→ CS193P updated for iOS 5 (iTunes U)

I wouldn’t be where I am today without Stanford’s excellent iOS development course. I can’t recommend it enough.

It’s never too late to start learning something new.

April and I shot some weddings this fall. One had a dress-up table.

staff:

Introducing the new and very improved way to customize your blog.
With themes organized by category, realtime previews, and an advanced code editor, it’s never been faster or easier to make your blog yours.
Internet Explorer users will still see the old Customize interface while we wrap up IE testing.

This is really, really neat, although scrolling seems a little janky in Safari 5.1.

(Looks like 2011 is indeed the year of linen on the desktop.)

Steve Jobs: 1955–2011

I was lucky enough to see Steve present in person at WWDC this summer, where I met the rest of my geek idols for the first time. Struggling to jump from biochemistry into software development, I’m always inspired by this quote from his Stanford commencement address:

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

Thanks for everything, Steve.

→ PS3 controller driver for Mac OS X

As sketchy as it is to install a “version 0.01” kernel extension on a pristine computer, I can confirm that this thing enables bluetooth pairing between a PS3 controller and a new MacBook Air running Lion. Combine with Richard Bannister’s emulators and enjoy.

As usual, my favourite image from the 2011 Nikon Small World competition features Daphnia. See others from the Lives Within a Drop of Water collection.

→ NoiseES 1.3

The talented designer/developer Shaun Inman just released a hefty update to his video game music player, NoiseES. Version 1.3 adds support for Sega Genesis and SNES sound formats as well as system-wide recognition and import of each format. This is a must-have for any nerd—get it while it’s hot!

Got it? Good.

I really admire Shaun’s ability to craft his obsessions into polished products. While building a game engine from scratch, the decision to compose and encode authentic NES music in lightweight MML necessitated the inclusion of an NSF player. NoiseES precipitated from those early experiments.

He’s been on fire lately and released his fantastic game The Last Rocket a month ago. Get that too.

→ FitVids.JS, a jQuery plugin for fluid width video

Resizing embedded video is a pain in the ass and CSS alone doesn’t cut it. Interesting.

→ Coming Soon: Merging Apple IDs

As a MobileMe subscriber from day one, being able to merge my @me.com address of choice (tied to an Apple ID that cannot be altered or deleted) with my original iTunes account is a welcome solution to one of the most insignificant non-problems imaginable.

Still, it’s one less thing to deal with.

April and I are shooting another outdoor wedding this weekend, which means I get to play amateur wildlife photographer again. Here’s my favourite image from the last one.

Vlambeer is bringing their fantastic freeware game Super Crate Box to iOS. I’m curious to see how they’ve solved the controller problem, although this alone might justify the existence of the iCade.

If they have a native iOS port (ex-Flash), why not sell it on the Mac App Store too? Let me swap the jump and shoot buttons (Z and X, but everyone knows X is jump) and I’m sold.