iPhone Developer

I'm a contract iPhone and iPad developer, currently working on iPhone apps at Melodis. Melodis is the creator of SoundHound, a speech and music recognition app that's now in the App Store top 50.

I recently completed a project for 4HomeMedia, a complex and flexible app that remotely controls home automation equipment such as switches, dimmers, locks, cameras, thermostats and sensors. The finished product is fully localized, has 35 view controllers, 37,000 lines of code, and uses a proprietary multi-channel XML protocol. It’s completely asynchronous yet single-threaded, and takes full advantage of the features of Core Data. Prior to starting the project, I delivered a working prototype of the interface and helped to perfect the design and operation of the app.

Another client, Xpertise Mobile in Australia just had a very successful launch of i am Safe, a personal safety strategy application. I have two of my own apps: QuickTwit, a send-only Twitter client for busy people, and IPVS Calc. QuickTwit features a simple, fast, distraction-free interface and makes using @names and #hashtags quick and easy. IPVS Calc is a calculator for designers of networked video surveillance systems that figures storage, recording duration, and data rates. I also like making toolbar and tabbar icons.
IPVS CalcQuick Twiti am Safe

I started programming Cocoa/Objective-C on the Mac about six years ago. Prior to that I have fifteen years professional programming experience in C and assembler on UNIX-like operating systems for embedded devices with small memory footprints and limited processors.

You’ll catch me at NSCoder night in Campbell most Tuesday evenings and at Cocoaheads in Silicon Valley. I organized a get-together between artists/designers in San Francisco and developers attending WWDC so that cross-pollenation could occur and have converted that into a Google group called Pencils and Keyboards. Send me an email if you’d like to join.


Writer and Blogger

I’ve been a writer of one sort or another for most of my professional life. I was the odd guy who wrote the docs before the code, understanding the value of knowing what the customer will experience before starting on the implementation.

I blogged for several years about cameras, photography, and coding, but have since fallen victim to iPhone development and the ease of Twitter. Eventually my site became too difficult to maintain in RapidWeaver, and I archived the whole thing. I’ve worked on large technical manuals in Framemaker, managed technical writers, and created and organized a ton of documents.

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Writing is interesting because it’s never just writing. When someone says “write this” they really mean, “figure it out because we haven’t”. The writing is just the deliverable.


Photographer and Aperture Guru

I was one of the first people to tackle the intricacies of Apple’s pro photo app, Aperture shortly after it hit the stores a few years ago as a 1.0 app. By blogging extensively what I learned and by helping other people I was able to achieve seemingly impossible things with it. Eventually I turned it all into a highly-acclaimed 160 page book.

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Since then, Aperture has improved dramatically in terms of speed, stability, and ease-of-use, and there are many third-party resources to draw on, so I feel my help is no longer needed. Nowadays I just use it to manage my photos.

I take a lot of photos; 40,000 at the last count. The main reason for getting into Aperture in the first place was that my photo count was rising so quickly. I outgrew iView, and didn’t look at iPhoto because of its limited features. Photography is an interesting hobby, but one constrained by a realistic budget. I have a scrappy gallery on SmugMug that is in need of a refresh.