I’ve been chilling in my new Cupertino apartment for about 3 days now. Jet Lag still makes me wake up between 5 and 6am local time, but strangely allows me to stay up till midnight. When I need to go somewhere, I walk, and until Alisa gets here next week, I likely won’t have much in the way of amenities. Not that I’m in dire need, mind you — it’s just not a priority at the moment. (more…)
February 8, 2010
October 14, 2009
Reality Distortion Field Deflector (RDFD)
Mid last month (September, for those keeping score at home), a peculiar email arrived in my inbox. Therein, I was referred by an Apple employee with an opportunity to potentially work there. To say the least, my interest was piqued. After all, after spending the past 2 years up to my elbows in some of their software’s guts, reverse engineering, patching, and exploring, I’d like to think I had some authority on the subject.
September 23, 2009
@synchronized, NSLock, pthread, OSSpinLock showdown, done right
Somewhere out there on the internet, there’s a “showdown” between @synchronized, NSLock, pthread mutexes, and OSSpinLock. It aims to measure their performance relative to each other, but uses sloppy code to perform the measuring. As a result, while the performance ordering is correct (@synchronized is the slowest, OSSpinLock is the fastest), the relative cost is severely misrepresented. Herein I attempt to rectify that benchmark.
September 12, 2009
CollegeAdvantage referral bonus again
Last year, CollegeAdvantage’s 529 college savings plan offered a referral bonus where those opening new accounts, as well as those referring them, received $25 bonuses. They’ve recently reinstated that bonus, so I figured I’d post some shameless self-promoting in the hopes of getting y’all some free college savings (for kids, etc), and get some for me as well (for our future children). (more…)
September 5, 2009
alloc, allocWithZone showdown
This brief post will explore some more mundane (but still measurable!) aspects of optimizing Objective-C software. This time around, we’ll talk about object allocation. (more…)
July 2, 2009
Pricey ivars
(apologies in advance — this will be a rather technical post. It’s eventually intended for fdiv.net, but while it’s getting migrated I figured I’d plop it down here.)
Instance Variables (or, more briefly, ivars) are a pretty simple trend in Object Oriented Languages. They’re data that get carried along inside an object, helping to define its state. While it would be fun to elaborate more on this, this particular article isn’t intended to teach the basics of OOP. So if you’re unsure of what an ivar is, this article probably isn’t for you. (more…)
June 24, 2009
May 15, 2009
curriculum vitae
A lot of lists have popped up where I frequent (digitally, at least) lately. Intended schedules, self-diagnostics, recipes, time-lapse accomplishments, etc. You know the drill. At one point in the not-so-distant past, I was probably pretty good maintaining such things as well. I suppose I need to refine my time management skills (or lack thereof) to keep things fresh. (more…)
March 5, 2009
Shadows
I guess it’s been a while. As is oh-so-often the case, I overcommit myself to too many things, and then pay dearly. Some may call it a trade, time for experience, money, or glory. I simply see it as exploration. With a lot still on my plate, I suppose it’s appropriate to take a brief break from Xcode, and jot down some thoughts to keep this blog from getting too stale.