Rex Flex

I’ve been pretty busy with work lately, but it has been very interesting. The past couple of days I’ve been working with the AES/Rijndael to encrypt sensitive user data in the application I’m currently working on. It has been pretty interesting and has proven to be quite a learning experience.

The main reason it has been a challenge is that some of this data that we’re encrypting needs to be decrypted and searched through for reports. We have already decided on using SQL Server Reporting Services (which I haven’t worked with before) to handle these reports, however there was the question of decrypting these fields through SQL Server. Luckily we should be able to create CLR User-Defined functions to handle this.

I have also spent some time cleaning up the solution. This particular project has been going on for the past year and a half (or so) and has had quite a few hands touching it. I went ahead and organized the projects in the solution and fixed the dependency problems that everyone had been just dealing with for the past year or so. I think taking care of these issues will make my life a lot easier in the long run.

Those of you that know me in real life probably realize that I have a tendency to obsess about something for awhile, then sort of forget about it. Well, my latest obsession has been developing native applications for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

For those of you that haven’t heard, apple has released their SDK. This means that the development tools are available to easily create applications for the iPhone, with apple’s blessing. After I saw some of the applications that were created, I was pretty much hooked.

I decided to start looking into getting the SDK, then realized that it was only available to those running OSX. So, I looked into virtualization options for running OSX on a PC. I didn’t really find a whole lot. Sure, there’s VMWare, Virtual PC, etc; however I couldn’t find anywhere where these solutions supported OSX specifically. I looked into it a little more and found out that there is a clause in OSX’s EULA that states it’s not to be run in a virtualized environment. After finding this out, I decided to go ahead and just get a new Mac.

So, I’m now typing this up on my new Mac Mini (the cheapest Mac they had at the apple store). Apple also has a program called one to one, where you can schedule appointments to go in and learn how to use your Mac. The email they sent me states, “learn how to do everything you ever wanted on a Mac–with your trainer beside you every step of the way”, so I plan to take advantage of that and try to get them to teach me the basics of XCode. I’ve installed the SDK and I am now exploring, trying to figure out just what you have to do to create an application for the iPhone. From what I’ve found so far, there’s not a whole lot to it.

1. You have to learn Objective-C, which if you know any other programming language, really isn’t a big deal. From what I can tell, it’s very much like C with some syntax changes.
2. If you want to hook up your application to run directly on the iPhone, as shown in the roadmap, you’ll need to sign up for the beta and fork over $99. As I understand it now, they’ve only accepted a very select few people to start the beta, but will expand it to more people once it gets rolling. It sounds to me like apple’s getting their partners in early so they can have a little jump start, but what do I know, I’m just an infrequent blogger.
3. You need to be able to go in and make positioning, size, color, etc changes to the UI in the code. From what I’ve seen so far, the Interface Builder isn’t working for iPhone apps yet. Unless anyone can show me otherwise, I’m going to be doing these things by hand for awhile.

Coming from a C# (Visual Studio) background it is quite different. But I almost feel as though I’m getting back to my computer science roots. New things to explore and fiddle with.

That’s really it, I haven’t run into a whole lot, however I’ve only really created a Hello World program, which I basically copied from an example on apple’s site. I’ll be sure to keep my blog updated with things I encounter and create.

In an old post I found online here the author asks how you would go about writing a simple for loop. I was bored tonight, so I wrote a simple program to time several different types of loops to confirm which is the fastest at iterating through a generic list, yes… that bored. My list contained 67,108,863 integers.

Here are the results:
Foreach loop: 1185.8ms

int tmp;
foreach (int i in array)
{
tmp = i;
}

Standard for loop: 932.1ms

int tmp;
for (int i = 0; i < array.Count; i++)
{
tmp = array[i];
}

Optimized for loop: 726.1ms

int tmp;
int cnt = array.Count;
for (int i = 0; i < cnt; ++i)
{
tmp = array[i];
}

It’s been over six months and two quarters since I’ve posted anything. So at the beginning of last quarter, I began working on an ongoing project here at Neumont University known as NORMA (Neumont ORM Architect). This is the most complex project I’ve ever been apart of.

Last quarter I was working along with Josh, getting verbalizations working for the ORM subset constraints. After we worked on that for about eight weeks, we were assigned the task of creating the framework to make it possible for end users to generate a PHP back end once they get their information modeled. We were able to get this done successfully in 10 days.

This quarter I’ve been working on reverse engineering a database to ORM. This task has had its complications, but is coming along smoothly. When this is done I’ll be teaming up with Josh again to get the framework setup to generate a Java back end.

Also, since the release of Internet Explorer 7 (and its support for alpha transparent png’s), I’ve decided to go back to the old layout on the site. I’ve always thought it looked nicer, however it didn’t play nice with IE7.

I’ve also been on a team of a group of coders known as Revolutionary Networks. We’ve been working on a portfolio type project which will, in the end, display each of the members in Rev Net and display certain details such as which projects they’re working on, which technologies they know, where they’ve worked, their resume, etc. It’s a very in depth project that’s been going on for awhile.

Quarter 5 here at Neumont University has started. Luckily I got into golf class so at least I get to have a little fun in between all of the work. This is what my schedule is looking like this quarter.

• Golf
• Game Programming
• Calculus
• Algorithms and Data Structures
• Development in the J2EE Framework I
• Projects IV

I’m pretty excited for the Projects class. This quarter I’m working on the PHPGedView project. Which is currently ranked #2 on the list of most active projects on sourceforge. My group is responsible for creating an Open “Source” Repository so that people can easily find more sources to look up information about their family tree. It’s a very interesting project and I can’t wait until we get past the database design and start the coding.

I also landed a grading position this quarter, so I have some source of income. I’m grading the Topics in Software Development, which is a class that all of the new students have to take. It’s pretty interesting to see the different things that get turned in and the different ways people decide to do things.

I’ve started playing World of Warcraft again after giving it up for about a month. I’ve decided that I’m going to finish leveling my Rogue and transfer it to Kalecgos since they’ve opened realm transfers. Most of the people that I used to play with decided to give the game up, and I have some friends on Kalecgos, so.. goodbye Tichondrius.

That’s really all that’s going on right now. Since it’s 1AM and I have Golf bright and early in the morning, I’m going to bed.

Finally, we’ve finished our second, and final, project for Projects 1.  Code freeze was tonight and we got it in.  I must say it’s probably the biggest piece of shit I’ve ever had the pleasure of working on, but it’s over.  Seriously, why not use objects in an object oriented programming language?  Classes, who needs those… I don’t really get it, but whatever.  We turned in our Form1.cs that contained over 2500 lines of code and called it good.  I’m hoping that next quarter I can get in a team with someone that has more knowledge of program design so that I can really learn how programs such as these are supposed to be coded.

I’ve fallen victim to World of Warcraft. I think it can happen to anyone. I play on the Tichondrius (PVP) server. I’m a level 23 Gnome Warlock that goes by the name of Qwik. Look me up, give me some gold, I won’t turn it down. I just recently figured out about the battlegrounds. I wish somebody would have told me about these things sooner. They’re awesome, you go in and play capture the flag, and kill tons of horde. Anyways, I’d really recommend going to Pure Pwnage (Music) and downloading the song World of Warcraft is a Feeling. It pretty much sums up the people that get involved with WoW. Also, download all the videos; they’re a really good watch.

As far as school goes, I got put into the advanced C# class. I decided to setup a wiki for people to reference if they get stuck or something. You can check it out here. “WTF” has become the slogan for the advanced C# class. Currently we’re creating our own Integer data type. We have to overload all the operators and everything. Can you say, “WTF?”

Related: The Daily WTF