A friend and I shipped an iPad app called «This Day». First one done — congrats to me. More details…

A note to self. Instructions on where to download it and how to embed are in Facebook’s docs. Even though they updated the GitHub project recently (November 23 at the time of writing), they still ship an old version of the JSON framework bundled with it. And since my project already uses a newer version of that framework, the app wouldn’t compile.

Fix:

1. after adding the SDK to the project, delete the JSON folder from the Facebook SDK;
2. in FBRequest.m replace the line #import "JSON.h" with #import "SBJson.h";
3. in the same file, replace
   

   SBJSON *jsonParser = [[SBJSON new] autorelease]

   with
   

   SBJsonParser *jsonParser = [[SBJsonParser new] autorelease]

Should work.

We’ve finally finished the first version of AllCafe for iPhone — one we can actually show off.

How many times have you walked into a place only to find there are no free seats — or just realised that today you don’t fancy this place after all? It happens to me a lot. And the first thought is: where else can we sit / eat / have a drink nearby?

Our portal AllCafe.ru has a fairly large database of restaurants across Russia. Plus user reviews about them. We made an iPhone app — which, by the way, weighs only about 200 KB. With it you can see nearby venues on a map, or as a list with the approximate distance.

For each venue you can see brief info — address, phone number (which you can of course dial straight from the app), what kind of cuisine it serves, read news about the venue, and — important — read reviews and decide whether to go.

You can also leave a review yourself. Sitting happily (or unhappily) in a restaurant — open the app and add a review.

That’s only what’s in the app right now. The list of planned features is pretty long and there’s plenty of work ahead.

This is, in fact, my first iOS app. Congrats to me.

My Rode Stereo VideoMic couldn’t handle loud gigs and was clipping the sound. On Tuesday I became the proud owner of a great little device, the Zoom H4N.

Needed to use both UINavigationController and UITabBarController in the same project. Two ways to do it.

Well, the new macOS with iCloud support is out, and iCloud itself has come out of beta.

Tried a bunch of different mic settings at a show. The best combination — the -10 dB switch on, with the foam windshield fitted (turns out it doesn’t just protect from wind, it also helps against overload). Sadly, I still couldn’t get perfect sound, even though the gig was pretty loud. But it’s a lot better than the first attempts. The drums still get clipped in places.

I also lowered the recording level on the camera itself in the settings. Around 50% gives better sound. Going lower just makes the final video quieter without removing the clipping. Here’s the result:

I’ll keep filming at other gigs and figure out how to better isolate the mic acoustically so everything records cleanly.