded>
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		<title>A post from 35,000ft</title>
		<link>http://www.andydev.co.uk/blog/a-post-from-35000ft/</link>
		<comments>http://www.andydev.co.uk/blog/a-post-from-35000ft/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sat, 27 Apr 2013 09:51:35 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Andrew Yates</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Blog]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.andydev.co.uk/?p=848</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[<p>As I type this I&#8217;m sat at 35,000ft on my way to Gran Canaria for a month. While I&#8217;m there I&#8217;ll be mixing my usual day to day routine with Buffer with the delights and scenery of Gran Canaria. I thought I&#8217;d share some insights into why I&#8217;m going and how I came to pick <a class="more-link" href="http://www.andydev.co.uk/blog/a-post-from-35000ft/">- Read More -</a></p><p>The post <a href="http://www.andydev.co.uk/blog/a-post-from-35000ft/">A post from 35,000ft</a> appeared first on <a href="http://www.andydev.co.uk">AndyDev - iOS Developer Andrew Yates</a>.</p>]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>As I type this I&#8217;m sat at 35,000ft on my way to Gran Canaria for a month. While I&#8217;m there I&#8217;ll be mixing my usual day to day routine with <a href="http://bufferapp.com">Buffer</a> with the delights and scenery of Gran Canaria. I thought I&#8217;d share some insights into why I&#8217;m going and how I came to pick Gran Canaria.<br />
<span id="more-848"></span></p>
<hr />
<h3>Why?</h3>
<p>Buffer is a distributed team with people dotted all over the globe and travelling is part of the Buffer DNA with visits to <a href="http://leostartsup.com/2011/12/why-we-are-taking-our-startup-to-hong-kong-and-other-crazy-stories-of-2011/">Hong Kong</a> and <a href="http://www.andydev.co.uk/blog/give-it-a-chance/">Tel Aviv</a> under its belt with many more places planned. </p>
<p>I&#8217;m hoping to fit in various other trips over the coming year with a list of places already in mind. Those include New Zealand, Italy and wherever else I point at on the globe. To think that up until last year I hadn&#8217;t been outside of Europe.</p>
<blockquote><p>&#8220;So, young person, travel. Travel wide and far. Travel boldly. Travel with full abandon.&#8221;<br /><a href="http://goinswriter.com/travel-young/">Jeff Goins (3 Reasons to Travel While You’re Young)</a></p></blockquote>
<h3>Picking a place</h3>
<p>I&#8217;ve made use of <a href="https://www.airbnb.com/tell-a-friend?airef=1dxibzcd89bzz5">Airbnb</a> for all of my visits so far, searching for a place is as easy as typing in a location and selecting your requirements. I have simply being typing in countries in order to find somewhere, think of it as spinning a globe and stopping it just somewhere within that country. </p>
<p>The main requirement for me as I&#8217;ll be working as normal is a decent Internet connection so I can communicate with the rest of the team and develop Buffer for iPhone along with the Web App. </p>
<p>As I don&#8217;t drive being able to get from the Airport to the destination easily is also a requirement, fortunately my Airbnb host was able to set this up for me and a taxi will be waiting for me at the Airport and is about 15 minutes from the Airport. </p>
<p>Prior to searching in Spain I was looking for somewhere in Italy, somewhere that I have wanted to visit for a while. I struggled to find somewhere suitable close to an airport and with good Internet also as I only have a month before my next trip I decided I&#8217;d prefer a longer trip in the future, maybe with a few hops around Italy to various cities. </p>
<p>So I typed in &#8220;Spain&#8221; on Airbnb and selected my specific requirements, I then viewed for half an hour or so adding possible places to a wishlist before picking the apartment i&#8217;m going to be staying in. Before booking I dropped the host a message enquiring about how good the broadband is and result it has 100mb Fibre Optic Broadband so it was decided a booked.</p>
<hr />
<h3>Why Airbnb?</h3>
<p>I&#8217;ve been using <a href="https://www.airbnb.com/tell-a-friend?airef=1dxibzcd89bzz5">Airbnb</a> for all of my trips for the ease of organising online and communicating with hosts easily. That and a hotel would work out alot more expensive and finding short term leases would be nigh impossible in most places although we did do that in Tel Aviv.</p>
<p>Airbnb places are all furnished and the likely hood is it has everything you need. Some even make sure that they have a beer or bottle of wine waiting for you. </p>
<p>Depending on your choice you can have a whole apartment to yourself or share it with the hosts and even other Airbnb travellers. Sharing allows you to ask any questions about the local area whenever and also means you can go grab a beer or meal with your hosts, handy if you don&#8217;t know anyone in the area. Hosts where i&#8217;ve stayed in the entire apartment have given me contact details and said to drop them a message at anytime if I have any questions about the local area. </p>
<p>Apartments on Airbnb are reviewed after a stay so you can easily decide whether somewhere is a good pick for your visit from the feedback they have.</p>
<hr />
