developing for the iPhone

It's been awhile since I've written anything complicated. The last bit of real programming I did was to write a test tool for exercising windows applications through Win32 API calls rather than normal screen positioning and click events.. it was a pretty slick piece of work, but there are 3rd party apps available now that are much better than what I wrote, and I've finally reached the point in my career where it is generally more cost effective to buy rather than write.

That might be a topic for another article.. the progression of software aquiry practice along the career path of the technologist.

Anyway, I've had the iPhone 3G for a bit now, and the only thing that I find it lacking (other than cut & paste...) is a native jabber client.

My workplace uses jabber for internal communications. The jabber server is local to our LAN and inaccessible to the outside world. This is good practice for security. None of our data leak out accidentally this way. However, it means that I can't use a webapp for IM to get to my internal jabber server without some tricky tunneling, and those types of tunnels kinda defeat the purpose of securing the jabber box in the first place.

So, I decided I'd have to write something myself again.

The iPhone developer program is really pretty slick. There are hours of video intros and the tools look pretty easy to use. I suppose I'll see how easy in the coming weeks as I try to get this thing off the ground.

iPhone 3G

It's the bees knees.

is your happiness threshold fixed?

I'm too busy to breathe lately, but I read a disturbing lead to a story off Google News last night while logging in to EVE to change skills being trained.

It seems someone just completed a study that says each individual has a certain default happiness level that doesn't change throughout his life. You can do some things to temporarily go above or below it, but in general it remains fixed for life.

Depressing, isn't it?

the importance of importance

I love to employ cyclical redundancy for effect. You have the redundant, wait for the cyclical..

While I've recently been hurled into a position of authority over not one, but TWO distinct groups of engineers, I've come to the grim determination that I'm not important enough to be important yet. This isn't the first time, or even the more interesting time this has happened, but it is _a_ time, and it will serve to illustrate my grievance as well as any other.

- late edit..
This is a post that I started months ago and never finished. It's been turned on its head a bit since then, but the gist remains. Reshaping your image from within a framework of familiarity is difficult at best. I'm making daily progress, but it's a long road. I had no idea how firmly entrenched I was.