iNtervalTunes
iNtervalTunes - What do you want to hear?
iNtervalTunes is an iPhone/iPod Touch App for listening to your
music synchronized to your workout. Create intervals, create a playlist
for each interval, and sweat. And when you're sweating, iNtervalTunes
tells you when an interval is about to end, begin, and how long the
interval is to last. 
And every 5 minutes it tells you how much longer
you have to go in the interval. iNtervalTunes lets you focus on the
road ahead, not your iPhone's screen.
iPhone SDK Programming: A Beginner's Guide
This is a great computer book that I loved writing. I use Interface
Builder
throughout rather than using code. This is something the other
iPhone books don't really do. See, back in the 90's I was quite the
Visual Basic programmer and so I like visual programming environments.
The book is post iPhone OS 3.0 and so it covers Core Data and the newer multimedia classes. It takes a numbered, tutorial approach to learning. But even though it is a beginner's book, I don't cheat you by ommitting common, yet difficult, tasks like placing a table in a navigation controller, in a tab controller. But I do keep the examples simple, and don't try to show multiple concepts in one example. If you wish learning iPhone iPod Touch development, this is the book for you. iPhone SDK Programming, Objective-C, Interface Builder
iStockMonkey
iStockMonkey - Beating Wall Street one banana at a time.
So I was dabbling in stocks but had no idea what stock to buy. Then
I remembered
the oft-quoted news story of a monkey picking stocks and iStockMonkey
was born.
This
iPhone App randomly selects a stock from the NYSE, NASDAQ, or AMEX
stock exchanges. You can limit the random stock pool to any combination
of the three exchanges. Also, if you wish to only consider S&P1000
stocks, you can do that to.
After selecting a stock, the App takes you to the configured
website's information page on the stock. You can configure iStockMonkey
to use Google, Yahoo, or one of several other websites. It's a fun
iPhone App,
complete with shaking, hooting, and silly monkey graphics.
It's not investment advice! But given recent events, I can't see how iStockMonkey's results can be much worse than the experts. A good iPhone App for learning about stocks.
Brilliant HTML & CSS
This book is part of Pearson Education Limited's Brilliant series, released in the United Kingdom. This book was my first book, and I learned a lot about the writing and copyediting process.
It was a fun one to write. It covers HTML and CSS.
Each topic
is a numbered exercise, where you complete the steps, and learn the
concepts involved. It is full-color too, so it's a visually appealing
book, and the publishers used high-quality, glossy paper and binding.
This is a good book for beginners that want to quickly pick up HTML and
CSS, with minimal extraneous discussion.
Web Design in Simple Steps
This book is part of
Pearson Education Limited's Simple Steps
series, released in the United Kingdom. This book was my second book
and also a lot of fun to write. Although a beginner book, it takes a
different approach than most web design books. In this book I stress
how a web site must offer a service, no matter how humble, to its
users. Each chapter is comprised of multiple sections. Each section
presents a step or a best practice. There are lots of examples from
real world web sites that show how to do things correctly. It's a great
book for beginners, and I believe it has something to offer advanced
developers too.
Objective-C for iPhone Developers: A Beginner's Guide
This is a book that was fun writing. This book is a prequel to the iPhone book, and covers Objective-C much more thoroughly than the iPhone Book. Like the iPhone book, this book takes a tutorial approach. Each tutorial has a video that you can watch online at Vimeo, or you can pay a nominal charge and download the iPad App.
SOA/Java/XML/etc. (My Day Job)
What can I say about my day job? It's pretty standard fare: J2EE
with lots of XML. I do know a thing or two about
SOA, webservices, and all that good stuff. I change jobs about every
two years, as that's about the average project's lifecycle. I'm not
loyal to companies, but very loyal to projects - the way it should be.
But this website isn't about SOA, Java, XML, or my philosophy on
corporations; it's about my moonlighting as
a computer book writer and iPhone developer.
Buy one of my books from Amazon.
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About Me
"Last of the fast, best of the rest."
This cycling adage sums my life. I have never been the best at anything, and never will. Thing is, by trying, I usually end up in a better position than most.
But here's the secret - turn off your television! By simply not watching television, you can be a semi-fast cyclist, a semi-smart programmer, and a semi-literate writer.
I have two kids, a wife, a fast bicycle (not the clunker in this
site's photos), and two Macs, but no dog. I live in the great American
suburb, Gaithersburg, Maryland - just outside of Washington, DC.