<h3>Packing</h3>
<p>After travelling to Tel Aviv for 2 and a half months and San Francisco more recently you&#8217;d be surprised how little you really need to take with you. Each time I leave for somewhere new I end up packing less after learning from the previous trip. Obviously a selection of clothes is a must, along with all the various cables for your tech. </p>
<p>I&#8217;m yet to come away somewhere without something that is essential, hopefully that&#8217;ll never happen. </p>
<hr />
<h3>Explore</h3>
<p>Depending on location you can find various useful apps to find places to visit and eat. Two of which are Yelp and Foursquare, the reviews and tips on these apps allow you to pick out places you want to visit during your time somewhere. </p>
<p>This depends in where you are going. A quick look at both before I left revealed that Yelp isn&#8217;t used that much and Foursquare tips are in Spanish (unsurprisingly), so Google Translate and star ratings it is. </p>
<hr />
<h3>Fixed Dates</h3>
<p>Picking your length of stay can be tricky, I&#8217;ve been working out my travel plans around fixed dates in my calendar. Those being conferences and Buffer Retreats, anything that can be moved like appointments at dentists etc don&#8217;t have to effect your plans unless urgent. It is working well so far with fixed dates in San Francisco for conferences in June &#038; August and back home in September for another conference then who knows where i&#8217;ll end up. Any recommendations?</p>
<hr />
<p>If you have any travelling tips or stories please share them in the comments, I&#8217;d love to hear them. </p>
<p>The post <a href="http://www.andydev.co.uk/blog/a-post-from-35000ft/">A post from 35,000ft</a> appeared first on <a href="http://www.andydev.co.uk">AndyDev - iOS Developer Andrew Yates</a>.</p>]]></content:encoded>
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		<title>Globbert, a development journey</title>
		<link>http://www.andydev.co.uk/blog/globbert-a-development-journey/</link>
		<comments>http://www.andydev.co.uk/blog/globbert-a-development-journey/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 21 Apr 2013 16:10:50 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Andrew Yates</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Blog]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.andydev.co.uk/?p=805</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[<p>Globbert is a interactive stop motion cartoon now available on iPad and iPhone. Once Globbert enters the main stage players can interact with the environment and Globbert by poking and squishing him around his world. Noisy speakers interrupt Globbert&#8217;s peaceful world and it&#8217;s your job to help Globbert regain his peace and quiet by attacking <a class="more-link" href="http://www.andydev.co.uk/blog/globbert-a-development-journey/">- Read More -</a></p><p>The post <a href="http://www.andydev.co.uk/blog/globbert-a-development-journey/">Globbert, a development journey</a> appeared first on <a href="http://www.andydev.co.uk">AndyDev - iOS Developer Andrew Yates</a>.</p>]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://globbert.com">Globbert</a> is a interactive stop motion cartoon now available on <a href="http://appstore.com/globbert">iPad</a> and <a href="http://appstore.com/globbertforiphone">iPhone</a>. Once Globbert enters the main stage players can interact with the environment and Globbert by poking and squishing him around his world. Noisy speakers interrupt Globbert&#8217;s peaceful world and it&#8217;s your job to help Globbert regain his peace and quiet by attacking the noisy things, sometimes with surprising outcomes.</p>
<p>A few people have asked myself and the creative minds (<a href="http://www.secondhomestudios.com/">Chris</a> &amp; <a href="http://www.marcsilk.com/">Marc</a>) behind Globbert what engine Globbert is built on top of. Having only ever previously done apps that interacted with API&#8217;s, such as <a href="http://magicbeanapp.com">Magic Bean</a> and obviously <a href="http://blog.bufferapp.com/new-iphone">Buffer</a>, Globbert was something entirely different. I&#8217;ve never tried to tackle building what is essentially a &#8220;game&#8221;, albeit one with the label of an &#8220;interaction stop motion cartoon&#8221;. This post not only serves as an insight into the tech behind Globbert but as an insight into some of the challenges I faced along the way and I how I overcame them.<br />
<span id="more-805"></span></p>
<hr />
<h3>First thing&#8217;s first, a demo</h3>
<p>It was decided a demo would be created before kicking off the project, not only to show that it can be done and performs well but to also prove to myself that I could step out of the world of UITableViews and get the animations displaying on a device and running smoothly in time to sounds.</p>
<p>The demo contained only a few select animations and was obviously crude, excluding nice functionality like squishing and poking. Instead buttons along the right hand side of the screen allowed you to trigger animations without any of the polish seen later in the App Store version.</p>
<p>Even though it was completed within a fortnight, the demo showed Chris, Marc and myself that Globbert was ready to go to the next stage.</p>
<hr />
