Browsing: Personal

Goodbye Apple, Hello… Oranges? CitrusByte!

Today is the last day I work for Apple. I put in my notice to quit! But let me make it clear that this is not for negative reasons; Apple was and is a very good company to work for. The benefits were good, the hours were flexible, and the people were very cool. But I was working in retail, where I obviously don’t want to be!

A few weeks ago CitrusByte contacted me, offering me a position as a web developer. I flew down to Los Angeles to talk with some of their team, thought they were cool people, and they must have thought I was an okay guy myself because I am now working for them.

Funny thing is I seem to be following fruit companies… Apple… Citrus… what next?

Posted at 10:25 AM | Written by Mitchell Hashimoto | 9 Comments made.

“Busyness” to Infinite

Life has gotten super busy the past few weeks. Here is a brief overview of what’s been keeping me busy:

• New Zend Screencasts - There is not much more I can say right now other than that…
• AutoUW release imminent. - If my roommates have notified me correctly, registration is in a few weeks. Therefore, further polishing and preparing for release of AutoUW must be done.
• A new project: iFishes - I have been working on a new project, that being a Mac OS memory editor similar to Windows’ ArtMoney. More information will come on this soon, as this program is also nearing testing quality.

In addition to these personal projects, I continue to work at the Apple Store and also am a full time student. Where do I find the time?!

Posted at 12:04 PM | Written by Mitchell Hashimoto | 1 Comment made.

My Thoughts On FileMaker’s Bento

One of the hot new products out for Mac (or at least heavily advertised products) is Bento by FileMaker. I’ve been receiving emails about, I’m getting slammed with information about it at work, and I just keep hearing “What is Bento?” So I finally downloaded myself a trial copy and began playing around with it. This is not a review, these are just some quick thoughts and answer the biggest question: What is it? If you’re looking for a review, a quick google search will reveal many.

What is it?

FileMaker says its a personal database. Too bad that for a user-friendly application, this doesn’t say much. But Bento actually is that powerful… it can store almost ANYTHING in an organized way (a database!). How would I use it? Well, I would use it for programming projects. For each programming project there is some information I’d like to store: A goal, a start time, some references to documents for research, etc. Also, I’d like to store notes on progress of the project as I work on it, so I know what was last done and what still needs to be done. Also, I would like another database to store information about my classes, including teachers, office hours, course URL, homework assignments, etc. There is no other program out there I know of which has the flexibility to create such a database so easily. If you want a custom database, Bento is for you.

What needs improvement?

Here is the reason I don’t use Bento: I can’t take it with me. It’s the same reason I didn’t use iCal before I had an iPhone! I thought iCal was great, I could store my appointments, classes, work schedule, homework, etc. Awesome! But all this information became useless as soon as I left my computer. What if I needed to modify it? view it? add to it? I couldn’t without my computer. Useless, for myself.

This is the same with Bento. I LOVE the organizational techniques of Bento, and I would love to use it to further enhance my homework planning, project management, etc. but a lot of times I need to access this information away from my computer. So I will say this now: As soon as Bento has a companion application for the iPhone (hopefully when the SDK comes out this month), I will use Bento, and I will love it.

Until then, Bento fills a very specific niche.

Posted at 9:36 PM | Written by Mitchell Hashimoto | No Comments made.

Gotta Look Good

My entire website has had a face lift! There are still some links and such which aren’t going to be working for a little while but for the most part the website is working! A few changes:

• Easy blog category navigation on the left
• You can now browse by month and year (archives)
• Search capabilities! In the upper left box just enter your search query and press enter.
• Pretty comments. (Hey, it was important to me)
• Easier to navigate main navigation up top.
• Easier to read blog entries.

For the most part this was a huge usability update. I loved my old design, but I needed something that was easier to expand, easier to navigate, and more integrated.

Enjoy the new look!

And I understand many pages are broken or missing. This is being looked into and I am fixing the pages one by one. Sorry for the inconvenience! Especially zend screencasts!

Thanks to Thuiven Design for the wonderful look.

Posted at 5:12 PM | Written by Mitchell Hashimoto | 1 Comment made.

New Year, New Stuff (LOTS!)

I am sitting in the airport right now waiting on a flight to fly back home to California for the new year and I thought I should update the site and explain what any readers can expect, since there is a lot coming!

First, and I’m sure I’m allowed to say this now: Official Zend Screencasts. Yes, I have been a busy bee the past month reworking my screencasts and writing out new screencasts, officially sponsored by Zend. Although I will link to them from my site, they will be hosted on the Zend Framework website. (Quite frankly, I can’t handle the traffic, so Zend kindly offered the hosting.) Not only can you expect full reworks of the getting started screencasts, but many more are coming. Also, the new screencasts are in flash video format. Hurray for reaching more viewers!!

Second, for the UW students who use my tools, I have a HUGE update coming. Really… “HUGE” doesn’t even begin to describe it. I have written a program (mac-only, sorry windows users!) which takes course notifications to the next level. It not only watches and waits for an opening (still every 15 seconds) for any courses, but automatically registers you for the class. I’m sure if you’ve used my course notifier you’ve had the moment where you’re nowhere near a computer or internet and you get a text message saying there is an opening in a class, but you have no way to register for it and feel helpless, knowing some other person is going to a computer to steal it from you as you think. Well with this new program, just set it and forget it. It will scan multiple SLNs for an opening and when it finds one, it will automatically register. If it was successful, it will text message you saying so, otherwise it will just keep plugging along, until it does get the opening. With this we’ll be one step closer to a more painless registration! For those wondering when you can expect this program: It is going through very intensive testing since it must work perfectly. But definitely expect it before spring quarter registration. I do have a working model testing on my own account at the moment.

Thats the big news that is for sure coming in the very near future. Some other things I’m THINKING of doing, but no promises…

iPhone development, once the official SDK comes out. This includes porting my UW tools to the iPhone (should not be difficult) and writing a few other useful tools which I think lack. Sounds fun!

I am very serious about writing a technical book on a very specific yet untouched subject (I could not find any books on this subject.) Really, I have been thinking of this for awhile and I am asking: If any of you readers have experience writing technical books, please drop me an email, I’d love to listen to any input you have. I don’t expect to make any money through a book in the future, I just want to share information. Really, what technical books make money anyways? (Top 1%? I laugh.)

Posted at 8:34 AM | Written by Mitchell Hashimoto | 3 Comments made.