The iPhone has a handy system Settings app that has a unified location to make changes to different apps on you phone. Within your application, Settings.bundle allows the app to display settings in the iPhone Settings application and NSUserDefaults allows an application to programmatically interact with the phone’s default system. When changing a value in the Settings app it will be updated in the phone’s default system so you can retrieve these settings programmatically within your application.

The problem is if your application settings are never opened in the Settings app, when using NSUserDefaults to retrieve setting values within your application, they will be nil even if a DefaultValue is set in your settings bundle. The reason is the settings bundle and the shared NSUserDefaults object are not one in the same. NSUserDefaults needs to be populated with data either through the iPhone Settings app or programmatically in your application. There are few solutions to this floating around the web to initialize the default values but I didn’t find any that I really liked.

Below is a pretty simple method that I call in the application:didFinishLaunchingWithOptions: method of my app delegate. What it does is grab the settings from the settings bundle, and if any item value is nil it will update the value of that item with the specified DefaultValue (if there is one). This ensures that all values that need a default value will have that default value set in the NSUserDefaults shared defaults object. For more information check out the documentation for Settings Application Schema Reference and NSUserDefaults Class Reference.

Dear Non-Developer Readers,
I may start posting some technical stuff up here from time to time. I’ll try to not let it dominate my bi-annual blog posts. Also, I’m testing out this code highlighting plugin which seems to work pretty well.

My Problem:
I want to hide the background of a UISearchBar and the methods I found only worked on SDK versions 3.1.3 and below. That method basically grabs the subview (of class UISearchBarBackground) that contains the background image and sets it to hidden:

Well that only works in versions of the iPhone SDK prior to 3.2. In 3.2 and beyond this technique no longer works (which is exactly why these sort of whatever.subviews hacks should generally be avoided).

My Solution:
In iPhone SDK 3.2 and 4.0 I’ve found this alternative technique that works:

And if you want to go all out and attempt to future-proof your code give this a try (no guarantee that it won’t still break though – Apple could still change the class name or change the structure of the UISearchBar in a future SDK update):

A while back someone (my Dad I think) recommended I add Who Killed the Electric Car? to my Netflix queue. I had completely forgoten about it until it showed up in my mailbox last week.

I really knew nothing about General Motors’ foray into the electric car market in the late nineties, but after watching this movie, I really want to get a plug-in hybrid. Basically, GM built the first mass produced 100% electic power car, the EV1. The long and the short of it is GM stopped producing it after California zero emission laws were rescended. The car no longer exists (except a few non-functioning museum cars) because GM actually reposessed every single car (which were all leased and not available for purchase) and literally crushed and shredded them. Check out the trailor below.

Well today I came across this article about a new Nissan electric car that will be unveiled this Sunday (and suppossedly available for purchase in 2010). The article has little to do with the car itself and more to do with an iPhone app Nissan has built. Basically, while you car is charging you can monitor the battery power so you will know when it’s all charged.

Nissan seems to just be scratching the surface with what they can do (the only other announced feature of the software is to remotely control the air conditioning). This is the kind of stuff companies need to start doing with smart phones. There are so many apps that are rehashed and non-innovative…I can’t wait until we start seeing more smart integration like this.

Since your hero last blogged I had some visitors, traveled to a destination wedding in Bermuda, moved to a different state, and I’m sure some other blog-worthy things…none of which will be discussed today! No, first I have something much more exciting… a short word on color profiles!

Super high level overview: Color profiles basically tell your computer how to output images for a certain device – be it your monitor, you printer, etc. Beyond that, they are also software dependent – most browsers only support the sRGB color profile.

Now you may be wondering why I’m talking about all this. I might even say this is embarassing considering the thousands of hours I’ve probably spent using Photoshop… I realized a couple months ago that I’ve been saving and uploading all of my photos to the web with the Adobe RGB color profile and I’ve been doing it for more than two years (approximately 700 photos). Why did I do this? Well Adobe RGB was set as the default color profile in the Photoshop “Camera Raw” plug-in that I used when processing my photos.

