I’m heading back to the “real working world” next week. I’m not giving up on the solo-venture. I’ve been enjoying it. It’s just that the startup funds, i.e. savings account, has run dry and I need to keep paying my mortgage and feeding my family. 4 Arrows Media will continue, but on a part-time effort until app sales can support us or I develop enough iOS dev skills to do contract work.

What makes a milestone day for an iPhone App? Well, for ScoutTrail, today marks the day of it’s 100th purchase. There are also currently 268 followers on ScoutTrail’s Facebook page.

The unit test framework that Saul M recommends is GHUnit. It is a unit-testing framework developed by Gabriel Handford. To use it, there is a bit of a setup process to go through. Here are the steps that I took.

1. Create New Project in Xcode. Mine is called CubPath.

2. Add a New Target… by Right-click or Control-click on the Target item in the Groups & Files pane in Xcode. Since we are creating are own test suite, select Application instead of Unit Test Bundle. Name it using convention ”Tests”, CubPathTests.

Been doing a little website updating work lately and not much iOS development, but getting ready to start my next project. I wanted to setup and do test-driven development when I started on ScoutTrail, but I didn’t really understand Apple’s suggestions. Then I ran into Saul Mora’s chapter in More iPhone Cool Projects, “Write Better Code and Save Time with Unit Testing”.

Why Unit Test?

The goal of unit testing is to prove that your smallest software components, or units, work correctly in isolation. Units are generally the individual functions or methods of a software class. There are several benefits:

4AM needs a brand, a logo. Some simple, elegant design that can become the ID for our new company. I had some ideas of what I wanted but not the graphic expertise to create it. I don’t personally know any graphic designers, and I am on a limited budget right now as a startup.

What to do?

I remembered an article in the April 2010 Inc magazine about online services that run contests to assist small-business owners like myself. I went with the recommended service, Hatchwise.com.

A browser tooltip: one of those annoyingly, informative little yellow boxes that magically appears when your mouse hovers over certain interface items. Some people like them, but I am one of those that doesn’t like them in the browser. But how do you get rid of them in Safari or Firefox? There is no simple preferences selection to disable them. But it can be done.

First, to disable in Safari, open up the Terminal application (in Applications/Utilities folder) and paste the following:

Been some time since my last post, but it doesn’t mean I haven’t been working on my app. Progress on ScoutTrail has been slow, but steady. The latest? While teaching myself about Core Data, I decided it would be better if my input data (rank and merit badge requirements, etc) was Core Data based rather than xml. Justification is that I want to track completion of each requirement and coming up with a data model that would stay coordinated with the XML input data would prove more difficult IMHO than creating a data model to handle both.

Seeing, hearing and reading about good design are how I learn to design better. Here is an interview with Dieter Rams, Braun’s chief of design from 1961-1995, on his design philosophy.

Ram’s 10 principles to good design

Last week was spent at Bayport Scout Reservation with Boy Scout Troop 317, of which I am the scoutmaster. It was a busy week for the scouts and myself. We had two 11 year old scouts wake up early each morning to train for the mile swim, and they both successfully completed the mile swim on Thursday morning after swimming 32 laps in the 50m pool. I originally thought about trying for the mile swim, but never having swam more than 1 lap in a pool and not knowing how to pace myself in swimming, I decided not to try…maybe I should have at least tried to see what I could do.