Are you my neighbor?

When I went to walk my dog this evening, I found a present at the end of my driveway.

With neighbors like these, who needs enemies? I did clean it up after I got back, but I find it very rude that some people don't pick up after their dogs.

(My wife thinks it could be from a coyote, but I don't think so. We live near a canyon, so it is a possibility.)

Working with blocks

In Mac OS X 10.6 and iOS 4, Apple added blocks to Objective-C. When I first started looking at them because various APIs used them, the syntax confused me, and I pretty much ignored them as I was still doing work that ran on iOS 4 and Mac OS X 10.5.

This spring, all my projects moved to iOS 4 and Mac OS X 10.6 as the minimum requirements, so I took another pass at learning blocks. This time, however, I could actually use them and read all I could about them. The more I started looking at them, the more I became enamored with them. I started using blocks in my own APIs and just finished rewriting a significant chunk of code using blocks. Using blocks has made my code more readable and has greatly simplified certain aspects of our app.

One of my co-workers cautioned me to not use blocks just because they were the shiny new tool which I admit was what I was looking at doing. However, after using them, we found that using blocks was pretty much vital to making our code more readable.

For developers that aren't familiar with blocks, I'd suggest learning them. With most iOS apps having a minimum OS of 4.0, there is no reason to avoid them.

Siri and a 4 year old

I've been playing a lot with Siri on my iPhone 4S and am finding it pretty neat. I add reminders when running and when in the car. I'm also asking it the weather, temperature, etc. My 4 1/2 year old son saw me asking it "What's the weather?" and he tried to do the same. Unfortunately he doesn't enunciate well, so Siri gets very, very confused. He's managed to get Siri to respond to something this evening; he asked it "What's the weather in San Jose?" and it responded correctly.

So, while Siri works pretty well for me, I wonder how well it works for people that don't speak clearly, have speech impediments or have thick accents. I know that Apple is still working on it, but right now, don't expect Siri to work for a 4 year old!

iOS 5's most useful feature

Now that my wife and I both have iPhones running iOS 5, the single most useful feature for us is Reminders. I've used to do lists on and off for years, but never found anything that was always accessible and easy to use. With iOS 5 and iCloud, I have access to my reminders on my desktop, iPhone and iPad. Furthermore, with Siri on my iPhone 4S, I can add reminders when I'm running or when I'm driving.

To top off my personal use of reminders, with iCloud, I can share reminder lists with my wife. I've setup a grocery list that we can both see. The other day I added an item to the list while I was in Portland and when I arrived home later that day, my wife had been to the store and purchased everything on the list, including what I had added!

There are lots of other useful iOS 5 features, but so far, this feature could be something that helps restore my sanity. Yes, I know that other apps can do this, but this is simple to use and just works.