<h3>Playing out the animations</h3>
<p>Each animated sequence contained in the app is a series of images, looped through at 25 frames per second, to create the illusion of motion. Globbert didn&#8217;t and still doesn&#8217;t use an existing engine, all animation playback is driven by a hand-crafted, bespoke implementation. Each animation is stored as a plist file, containing each frames&#8217; filename and coordinates, ready for display.</p>
<p>Each plist file within the demo was crafted by hand, a painstaking process of copying the filenames for each frame and placing them into the plist one by one, including any additional sound files that needed to play out at specific points. This was time consuming but got the demo functioning as it should very quickly. This wasn&#8217;t a solution that was going to scale when it came to building each of the Plist files for X animations however&#8230;</p>
<p>For the real thing, <a href="https://twitter.com/AaronWardle">Aaron Wardle</a> had mentioned PlistCreator. I managed to use this to take an array of file names and with some other PHP magic it could create the files for me by simply passing it the images for each animation. This was done by grabbing the image files and dragging them to an upload field which then generated the file based on the image filenames, pulling out the required animation reference and coordinates for each frame.</p>
<p>Even though some of the plists required some gentle massaging afterwards, this tool ultimately saved me hours of repetitive work. It just goes to show that every dev should know at least one scripting language to help automate these mundane tasks.</p>
<p><img class="size-full wp-image-744 aligncenter" alt="stacks_image_8" src="http://www.andydev.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/stacks_image_8.jpeg" width="612" /></p>
<hr />
<h3>Animations need sound</h3>
<p>Sounds for each animation lived in a separate Dropbox, along with a spreadsheet which gave the specific frame number the sound needed to be played for. Most of the animations support multiple sound effects, so the animation doesn&#8217;t feel repetitive when you poke and squish Globbert around his little world.</p>
<p>Adding sounds to the app was obviously much simpler than the animations themselves, with only a filename needed in order to trigger the sound through the standard iOS frameworks. However we didn&#8217;t want sounds to be repeated multiple times, so the audio system was tweaked slightly in order to ensure a sound is only played once per animation. To get around this various animations have their sounds stored elsewhere in a list, each time a sound is played it is removed from the list. Once the list is completely empty the list is re-populated and the process starts over again.</p>
<hr />
<h3>Adding the ability to hold frames</h3>
<p>Some animations within Globbert require a frame to display for more than the usual 0.04 seconds (1/25th of a second), so like sound I had to include an option within the Plist files to hold a frame for a number of given seconds. When the code loops through the Plist and finds a hold it will pause the loop for that length of time. Sounds simple, right?</p>
<p>Sleeping the loop wasn&#8217;t enough as in that time the state of the app could change. Globbert could be squished during the sleep or splatted across the screen. This meant that the sleep could potentially be invalidated at any time so another animation could be started. Another loop was used for this which after each frame it had been held for checked that the state was still the same before continuing with the sleep. If the state changed it checked the state and either continued or canceled the current animation and moved on.</p>
<hr />
<h3>Follow on animations</h3>
<p>Some animations have multiple endings and only look completed when another animation is played. For instance an animation of Globbert flying back on screen doesn&#8217;t show him land, the animation Plist file contains a list of animations that can follow and one is selected at random. Another way to ensure that the experience doesn&#8217;t feel repetitive.</p>
<hr />
<h3>Many animations at once</h3>
<p>From the outset Globbert required multiple animations to be happening at once all interlinked with one another.</p>
<p>For example, a speaker would include an animation and sound, but at the same time Globbert would need to show a reaction to the speakers. Each animation has it&#8217;s own duration, sounds and loops that need to be managed. This required slightly different handling for a few different aspects, so animations were grouped by type.</p>
<ul>
<li>Globbert Animations</li>
<li>Speaker Animations</li>
<li>Idle Animations</li>
<li>Exit Sign Animations</li>
<li>Instruction Animations</li>
</ul>
<p>Each group of animations has slightly different play out logic, for example Speaker animations play and loop a set of frames in while sound files are playing. Once completed the speaker animation progressed passed the set of frames used during play to retract off screen.</p>
