(Or: Physician, heal thyself)
Let’s start with this: I’m an idiot. I’m 24 years old and I don’t know anywhere near as much as I need to. I convince myself otherwise because without the strength of thinking I know at least something, I could never get much done.
That said, I do know this: there are only a few people who you should take advice from. I mean life advice: advice on how to be who you are, how to manage your world, how to grow as a person.
- People who have demonstrated an interest in your success and years of loyalty. You’ll be lucky if you get one of these. I hit the lottery, and I have two. You’ll know them with this test: If they asked you to drop everything and save their ass (business, product, family, life) for a month, you’d do it without hesitation.
- Your significant other. This is someone who spends a lot of time with you and sees all that you struggle with, all that makes you happy. You’ve been through good and bad and get wistful recalling both. My luck continues: my girlfriend is the wisest counselor I could ever ask for.
- Yourself: If you cut the crap and take a long walk alone, you can ask yourself anything and usually get the right answer. Make the time to know your own thoughts: you might be surprised how much is waiting in your own brain.
That’s all. Here are people who should not be trusted for advice:
- Some dick with a blog (even me). If you’ve ever read a top-ten post on a blog, you know the content is cranked out to drive pageviews. The author probably slapped the content together in the space of two hours to benefit an audience of thousands. Like with drive-by legal or medical advice, you’re a fool to assume you can get something directly applicable to your case from a one-size-fits-all post.
- Parents. Your mileage may vary but parents are often too invested in your safety and security to be able to weigh the benefits of those risky life decisions with huge payoffs and incredible experiences. If your parents are batshit insane (thankfully not my case, but I have seen this) that investment may yield terrifyingly bad advice. Even if the advice you get is reasonable, there’s plenty we don’t need to tell our own parents.
- Your social circle. Excluding a choice best friend or two, your social circle can’t tell you anything useful about how to run your life. Groups breed conformity and breaking from that might be consciously or even subconsciously discouraged.
- Penelope Trunk. (cf. #1)
Penelope Trunk wants to tell you how to run your career. She presumes to be an expert on this subject. She’s not.
Once upon a time, as a young man desperate for growth and success, a blog specifically like hers, geared toward shameless career ambition, seemed like crack. Loyal readership taught me otherwise. Penelope Trunk is someone barely in control of her own life. That she is honest and open about her flaws is endearing but doesn’t change the fact that she cannot provide viable career advice based on personal experience. She’s proudly a trainwreck and while that may be great for her blog’s readership, would you trust a fitness trainer who doesn’t exercise and can’t stick to a healthy diet? Mental health counseling from a patient in a psychiatric ward? Computer advice from someone who uses Windows 98? Come on. I may be an idiot but at least my bullshit detector works.
Only when Penelope Trunk is viewed as a cautionary tale will you find viable lessons for your own career. I would never claim to be qualified to advise you on how to run your life. Nonetheless, if you take the things Trunk has done with her life and imagine the opposite, you may find valuable guidance.
Read on for these lessons.
Continue Reading…
Tallymander uses UITableViewCells not only to display data but also to manipulate it. That means that partially-visible cells — that is, those that are cut off at the top or bottom of the view — aren’t terribly useful.
Better, I thought, would be to always ensure that when a partially-visible cell crops up, the UITableViewController will quietly nudge things to be completely visible.
vs. 
