Eric M.’s Blog

Well, after a bit of waiting and providing some documentation, I have been accepted into the iPhone Developer Program. Apple just released a new version of both the SDK and the iPhone beta operating system yesterday, so I installed them and everything appears to be working fine. There were some reports out there that the beta OS disabled the radio (cell) in the phone, but luckily that was not the case…

Now I just need the time to ticker with programming for it.

The first Flight-Test-Article (also known as a boilerplate) of the Orion space capsle has been rolled off of its assembily station and pictures show to the public. The FTA acurately reproduces the size and mass characterstics of the final craft, and will be used in a series of pad abort tests later this year.The pas abort tests will test the launch abort system, which is a tower with a handful of rocket motors that sits atop the orion capsule (crew module) :

In the event of an emergancy the motors fire and lift the capsule 1 mile up and 1 mile to the side very quickly, clearing the capsule from possible hazard (such as an explosion).

It’s exciting to see real progress being made on this. The first launch of the Ares I (the rocket that the Orion will sit on) is scheduled for 2009. And while the first manned flight isn’t scheduled until 2015, there is going to be some real visible progress in the not to distant future.

The full article is here.

So I, like thousands if other developers, applied to join the iPhone developer program. You can freely download the SDK, but you can’t test code on real iPhone hardware unless you joint the program for $99.

After a week of waiting, I (and apparently a few thousand other developers) got this rejection letter from Apple:

Dear Registered iPhone Developer,

Thank you for expressing interest in the iPhone Developer Program.  We have received your enrollment request.  As this time, the iPhone Developer Program is available to a limited number of developers and we plan to expand during the beta period.  We will contact you again regarding your enrollment status at the appropriate time.

Thank you for applying.

Best regards,

iPhone Developer Program

There seems to be no knowledge out there of people who actually got accepted, but my guess is only the highest tier, hand picked developers were let in. This is a letdown, because it gives those developers an even larger advantage over smaller developers (They have more money, more coders, and now more time).

We’ll have to see if they let others in as time goes on before the June wide release of iPhone 2.0 update that includes the new application distribution.

BTW, this was the first post I wrote on my iPhone (minus the copy and past of the email).

So I’ve decided to make a concerted effort to get in shape and lose some weight. My weight hovers at about 230lbs quite constantly, which is obviously way to much… My goal is drop 50lbs, to a weight of 180lbs, which would actually still technically make me overweight, but just barely. To do that will probably take about a year.

So the title of this post comes from an e-book written by the founder of AutoDesk, John Walker, titled The Hacker’s Diet: How to lose weight and hair through stress and poor nutrition.  The subtitle is satirical by the way…

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I did a quick time lapse test today at work (well, the actual time lapse part ran for around 3.5 hours).

I was shot a 1 frame per minute, and is played back at 15 frames per minute, so 201 minutes is condensed to a bit over 13 seconds.

This was mostly just a proof of concept for me, setting up the camera right, and then testing out the software (iStopMotion). I hope to do some more interesting ones in the future.