<p>Each frame of animation within Globbert is comprised of the element moving and the background from the set, this meant that frames could sometimes clash and overlap. Extra logic within the play out allowed certain animations to speed up to avoid overlapping frames within certain states. For example, a speaker would be playing a noise to annoy Globbert and would be squished to try and atatck the speaker which would retract quicker than normal to avoid overlaps with bounce-fly animations which see Globbert bounce around all corners of the set.</p>
<hr />
<h3>Off screen</h3>
<p>Part of the magic behind Globbert is when the story happens off screen; when you squish Globbert and he flies out of the viewport, a set of different audio clips is played. You&#8217;ll hear Globbert interacting with things not visible on screen. Things that you can imagine him doing in your head.</p>
<p>While he is off screen the world would have been completely still, so various idle animations play out during off screen audio clips to keep the world alive, such as dripping pipes or eyes peeking out.</p>
<p><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-840" alt="stacks_image_167" src="http://www.andydev.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/stacks_image_167.jpg" width="612" /></p>
<hr />
<h3>Queuing animations didn&#8217;t seem to work well.</h3>
<p>When Globbert is squished he flies off the screen, the animations that are performed for this are comprised of a list of separate animations which show Globbert bouncing around the screen in different directions. These all vary in length and initially were built using a Plist which detailed the separate animation references. When one of these bounce-fly animations needed to play out it would have to grab the reference from the queue before fetching the Plist for that animation before progressing onto the next one in the list. This method worked fine in the simulator and on newer iPads but when it came to the 1st generation iPad it just couldn&#8217;t handle it.</p>
<p>The queues were eventually removed and each of the bounce-fly animation Plists were manually created to remove the need for the animation queue files. This improved the performance on the 1st generation iPad.</p>
<p><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-818" alt="stacks_image_161" src="http://www.andydev.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/stacks_image_161.jpg" width="612" /></p>
<hr />
<h3>Make Globbert come alive</h3>
<p>To give Globbert the impression of being a living, breathing character subtle effects such as blinking and reacting to the players actions had to be introduced, otherwise you end up with a rather stilted character no-one would believe in. The first step to make Globbert come alive was to add blinks and double blinks throughout the animations, while still allowing squishes and interactions to flow correctly.</p>
<p>After we had breathed some life into the animations, Globbert felt much more natural. With a moving, chaotic world the player never quite knows what to expect when they squish him.</p>
<hr />
<h3>Globbert for iPhone</h3>
<p>While we wrapped up development on Globbert for iPad we started to think about iPhone. The iPhone app would be a scaled down version of the iPad app with a few entries removed due to the smaller window into Globbert&#8217;s world.</p>
<p>After a few hours sat with a calculator, the maths to work out how much everything needed to be scaled down by was done and all of the assets and playout code was tweaked ready for the smaller viewport.</p>
<hr />
<h3>iPhone 5, another screen resolution&#8230;</h3>
<p>While Globbert for iPad was being developed Apple announced the iPhone 5. The iPhone 5 came with a taller screen so we had to figure out a way of making the world work within the new resolution. We decided rather than zoom into the world and affect more of the gameplay within Globbert, we would add a border to the top and bottom which sat within the world.</p>
<p><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-862" alt="gbt-iphone5" src="http://www.andydev.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/gbt-iphone5.png" width="612" height="418" /></p>
<hr />
<h3>Transcontinental</h3>
<p>Not all of the challenges have been technical ones; working at Buffer has meant I&#8217;ve been traveling around various parts of the world while trying to keep things ticking over with the app. Globbert has well and truly become a transcontinental project, with development ranging from the beach front in Tel Aviv, to coffee shops in San Francisco and even back home in Birmingham.</p>
<p>This has proved challenging providing builds of the app for testing, requiring a rather decent Wifi connection wherever I am to submit TestFlight builds. Fortunately Globbert sits just under the maximum limit for TestFlight builds and has proven invaluable in getting Globbert developed and tested while I have been traveling.</p>
<p><a href="http://instagram.com/p/N3M4m-Im1w/"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-814" alt="" src="http://www.andydev.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/jpeg.jpeg" width="612" height="612" /></a></p>
<hr />
<h3>Some stats</h3>
<ul>
<li>16,000 files in the Xcode Project (contains both iPhone &amp; iPad targets).</li>
<li>400+ Plists for both versions.</li>
<li>550+ audio files for both versions.</li>
<li>6300+ images, for the iPad version alone</li>
</ul>
<hr />
<h3>Go grab Globbert now!</h3>