What happens when you view an Adobe RGB image with software that only does sRGB? Basically it sucks the life out of your image. Colors are dulled and people are turned into zombies. On some photos it’s not that noticable…on others it’s definitely noticable.

Here are two screen shots from a browser that only supports sRGB. The left photo is sRGB, the right is Adobe RGB. Can you see a difference? I think it looks like my skin is going to fall off in the right photo (both due to the jowling and the grayish hue).

After a few marathon sessions spanning a couple months, I’ve finally finished replacing all of my flickr photos with sRGB versions! Huzzah! Lesson learned. I imagine in a couple years that this won’t be a big deal – some browsers already support multiple profiles, and hopefully that trend spreads.

This problem has been bugging the crap out of me since I started using GoDaddy hosting. All of my old mod_rewrite stuff stopped working and I had to find roundabout ways to get mod_rewrite working. I talked to GoDaddy support which is usually great but they told me they couldn’t help. I scoured the tubes o’ internet and found lots of people with the same problem, but not too many answers, and none that worked for me…until today! The problem was that Apache MultiViews were enabled by default in GoDaddy hosting (at least in their shared hosting 2.0 environment).

Apache.org docs say the following about multiviews:

The effect of MultiViews is as follows: if the server receives a request for /some/dir/foo, if /some/dir has MultiViews enabled, and /some/dir/foo< does not exist, then the server reads the directory looking for files named foo.*, and effectively fakes up a type map which names all those files, assigning them the same media types and content-encodings it would have if the client had asked for one of them by name. It then chooses the best match to the client’s requirements.

After I finally figured this part out, it was easy to disable. Just add the following to your .htaccess file in any directory which you do not want to use multiviews:

Options -MultiViews

So… this post is really just for random people scouring the internet tubes, probably not most of my normal readers…but it’s better than nothing.

I got two pretty awesome presents yesterday…

The first was a red Swingline stapler. Anyone who’s seen Office Space knows the story of Milton and his red stapler. (For those that don’t, just go rent the movie or watch it on Comedy Central.) The story behind it is I have been working as a subcontractor for a few months for a place where I used to be an actual employee. Since becoming a subcontractor, my workspace is constantly moved almost daily between cubes, offices, and random tables. While I was in a meeting yesterday someone put a red stapler on my desk! I still have yet to figure out who put it there, and everyone I have asked has denied it. I’m not sure if it was intended as a gift or not but I am keeping it until someone asks me, “Have you seen my stapler?”.

The second gift was a black iPod classic(named “The bPod”) as an early Christmas present from my awesome wife. I have wanted an iPod for quite a while but had a few hangups. I was too lazy to rip all my CDs, I’m not usually an early adopter and iPods kept improving every year or so, and I tend to over-think any purchase above $10. Since the iPod Classic came out, and the iPhone/iPod Touch is a pretty huge leap, I figured it was about time.

Google Maps has implemented a great new feature to customize your driving route after they give you directions. I’ve used this a couple times since it was rolled out with great luck. Basically, after you put in your start and end points they give you a route as a blue line on the map. Then you can click and drag any point on that route and move it to the route you really want to go. It is useful if you are picking something up along the way or just want to use a different road than they suggest (the “scenic” route for example).

It seemed to work great until tonight. I wanted to give someone not too familiar with the area easy directions into DC via Interstate 66. Google Maps refuses to give directions using I-66 inside of the Capital Beltway going eastbound. I even tried having my starting address as “I-66, Arlington” and the end address being Constitution Ave (which 66 runs directly into). The first thing Google does is exit 66 and take a much more confusing route. No matter how many stops I added, it refuses to use 66 eastbound inside the beltway. It had me literally driving in circles going in and out of DC because it would only drive West across the Roosevelt Bridge.

Anyone else run into this?

