It was an enjoyable and extremely educational experience, and I am grateful to the entire publishing team that relentlessly tugged me along and kept me on schedule for more than a year.

More information and of course to get your hot little hands on a copy:

http://www.packtpub.com/iphone-applications-tune-up/book

Traveling at the moment, but when I get some additional time and can sit down for more than a few minutes, I’ll put together a few details on the overall experience; even point out some efficiencies I discovered and traps I blindly walked into.

Who this book is for

A/V Addiction

I mentioned in a few earlier blog posts that I recently began dabbling in the audio / video world. Amongst my dabbling, a few of my first purchases happen to be an M-Audio Fast Track Pro and a set of KRK Rokit studio monitor speakers. Initially connecting and setting up the new device was simple, but brought with it a challenge of identifying a confusing (for me) static / noise that was heard over everything played through the device.

Getting to the point; The purpose behind this post is to hopefully help anyone who might run into the same problem I did when installing the M-Audio Fast Track Pro on Mac OS X 10.6.8, specifically an i7 3.4Ghz iMac.

(my setup on the right)

Issue

Upon connecting the USB interface for the M-Audio device and installing the appropriate device drivers for OS X (these change the default behaviour of the audio sub-system), each of the Rokit studio monitors were emitting static and noise during any and all audio playback.

Re-installing had no positive effect and all static was limited to audio playback through the M-Audio device.

Remedy

Opening the M-Audio Preference pane (OS X System Preferences) and deselecting all but the first option, cured the static / noise problem completely. In my case it turned out to be a simple driver / compatibility problem that was remedied with a little configuration change. A screenshot is included below that shows the only option enabled being the “Outputs 1 & 2 (balanced and unbalanced)”.

I hope this finds usefullness for someone. I had absolutely no luck finding a solution anywhere else online including the M-Audio forums, which unfortunately included instructions to return the device. Fortunately for me, it was a simple fix. Only took a few minutes of experimentation to find it.

Enjoy.

~moses

The net is buzzing with fierce and fiery comments about Apple and their recently released Final Cut Pro X.

However, for me it doesn’t really matter. I’ve played with previous releases of FCP and although there is no doubt that Apple released FCPX very and admittedly early, for the non-pro user (like myself), it is simply an amazing application.

I grabbed a copy of it along with Compressor and Motion to work on a few promotional / marketing videos for Aanval (http://www.aanval.com). The change in technology-realms helps to clear my mind and removes me from my daily grind of information security, development and book writing.

Surprisingly, I found I really enjoyed working with FCPX and have since grabbed a Blue Yeti, M-Audio FastTrack Pro and a couple of KRK Rokit studio monitor speakers to create my own tiny audio / video editing studio. I can now definitely understand the magnetic addiction that so many people have to audio / video editing. So much fun.

Ultimately after investing a little bit into my new hobby, I wanted to first throw together a short video preview of Aanval to cut my teeth and put some of my newly learned skills to test.

I did this in the form of a 1 minute, Aanval Preview (Rough Edit — I call it this, because it still needs quite a bit of work). It can be found at http://www.aanval.com/preview/ or on Youtube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lY1uhlqR1BI.

Have a look and enjoy.

~moses

To sum it up, it’s an action-thriller set in the medieval age of war-torn eastern Europe filled with empirical struggles between feudalism and aristocratic ideals. It’s not well known that Objective-C played a pivotal role in the dismantling of the populous western caste system responsible for the stagnant performance of current day mobile platform development.

I don’t want to give away too much, but there is a romantic interposition towards the end of the book that will leave readers highly suspicious and apprehensive of Android’s luring siren calls.

… but more seriously, details are below.

iPhone Applications Tune-Up
High performance tuning guide for real-world iOS projects

Details and pre-order @ Packt Publishing: http://loyal.ms/gwGfAa

Book description
The best iPhone applications are the ones that demonstrate smooth, fast, efficient and optimal performance. An application should be designed to run at 200 mph, but operate just as smoothly as it would at 5 mph. Developing an application that supports such a wide range of performance needs is no small task and requires an understanding of the basic elements of performance as well as a strong strategy.

This book covers every aspect of tuning, optimizing, and squeezing every last bit of performance out of an iOS project. From application architecture and design to development and deployment, readers will be guided through the entire process of tuning an iOS application for high performance.

Every line of code presents an opportunity to improve upon the effective performance of an application. This book begins with the fundamentals of performance, demonstrating the impact poor performance can have on the success of an application. Apple’s App Store is riddled with applications that fall just short of success and it isn’t too much of a stretch to attribute many of these failures to a lack of optimization. Readers will be lead through each chapter, learning every aspect of performance tuning from simple syntax tips and tricks to advanced process management, and network and memory optimizations.

In addition to theories, syntax, and detailed code examples, readers will learn to take advantage of Apple’s powerful performance measurement and benchmarking utilities to identify the specific components of an iOS project that might need attention.

Learn the fundamentals of performance driven development to remedy existing performance related issues or design high performance iOS applications from start to finish

Who this book is written for
This book is for iOS application developers who are interested in resolving application performance bottlenecks in both new and existing Xcode projects. Readers should be familiar with the basic concepts and principles of iOS development, Objective-C syntax, and use of Apple’s Xcode development environment.