<p>You can now get your hands on Globbert and interact with him within his little world. Help him reclaim his peace and quiet by beating the noisy things. Grab it now for <a href="http://appstore.com/globbert">iPad</a> and <a href="http://appstore.com/globbertforiphone">iPhone</a>.</p>
<p>Drop me a comment below if you&#8217;d like to know anything else about how Globbert was developed, I tried to cover as much as I could that I thought might be interesting so no doubt I&#8217;ve missed something.</p>
<p>The post <a href="http://www.andydev.co.uk/blog/globbert-a-development-journey/">Globbert, a development journey</a> appeared first on <a href="http://www.andydev.co.uk">AndyDev - iOS Developer Andrew Yates</a>.</p>]]></content:encoded>
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		<title>2012</title>
		<link>http://www.andydev.co.uk/blog/2012/</link>
		<comments>http://www.andydev.co.uk/blog/2012/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 31 Dec 2012 18:25:10 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Andrew Yates</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Blog]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.andydev.co.uk/?p=776</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[<p>2012 has been a bit of a roller coaster of a year for me. Getting out of Europe for the first time, leaving 383 Project, joining Buffer and releasing even more apps. Here are the highlights&#8230; New York Till this year I hadn&#8217;t been outside of Europe, late last year I was planning to head <a class="more-link" href="http://www.andydev.co.uk/blog/2012/">- Read More -</a></p><p>The post <a href="http://www.andydev.co.uk/blog/2012/">2012</a> appeared first on <a href="http://www.andydev.co.uk">AndyDev - iOS Developer Andrew Yates</a>.</p>]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>2012 has been a bit of a roller coaster of a year for me. Getting out of Europe for the first time, leaving 383 Project, joining Buffer and releasing even more apps. Here are the highlights&#8230;</p>
<p><span id="more-776"></span></p>
<p><strong>New York</strong></p>
<p>Till this year I hadn&#8217;t been outside of Europe, late last year I was planning to head to New York for a holiday, followed by a week in San Francisco for Apple&#8217;s World Wide Developer Conference. As with most things planning was left till last minute, booking accommodation just a week or two prior to leaving for the big apple.</p>
<p>I hadn&#8217;t planned an itinerary for each day in New York, often deciding what I was doing each day just after waking up. I managed to take in most of the sights I wanted to. I even got to see sights I thought I would miss due to the dates I had chosen. Fortunately some bad weather meant I was able to see the Space Shuttle craned onto the Intrepid, which was a somewhat bizarre experience.</p>
<p><img src="http://www.andydev.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/7164332093_f4bcb9fb7b_o.jpg" alt="7164332093_f4bcb9fb7b_o" width="2000" height="1333" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-778" /></p>
<p>I&#8217;m hoping to get back over to New York in 2013 for a longer period than a week and see even more of New York.</p>
<p><strong>San Francisco / Apple&#8217;s World Wide Developer Conference</strong></p>
<p>Ever since starting iPhone development and even prior to that WWDC has been high up on my list of conferences i&#8217;d love to attend. Fortunately I managed to get a ticket within the short amount of time that they were on sale, which was a good job as I had already booked flights to be in San Francisco following New York.</p>
<p>Prior to hitting WWDC a group of UK iOS Developers got together to cycle over the Golden Gate Bridge, a definite highlight of the whole week.</p>
<p><img src="http://www.andydev.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/7421423540_8006071ae3_o.jpg" alt="7421423540_8006071ae3_o" width="2000" height="835" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-781" /></p>
<p>If you do iOS or Mac development and haven&#8217;t been i&#8217;d recommend it, I certainly want to go again next year. Crossing my fingers already for tickets. Not only do you learn about the new features in the upcoming iOS release you get to chat to developers from around the world and also chat to Apple Developers who can point you in the right direction if you have a problem with some code.</p>
<p><strong>Buffer</strong></p>
<p>2012 saw me join Buffer fulltime in June after working freelance on the iPhone app since last September, working alongside an ever growing team of awesome people. We&#8217;ve visited Tel Aviv and I have a list of places I want to visit in 2013.</p>
<p><img src="http://www.andydev.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/614697_10151023200712799_367322031_o.jpg" alt="614697_10151023200712799_367322031_o" width="2048" height="1361" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-785" /></p>
<p><a href="https://angel.co/buffer#recruiting">Want to join the Buffer team? We&#8217;re hiring!</a></p>
<p><strong>Tel Aviv</strong></p>
<p>Buffer decided we&#8217;ll be heading to Tel Aviv, Israel for a few months. Somewhere that initially some of us were sceptical about. Something that two weeks in triggers me to post &#8220;<a href="http://www.andydev.co.uk/blog/give-it-a-chance/">Give it a chance</a>&#8220;&#8230;</p>
