The iPhone has a handy system Settings app that has a unified location to make changes to different apps on you phone. Within your application, Settings.bundle allows the app to display settings in the iPhone Settings application and NSUserDefaults allows an application to programmatically interact with the phone’s default system. When changing a value in the Settings app it will be updated in the phone’s default system so you can retrieve these settings programmatically within your application.

The problem is if your application settings are never opened in the Settings app, when using NSUserDefaults to retrieve setting values within your application, they will be nil even if a DefaultValue is set in your settings bundle. The reason is the settings bundle and the shared NSUserDefaults object are not one in the same. NSUserDefaults needs to be populated with data either through the iPhone Settings app or programmatically in your application. There are few solutions to this floating around the web to initialize the default values but I didn’t find any that I really liked.

Below is a pretty simple method that I call in the application:didFinishLaunchingWithOptions: method of my app delegate. What it does is grab the settings from the settings bundle, and if any item value is nil it will update the value of that item with the specified DefaultValue (if there is one). This ensures that all values that need a default value will have that default value set in the NSUserDefaults shared defaults object. For more information check out the documentation for Settings Application Schema Reference and NSUserDefaults Class Reference.

Dear Non-Developer Readers,
I may start posting some technical stuff up here from time to time. I’ll try to not let it dominate my bi-annual blog posts. Also, I’m testing out this code highlighting plugin which seems to work pretty well.

My Problem:
I want to hide the background of a UISearchBar and the methods I found only worked on SDK versions 3.1.3 and below. That method basically grabs the subview (of class UISearchBarBackground) that contains the background image and sets it to hidden:

Well that only works in versions of the iPhone SDK prior to 3.2. In 3.2 and beyond this technique no longer works (which is exactly why these sort of whatever.subviews hacks should generally be avoided).

My Solution:
In iPhone SDK 3.2 and 4.0 I’ve found this alternative technique that works:

And if you want to go all out and attempt to future-proof your code give this a try (no guarantee that it won’t still break though – Apple could still change the class name or change the structure of the UISearchBar in a future SDK update):

As I was watching the Orioles pre-game show last night (before watching the Capitals miserable loss) I saw that MASN was promoting a video blog created by one of my favorite Orioles, Brian Roberts! Well he picked the best name possible for his blog, “The B-Log“.

Saturday I went to to see the Orioles lose to the Angels in Baltimore. On our way out of Oriole Park at Camden Yards we saw the van pictured above and I must say that it is awesome and I must own one. Obviously vans are pretty cool to begin with, but adding an Orioles paint job adds to the grandeur.

About 10 minutes after I took this photo, we walked through the Inner Har and happened upon people fleeing one of the buildings. Apparently, there was a shooting moments before we arrived after a few rival gang members happened upon each other in the most tourist filled area of Baltimore. Fortunately, no one was killed though it was still a pretty nasty scene – we saw police attending to a shot gang member through a doorway and we almost stepped in some blood outside…ugh.

Thankfully I spotted this van and stopped to snap a few photos, otherwise we might have arrived at the Inner Harbor a minute earlier…

A while back someone (my Dad I think) recommended I add Who Killed the Electric Car? to my Netflix queue. I had completely forgoten about it until it showed up in my mailbox last week.

I really knew nothing about General Motors’ foray into the electric car market in the late nineties, but after watching this movie, I really want to get a plug-in hybrid. Basically, GM built the first mass produced 100% electic power car, the EV1. The long and the short of it is GM stopped producing it after California zero emission laws were rescended. The car no longer exists (except a few non-functioning museum cars) because GM actually reposessed every single car (which were all leased and not available for purchase) and literally crushed and shredded them. Check out the trailor below.

Well today I came across this article about a new Nissan electric car that will be unveiled this Sunday (and suppossedly available for purchase in 2010). The article has little to do with the car itself and more to do with an iPhone app Nissan has built. Basically, while you car is charging you can monitor the battery power so you will know when it’s all charged.

Nissan seems to just be scratching the surface with what they can do (the only other announced feature of the software is to remotely control the air conditioning). This is the kind of stuff companies need to start doing with smart phones. There are so many apps that are rehashed and non-innovative…I can’t wait until we start seeing more smart integration like this.

I’ve done a photo shoot and two live shows with Elementary (the band!).  I gotta say, live music photography is fun. The above was my favorite shot from the Velvet Lounge show. I’d like to revamp my blog to cater more to being a photo-blog. Don’t hold your breath though…since all I do all day is build web sites, I’m kind of slow to actually update my own. It will happen at some point, but it could be a couple years.

