Since I implemented my date formatters incorrectly, the number of data formatters in my app increased steadily until the iPad ran out of memory and crashed. At this point I ran my app through Instruments and found what you see in this screenshot:

As you can see in the Responsible Frame column, there are a ton of -[NSDateFormatter _regenerateFormatter] messages. This was a simple fix. I defined an NSDateFormatter variable in my header and then instantiated it in my viewDidLoad method. Then when I need to use it, I just call setDateFormat on it to make sure the format is correct. The result: no leaks! At least no regenerateFormatter leaks:

Yes, I have other leaks, but I’ll tackle those later. The goal is obviously 100% leak-free code, but as far as memory consumption goes, I eliminated probably more than 90% of the memory leaks. I hope this helps someone, since my Google search for regenerateFormatter didn’t yield much useful information.

LEARN from Rick Mereki on Vimeo.

Flipboard: I loaded Flipboard for the first time about 2 months ago after watching the Stanford CS193P lecture with the creators of it. It’s an amazing way to browse content from Facebook and Twitter. But more importantly, Flipboard curates great content that I would’ve never found.

Kindle: I’ve been reading more lately, and Kindle is the platform to read digital books on. The fact that I can read a book on my iPad, Kindle Keyboard (recently acquired – that’s another story), or Kindle Cloud Reader and keep everything in sync is awesome. I thought I would enjoy reading on the actual Kindle hardware more than I do, but I’ve found that the iPad is by far the best reader (in my situation)

Instapaper: I’ve been listening to Build & Analyze with Marco Arment for probably a year now, but I finally bought Instapaper a few months ago. I don’t use it as much as I should, and I’m well aware of this. Right now I am in the middle of reading Steve Jobs on the Kindle, though, so that’s taking most of my reading time.

OmniFocus: Everyone raves about OmniFocus. Is it really that good?

Dropbox: Fraser says his “life is in Dropbox”. I’m not there yet, but Dropbox has revolutionized the way I work, particularly with grad school work and iOS Development. I wish I had had Dropbox in college. If you don’t use Dropbox, you’re missing out.

iA Writer: Another app I hear/read about all the time. Might have to check it out.

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Apps on my home screen that Fraser didn’t mention:

Plants vs. Zombies: the greatest game ever made for iOS. It’ll be hard to beat.

500px: Awesome photographs.

FaceTime: Made Christmas morning special, being able to video chat with almost all of my family, even though we were all in different states. Yes, iChat can do the same, but the more mobile experience of the iPad made it so much better.

Mr. Reader: I should probably swap this out with Reeder, but Mr. Reader is good.

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Finally, here’s a screenshot of my iPad home screen. I am in the process of rearranging my apps, and I’m getting close. The use of Folders on the dock is a clever idea I stole from someone. Also, several of my home screen apps are there because I’m temporarily interested in them. Scribblenauts, Lync, and iTunes U are examples of that. (And yes, I need a new background. That one was great for the Christmas season.)

My iPad Home Screen

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Caption Please.

• Digital Fortress* by Dan Brown

• The Cross and the Switchblade by David Wilkerson

• The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo* by Stieg Larsson

• A Scanner Darkly* by Philip K. Dick

• The Girl Who Played With Fire* by Stieg Larsson

• The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest* by Stieg Larsson

• Sun Stand Still* by Steven Furtick

• The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks* by Rebecca Skloot

• Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller

• Radical by David Platt

• Heaven is For Real* by Todd Burpo

• Son of Hamas by Mosab Hassan Yousef

Which books did you read in the last year?

Full disclosure: The links above are Amazon Affiliate links, which means I get a small percentage of money from sales made by clicking them. If you don’t want to support that, go directly to Amazon/Google and search for the books.

Last year I wrote about some goals that I had for 2011. While I didn’t achieve all of them, I did finished reading the Bible through this morning. I am proud of this, but I don’t say it to boast about what I’ve done. I just want to share some of the things I learned through the process and where I went wrong.

There are countless reading plans to guide you through the Bible in whatever timeframe you want. One of the teaching pastors at my church is the president of Walk Thru the Bible, so I chose to go with their monthly periodical called Daily Walk.

The Daily Walk

This little monthly guide has a page for each day’s reading, explaining what’s going on in the story and providing some life application. The small “digest” format makes it really easy to carry around and works great if you use various Bibles (I mainly used my NASB copy and the YouVersion app on my iPad/iPhone). The other format that Walk Thru offers is the Daily Walk Bible:

The Daily Walk Bible

The one disadvantage to this format is that it is an entire Bible, with similar commentary to the magazine, so the dates might not match up in subsequent years (Saturdays and Sundays are typically paired up). That said, I think the content is better, and there are extra days of reflection thrown in. So, if carrying around a heavier Bible with slightly skewed dates doesn’t bother you, I recommend the full Bible. Plus, the magazine costs $10 more.

