ironcoder

Just a quick note for anyone looking for the submissions page, the URL has been up for a day or two but has been hard to find. Submit here:

http://ironcoder.org/contest/

Ironcoder 5 is on.

The API is the “ScreenSaver.framework” API.

The theme is: “Life“

You have until 5PM CST on Sunday, April 1st (April Fools Day) to submit your entries. Submit your entries here: http://ironcoder.org/contest/

Winners will be announced after 5PM CST on Sunday.

Come to the #macsb channel on irc.freenode.net if you have any questions or send email to “chairman at ironcoder.org”.

More information on the API here: Screensaver Framework Reference If you’ve never written a screensaver before this might be your chance to do something a little bit different. But don’t forget, just because the API may be ScreenSaver.framework that doesn’t mean you need to write a ScreenSaver…

This might help you debug a screensaver (or provide other inspiration): www.cocoadev.com

Example Screensavers: www.jwz.org

Great OpenGL Screensaver Resource: www.reallyslick.com

Lots of screensavers here, with source: www.epicware.com

Excellent tutorial on writing screen savers: www.macedition.com

SaverLab: dozingcatsoftware.com

You’re cheating if you submit this: mikeash.com

Maybe you want to put a custom view in a Screen Saver. Mark Dalrymple will tell you how to write one.

More links from twedge on #macsb: mactech.com, cocodevcentral.com #1, and #2

Scott Stevenson has put up a very nice links page: theocacao.com

More information on the theme: here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here.

No sample app this time. You’re on your own!

Good luck.

Ironcoder V is only two days away. We’ve had a great response to our call for sponsorship and I’ve just updated the sponsors page with a bunch of new sponsors. Prizes totaling a value of $2,300 have been donated so far.

There are now two very special prizes announced for Ironcoder:

First, Jonathan “Wolf” Rentzsch has been kind enough to donate a ticket to the next C4 conference as a prize. The first C4 was a great experience and I’m sure C4[1] will be too. See http://rentzsch.com/c4/ironCoderToTheMetal for more information

For the second prize Fernando Lins of devixdesign is donating 5 hours of his time to design an icon for the winner. Fernando has produced some awesome icons for some great Mac OS X products (some of which are in fact Ironcoder prizes!) and I’m sure he will produce a fantastic icon for the winner.

See you at 5PM CST for Ironcoder V.

Jason Harris brings you Cocoaduel, a competition in the spirit of Ironcoder. It starts now and entries have to be in by Wednesday December 20th. So get cracking!

Read all about it: Mac Developers donate sales to Children’s Toy Charity!

Total is in: $10,000! Nice job everyone!

A bevy of Ironcoder 4 wrap up posts:

• bruji, including a great overview of their entry
• allocinit.net
• Sugar Maple Software
• Rogue Sheep Software
• toxicsoftware.com
• Ars Technica interview with the winner
• borkware: Our esteemed and most venerable chairman’s blog

Our next Iron Coder is none other than schwatoo, with his SpaceCam application.

This is an app like the new Leopard iChat where you can put yourself into any background. Major new feature implemented in a weekend, and I’m very impressed. There’s even custom kernel code in there which makes schwatoo’s entry even more studly. Plus it let me have theFLOATING HEAD. BOOGA BOOGA

The next four runner-up entries are:

1. Andrew Wellington with Space Board. Awarded best use of undocumented goodness.
2. Conor Dearden with Desk Space. The Most Potentially Useful. Plus it’s all set to be a Leopard-style UI.
3. John Labovitz with ImageStage. I don’t know why, but I really like this one. It’s my favorite of all of the “go fetch an image from somewhere and display it”. Plus I’m a sucker for radar screens.
4. Chris Parrish, with Star Tracer. Awarded most beautiful icon and display. Behold The Star Pumpkin.

