Inpsired by the release of the new Netflix iPhone app today. I was looking at the Mathogen profile on iTunes Connect Preview and noticed that it's been a years since I released an update for Mathogen on iPhone. I am working on 3 different update spaces for Mathogen and notice that I have to focus on one thing at a time and release more updates more frequently.

Feeling the video game flow these days. Played 2 hours of Starcraft multiplayer with my brother last night. Played an hour of Torchlight right afterward. Planning to code tonight for 2 hours. Working on Facebook Mathogen this weekend. Getting it posted online by the end of the week. Back to coding.

I've been parsing XML with regular expressions and naming conventions seem rife with meaning. I've been thinking that it's strange that form buttons have the label "submit" on them. The phrase is ironic. I had a professor in college, who now lives in Saudi Arabia, who said, "Technology gives back what it takes away." He then made an allusion to an airconditioner and the movement of air, but I didn't get it. I still don't know if I really get it. But I'm trying to.

Sleeping on it really does work wonders. Figured out a simple regex to pull out the data I needed. Now I'm 50% of the way finished with my second iPhone application. Very excited about this one. Got the prototype finished. Going to work on new ways to display the information and allow the user to select different options. Excited about this one. Have had it in mind for a long time now. Excited to see how it does on the App Store.

Objective C doesn't support regular expressions. I did some research online and found RegExKitLite, a regular expression library for Objective-C. Installation was a breeze. Now I'm just stuck familiarizing myself with regexs, a subject I haven't had to think about since my undergraduate days at UH.

Hmm, still working out the best way to pull URLs from an img tag. Been working on regexs for 3 hours now. I ate a large plate of Chicken Katsu Curry at my Dad's house after work today. Kanak attack. Time to get some sleep. Going to let my mind work it out while I sleep.

Today I woke up early and pulled up tons of weeks from my front lawn. As I was pulling the weeds I was thinking about the other things I could be doing wtih my code. Watching "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles" today while I work on the menu system in Mathogen. I'm sold: computers, androids, math, and chess.

Yesterday I started working out the beginning animation. Today I'm looking for interesting video game menu systems to figure out how best to present some new features in the cleanest way possible. Coding for another few hours.

Today I came up with a solution to the string vs int comparison. 1 bug down, about 5 to go. Really learned a lot from reading Joel on Software. Decided to iron out all the bugs before I add in new features and functionality. Played The Incident for another 30 minutes today. Can't seem to get past 524m on the Mountains level. Looking forward to heading home tonight and playing Death Spank. Still can't beat the Nanny Demon. Going to harvest more chickens and build up my health meter. If I still can't beat her I'm going to recruit my brother to help me beat her in Co-op.

Finished reading through the artbook in the Starcraft Collector's edition. Felt kind of strange reading it on the bus. A few pages in the book were not appropriate for the bus. My earbuds are working with my iPhone again so I won't have to purchase a new iPhone. As much as I want one, I wasn't looking forward to putting down $200 to upgrade. I think I can wait till the iPhone 5 comes out. Maybe I'll upgrade when I have a little more money saved up. Back to coding!

Feeling the burn of being away from the code. Trying to work out a bug that makes the iPhone think that a string is an int. Will keep working on this one bug until I fix it tonight. Fixing the bug involves remembering how the algorithm was written. This fix might take a while because it involves figuring out how the sprites were stacked on top of each other. Oh boy. Good fun :)

Played "The Incident" on my iPhone the entire length of my hour long bus ride. Half way through my iPhone stopped making sounds. Wondering if it's my earbuds giving out or the jack on my iPhone. Wish I had enough cash to purchase a new iPhone 4 -- antenna problems and all. I want the retina display! I've been coding the intro to Mathogen at 96dpi. I'm researching creating a universal iPhone app for both the iPod and iPad. "The Incident" is inspiring. The mechanic, the fonts, and the interface remind me of Flixel games.