zacharytamas

When I first started developing for Palm I was a bit skeptical of the framework because it seemed thrown together and needed a lot of polish. The most annoying part was (and is) the lack of accurate documentation. Yes, I said accurate. Palm’s Developer website doesn’t offer complete documentation on everything, and even less of it is actually accurate. Often times if you copy-and-paste the sample code into your project it will not work due to either a typo in their code or the fact that the code is from a previous version of the framework and no longer works.

Palm’s own developer forums often are a frustration. If you take a look around you’ll notice a trend: most people’s posts have many more views than replies—which tells me nobody else can help them either. This isn’t to discount the webOS/Mojo ninjas out there—it just grows both aggravating and disappointing. I am currently trudging through writing a follow-up app for my last one, with progress alternating between very quick and very aggravatingly slow (as in, spending an entire day trying to figure out a problem no one has the answer to, and eventually deciding on another path that actually works).

Although this post sounds like a rant, I wouldn’t classify it as one. I haven’t lost faith in Palm. I understand it’s very early in webOS’s lifespan (indeed, the App Catalog itself is still in Beta), and being a developer I can accept that 1.x software is seldom perfect. Although being in the Palm camp this early on is a bit frustrating, seeing the ratings and feedback from your users after your app has finally shipped makes it all worth it.

I wrote a small tester webOS app for Palm Pre a while back and submitted it to Palm to be in the App Catalog. I didn’t even notice until today, but evidently my app, gChords Free, was published in the app catalog a few days ago. So far it’s managing pretty good reviews.

If you’re not new you know I’ve had a blog called Peacefully Adrift for years that I’ve posted to on and off. For a little while now I’ve owned this domain which I planned to use for my “professional” side and Peacefully Adrift would be my “personal” side.

Well, I’ve decided to do away with Peacefully Adrift altogether and migrate all of me to my namesake domain here. » Read the rest of this entry «

If you’ve read a single blog post on my site you know music is a huge part of my life. I’m a double musician (piano/guitar) going to school for music production technology with an emphasis in composition. However, I am (and have always been) heavily involved in technology—particularly web development. Naturally, these things all mesh together. » Read the rest of this entry «

A very long time ago I added Skribit to this site. Skribit is a start up by my friend Paul Stamatiou which aims to destroy writers block—for bloggers anyway. The idea is that while you’re browsing my site you can click on the “Suggestions?” tab on the right side of your screen and drop a few lines about what you’d like me to write about. It’s a pretty great idea but it seems to only gradually be growing—which is probably a good thing: it gives Paul and friends time to focus on making Skribit even better.

I’ve received a couple suggestions via Skribit but I’ve yet to act on any of them—something that will be fixed shortly. In the meantime, be sure to make some post suggestions by using the Skribit tab on the right. You don’t need an account to suggest topics.

Okay, I’ve finally figured it out. I know this site has kinda gone by the wayside several times in its life. I’ve flirted with it, posting a lot for a week or so before eventually going away for a while. Most of those attempts were experiments, and I largely got disinterested because I hadn’t found anything that I could write a lot about for several articles and people actually care about. Because of that I posted about whatever was cool for me at the time, and now from looking at the statistics I can see what ended up gaining the most attention. » Read the rest of this entry «