If you search YouTube for TMT videos, you’ll see some amazing finger work. My favorite is this one:

• Moron Test 48.3 record speed run

If you haven’t purchased The Moron Test yet, spend the 99 cents and enjoy yourself. I still don’t have a great finishing time like the YouTube guy, but it’s always a challenge.

I also submitted a client’s new app’s (paid and free versions) to the App Store on July 7. Let’s see how long it takes for it to be approved. Once it is, I’ll let you know more about it.

And one more App Store item, another one of my client’s apps was *finally* approved on 7/8. It was submitted on 6/3, so it took quite a while to be approved. However, during that time was WWDC, 3.0 release and I’m sure a number of other items. So, all said and done, not great but looking at it in context, not horrible.

I’m working with a friend on some new ideas as well as trying to get another project out the door along with all the other current client work. I’m thankful for the work but also looking forward for a day off soon.

• Val and Charis have been gone all week, so I’ve had a lot of heads down coding time
• Started in earnest on a new super secret project that has me pulling my hair out
• Really darn close to finishing up and submitting an iPhone app for a client
• Reviewing PushToTest and WebDriver for front end testing
• Finished up some really nifty caching with Ehcache and Terracotta

With Val and Charis gone, it’s just been me and the dog. If it wasn’t for the dog, I’m not sure that I would have ever left my office. She has reminded me on a number of occasions that it was time to get up and stretch and more importantly, go to bed. That’s a good thing.

I’m currently working on the laying the foundation for a new super secret project, known only by the code name NoCodeName. Ok, we haven’t gotten far enough to give it a code name yet, but soon. The biggest issue I’m running into is getting over the hump with Spring Security. I guess I’m considered an old timer since I started working with Spring 1.x and Acegi. Recently I worked with a client to upgrade to 2.5.4. That was fairly painless, but we left all the XML configs as they were. Since I’m starting this project, I’m trying to place nice and use all the coolness of Spring 2.5.x. Making changes to my thought processes to use annotations and the like are really starting to bug me. I’m not ready to drop back to the old school style yet…but it’s getting pretty darn close. I’ve seen a few semi-helpful Spring Security tutorials, but not enough to get me over the hump. I’ll give it a little more time, but I may scrap Spring Security all together and just roll my own since the datastore is going to be MySQL. I’m not real excited about that, but if I can’t figure it out quick, I’ll go with what I know. If anyone has any suggestions on easily implementing JdbcUserDetailsManager for logins and registration, please send them my way. I’ll buy you a beverage of your choice, that is, as long as it’s within the budget.

I’ve been working on an iPhone app (free and paid versions) for a client for a couple of months and we are in the final testing stages and hope to submit it to the App Store this weekend. Once it is available in the store and I get permission, I’ll post a link to the app.

If you or someone you know is wanting to learn how to develop for the iPhone, I’m going to be working on some posts and videos over the next few months.

Also, if you or your company is looking for an iPhone consultant, I would be glad to talk with you.

I’ve also been reviewing PushToTest and WebDriver for testing on a couple of projects. I haven’t gotten as far as I wanted, but both look promising. I’m really intrigued by the ability to load up PTT instances on Amazon EC2 and then hammer the sites I want to test. I’ve worked with Gomez in the past and they have a very good product, but being able to do roughly the same thing without having to get into a contract is a good thing IMHO.

Finally, Ehcache + Terracotta is like apple pie and vanilla ice cream. That is, as long as you actually cooked the apples and the ice cream hasn’t melted. In theory, you enable the Ehcache module with Terracotta and everything just works. You know, that statement is completely true. However, YMMV. In my client’s case, we had a number of issues with the depth of our object structure and the (lack of) size of our client heaps. We are still doing some refactoring, but it works nicely now, but I still want to squeeze some more performance out of it. When I do another Terracotta+Ehcache project, I’ll know the gotchas to avoid.

For those of us that live in the United States, this weekend is really important. I read a post from Jeff Herring today that is titled Celebrating Freedom From and Freedom To… I’ve been very fortunate over the past few years to have great clients that have allowed me freedom to see my daughter grow up on a daily basis.

No matter whether you are a liberal or a conservative, a faith person or an atheist and the list of comparisons goes on, the United States is still one of the greatest places to live on this planet.  Be thankful this weekend. Eat some hamburgers and hot dogs (or tofu dogs for my vegan friends). Hang out with friends and family. At the end of the day, stepping away from the computer is a good thing. Now, I just have to remind the dog to remind me to step away.

Here’s a link to the article:

These guys make your smart phone smarter

If you or your company is in the market for any kind of mobile development, contact me.

JSON Framework from the video: http://code.google.com/p/json-framework/

Also, I’m doing all the filming with a Flip MinoHD. This is the first real set of videos I’ve shot with this camera. It’s a very cool camera, but takes some getting used to.

I’m also doing all the editing with iMovie ‘08. I’m used to used Sony Vegas on the PC, but I’m trying to be totally Mac on this trip. We’ll see how it goes. The render to FLV looks a little weird as compared to the other day. That day, I used the FlipShare software to do the edit. I might switch back to that on day 1.

If you aren’t following me on Twitter, do so to get up-to-the-minute updates throughout the week. http://twitter.com/DarinPope

1. Help me remember what I did
2. Give you an insight on the teaching process of BNR

One great thing about living close to ATL is that I can drive down and enjoy some breaks along the way: Krystal, Fry’s Electronics and seeing a bunch of friends that we still have in the Atlanta area.

I’m also looking forward to going heads down and brushing up on some development skills. It’s been a number of years since I have taken an honest-to-goodness sit-in-the-seat-all-day training course. It could be interesting, but being out in the middle-of-nowhere Georgia (not much different than the middle-of-nowhere North Carolina) should help in staying extremely focused.

Be sure to check back the week of 2/23 for the updates.