Written by Scott Williams who lives and works in sunny Phoenix, AZ. Twitter is also a place.

Best Feliz Navidad Ever

Feliz Navidad is a terrible song, and you should play it whenever possible to harass your friends into submission. One of my favorite…

I Made an App!

One of my goals for this year was to create and release an iOS app. I’m cutting it close, but I think it’s finally good enough to actually…

A New Appreciation for the Climactic Duel in The Empire Strikes Back

I recently watched the original Star Wars trilogy 1 with my 5 year old. She’s really enjoyed it and caught the bug. I’ve watched those…

Lack of Commercials

We cut our cable a couple of years ago and have been using Netflix/Hulu/iTunes as our primary source of television ever since. Our oldest…

Stop Thinking You're a Special Unicorn

This image has been circling the Internet recently. It demonstrates the peril of interrupting a programmer deep in thought: they lose their…

The Frustrations of the Journeyman

I was a .NET programmer from almost the beginning. I did a lot of work in 1.0 and 1.1, and was excited when things like generics and…

Handling Bluetooth Keyboard Events With Modifier Keys in iOS 7

Before iOS 7, if you had a Bluetooth keyboard attached to your iPad, you could only access modifier keys (Command, Control, etc) through…

Thoughts on the New iPhone

Buy it. Or don’t. I don’t really care.

You Probably Shouldn't Buy a DSLR

I have three digital SLR cameras 1 , and a bunch of nice lenses to go with them. I’ve been an amateur photographer , and have taken tens…

50 Years

50 Years ago this happened. Non-violence is one of the things I admire the most about Martin Luther King, Jr. It’s crazy when you think…

High Quality Parenting

My oldest has been naming her stuffed animals and finally came to her stick horse. She’s been partial to “Alley” and named a bunch of other…

The Average CEO

I usually don’t like to commentate on tech news; there are more than enough people doing that already. Let’s just let this be a freebie and…

Tesla

I tend to yo-yo on my feelings with Tesla motors. This video (and article) of the Tesla plant hits all the right spots in my nerd brain…

Customizing the Link Color in a UITextView

UITextView’s can automatically detect URLs and treat them accordingly. This is a nice feature, but when you start to customize your UI…

Don't Save Full Paths to Resources in Your iOS app

Don’t save full paths to resources in your iOS app 1 . I’m working on an iPad application, and this just bit me pretty hard. Your…

How I Straight-Up Murdered the Cricket in my Bedroom

I’m a bit of a finicky sleeper. I don’t like tiny lights on when I try to sleep, and I don’t like sounds either. So, when a cricket managed…

Multiplane

This YouTube video linked from Marco Arment (riffing on this post by Manton Reece ) is awesome. It’s Walt Disney describing Disney…

Quality Customer Service

The iOS 7 beta bug had bit me, but I wasn’t about to install it on my primary iPhone, therein lay madness. I had a bit of cash running…

Incentivization

The job market is red hot for software developers right now. Last time I was looking for a job, I made the mistake of putting my resume on…

Fear of Falling, Fear of Failing, Fear of Rejection

I’ve been trying to get my five year old daughter to play on the monkey bars at the park near our house. The problem is that she is scared…