In the first image, you can see the only part of the top and bottom cell. In the second image, the cells have been nudged so that everything visible is completely visible. This took a little noodling around with math but it wasn’t hard to do. Put this method into your UITableViewController subclass:
- (void)snapBottomCell
{
NSInteger cellHeight = 62; //Cells for my view are 62px tall. Sub your own height here
NSInteger offsetOverage = (NSInteger) self.tableView.contentOffset.y % cellHeight;
//Use the tableview's contentOffset property and the cell height to determine how much is being cut off
if (offsetOverage > 0)
{
//If the overage is more than 0, we should figure out what the new offset needs to be
NSInteger newOffset;
if (offsetOverage >= (cellHeight/2))
{
newOffset = self.tableView.contentOffset.y + (cellHeight - offsetOverage);
//If the overage is greater than or equal to half the height of a cell, pull the cell up so it's fully visible
}
else {
newOffset = self.tableView.contentOffset.y - offsetOverage;
//Else, push the cell out of view
}
//With the new offset determined, animate the movement:
[UIView beginAnimations:nil context:NULL];
[UIView setAnimationDuration:0.5];
[UIView setAnimationCurve:UIViewAnimationCurveEaseOut];
[self.tableView setContentOffset:CGPointMake(0, newOffset) animated:NO];
[UIView commitAnimations];
}
}You’ll need to implement these two delegate methods as well:
- (void)scrollViewDidEndDecelerating:(UIScrollView *)scrollView
{
[self snapBottomCell];
}
- (void)scrollViewDidEndDragging:(UIScrollView *)scrollView willDecelerate:(BOOL)decelerate
{
if (decelerate == NO)
{
[self snapBottomCell];
}
}And that’s it. If more than half of the bottom cell is visible, the cell gets nudged completely into view. If less than half is visible, it’s pushed out of view.
You could change snapBottomCell to accept cellHeight as an argument if you need to accommodate cells with variable heights. You might sort out a particular cell’s height like so:
NSIndexPath *indexPath = [self.tableView indexPathForRowAtPoint:CGPointMake(0, (self.tableView.frame.size.height - 1))];
//Get the index path of the cell currently visible at the bottom edge of the tableview
UITableViewCell *cell = [self.tableView cellForRowAtIndexPath:indexPath];
[self snapBottomCell:cell.frame.size.height];
There are cases where this isn’t useful: long lists whose primary function is selecting data for loading in another view, for example. Still, any time you’re using UITableViewCells to house controls or chunky bits of data, it might be good to ensure that only whole cells are displayed.
Tallymander 2.0 has been in the App Store for a few weeks. Here’s the story on my favorite product, so far.
Once upon a time…
Tallymander was born because once upon a time, I worked for the man and that meant wearing fancy pants and shirts that buttoned (the better to establish my image as a professional and advance my career). About once a month I rounded up my finery, counted it, and took it to the dry cleaners.
My mental math abilities could be bested by a fruit fly so I wondered if the App Store had anything to make the counting easier. They did, but it was either crap or too limited for my needs. The idea for Tallymander was born. I wanted to make something simple but useful.
I expected to make about $40 off of it, but I knew I wanted the challenge so I plowed ahead anyway. 1.0 shipped and people liked it. Really liked it! I got a handful of emails with kudos and feature requests. I wanted to get cracking on GlobeJot but decided I would spend a little time adding some customer requests to Tallymander first. A couple more weeks of development and Tallymander 1.1 was submitted. I forgot all about it.
Until one night, around midnight, when I got the “Ready for Sale” email that iPhone developers live for. Tallymander 1.1 was live.
And an App Store Staff Favorite. I peed myself a little. There followed a slew of copycat apps following this prominence. So it goes on the App Store.
The future
Tthanks to a handful of enthusiastic users and a little help from Apple, Tallymander managed to make me a tidy bit more money than the $40 I had expected. About $4,000 to date, in fact. Not bad for an app that started as a two week UX trial.
Continue Reading…
I’ve had the product management bug since the early days of my childhood. While I have a stable of iPhone products that I spend the bulk of my time planning and developing, my need to make good stuff doesn’t end with software.
It extends entirely into the kitchen. I love cooking. It’s a creative act whose rewards are unrivaled by anything else. When you get it right, when the flavors and textures come together in a way that can satisfy and surprise, it feels incredible. Moreover, cooking is an important bit of empowerment. In today’s world of corporate food, unless you prepare it yourself, you’ll have no idea what’s truly happening on your plate. Cooking your own meals is the best way to understand your diet and cut out synthetic, unhealthy garbage. 90% of my meals come from my own kitchen prepared with ingredients that are as elemental as possible.
Cooking for me breaks down to about 25% experimentation and 75% refinement. That is, while I often try new things, I spend most of my time taking my established specialties and making them better. Of all of my kitchen products thus managed, I’m proudest of Turkey Tacos.
I love tacos: crunchy, savory and infinitely customizable. My favorite taco was always ground beef, but it had some drawbacks: greasy as hell yet the meat is paradoxically dry and crumbly. I don’t love ground turkey for many of the applications where it is recommended. Turkey burgers are odd, spongey, colorless things and turkey meatballs suffer from similar drawbacks.
