Lap Cat Software Blog » Rogue Amoeba

WWDC or bust

Jeff — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 15:16:06 +0000

Thanks to the generosity of Rogue Amoeba, the Ford Foundation, and listeners like you, I’ll be attending WWDC this year. If you want to find me there, I’ll be the one wearing a Rogue Amoeba T-shirt.

Actually, I’ll be one of the ones wearing a Rogue Amoeba T-shirt. The cute one.

No, sorry, that’s Paul. Let’s face it: in our fab four, I’m the Ringo. (Or for you younger folks, the Michael Anthony.) My plan is to earn millions hanging out with those other guys and making thumping noises in the background.

This will be my first time attending WWDC. I’m really looking forward to meeting fellow developers such as Rainer Brockerhoff and … umm … err … yeah. Anyway, hope to see you there!

To those poor, unfortunate souls who won’t be at the Moscone Center on Monday, I offer a consolation: the official 2009 WWDC keynote home game! The rules are straightforward. (1) Whenever Phil Schiller says something, drink. Heavily.

Postlude in C4[2] major

Jeff — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 15:13:47 +0000

I’m back safe, cat in lap, from C4[2]. This year’s theme was “Don’t ship until it’s ready, i.e., early and often, and don’t price too low, i.e., make it free.” I would like to thank @rentzsch for hosting the best conference I’ve ever attended (with the possible exception of the Marty Feldman fan club). I’d also like to suggest that C4[3] be moved to neighboring Wisconsin, which is home to @rentzsch as well as to “Fun”, as @dylanbr (or was it @bruzenak?) correctly noted.

The highlight of the weekend was meeting a lot of people — basically, everyone, including my coworkers — for the first time. Unfortunately, however, they came to realize that I’m a complete fraud who has been contracting out all of my coding to @macgeek02. As a result, I was fired by @PBones, fired by qdc (@???), and retroactively fired by @markonen. Fortunately, I had a backup plan: I stowed away in @wilshipley’s luggage and am now living in his basement.

C4[2] was not brought to you by the letter ‘w’. For some strange reason, the Apple Store refuses to sell individual keycaps. Disaster was avoided, though, when @PBones genius-ly performed an emergency transplant. |hat a relief that \as!

Another disaster was avoided when I failed to get into a fight. There were many opportunities. The much anticipated battle for supremacy over Radioshift between myself and @kickingbear never materialized. A little anticipated battle over tunes was quickly resolved when @mikeash chose Dire Straits. Apparently, drunkenbatman was too afraid to show after hearing about my unresolved anger over crashing our WebKit apps. On the other hand, the unresolved anger of @jimcorreia over stealing his chair was redirected toward @chockenberry.

I was pleasantly surprised to learn that someone other than my cat and my parole officer reads my blog. I won’t name names, for the same reason that “Hustler” comes in a plain, brown wrapper. I won’t name everyone I met at C4 either, because there are [2] many, but please know that I enjoyed talking with you and that I’ve put all of your names in an SQLite database, of course.

C4: I’m a twit

Jeff — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 15:13:11 +0000

In September I’m traveling to Illinois, affectionately known as the Land of 10,000 Tollbooths, in order to attend C4, affectionately known as C4. This year will be C4′s third, signified by the title C4[2] because programmers are terrible counters. In any case, I’ll be making an appearance there for the first, or nilth, time. The Rogue Amoeba army is planning to invade and conquer the conference, which we’ll subsequently rename to R4 (give or take an R, depending on how many of us show up).

The C4[2] online registration was unusual in requiring a Twitter ID. (@rentzsch I forgot to mention my special diet: Kobe fillet with Château Lafite.) As we all know, it’s against the law to ignore * in a web form. Thus, at the urging of my attorney, my agent, and my astrologer (all the same person), I signed up. Fedaykin, follow me!

I’m a Rogue

Jeff — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 15:10:48 +0000

I’m delighted to announce that I’ve been hired as Rogue Amoeba Employee 008. (Employee 007 is Longwell, Justin Longwell.) I’ll be working on Rogue Amoeba’s apps as a software engineer, as well as providing comic relief. Thanks to Alex, Paul, and Quentin for this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. My coworkers at Rogue Amoeba Software, LLC include fellow bloggers Mike Ash and Guy English. Together we form perhaps the most talented group of Mac programmers outside of Apple. (Yes, I’m talking to you, Adobe and Microsoft.) Indeed, I haven’t seen such an array of stars in one place since the Ghostbusters music video.

I’ve joined Rogue Amoeba just in time to miss WWDC ’08. In an earlier post, I mentioned that I left Marko Karppinen & Co. LLC just in time to miss WWDC ’07. (I’ll make it there someday! ) The question is, what have I been doing in the meantime? Backpacking through Europe? Rotting in Gitmo? Running for President? No, I’ve been working on super-secret projects for Francis Technical Services, LLC. Although FTS is a little-known company, its software is well-known, at least inside Apple. For example, FTS is responsible for Radar, the Apple-internal Cocoa app that opens when employees click on the funny-looking rdar://problem/ URLs you often see. The number at the end of the URL corresponds to the problem ID of the bugs you file on the web with Apple Bug Reporter (also known as RadarWeb). It’s useful to have one of these URLs available when communicating with Apple engineers, because their managers forbid them from lifting a finger without a Radar problem number.

While at FTS, I did some bug analysis for Radar: that is, analysis of bugs in Radar’s source code, not analysis of bugs in Radar’s database, to which as a contractor I had extremely limited access. However, I mostly worked on other projects, such as Radar’s sibling app Sonar. Apple’s DTS uses Sonar to communicate with ADC members (such as me!). If you’ve ever seen sonr://request/ URLs — the Mighty Quinn provides one in an Apple Mailing List post — those open in Sonar. (By the way, I’ve read all of your emails to DTS. No, you haven’t been accepted to the iPhone Developer Program. Stop whining.) Another project that I worked on was Merlin, an app for Apple’s Human Resources department. I think that Steve Jobs is doing an outstanding job at Apple, so before I left I used Merlin to double his annual salary.

I’d like to thank Dave Francis, the owner and founder of Francis Tech, for the opportunity to work there. Despite appearances, I’m not really the type to hop from job to job. I’ve just been looking for Mr. Right, LLC, a company to fall in love with, marry, and have baby apps with. (As for any other support claims, sorry Billie Jean.) I can see myself growing old with Rogue Amoeba. (Easy to see when you’re already old?) Besides, someone has to stick around and keep an eye on mikeash, stop him from taking over the world.

Now without further ado, please take out your credit card and buy some of our fine software. As a special bonus for our Leopard customers, your purchase will be (code-)signed by your favorite Rogue Amoeba star.