Since your hero last blogged I had some visitors, traveled to a destination wedding in Bermuda, moved to a different state, and I’m sure some other blog-worthy things…none of which will be discussed today! No, first I have something much more exciting… a short word on color profiles!

Super high level overview: Color profiles basically tell your computer how to output images for a certain device – be it your monitor, you printer, etc. Beyond that, they are also software dependent – most browsers only support the sRGB color profile.

Now you may be wondering why I’m talking about all this. I might even say this is embarassing considering the thousands of hours I’ve probably spent using Photoshop… I realized a couple months ago that I’ve been saving and uploading all of my photos to the web with the Adobe RGB color profile and I’ve been doing it for more than two years (approximately 700 photos). Why did I do this? Well Adobe RGB was set as the default color profile in the Photoshop “Camera Raw” plug-in that I used when processing my photos.

What happens when you view an Adobe RGB image with software that only does sRGB? Basically it sucks the life out of your image. Colors are dulled and people are turned into zombies. On some photos it’s not that noticable…on others it’s definitely noticable.

Here are two screen shots from a browser that only supports sRGB. The left photo is sRGB, the right is Adobe RGB. Can you see a difference? I think it looks like my skin is going to fall off in the right photo (both due to the jowling and the grayish hue).

After a few marathon sessions spanning a couple months, I’ve finally finished replacing all of my flickr photos with sRGB versions! Huzzah! Lesson learned. I imagine in a couple years that this won’t be a big deal – some browsers already support multiple profiles, and hopefully that trend spreads.

I’ve been to a few open mic night events over the years. Last night at Tritone was easily the weirdest combination of performers I’ve seen with acts like a solo guitarists (one playing the Beatles “Let It Be” sung all in Spanish), stand up comedians, a solo death/scream metal performer, and finally the highlight of the night for me was the sword swallower! So much entertainment they ran out of time for the tenor saxophonist which could have been cool.

I was about the closest person to the stage which is tough when you’re staring at a comedian who isn’t funny. When the solo screaming guy performed (he had a CD for his backing music) I had to actually get up and go to the bar to keep myself from chuckling in front of him. He might have come out and bit me or something.

Tritone is definitely a rockin’ dive bar. I didn’t see “the special” on the menu until we were about to leave: $3 for a PBR and a shot of whiskey! Without further ado, the sword swallower:

…and yes, that’s a tattoo of a sword on her throat!

Third place! That’s where my basketball team, The Dream Team, finished in this year’s Philadelphia Sport Network winter Thursday night ref league. At least that’s where I think we finished since our last game was supposed to be last night and I believe the other team forfeited (seems both teams lost interest since we weren’t in the championship game not to mention the NCAA tournament starting).

I averaged 6.83 points per game with a single game high of 14 and a single game low of 2. Sadly, unlike Stanus.butt, I did not video tape any of our games so I cannot accurately report on any other stats (which I know my faitful reader are clamoring for!).

I had fun, and I may look into playing in a similar league when returning to the DC area. Really it’s the only thing I’ve done in recent months that got me excercising.

In other news, it seems my 2 week long flu/cold combo is just about gone. Finally.

I’m sick. I’ve been sick for a week and it only got worse today when I realized I had a fever. The doctor gave me some heavy duty cough syrup to knock me out tonight since the NyQuil didn’t have much effect so that should be fun. Apparently I have some sort of flu-like thing, but not the typical flu that’s going around…whatever that means.

But, before I realized I had a fever, Katie and I attended the Flyers / Capitals game yesterday to watch the Caps win 2-1! We’ve had the tickets since Christmas as a present from my brother and I’d been looking forward to it for a while. I didn’t realize how easy it would be for us to get to the stadium area (Phillies, Eagles, 76ers, and Flyers all play in buildings within walking distance of each other) and it was a short subway ride to get there. Going to definitely attend a Phillies game or two once the season kicks off.

Flyers fans (and I guess Philly fans in general) were pretty brutal. They booed the refs before the game even started and cheered when one got knocked down mid-game. Then after each of the Capitals starters names were announced the entire sold out crowd yelled together, “SUCKS!”. Not to mention the boos every time the league’s best player (and Washington Capital) Alex Ovechkin touched the puck.

Unfortunately, I forgot my camera so I only snapped one quick photo of warmups with my phone. Katie and I quietly cheered for our team and respectfully clapped when we scored. A louder Caps fan near us was being heavily berated by those around him and I wasn’t much in the mood for that being sick and all … plus it’s not like it’s a baseball game or something, it’s hockey.

On a related note, I just realized the Phillies play the Orioles in June! Though I’m not sure we’ll still be in Philly then…