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brian gilham - essays
Aside from an occasional trip to the grocery store or pharmacy — an experience that continues to raise my stress levels — and some evening walks, we’re staying home. Everything else is optional and right now isn’t the time for optional.
Just a Notebook and a Pen
We’re all looking for the perfect solution to our time management woes.
→ 9:00 AM, Jun 12
Breaking My iPhone Addiction
For a long time, I felt addicted to my iPhone. I often ignored the people around me in favour of email, tweets, games, and YouTube videos.
The Tao of Gordon Ramsay
I don’t watch much television these days, but one of my guilty pleasures is old episodes of Kitchen Nightmares . Each episode, through the power of cursing and walking around in dramatic fashion, Gordon Ramsay works to turn around a struggling restaurant.
5 Reasons to Boost Your Career with Side Projects
If you’re a programmer, *particularly* early in your career, there’s no better way to learn new skills, promote yourself, and improve your job prospects than working on side projects. Full stop. Brainstorming, developing, and releasing side projects has been a force multiplier in my career — and it can do the same for you.
Perfection Is Just Procrastination
We all want to do great work.
To pour over every detail, tweaking and tuning until everything is “just right.” And with good reason — it’s those little details that help a project stand out, stick in people’s minds, and provide value to users. By caring about everything, we can be proud of our work.
Not Too Philosophical
I recently got an email from a Monday Mailer subscriber, complimenting me on an article I’d written.
They liked the piece and told me to, “keep them coming.” I love hearing from readers, particularly when something I’ve written has helped them in some way. But it was a comment at the end of the email that caught my eye.
“Not too philosophical, though”
It's All About the Work
It’s almost midnight on a Saturday night and I’m sitting in front of my laptop, writing this article. I’ve always loved writing, whether it was cringe-worthy journal entries as a kid or my short-lived career as a journalist.
Start Paddling
I’ve launched a lot of side projects over the course of my career, but I still get nervous each and every time — especially when I’m trying something for the first time, like selling an icon set or an Apple TV app. A laundry list of doubts creeps into my brain.
→ 10:00 AM, Feb 5
Your First Programming Job
When you’ve been programming for a long time, it’s easy to forget what it’s like to be brand new, fresh out of school, and starting your first job. Heck, I can barely remember what that period of my life was like at this point. The biggest thing I remember? Being afraid. I worried I’d screw up something important. I worried my coworkers would hate me. Most of all, I was scared I wasn’t good enough to hack it as a professional developer.
→ 2:02 PM, Jan 11
The Path
This is a slightly-edited version of a talk I gave to the mobile cohort at Bitmaker Labs in May. It’s a bit of a long read, but it was well-received.
Burning Out
In 2009 I accepted a position as a Web Developer at a medium-sized marketing agency in Toronto. The pay sucked , but we had interesting clients and a really fun team. The perks were outrageous. The company-supplied beer flowed freely and we often retired to the local pub and partied well into the night. On the company dime, of course. One year, in lieu of a Christmas party, they sent us on a weeklong ski trip in Quebec.
I was blown away. I had never seen perks like that before.
No Boots in the Canoe
About nine years ago, a girlfriend and I went camping in Bon Echo Provincial Park . Accompanied by a couple of friends, we spent our time hiking, sitting by the campfire, and swimming at the beach. We were having a lovely time. One morning, she suggested we rent a canoe and take it out on Mazinaw Lake; famous for an escarpment adorned with native pictographs.
→ 4:19 AM, Jan 26
Open in Helium
I’ve become a huge fan of Jaden Geller’s Helium . I recently moved to a one-monitor setup, substantially cleaning up my Minority Report-esque workstation. Previously, I played tutorial videos and the like on a second monitor. Now, I use Helium to overlay them on my current work. It’s fantastic .
Breathing Room
I’ve spent the last six months quitting things.
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If you eagerly fired up iOS 9 and watchOS 2 yesterday you may have noticed something strange, at least if your app relies on NSURLSession.
→ 4:15 PM, Oct 13
Improve the Accessibility of Images in Your WatchKit App
While browsing through the WatchKit Framework Reference recently, I noticed an interesting class: WKAccessibilityImageRegion . Intrigued — and unable to find anyone else who had tried it out — I put together a quick example.
Quick WKInterfaceImage Tips
Now that users everywhere are firing up their brand-new Apple Watch, I’ve been extremely busy working on updating a few apps. But I wanted to take a moment and share two quick image-related tips with you.
Submitting Your WatchKit App
Now that submissions are open for WatchKit extensions, many developers are running into issues and bugs that didn’t present themselves when working in the simulator. This post is an attempt to aggregate tips and solutions to common problems.
How to use Handoff in your WatchKit app
Considered by many to be an optional feature in their iOS/OSX apps, I believe Handoff will play an integral role in our WatchKit apps.
How to get text input from the user
One of the most interesting features of WatchKit — collecting text input through dictation — is also one of the least talked about. Let’s get started.
How to debug an iOS app while the associated WatchKit app is running
Since the introduction of openParentApplication:reply: I’ve seen developers struggle to debug their iOS app while running a WatchKit app in the simulator.
One weird trick to “fix” openParentApplication:reply:
A quick perusal of the Apple Developer Forums shows more than a few developers have experienced strange bugs when calling
openParentApplication:reply:
in a WKInterfaceController. Most often, it seems, when making multiple requests in quick succession.
"Wait. You made Goalie?"
Back in April, I was fortunate to attend the inaugural NSNorth. The conference was amazing, of course. But the real benefit of any conference comes from time spent with fellow attendees. The first night, I found myself in conversation with Gordon Fontenot. We were discussing iOS development and, inevitably, I mentioned Goalie. Much to my surprise, he was already familiar with it. “Wait. You made Goalie?” Without another word, he smiled and shook my hand.
→ 5:36 AM, Aug 27