About
This is the first (to be published) book of its kind and is very much focused on Objective-C tuning practices for all iOS platforms, including the iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad and iPad 2. Performance tuning is a recipe that includes some common sense, a little bit of obvious and of course generous helpings of technical know-how and all around development experience. No matter the size or depth of an iOS project, performance can play a key role in an applications success or failure on the market. iPhone Applications Tune-Up is designed to aid developers in squeezing every last bit of performance from every aspect of an application. A lot of experience and research has gone in to producing a book that highlights the areas in which performance gains are most critical and even commonly overlooked.

—

I have an absolute passion for technology and Objective-C represents this deep focus most simply because it encompasses the highest levels of programming technology and advancements in development languages. iPhone Applications Tune-Up will be the result of more than 1000 hours of my personal time; authoring, researching and generally staring at the screen. At this point I have only a couple of chapters remaining before the re-write and finalization work begins. It’s been a long and enjoyable road up to this point and I look forward to its final release.

Now, go pre-order it! http://loyal.ms/gwGfAa

Enjoy.

~Moses

I recently printed the entire book up to this point and was very surprised at the stack of paper that sat on my desk, and almost couldn’t remember writing all of it. Will be interesting to hold the final book in my hands and realize the whole thing came from these little fingers.

With 8 chapters under my author belt, here are a few lessons I have learned along with a selection of important observations.

• I can put an entire chapter together in 48 hours.
• I can’t really put an entire chapter together in 48 hours.
• Procrastination is still one of my personal characteristics.
• I absolutely loath Microsoft Word.
• Writing is just as much learning as it is teaching.
• its, it’s, effect and affect still haunt me.
• More screenshots equal less typing.
• Writing code at this point is still more enjoyable.
• My best writing is done early in the day before my mind gets tired.
• Most of my writing is done late at night after a long day of coding.
• Printing and reading each chapter helps find mistakes.
• Microsoft Word’s spell checker doesn’t recognize iPhone.
• Micro outlining is by far the best way to prepare a chapter.
• Don’t print chapters with an ink-jet, buy a laser and save your wallet.
• Auto-editing between brain and fingers gets easier to control.

… this is my short list.

With chapter 8 submitted and chapter 9 not due for a couple of weeks, it’s time to relax a bit and let the mind prepare for a much more technical chapter 9.

Enjoy.

~moses

killall Dock

I’ve never really been sold on the 3D dock in Snow Leopard and gave it a good 3 or 4 month run… but in the end, ultimately decided to go back to the 2D style where I think the dock belongs.

~moses

Chapter 1 was sent off to the publisher but of course there is a considerable amount of work to be done before a chapter is finalized and accepted.

A colleague of mine with authoring experience predicted 2 hours per page for technical writing. I have to admit I figured I could push out pages a little quicker, but in the end doing some simple math shows that I was actually at about 2.2 hours per page. That was a pretty good estimate!

This 1st chapter had an extremely steep learning curve and although I am exhausted and looking forward to a short break, chapter 2 and 3 are right around the corner and strangely enough I can’t wait to get started.

I need to focus on limiting the automatic self-editing that takes place between my brain and fingers. My fingers want final draft while my brain just wants something on paper that can be re-worded later on. I’ll work on this.

Exhausted; must sleep.

In any event, the first of several significant milestones is behind me and I’ll be redirecting focus on chapter 2 and 3.

~moses

I’m pretty excited to see more of these types of Apps showing up on mobile devices. The information security sector although very technical by nature seems to have been left behind when it comes to usability and native integration.

Our industry needs and wants more access to this data and it seems the guys over at Tenable feel the same way we do.

The Nessus App along with the Aanval iPhone / iPad App makes mobile network security management that much easier with nessus and snort in your pocket.

If you are a Nessus user, go snag it.

http://itunes.apple.com/app/nessus/id390891776?mt=8

Description (from iTunes App Store)

The Nessus iPhone app, from Tenable Network Security Inc., enables you to log into your Nessus scanners and start, stop and pause vulnerability scans as well as analyze the results directly from your iPhone.

This mobility helps improving the efficiency of your Incident Response process by letting you quickly log into a Nessus scanner from your phone to search previous scan results or check the status of an on-going scan.

(Requires an access to version 4.2 of the Nessus server, or newer)

Enjoy.

~moses

This update follows along with our feature timeline and extends the basic functionality of the iPhone / iPad App by adding several popular displays that retrieve additional live snort and syslog data from deployed Aanval consoles.

Included is a short list of a few of the changes and further down is a few screenshots of the new version.

Added Frequent Events Display
Added Frequent Offenders Display
Added Sensor Status Display
Added Basic Auth Support
Added Payload to Event Details Display
Added Refresh Button to Live Monitor Display
Added Refresh Timer to Live Monitor Display

Product information is available here:

http://www.aanval.com/iPhoneApp

Aanval iPhone App in iTunes here:

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/aanval/id381007750?mt=8

Enjoy.

~moses

It just makes me so happy!

~moses