Down by the Lake

How to run Drupal on Amazon EC2 using a new micro instance

in
September 15, 2010
Amazon Web Services

A while ago, I wrote an article about the steps required to set up a web server that runs the Drupal content management system (like this site).  Enough has changed in the interim that I figured I'd revisit this article with more up-to-date information.  In particular, Amazon just introduced their micro instances, which offer you the ability to host a website for as little as $5 a month.

Read on for a step-by-step guide in setting up a micro instance for hosting Drupal.

Advanced iPhone Development course now on iTunes U

in
June 3, 2010
MATC logo

The videos of the Advanced iPhone Development class I taught this past semester at the Madison Area Technical College are now available for free on iTunes U.  These videos amount to over 35 hours of HD content, covering more advanced iPhone development topics such as Core Animation, multithreading, Quartz 2-D drawing, and OpenGL ES.  The course notes that accompany the class are available for download here in VoodooPad format, or for viewing here in HTML.  Links to all sample applications used for the class are present in the notes.

Read on for more about the structure and presentation of the course.

Molecules 1.4.1 now on the App Store

in
June 2, 2010
Molecules icon

A new version of Molecules is now available on the App Store, and the available source code has also been updated.  The new version fixes a potential crash in iPhone OS 4.0 and adds a new means of directly installing molecular structures in the application.

On the iPad (and soon the iPhone), you can now drag and drop molecular structures into (and out of) Molecules using iTunes.  When your device is connected, you can go to the Apps tab and scroll down until the File Sharing section is visible.  Within that section, click on Molecules to display all currently loaded molecular structure files.  To add a new structure, simply drag it into the list of files.  On the next startup of Molecules, it will be parsed and added to the application's internal database.

My Core Animation talk from iPadDevCamp Chicago

in
May 3, 2010
iPadDevCamp Chicago logo

Chicago hosted a satellite location for iPadDevCamp this weekend, and I had just as much fun as the iPhoneDevCamp I attended there two years ago. I had the privilege of speaking about Core Animation there, a talk where I crammed too much information into a one-hour space. My Keynote presentation is available for download here. The source code for the sample applications I showed off, NanoSpores for iPad and ReplicatorDemo for iPad, is also available for download.

I had also referenced my Advanced iPhone Application Development class for MATC. The final course notes for that are available for download here in VoodooPad format. UPDATE (6/29/2010): The final video for my class on Core Animation can now be found as part of my class on iTunes U.

Thanks for organizing the event go to David Kinney, who pulled the entire thing together despite having a busted MacBook Pro. He proved that the iPad really can be a work device. It was also extremely generous of TechNexus to allow us to use their very nice facilities for the weekend.

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