ironcoder

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! 

Iron coder starts today at 5:00pm CDT (22:00 UTC).  The API and theme will be posted up here at that time, and what follows are the offical rules as dictated by Chairman Mueller.

Friday, July 21, 5pm CDT (22:00 UTC): API and Theme will be announced. Sunday, July 23, 5pm CDT (22:00 UTC): Judging will begin (hopefully.  that’s when you’re entries need to have been uploaded anyway).

Judging will be based on four criteria: * Style * Technical expertise * Use of API and theme * Cool factor

Some rules: * The programs must run in their own address space- so that rules out input managers and haxies. The program must also run without authentication. * Source code has to be included, and you’ve got to be ok with it being public. * New projects only! The idea is to try and cram all development into a 48hr period. * If it’s some sort of movie, or something that you have to sit through, it can’t be longer than 1:27 seconds. * Files must be under 5mb compressed (for uploading). * A quick little blurb on how to run your program, what it does, and how it ties into the theme is probably a good idea. * The app has to be totally self contained. We don’t want files littered all over the judge’s system. * The judge has to be able to compile the code. * Instant disqualification if judge is too scared to run the code. * You must be willing to be the next competition’s judge.

Iron Coder is almost here! Only 3 more days! So I thought it would be good to give our wonderful sponsors a little bit o’ exposure, and list what is being given out to the winner(s). So here are the prizes, listed in alpha order by company name:

Bitcartel Software: RadioLover, iRecordMusic and ComicBookLover.

Code Sorcery Workshop: Pukka.

Daring Fireball: two one-year memberships each with a DF t-shirt of the winner’s choice.

Delicious Monster: Delicious Library.

Flying Meat: VoodooPad, FlySketch and FlyGesture.

From Concentrate Software: MacDialer or SiteTagger (winners choice!).

Griffin Technology iFill, RadioShark, iTrip and PowerMate.

Happy Apps: WebnoteHappy licenses.

Infinite Nexus Software: Compare Folders.

Inventive: iClip

The Little App Factory: iPodRip and Connoisseur.

Martian Technology: SlingShot.

Mindvision/eSellerate: FileStorm.

Potion Factory: Podcast Maker and Voice Candy.

Roobasoft: 3 rooSwitch licenses.

Second Gear: 3 month Porchlight Pro subscription.

Specere: Menuet

Stairways Software: Interarchy.

Stunt Software: Pick from On The Job, PhotoBooth, Downsize or Overflow.

Widget Machine: NotePad and VoiceNotes.

Sweeeeeeeeet.

The date has been set, so make sure to mark it on your calendars.

The next ironcoder contest will be July 21-23, and we’re going to do it a little differently this time. You’ll get the API and theme at the same time- giving you a full 48 hours to work on your project. (That’s an extra 100% for the same price!).

And we’re also looking at having a couple of prizes too! And if you come in first place and show up at WWDC, we’ll get you good and drunk one of the nights as well. (Must be 21 or older yada yada to receive alcohol, blah blah blah,etc..)

Posted by Tom Harrington

Over recent weeks I’ve been working on my own version of Sparkle, Andy Matuschak’s uber-cool auto-update framework for Cocoa apps. I love it– but at the same time, Omni Group’s Software Update Stats page just plain makes me drool. I so need data like that, and if I’d realized that back in 2002 I might have given up supporting 10.1 by now. Or not. But at least I’d know if dropping it was going to seriously inconvenience my customers.

So, I thought to myself, “Self, why not combine these ideas? I mean, if the app’s already contacting the server to check for an update, why not have it pass along some basic information about the Mac it’s running on at the time?” Since Sparkle’s open source and has a completely non-restrictive license, I decided to do it. However, Andy didn’t think it was something he wanted in the core Sparkle distribution.

So, here’s SparklePlus– Sparkle plus basic system profile information. This version of Sparkle is, as with the original, something you can pretty much just drop into your app and have it work. Do this, and the app will ask your users if it’s OK to include anonymous system information, and do its work without asking for any help from you.

Here’s a quick movie to show you what it looks like. Aside from this it’s exactly like Andy M’s movie. (And by the way– yes, we could use some help with localizing this window from people who speak languages other than English!)

There’s also some PHP code to use on your web host, along with a MySQL database. The distribution includes a README that explains how to use it. At the moment pretty graphs a la Omni are missing, but all in good time. The data gets collected, the eye candy will fit in later.

I’d like to thank Jonathan Wight for offering to host SparklePlus here at ironcoder.org, and for fixing some problems in the PHP code. Also numerous people in #macsb have been extremely helpful, looking over the code, putting it through its paces and making sure it seems ready for public consumption.

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p>You can get SparklePlus 0.2 through SVN here at ironcoder.org. That’d be: svn co http://ironcoder.org/svn/SparklePlus/tags/release-0.2 Or if you want to keep up to date with it, grab the trunk and take your chances: svn co http://ironcoder.org/svn/SparklePlus/trunk

As of today it’s current with Andy’s latest SVN updates (that’s rev 686).

Based on our previous post it looks like sponsored prizes for Ironcoder is a good idea. I’ve begun e-mailing a few people who I think might be able to provide cool prizes but I really don’t want to spam every Mac OS X shareware developer in existence. So this posting is a call for sponsors.

So if you’re a Mac OS X software developer and wish to contribute one or more free product licenses to Ironcoder please either email me directly at schwa at this domain. or attach a comment to this thread. There is no need to provide licenses right now, just commit to providing a license at the time of the next Ironcoder contest (which tentatively looks like it will be scheduled for just before WWDC).

Sponsors will probably not gain much in the way of fame and glory from sponsoring Ironcoder. We will not be plastering adverts for sponsors over ironcoder.org but will be listing and linking to all sponsors during the contest. No one will be tattooing icons onto any body parts. The main reason to sponsor Ironcoder would altruistic, to help the contest thrive by attracting more entries.

We’ve had two Ironcoder contests so far. Ironcoder v0 was a definite success. We had ten entries, most of which were on target with theme and API (mine excluded) and one entry is even being turned into a product. It is good to see something permanent come out of Ironcoder.

Ironcoder \01 had only one entry. I for one would like Ironcoder 2 (0×02?) to have more entries than that.

What can we do about this? The format of Ironcoder was completely arbitrary and decided during a late night session on the #macsb channel of freenode.net. In fact the whole idea stemmed from a semi-joking comment of mine on the channel along the lines of “we need a #macsb ironchef contest”. I don’t think anyone involved with ironcoder is particularly tied to the format of the contest, so if a format change will help improve Ironcoder then we will be all for it.

So I ask anyone interested in Ironcoder to please step up and comment on how they would like to see the next Ironcoder improved.

(See also: Jesper’s blog entry)

Submission closed an hour ago, and it’s time for some judging.

Unfortunately, this contest was not as well-attended as the last one. Gus Mueller’s Emily Dickinson Keywords was the only entry.

EDK looks at the song that is currently playing, and searches a list of poems for one which matches a word from the song metadata. It’ll then display the matching poems in a lovely calligraphy font.

Congratulations, Gus. You’re the Chairman next time around.