<blockquote><p>My take out from the past few weeks is to not judge somewhere based on what you’ve heard in the news. They rarely pick up on the good stories and focus on the negatives as they are the stories which make the headlines. While those bad headlines are no doubt happening, they are out of sight and out of mind while I explore and experience somewhere entirely new (and the weather’s not bad either).</p></blockquote>
<p>I&#8217;d definitely go back to Tel Aviv given the chance. I didn&#8217;t make it to Jerusalem while I was there and it&#8217;s definitely on my list of places to visit.</p>
<p><strong>Buffer for iPhone</strong></p>
<p>The original Buffer for iPhone launched in January of this year with various released adding and tweaking things released after. Then we started working on version 2 in June, which was released earlier this month. It is a huge step forward and it was a pleasure working alongside <a href="http://lukesbeard.com/">Luke Beard</a>, who made it look very pretty.</p>
<p><img src="http://www.andydev.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/reflect-on-what-youve-achieved.jpeg" alt="iPhone" width="1000" height="424" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-786" /></p>
<p>We added the most requested features such as Photo Upload, Analytics shown without having to select each update as well as promoting all of the other amazing 3rd party apps that have Buffer integration. </p>
<p>Feedback on the new version has been great. We have lots of other tweaks and improvements planned for future versions.</p>
<p><strong>Globbert</strong></p>
<p>Having only worked on productivity apps and data driven apps such as Buffer and Magic Bean it was a whole new challenge to work on an animation based iPad app. It has been a pleasure working on Globbert, while also learning so much during the development. It&#8217;s been great to get to grips with another side of iOS development I hadn&#8217;t experienced till now. </p>
<p><img src="http://www.andydev.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/glob.jpg" alt="glob" width="1000" height="460" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-788" /></p>
<p>If you got an iPad this Christmas or had one already go and get Globbert from the App Store! Watch out for updates about Globbert in the future. </p>
<p><strong>2013?</strong></p>
<p>Who knows what 2013 will bring. I hope to have even more countries crossed off my list this time next year, even more apps developed and shipped. Also I hope to make sure I post more regularly on this blog, so far so good!</p>
<p>So with that all said, Happy New Year!</p>
<p>The post <a href="http://www.andydev.co.uk/blog/2012/">2012</a> appeared first on <a href="http://www.andydev.co.uk">AndyDev - iOS Developer Andrew Yates</a>.</p>]]></content:encoded>
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		<title>The Fear of Open Source</title>
		<link>http://www.andydev.co.uk/blog/the-fear-of-open-source/</link>
		<comments>http://www.andydev.co.uk/blog/the-fear-of-open-source/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 23 Dec 2012 13:35:46 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Andrew Yates</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Blog]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.andydev.co.uk/?p=737</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[<p>Many years ago I released themes for a content management system called e107, back then I would release the themes without really caring about what people thoughts of the code behind them. As time went on I grew a fear of releasing code, worried about what people would think. I ended up releasing over 10 <a class="more-link" href="http://www.andydev.co.uk/blog/the-fear-of-open-source/">- Read More -</a></p><p>The post <a href="http://www.andydev.co.uk/blog/the-fear-of-open-source/">The Fear of Open Source</a> appeared first on <a href="http://www.andydev.co.uk">AndyDev - iOS Developer Andrew Yates</a>.</p>]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Many years ago I released themes for a content management system called <a href="http://www.e107.org/">e107</a>, back then I would release the themes without really caring about what people thoughts of the code behind them. As time went on I grew a fear of releasing code, worried about what people would think.</p>
<p>I ended up releasing over 10 themes and a few plugins for e107, while taking onboard feedback and making updates quickly before letting them naturally fizzle out. With many of them are still available to use after 5+ years with most of them released during a &#8220;<a href="http://www.andydev.co.uk/blog/general/e107advent-success/">e107Advent</a>&#8221; which I thought up just before December one year. Looking back at the code behind them isn&#8217;t a pretty sight at all.</p>
<p>Up until recently when i&#8217;d go to release anything into the wild i&#8217;d have an overarching feeling of fear that someone would come and attack me regarding something I had done within the released code. A fear that seems to effect most developers i&#8217;ve spoken to recently. While it&#8217;s definitely good to make sure your doing everything within it to the best of your ability, you can only do so much within the realms of what you know.</p>
