Michael Voong

Strict Date Parsing Gotcha (12 Hour Clock Example)

Michael Voong — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 19:32:11 +0000

/**
 * Be careful when parsing dates from strings. According to Technical Q&A QA1480 
 * (http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#qa/qa1480/_index.html) dates are parsed depending on a user's
 * particular setup, e.g. locale. This happens even though the date format is specified strictly.
 * To ensure reliable parsing for all users, you need to explicitly set a NSDateFormatter's locale property.
 *
 * Example follows for a user that has their clock set to 12 hour:
 */
NSDateFormatter *dateFormatter = [[NSDateFormatter alloc] init];
dateFormatter.dateFormat = @"HH";
 
// Prints "(null)"
NSLog(@"%@", [dateFormatter dateFromString:@"13"]);    
 
dateFormatter.locale = [[NSLocale alloc] initWithLocaleIdentifier:@"en_US_POSIX"];
 
// Prints "1970-01-01 12:00:00 PM +0000" on my device
NSLog(@"%@", [dateFormatter dateFromString:@"13"]);

Cisco E4200 v1 Airplay Network Bounce

Michael Voong — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 19:13:58 +0000

Had a problem with my E4200 for a while, where if I attempted to use Airplay over 5Ghz Wi-Fi, the whole network would “reboot/bounce”. Finally came across a solution posted by canadamg over at the Apple discussion forums.

In router management, apply these settings:

Applications & Gaming -> QoS -> WMM -> ENABLE IT
Administration -> Management -> CTF -> DISABLE IT

I can confirm this works on my router with firmware version 1.0.03.

Xcode 4.3 Can’t Run OCUnit Tests

Michael Voong — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 22:15:29 +0000

I was a bit frustrated when i upgraded to Xcode 4.3 and we started getting a SenTestCase symbol not found compiler error.

A very useful comment by “Daniel” gave me the solution:

The key is the Build Setting “Framework Search Paths”. It needs to contain the following values, in this order:

$(SDKROOT)/Developer/Library/Frameworks
$(DEVELOPER_LIBRARY_DIR)/Frameworks

Thanks Daniel!

Do financial woes fuel racism?

Michael Voong — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 20:34:52 +0000

A brilliant article by my friend Wei Jun about how we should stop blaming each other because we’re in it together. Really worth a read!

GraphicalHTTPClient – Aids REST API Consumption During Development

Michael Voong — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 12:28:56 +0000

Found an awesome Mac AppStore app that makes it easy to perform HTTP requests and see the response body.

From the website:

“With Graphical HTTP Client, you can send an HTTP request to a server, specify any number of headers, and examine the response body and headers. If the response is HTML, you have the option of opening that HTML up in a web view. You can also save the response as a file.”

It even formats JSON:

“If Graphical HTTP Client detects JSON as the response type, it will format it for you so you can easily view the response.”

Current available for £1.49 on the Mac AppStore.

iOS Boilerplate

Michael Voong — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 09:03:45 +0000

An Xcode project designed to speed up development of new projects. Seems like there are quite a few things in it I can take inspiration from for my own code.

What is it?

This project is inspired on HTML5 boilerplate.

It is intended to provide a base of code to start with

It is not intended to be a framework

It is intended to be modified and extended by the developer to fit their needs

It includes solid third-party libraries if needed to not reinvent the wheel

Via: Simon Teppett

iOS Development – sizeToFit:

Michael Voong — Thu, 19 May 2011 21:16:55 +0000

Jérémy Chatard explains the intricacies of UIView’s sizeToFit: with a concrete example of how it should be used to lay out a bunch of subviews stacked vertically. He makes use of recursion in his solution to solve the problem of “If you want to lay out a parent view, you first need to lay out its children”.

If, like me, you always wondered what sizeToFit: should be used for, I recommend you read this. Cheers Jérémy.

Funny Article About Android vs iOS

Michael Voong — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 15:35:50 +0000

Made me chuckle – an April Fool’s article by Ray Wenderlich – Why I’m Ditching iOS and Becoming an Android Developer.

Android SeekBar Skinning (Styling)

Michael Voong — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 19:30:00 +0000

Want to skin an Android SeekBar? Check out this article by MokaSocial – it really lays it out quite simply! Can’t wait to try this out tomorrow!

Flirtomatic App 2.0

Michael Voong — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 19:26:28 +0000

I’m glad to be able to announce the Flirtomatic app is now available on the app store!

I’ve been working on this since November and my gosh that was a large project! It has a pretty slick design courtesy of George. Great work Chris, Phil, Jason, Jean-Claude and Liz on the back-end – it’s been a battle but worth it! Fernando, the UX work helped so so much, great stuff! Mark, you can finally sleep without dreaming about Apple Push Notifications – give yourself a pat on the back you held this project together so well it’s unbelievable. Simon, great job on the QA, you managed to find and narrow down problems with such detail that almost made the problems fix themselves.

Finally, Chris G, I’ve learned so much from you so thank you for enlightening me on the iOS platform – you’ve taught me so much and have given me the confidence to realise that I can now code just about anything on the platform!

Check it out everyone, Flirtomatic’s here to stay