I’m Not Playing

How to block Google Analytics Referrer Spam

Kenny Saunders — Wed, 18 Jan 2017 21:30:25 +0000

Spam has been a problem on some of my larger clients, posting this as a reminder.

Two articles explaining different methods:

https://biegal.ski/articles/stop-google-analytics-spam
https://biegal.ski/articles/ultimate-spam-referral-list-for-google-analytics

Why it really can’t wait til later

Kenny Saunders — Tue, 11 May 2010 00:20:39 +0000

How many times during the development of a new project do you come across something that is an obvious error but you tell yourself “it’s not a big one, I’ll wait til later to fix it” OR “the task I’m currently working on is much bigger, I’ll fix it during my cleanup phase”. I know I’m personally guilty of this more often than I’d like to admit.

Why is this a problem you ask?

If we put off fixing small bugs, it prevents us from seeing past it to the next mistake. It increases our chance to get quality feedback and to properly test before finishing the project.

Members of your team will be accustomed to seeing this error, and will start thinking that all bugs are just placeholders and you’ll get to it them sometime. It pushes everyone into making assumptions that “someone” will fix it later.

This is a dangerous place to be.

So please, drop what you’re doing, wire up that tiny bug, replace that placeholder image, and get rid of that lorem ipsum text. Start giving your testers every chance you can to succeed and help get your project polished and ready to launch.

A Personal Reboot

Kenny Saunders — Tue, 04 May 2010 04:24:22 +0000

So I’m starting over, again. The previous version of this blog began well over a year ago, right before a job change, and didn’t progress that far. I decided to scrap the previous posts mostly writing about iPhone development, and start over from scratch. Partly because it was a custom web app, written using the PHP framework Code Igniter. The original intent was just to test out the framework for an upcoming freelance project, but the fact that I was always refactoring / enhancing the code was keeping me from the real reason I started this site in the first place. WordPress was a much better fit.

Back to the basics, why I want to blog

Using a prebuilt CMS allowed me to get back to core of this endeavor, writing. There have been several times where I’ve written up lengthy IM replies explaining what I thought on a subject, that I’ve forgotten and had to re-investigate. This site is place to collect my thoughts on to cohesive opinions and document the learning process as I tryout new languages / techniques.

Cleaning up the cruft, sticking to 3 main sites

If you are like me, you probably own several domain names. Every time I “think” I’ve come up with some clever domain name I just have to register it. I get delusions of grander about the killer site I’m going to build some day now that I have this name, and end up just bogging myself down with a never-ending supply of TODOs.

I decided to keep my online presence neatly folded into 3 websites:

An Online Resume: www.kennysaunders.com
A Consulting Front: www.fortyeightedesigns.com
A Blog: this site of course

Plans for the website

At this stage in the game, the sky is always the limit. My plans are to write one post a week, and start with the creation of this website, and the process I follow in my day job as a User Experience Design & with my consulting work as I try out new technologies / best practices.

I hope you enjoy the ride / new site. Let me know what you think & if you already know me, let me know which direction I should take the content of this site.

Thanks again, you can follow me @kennysaunders, and don’t forget to say hi!

Resources For Getting Started with Objective-C and Developing for the iPhone

Kenny Saunders — Wed, 28 May 2008 22:59:31 +0000

I’ve been going back-n-forth with myself lately on whether or not I should make the leap into learning Objective-C. For the record, all my development experience has been on the web, aside from a little Java a few years back this will be a big jump for me. I’m still not certain, but man is that iPhone shiney. I think the real selling point for me is how Apple will handle distributing / selling the applications. Regardless of that, here are a few links that have helped me on my way:

The iPhone Software Developers Kit(SDK):

You can download this free of charge from the iPhone Developer Program page on Apple’s website: http://developer.apple.com/.

Apple’s Own Documentation:

NOTE: These links require you to be a registered iPhone Developer, which you can do for free at: http://developer.apple.com/iphone/program/

Introduction to Cocoa Application Tutorial
I started with this tutorial, although the syntax of Objective-C is completly foriegn to me, it allowed me to get up to speed on a lot of the tools you’ll need to create a desktop or iPhone application.

Object-Oriented Programming with Objective-C
I jumped to this one next, but you might want to dig around in their documentaiton first, there are some great getting started guides.

Cocoa(R) Programming for Mac(R) OS X (3rd Edition)

Every Apple developer I’ve talked to has pointed me to this book. Unfortunately this version won’t be out until later this month, if you’re impatient I’m sure you’ll be able to google around and find the 2nd Edtion in pdf form.

That’s all for now.

Hopefully this will give you a little motivation to make that leap if you’ve been on the fence about it. Like I said before, I have no Objective-C, C, C++ experience, but I’m going to give it a shot anyway.

If you do decide to try it out leave a comment below or hit me up on Twitter. I probably won’t be able to help at first, but it would be nice to work along side some other developers just getting started as well.