At the beginning of 2011 I had just undergone my first real surgery (gallbladder removal) and I used to weight around 182 pounds by the time I left the hospital. I don’t know what happened in the next few months, but by the time I really started looking to realize I gained weight, I was at 205 and in denial. Andy and Craig mentioned several times just how much weight I had gotten. I let it keep going for a little while longer and then one day, out of absolutely nowhere, I just started running.

I don’t know if you have ever decided to just “try” and go out running, but it’s by far one of the hardest things I have ever done in my life. To see just how little you can do in the beginning is disappointing and downright embarrassing. The pace you go, how heavy you feel and just the amount of noise you make trying to gasp for more air is terrible. I could have let all of that stop me and just give up. I, however, did the exact opposite. (more…)

My favorite part of building any app is towards the end, where you have to think of the small details you’ve missed and the very minor improvements you could make to make the app better for the user. To me, polishing is everything. When Ryan Abbott approached me with the idea of Pockeshots, we both knew it would be a spectacular app to make. The concept of the app was done in 72 hours. The end result? Not pretty. After working on the minor details however, the end result came out to be truly exceptional.

Design aside, the concept version of Pocketshots didn’t have any sounds, camera flash, settings or Facebook integration. We knew we had to improve the app just a little in order to make it something users would want to buy and use. There’s still a lot more coming, but for a v1, it’s off to an extremely good start.

When making your next app (or just app update), ask yourself if there any minor details you should improve on. Most little improvements only take minutes to implement and can greatly improve the overall user experience. (more…)

Farewell 2011, you were an awesome year. I got lots accomplished, lost a whole bunch of weight, ran a little over 500 miles and got a start on a project that I look forward to building in 2012 and beyond.

Here’s some lessons I learned this year:

• Rails is awesome. I will definitely spend more time in 2012 to learn it a bit more.
• Perfection makes a huge difference.
• Losing weight isn’t really as hard as people make it seem. Don’t eat as much and exercise more. Simple equation.
• How to really, really focus on things.

My goals for 2012:

• Maintain my current weight range. 160 – 165.
• Gain some muscle
• Climb a mountain
• Launch all my pending iPhone apps

When Siri works, it’s obviously really awesome. The one really cool thing about Siri is that it remembers relationships with your other contacts. How? Just tell it! (more…)

I use these apps on an almost daily basis, and I’m sure my iOS experience wouldn’t be the same without them. What are your favorite iOS apps?
(more…)

Even though I love Chrome, the only reason I really use it over Safari is because of the Omnibar; being able to type a search in the address bar just makes sense. While browsing Github today, I found a plugin that allows for the Safari address bar to behave somewhat like Chrome’s Omnibar. It allows you to make searches just like Chrome, but it won’t let you search specific websites – at least not yet.

It’s still totally awesome and makes Safari that much better. Download it, run the installer and restart Safari. It even hides the search box!

Here’s the Github page

The most requested feature of QuickStart is now here. QuickStart 1.2 allows you to predefine up to 3 templates that you can easily start with later on.

P.S. If you delete a template folder and later try to create a project with that template, you’ll get an error. I plan on making sure that you’re able to delete the folders once you set the templates, but for now, not possible.

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