Google Talk thinks I’m sad. I’m not sure why, but it keeps telling people my status is “:(” while I’m chatting with them. My actual status doesn’t change, but mid-chat with people, it sends them my “updated” status and tells them it is “:(“. Kevin was the first to notice this strange happening and told me about it multiple times. Then today while I was one a different machine than usual, with a separately downloaded version of Google Talk, Dwayne pointed out my “emo filter” which had sent him my sad face status while mid-chat.

I have done a bit of googling…but have found nothing. In fact, searching for “:(“ turns up some rather…um…null results.

The could be related to having GMail open at the same time as GTalk because I almost always have them both open. This would be an easier problem to point to if I had the web based gtalk client enabled withing GMail, but I don’t. But still, it could be related. And why the frown face? What is GTalk so sad about?

Anyone else heard of this before?

And yes, I realize I told Kevin I was going to “blob” about this in the above screen shot. I just blobbed all over the place.

(screen shot courtesty of Kevin)

I have a Hotmail account which I use almost entirely for signing up for random crap online: message boards, giveaways, shady services….it is my spam repository for the most part. I don’t check it as regulary as I do my GMail account because usually, I am just mass deleting spam. I also use Firefox (2.0.0.4 at the moment). Recent reports say Firefox has a 25% market share which is pretty significant…I have been very frustrated lately just to open and read emails in Hotmail because everything has been painfully slow. It doesn’t matter what my connection speed is when I check it, the interface is always painfully slow to respond to the simplest requests.

I decided to test Hotmail in IE7 … works like a charm. WTF? Is this a Firefox issue or a hotmail issue. Given the fact that many other sites with similar AJAX-like functionality work great in Firefox, I’m going to guess it is a Hotmail issue. I have a couple options (unless someone has a tip on how to speed up Hotmail in Firefox):

• Stop using hotmail (I have too many accounts tied to this address to give it up and am too paranoid that someone from my past won’t have my new email)
• Use Hotmail in IE (never!)
• Revert to “Classic” Hotmail (very tempting and may happen…but why must I revert to an old version simply because Microsoft doesn’t optimize their software for multiple browsers?)
• Deal with and hope they fix the issue (not holding my breath)

This got me thinking, how long have I had my hotmail email address (which was also the first email address I ever had). http://account.live.com tells me I signed up October 14, 1996 (apparently Hotmail went live July 4, 1996). Anyone else remember when Microsoft didn’t own “HoTMaiL”?

Freshman year at JMU my roommate Will got me into the computer game Counter-Strike. It’s a first person shooter that is primarily played online with two teams, the terrorists and the counter-terrorists. I was never that great and my crappy computer froze half the time. Flash forward to last Christmas and Katie got me the new and improved Half-Life 2 with Counter-Strike:Source – Basically, Counter-Strike 2. Well in the last few weeks I’ve been playing more and more CS:S.

I think I may have reached some point of saturation. A few days ago I had a dream…I was in a relatively small enclosed area with a few people. Something like you would play paintball in with a few small barriers to hide behind etc. Paul McCartney was chasing me with a pistol trying to shoot me…I don’t remember actually having a gun and shooting back – more just running and trying not to get shot by a Beatle.

Maybe there’s a deeper meaning to this dream….or maybe I saw Paul McCartney during a Saturday Night Live sketch a couple weeks ago and he just got mixed up in my CS:S dream. Anyone have any psychological input on this one? There was a little while during high school when I would write down all the details of my dreams…if I woke up in the middle of the night I would write them down right away, then when I woke up in the morning I would read what I wrote and usually didn’t remember the dreams at all…maybe I should start doing that again and put my whacked out dreams on this blog.

Speaking of first person shooters, Stan sent me a link to a new awesome PS2 game that is right up my alley: “NRA Gun Club”. Here are a few quotes from the review in case you don’t actually read it: “It’s disgustingly ugly, nearly silent, and shallow in a way that will put off anyone, whether a firearms enthusiast or not.”, “The presentation in NRA Gun Club is atrocious.”, “The awfulness stacks up, resulting in a nearly unplayable product.” I guess these are the kind of games that come out when a new generation console replaces what was once the hotness.