And many thanks for the rest of the ironcoders. I had a lot of fun going through the entries and pawing through the code. Here they are, sorted by first name:

• Blake Seely with Invader. Best use of goatse.cx imagery. (to clarify, the goatse.cx imagery is my own take on it - it’s SFW, and SFLunch too)
• Colin Gavin with Space@Night. This one is very pretty. I think it’d make a good screen saver too. Be sure to use the status item to tweak the parameters.
• Erik Wrenholt with MyFaces, a mySpace image viewer. Luckily it comes with a disclaimer. “my eyes! they burn!”. Has cool transitions.
• Geoffrey Schmit with Space Defender. Has a beautiful background, and a nice super-nova effect when losing.
• Henry Skelton with Free Spaceball. Another in the “actually kind of useful” category. I’m looking forward to compiling Big Stuff and seeing my memory go down.
• Jason Terhorst with SpaceViewer. Educational, and with gratuitous special effects!
• Lucas Eckels, with Close. This was the most entertaining one for me, since it tugs at my nostalgia for Daleks on the original 128K Mac. Be sure to play this all the way through the bonus round. Also has the most entertaining plist : “deadFoeImage = whopoo”
• zbir with Bokeh. Best improvement of the judge’s vocabulary, with new words like “Bokeh” and “Interstice”

Cashing in on the Prizes

Please email me (chairman@ironcoder.org) your top choices for prizes - put IronCoder in the subject so my spam filter doesn’t eat it up. I’ll go down the list of the top five, and the draw a lottery for the runners-up and arrange for the prizes to get to you.

The Entries

You can download all the entries in one giant disk image (well 10MB) here: ironcoder_4.dmg

Oh geeze, it’s all over.  And congrats to Mark Dalrymple for coming in first place!  He’s our new Ironcoder!

Here’s the order the folks came in, and the apps they wrote: 1. Race Against Time, by Mark Dalrymple 2. TimeLapse, by Andy Kim 3. Zoner, by John Labovitz 4. What Have You Done for Me Lately? by Daniel Jalkut 5. Usage, by Grayson Hansard 6. Lcarstime, by Jason Terhorst 7. Falling Sand, by Jonathan Wight 8. WhereDidTheTimeGo, by August Fackler 9. Fuzzy Freddy, by Lucas Eckels 10. Relativity, by Philip Taff 11. SunMoonDial, by Chris Liscio 12. No time, by Duncan Wilcox 13. TopQuartz, by Chip Coons 14. MouseLapse, by Chris Parrish  15. DaliClock, by Kevin Ballard 16. Iron Dazzle, by Tom Harrington 17. Process Timer, by Peter Hosey 18. Time RSS Reader, by Jin Kim 19. BlindDogClock, by Jeff Szuhay 20. TapDance, by Mike Ash 21. RedWire, by Michael Buckley 22. TDWatch, by Geoff Pado

And honorable mention to Kitwana Akil for IC_Digital Clock (he entered it after the deadline).

And in case you are wondering what the top three prize picks were- Mark chose a subscription to Daring Fireball, Andy Kim chose the PowerMate, and Daniel Jalkut chose the RadioShark.  (John Labovitz wasn’t around on #macsb when we were handing out the prizes, but he still gets something; he just needs to contact me first).

There are still some prizes to give out to folks who couldn’t make the awards ceremony (more like awards madhouse if you ask me).  So if that’s you, send a message to the judge (gus@flyingmeat.com) and we’ll get ya something.

Wow, that was a lot of entries to judge.  I’m pooped.

So there’s one thing I would have done differently in hindsight- and that’s how the ranking was done.  Rather than have everyone ranked down to the last place, I’d rather give the picks of the prizes to the top 4 or 5 and then for everyone else have a raffle to determine who gets the next pick.  That way I don’t have to determine who comes in last place.  It was a little awkward judging people that I chat with every day and other folks I even go out to grab a beer with in meat space (hi Chris!).

So that’s a bit of advice I pass on to our next judge, Mark D.  He gets to make the rules next time around!

The appointed time is here.

We’ve had a record breaking 20 entries (plus one entry missing the deadline by a few minutes). Judging, appreciation and ridiculing is taking place in #macsb.

An anthology of all entries (all 21) can be downloaded here: http://ironcoder.org/entries/ironcoder_2.dmg

Individual entries can be found here: http://ironcoder.org/entries/ironcoder_2

The API and theme is…

CoreGraphics + Time!

All those fancy CG* calls, you better get familiar with them.  And make sure not to box yourself into doing just stuff to a display; don’t forget that you can create a context and write something to a bitmap or even PDF.

And here’s a sample app: ICNewtime.zip.  It’s a variation on a clock, showing the hour, minutes, and seconds as circles, and the day of the year, and the day of the week as lines.  Very modern.

But don’t think that you have to do a clock!  Be creative! Be inventive! Be … a rebel!