Bad Month

Have you ever had one of those days where you just can't seem to get anything right? Well, when it comes to my professional life (work), I seem to be having one of those days for the last month or so. No matter how hard I try I just can't seem to get it right. … Continue reading Bad Month

Please Take an Economic Class… or Two.

I am so very TIRED of seeing stupid posts like the one below. To me it shows one area where public education has completely failed our children by not teaching them important things like basic economics. This leads to our kids having this grossly fairy tale-like, over simplified view of economics. Our kids end up … Continue reading Please Take an Economic Class… or Two.

Thoughts on Strings in Swift

Okay, I really do understand the plight. Honestly I do. I mean, I get it! Strings in Swift are not randomly accessible collections of bytes like they are in C or 16-bit words like they are in Objective-C or Java. In Swift a String is a collection of grapheme clusters. So, why not allow you … Continue reading Thoughts on Strings in Swift

How the VIC/64 Serial Port Works

By Jim Butterfield Originally published in Compute! July 1983 (page 178) The Serial bus connects VIC or Commodore 64 to its major peripherals, especially disk and tape. The workings of this interface have been a source of bafflement to most of us.  We know that it's somehow related to the IEEE-488 bus which is used … Continue reading How the VIC/64 Serial Port Works

Pi1541 Pi-Hat

So, one of my other hobbies are retro-computers. Specifically the Commodore 128. I had this computer as a kid and it still holds a strong place in my heart. I recently acquired a Commodore 128DCR on eBay and have been playing with it again. But as with all things retro, there is a strong community … Continue reading Pi1541 Pi-Hat

My Hobbies

Taking a look at my activity on GitHub shows that, outside of my day job, I didn't do Jack from June until November last year. 😳 No wonder I was so cranky. All work and no play makes me very restless!

Documentation 😳

I've started using Jazzy to generate documentation for my Swift and Objective-C projects. If you do development on the macOS platform then I highly recommend using Jazzy. It's by far the easiest to use. Here's a sample: Rubicon â–º Extensions â–º String â–º split(on:limit:)

Swift – First Impressions

After playing with Swift a bit here are my first impressions of the language. There is definitely a lot to like about it! There's also a few things that annoy me. 😎 But first I'll start out with a giving you a 1,000 foot overview of the language itself. Syntax aside, Swift and Objective-C 2.0 (as … Continue reading Swift – First Impressions

Taking the Swift Plunge

Okay... So... I think I'm finally ready to take the plunge and start learning the Swift Programming Language in earnest. I've been watching it and starting with version 5 there is finally enough there for me to get excited about. But this isn't going to be easy for me. Not like it was when I … Continue reading Taking the Swift Plunge