Reading the Bible through in a year is a great exercise in discipline. I got behind many times and had to catch up, and several times it really did feel like a chore. I have developed somewhat of a habit of reading the scriptures, though, which is good. Next year, I either want to read through the New Testament throughout the year (thus taking a slower pace and digging deeper), or I want to do a separate devotional.

I definitely don’t claim to truly *know* the scriptures at this point, since there’s so much to digest. What this exercise did for me, though, was to reinforce the stories that I did already know. On many occasions we would hear sermons at church about a story I had recently read (or vice versa), and I had a better grasp on it as I listened to my pastor teach. So I recommend reading it through at some point in your life, or at the very least, make an attempt to read the Bible more regularly and apply it so that we can represent Christ to the world.

Anyway, so I followed the TechNet instructions (found here) and moved my File Store to a server not running virus scan software. Doug Deitterick’s blog post was even more helpful in this process, since he includes important steps that Microsoft’d docs left out. However, either my server is more stubborn than everyone else’s, or these great articles left out an important step.

Moving the File Store to another server fixed the dial-in conferencing delay issue, which was great. But I noticed later that when I shared a PowerPoint presentation or uploaded a file attachment to a meeting, no other users could download the file. For PowerPoint files, the non-presenters using the Lync client would see this message:

“This slide couldn’t be downloaded. Please contact your support team. Error reason: File not found.”

Those users who logged in with the Web App would see:

“Failed to Download the Slide.”

File attachments gave similar errors, indicating the file was no where to be found.

I called Microsoft, and my support rep immediately had me look in IIS at the Basic Settings of the MeetingContent and MeetingFiles Folders.

The folder was still pointing to my old server. Both linked articles above left this step out. So I changed the directories to the new File Store location and rebooted the servers later that night. One important thing to do after changing this pointer was to run the Step 2: Setup or Remove Lync Server Components in the Lync Server Deployment Wizard. I think this step writes some permissions to the new File Store folders.

This is definitely an issue that Microsoft needs to fix. The server not running virus scan software is locked down pretty good, but my next step is to experiment with alternatives to McAfee, or installing it with certain exceptions. Hopefully this post help some of you Lync administrators out there.

My instructor, Ryan, had jumped more than 6000 times, and Nikole’s instructor, Big Steve, had jumped more than 3000 times, so we felt like we were in good hands. I don’t know Nikole’s exact numbers, but I took a picture of my stats from Ryan’s Altimaster Neptune altimeter:

I jumped at 14,500 feet, and 63 seconds later (and topping out around 130 mph), Ryan pulled the ripcord at 3900 feet (about 2 miles in a minute!). 189 seconds after that, we made a soft landing. Here’s the graphical representation of my dive.

Here’s the video from my dive, and some of the best pics.

MARTA vs T

After spending a few days in Boston, I began wondering if I really could take public transportation in this urban sprawl of a city. I live in Dacula, GA, which is about 37 miles from my office. If I leave the house at 6:15AM, it takes about 0:45 to get to work. If I leave work at 4:00PM, it takes about 1:15 to get home. This puts me on the road for about 2 hours per day, driving about 74 miles. This becomes kind of a drag, so I decided to try the bus.

The most convenient bus route for me is the Xpress GA 411 route. The bus leaves the Mall of Georgia at 6:30 and drops me off in Midtown Atlanta a little bit before 7:30. I have to leave my house at 6:15 and drive 7.1 miles to the bus stop, and then I have to walk 0.8 miles from the midtown bus stop to my office, arriving to work at roughly 7:40. I then can leave work at 4:40 to catch the 5:00 outgoing bus to arrive back at the mall at 6:10. Then I drive home and arrive around 6:20PM.

I wondered just how much time/money I lost/gained by doing this experiment. So here’s a summary that takes everything into account:

Note: I take the BMW to the bus stop so that my wife puts more miles on the Honda to save gas. And she prefers the Honda anyway because it is an automatic.

On the surface, it looks like it’s not worth it, because it costs $0.37 more to take the bus, and it takes another hour out of my day. If you dig a little deeper, though, there is more to it than just finances and time.

• Because my wife would be taking the lower-cost Honda to her work, that saves $0.76.
• In mileage and wear-and-tear on our cars, we are putting 1.2 fewer miles per day on the BMW and 58.6 fewer miles per day on the Honda. That has to count for something
• Taking the bus frees up time to do stuff on the bus that I’d normally do at home, like read (or maybe develop iOS apps?!). This isn’t a 1-to-1 match on time, but it’s definitely worth some value.
• (Update) I forgot to mention that riding the bus also adds an automatic 1.5 miles of walking into my day.

I really enjoyed the “public transportation experiment”, and I’d be willing to do it regularly. After going through it many times, my opinion may change, but it certainly reduces the stress of driving a car for 2 hours every day, and it’s an environmentally responsible thing to do. When we move closer to the city (hopefully soon!), if bus stops are conveniently located, then I might consider taking the bus 100% of the time. And who knows, we might be able to get rid of a car also!