<p>However, I now no longer worry about releasing code publicly. Releasing code to the world and having someone comment on any aspect of it is a great learning experience. If they mention a way of improving something or a better method of achieving the same result then it&#8217;s only helping me improve my code in the future. And with GitHub people don&#8217;t have to email you about an improvement but they can make the changes themselves and share it that way making the whole process much easier.</p>
<p>The post <a href="http://www.andydev.co.uk/blog/the-fear-of-open-source/">The Fear of Open Source</a> appeared first on <a href="http://www.andydev.co.uk">AndyDev - iOS Developer Andrew Yates</a>.</p>]]></content:encoded>
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		<title>Get Globbert</title>
		<link>http://www.andydev.co.uk/blog/get-globbert/</link>
		<comments>http://www.andydev.co.uk/blog/get-globbert/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 21 Dec 2012 11:32:06 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Andrew Yates</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Blog]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.andydev.co.uk/?p=743</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[<p>For the past few months i’ve been working with Randall &#038; Silk on a stop motion animation interactive cartoon for iPad. It has hit the App Store just in time for Christmas so you can poke and squeeze him all you like over the holiday period. Check out the teaser trailer above. Globbert lives in <a class="more-link" href="http://www.andydev.co.uk/blog/get-globbert/">- Read More -</a></p><p>The post <a href="http://www.andydev.co.uk/blog/get-globbert/">Get Globbert</a> appeared first on <a href="http://www.andydev.co.uk">AndyDev - iOS Developer Andrew Yates</a>.</p>]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>For the past few months i’ve been working with Randall &#038; Silk on a stop motion animation interactive cartoon for iPad. It has hit the App Store just in time for Christmas so you can poke and squeeze him all you like over the holiday period. Check out the teaser trailer above.</p>
<p>Globbert lives in a sewer and enjoys a peaceful life, however he&#8217;s often interrupted by the noisy things. Help him regain his peace &#038; quiet by squashing him down and aiming him at the noisy things. Plenty of surprises are in store.</p>
<p>Globbert has been 2 years in the making with development starting earlier this year, ahead of my trip to Tel Aviv. Many days were spent on the beach with my laptop coding away to make Globbert the loveable character come alive as well as those noisy things.</p>
<p>Each frame of the app originated from a stop motion puppet on a custom build miniature set, each frame was then cut out as small as possible before imported into a custom built play out system I developed over the past few months.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s been great fun working alongside <a href="https://twitter.com/secondhomechris">Chris</a> &#038; <a href="http://twitter.com/marcsilk">Marc</a> from Randall &#038; Silk and we&#8217;re not quite done just yet with Globbert heading to other screens soon.</p>
<p><img class="size-full wp-image-744 aligncenter" alt="stacks_image_8" src="http://www.andydev.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/stacks_image_8.jpeg" width="612" /></p>
<p>So go and say &#8220;Hi!&#8221; to Globbert by grabbing him from the <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/app/globbert/id587176451">App Store here.</a></p>
<p>The post <a href="http://www.andydev.co.uk/blog/get-globbert/">Get Globbert</a> appeared first on <a href="http://www.andydev.co.uk">AndyDev - iOS Developer Andrew Yates</a>.</p>]]></content:encoded>
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		<title>Reflect on what you&#8217;ve achieved</title>
		<link>http://www.andydev.co.uk/blog/reflect-on-what-youve-achieved/</link>
		<comments>http://www.andydev.co.uk/blog/reflect-on-what-youve-achieved/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 16 Dec 2012 13:48:12 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Andrew Yates</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Blog]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.andydev.co.uk/?p=711</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[<p>As 2012 draws to a close people start to think about what they want to achieve in the following year. Whether that&#8217;s by making New Years Resolutions or deciding what goals they&#8217;d like to achieve in 2013. It&#8217;s been nearly a year since we launched the first version of Buffer for iPhone and since then <a class="more-link" href="http://www.andydev.co.uk/blog/reflect-on-what-youve-achieved/">- Read More -</a></p><p>The post <a href="http://www.andydev.co.uk/blog/reflect-on-what-youve-achieved/">Reflect on what you&#8217;ve achieved</a> appeared first on <a href="http://www.andydev.co.uk">AndyDev - iOS Developer Andrew Yates</a>.</p>]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>As 2012 draws to a close people start to think about what they want to achieve in the following year. Whether that&#8217;s by making New Years Resolutions or deciding what goals they&#8217;d like to achieve in 2013.</p>
<p><span id="more-711"></span></p>