Yet, for tacos, ground turkey is sublime. The meat breaks up into manageable, small chunks while remaining superbly moist and tender. The sponginess that is an indictment against turkey burgers is an asset for tacos, as the meat even after browning remains bursting with flavor.
The best part of turkey tacos: economy. They’re inexpensive to make and the prep time is less than 20 minutes.
Here’s my current, favorite formulation after over a dozen iterations. No sodium bomb flavor packet full of garbage, here. Just a tasty meal with ingredients you’ll look straight in the eye before cooking.
Turkey Tacos
You will need:
- Half a pound of ground turkey
- A can of simple, smooth tomato sauce (or, if you make yours from scratch, about a cup)
- A 4oz can of Green Chile (diced green chile pepper is a delicious addition to any meal. You can usually find it among your other canned foods at the Supermarket or at Trader Joes. Sometimes it’s hiding among the ethnic foods. Use whatever temperature suits you. Of course, if you’re lucky enough to live in New Mexico, substitute canned for fresh)
- A few spoonfuls of Frontera Chipotle salsa (can substitute with another splash of tomato sauce and some crushed red pepper, but seriously, find this salsa — it’s incredible)
- Olive oil
- Salt
- Black pepper
- Two cloves of garlic, minced or crushed
- Blue corn taco shells (I’ve found that Whole Foods’ house brand is the best of these and costs the same as nasty garbage from Old El Paso)
- Shredded cheese
- Optional: Frontera Chipotle Garlic Taco Sauce. Absurdly good as a topping at the end
Preparation:
In a skillet or electric wok, heat two tablespoons of olive oil over medium heat, then add your garlic. Keep the garlic moving so it doesn’t burn. Once the garlic has gone from white to light brown, carefully add the turkey. Try to avoid pouring in any of the water or other fluid that your turkey may be sitting in — your olive oil will spatter otherwise. Break up the turkey into small chunks while you brown it, again keeping it moving to prevent burning. As the turkey browns, add a light sprinkle of salt and pepper, according to your preferences. Better to be conservative at this stage — you want just enough to lightly flavor the meat and you can always add more later before you serve.
Take moment to preheat your oven according to the directions on your taco shells.
Once the meat is evenly brown, with nothing pink left in your pan, add the green chiles. Since turkey is so much less fatty, you won’t need to drain the pan of grease as you would with ground beef at this stage. If anything, your pan may be getting a little dry and sticky, especially if it doesn’t have non-stick coating. Add a splash of olive oil if necessary to keep things lubricated. After about a minute, once the green chile is cooked through, stir in the tomato sauce.
After everything has been combined and the meat has a light, even coat of tomato sauce, turn off the heat and have a taste of your taco filling. If you’re satisfied with the spiciness and overall flavor, great, you’re all set. If you want to ratchet up the heat, though, add a few spoonfuls of the Chipotle Salsa, then taste again. Repeat until it’s just as you like it.
Let the filling rest and cool while you toast the taco shells according to the directions on their box. Usually about a minute at 400 degrees F. While the shells cook, transfer your taco filling to a serving bowl. Set the table with your bowl of turkey, the cheese, your taco sauce and the salsa. Bring the shells to the table, then let the table take turns building tacos. Two or more spoons in the turkey bowl are a good idea. Fill with turkey, top with sauce, salsa and cheese, to preferences. Makes about eight tacos.
A couple of notes: Like I said, I try to build with the most elemental, simple ingredients possible. At the same time, the Frontera Taco Sauce and Salsa are outstanding shortcuts. Short list of natural ingredients, made in small batches, no scary garbage and really, really tasty. Besides all that, Rick Bayless is the man. Why blue corn? It’s a better shell. Crispy but firm. Your tacos won’t fall apart mid-way through eating.
Leftovers from an earlier iteration, before discovering the perfection of blue corn shells. Look at that gorgeous filling!
Another earlier iteration. I was using some mild salsa and tobasco to get toward the heat I wanted. The Frontera Chipotle Salsa produces much better results.
It took a lot of... testing to ensure I had the right Frontera salsa for the job. My favorite remains Chipotle but the other flavors are also delicious and great for chips.
