Archiving NSManagedObject with NSCoding
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Several of the apps I have been working on lately have been using Core Data. Core Data is pretty sweet. So far, I really like it.
I needed to persist an array of NSManagedObjects to NSUserDefaults to persist the state of the application between launches. Obviously, I could have done this with another attribute on the Core Data entity, but this approach seemed a lot simpler. I was surprised that NSManagedObject didn't conform to NSCoding. I guess that makes sense because if you store any custom types in your entity, it wouldn't know how to archive them. In my case, (and I would assume most others) I didn't want to archive the entire object since it was already store in Core Data. I just needed to store the object ID.
This was actually really easy. See:
Hosting Frustrations
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Lately I've been struggling with good hosting. Here's three stories about some stuff I've tried. (Skip to the bottom of the post if you just want my conclusion and don't care about the stories.)
I love Heroku. I did a screencast on how awesome they are a few months ago. Since then, I've moved all of my personal apps and all of Tasteful Works's apps to Heroku. They've been really great until recently.
I have two big complains (and one small one) with Heroku.
Old People and the Other Side
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Watching different people use software is fascinating to me. My mind works a lot differently than Average-Joe's does when it comes to using software so seeing how people interact with software is really intriguing to me.
I was just at the post office and this old lady in front of me was trying to buy a shipping label for her package. This is a very easy thing to do. There are lots of instructions, big buttons, and even instructional videos to help you if you want.
After two tries she gave up and went to go stand in the super long line to get someone to help her. (Why are the lines always stupid long in post offices? It was 2:30 in the afternoon. Why is there a line?)
What I Do
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People as me a lot what I do. I generally say "I write software" and get a blank look. I think I'm going to start saying:
I type a lot and make stuff happen.
That sounds cool, right?
Rejected for Cleverness
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The latest X3watch iPhone app update got rejected. Here some of the highlights from the rejection email:
We have reviewed your application and have found that it is accessing and displaying the contents of the iPhone OS filesystem outside of your designated container area. The iPhone Developer Program License Agreement provides specific guidelines about this behavior in section 3.2(e).