<p>It&#8217;s been nearly a year since we launched the first version of Buffer for iPhone and since then a fair bit has changed for me. I went from working at <a href="http://www.383project.com">383 Project</a> and working on <a href="http://bufferapp.com">Buffer</a> in my evenings and weekends. To starting working at Buffer fulltime in June building the brand new iPhone app and various other integrations with other iOS/Mac apps. Throughout this time I can&#8217;t say i&#8217;ve sat down and thought about what i&#8217;ve achieved in the past year.</p>
<p>It seems very rare that developers of any kind actually reflect on projects they&#8217;ve worked on. Say for instance you&#8217;ve built a site that gets used by thousands of people each day, you should be proud of the fact your work is being seen by thousands of people each and every day. </p>
<p>We&#8217;ve just launched version 2 of Buffer for iPhone, something that has been months in the making. Working alongside the very talented <a href="http://lukesbeard.com/">Luke Beard</a> to improve the Buffer experience on iPhone. While looking at download figures we discovered 44,000 people have downloaded the Buffer iPhone app since its launch last January. When I was asked to find out how many I simply gave the number across without a single thought about how something i&#8217;ve built has been downloaded by that many people across the world. </p>
<p>So while your thinking about what you want to achieve next year, start by taking a look back on what you&#8217;ve done over the past year.</p>
<p>The post <a href="http://www.andydev.co.uk/blog/reflect-on-what-youve-achieved/">Reflect on what you&#8217;ve achieved</a> appeared first on <a href="http://www.andydev.co.uk">AndyDev - iOS Developer Andrew Yates</a>.</p>]]></content:encoded>
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		<title>Learn by teaching</title>
		<link>http://www.andydev.co.uk/blog/learn-by-teaching/</link>
		<comments>http://www.andydev.co.uk/blog/learn-by-teaching/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 02 Oct 2012 20:58:35 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Andrew Yates</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Blog]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.andydev.co.uk/?p=682</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[<p>Like most developers you sometimes find yourself stuck with a problem and you reach out to the internet to see if you can find a solution. More often than not that solution will be found on StackOverflow, a programming Q&#38;A community. At least that&#8217;s often where I end up when searching a problem with some <a class="more-link" href="http://www.andydev.co.uk/blog/learn-by-teaching/">- Read More -</a></p><p>The post <a href="http://www.andydev.co.uk/blog/learn-by-teaching/">Learn by teaching</a> appeared first on <a href="http://www.andydev.co.uk">AndyDev - iOS Developer Andrew Yates</a>.</p>]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Like most developers you sometimes find yourself stuck with a problem and you reach out to the internet to see if you can find a solution. More often than not that solution will be found on <a href="http://stackoverflow.com/">StackOverflow</a>, a programming Q&amp;A community. At least that&#8217;s often where I end up when searching a problem with some code.</p>
<p><span id="more-682"></span></p>
<p>This past week i&#8217;ve been visiting StackOverflow not only to read answers but to actually answer a few things myself about iOS. Having done so each day I found myself answering questions about stuff I didn&#8217;t necessarily know about. I&#8217;d search for an answer just like I would do normally and post a link to it, while gaining knowledge of that solution and if I knew the answer i&#8217;d sometimes verify it to make sure I wasn&#8217;t being stupid.</p>
<p>Getting techie for a second&#8230; So far i&#8217;ve it&#8217;s been pointed out that UIActivityViewController&#8217;s on iPad need to be presented as a Popover rather than a modal like I was previously doing in the <a href="http://www.andydev.co.uk/blog/projects/buffer-uiactivity/">Buffer UIActivity</a> code released last week. Something that is in the documentation but isn&#8217;t necessarily highlighted and obvious, especially as both methods work.</p>
<p>So my improvement the past few days has been to keep answering StackOverflow questions to pick up things that i&#8217;d not necessarily pick up day to day but may be useful down the line. I&#8217;ve been pleasantly surprised at just how much you can pick up by just helping others, it&#8217;s definitely helping and it also means I won&#8217;t feel as bad leaning on the StackOverflow community for help in the future.</p>
<p>Following the quote from the Greek Philosopher Aristotle in my &#8220;<a href="http://www.andydev.co.uk/blog/general/learn-by-doing/">Learn by Doing</a>&#8221; post. I&#8217;ll continue on a similar theme, Roman philosopher Seneca Read said&#8230; “While we teach, we learn”.</p>
<p>The post <a href="http://www.andydev.co.uk/blog/learn-by-teaching/">Learn by teaching</a> appeared first on <a href="http://www.andydev.co.uk">AndyDev - iOS Developer Andrew Yates</a>.</p>]]></content:encoded>
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