Posted by Jason on July 19th, 2008
If you’re a user of Tapes, my Ruby on Rails tape-logging app for the iPhone, you might have noticed some weirdness going on in the last few days. Namely, that all of your saved tapes appeared to be missing.
To make a long story short, they’re back now. But if you added anything in the past four days, you might want to login and see if your new tapes are still intact (probably not). If you created a user account in the last week, your account should be fine, but any tapes created will have been lost. Sorry about that.
If you have any questions or concerns, please email me or leave a comment here.
A huge, super special, wet and sloppy thanks to Jason Seifer of Rails Envy for all the help. I’d be sobbing in the corner rocking back and forth right now if it weren’t for him.
Posted by Jason on July 12th, 2008
About a year ago I worked for a few months teaching myself Ruby on Rails. I’m not a programmer, but I really wanted a tape logger that I could use on my iPhone, and one hadn’t been introduced yet. So I made my own.
It’s not perfect. I did the best I could with the knowledge of programming that I had at the time, and the result was a single release of a web app I called Tapes. Since it’s debut in Apple’s web app section I’ve had 5,485 people sign up as users. I have no way of checking to see if they’re actually using the application, but if even a handful of them still find it useful I’d be thrilled.
But now we have the ability to write native apps for the iPhone and iPod touch. I would love nothing more than to be able to sell Tapes (don’t worry, I’m thinking $4.99) through the iTunes store and do my part to fill the gaping void of production-oriented apps. My biggest problem in reaching this goal is that I’m STILL NOT A PROGRAMMER. I’ve been studying up on C since February, but I don’t really feel like I’ve got a firm grasp on it yet. And after that I have to learn Objective-C. And then the Cocoa-touch framework. And make sure the UI is intuitive. And then get accepted into Apple’s dev program even though I’m not really a developer. All without having a formal education in computer science.
Basically, it’s hard.
But hard isn’t bad. Just challenging. So I promise you this, Internets: If it can be done, it shall be done. I will do my best to come out with a native tape or footage logging application at some point in the future. I have no idea when, or how. But I’m going to try.
And if you know anybody that knows anything about writing Objective-C apps, please send them my way.
Because I need some help.
Posted by Jason on August 23rd, 2007
Today I’m putting up the new site in place of the old one. I suppose that’s a bit of an understatement, since the “old one” was basically a one page link to my email address. Hopefully you find this new site a bit more useful. Or informative. Or entertaining. Or all of those things.
The Rails Envy guys are also premiering the new Get a Mac parody ads we put together recently. You can digg the ads, if you’d like, or just give us your feedback on YouTube. We really wanted to answer some of the criticism brought on by the first round of ads. Or maybe we just wanted to try and piss a few more people off. I guess that’s up for you to decide.
Anyway, have a poke around. Hopefully you find everything is in order. I’ll be updating this space with every video project I work on from here on in, so keep an eye out for all that goodness. Below you’ll find the first of the new Rails Envy Ads. It’s about the .NET framework, where we made the assumption that all .NET programmers are probably closet alcoholics. Enjoy.
