We are so excited to announce the official launch of our new puzzle game, Rudoku! 

Rudoku is a nifty logic and numbers game for casual iPhone gamers.  Over here at Cerebral Gardens we love creating brain stimulating games and Rudoku is no exception. All you really need to solve the puzzles are basic math skills and you can make each puzzle as easy or as difficult as you like. We really strived to strike the right balance between minimal design and the right sounds and animations to make Rudoku a more relaxing experience.

We really love Rudoku, and we hope you do to. You can learn more about it here or go straight to the App Store and grab it. It’s just $1.99 USD ($2.29 CAD) with no in-app purchases. Pay once and enjoy endless playability. 

You can like Rudoku on Facebook or follow Rudoku on Twitter for more updates. 

As we all scramble to learn this fantastic new language Apple gifted to us at WWDC 2014, we're coming across new ways of doing things, either because the new way is better, or because the old way is no longer possible.

One of the main features that Swift has taken away, is the C preprocessor. That's what enabled #define's to work. A common #define used is for debug logging, to include useful info with every line.

#define DLog(...) NSLog(@"%s(%p) %@", __PRETTY_FUNCTION__, self, [NSString stringWithFormat:__VA_ARGS__])

This lets us go from this:

NSLog(@"Simple Message");

2014-06-08 05:38:54.649 TestApp[35062:60b] Simple Message

to this:

DLog(@"Simple Message");

2014-06-08 05:38:54.649 TestApp[35062:60b] -[TSTAppDelegate application:didFinishLaunchingWithOptions:](0x10961f2e0) Simple Message

We now get a lot more info in our log messages and can see where in our code the log message came from without having to type it in for every line.

In Swift, we lost this functionality. The reason this was traditionally done with a #define, and not a function or class, is so that we can use the __PRETTY_FUNCTION__, __FUNCTION__, __FILE__, and __LINE__ macros. The preprocessor replaces those macros with their actual values. For example, __FILE__ will always contain the filename where the macro is placed for example. If you were to use them in a logging function, the macros would always contain the information of the logging function, not the calling function, rendering them useless.

This looked like it was going to be a major inconvenience in Swift so I filed a radar about it: http://openradar.appspot.com/17170702. After playing with Swift for a while, I've discovered a solution. I've built a library you can use in your projects.

Introducing XCGLogger

XCGLogger is my first open sourced third party library, that I think will be essential to add to your project.

The source can be found on GitHub here: https://github.com/DaveWoodCom/XCGLogger, with basic instructions on how to use it.

At a glance, it will change your logs from this:

Simple message

to this:

2014-06-09 06:44:43.600 [Debug] [AppDelegate.swift:40] application(_:didFinishLaunchingWithOptions:): Simple message

By writing code like this:

log.debug("Simple message")

instead of this:

println("Simple message")

A few things to note:

1. Swift is brand new and in a state of flux, so it — and any libraries using it — will be subject to frequent changes.
2. This is my first released library, so please let me know what you think and please share any ideas for improvement.
3. There is a bug in Xcode 6 when using __FUNCTION__. XCGLogger uses a workaround for now, but will remove that once the bug is fixed. See: http://openradar.appspot.com/17219684
4. This library is intended for use in Swift projects. There's no Objective-C compatibility included in it at this time. If it's a requested feature, it can be added.

Since Swift is brand new, there are a lot of different ways to accomplish the same thing. Over time, some best practices and patterns will emerge. I've used what I think are good practices and patterns in this library and hopefully they'll be helpful for developers as we work to establish what's best. For example, how to store static tokens for dispatch_once calls, shared instances, and global variables etc.

How does this work when I said earlier that using __FUNCTION__ and its friends in a function only gives you the information in the function instead of where it's called? Well, that's the secret sauce I discovered last week. If you set the default value of a parameter in a function to one of the macros, the compiler fills in that value at the calling location giving us the effect we need. Giving us access to the correct macro values inside the function that's called.

If you find this library helpful, you'll definitely find these other tools helpful:

Watchdog - monitors Xcode® and automatically cleans up stale cache files

Slender - cleans up Xcode projects, removing duplicate and/or unused assets

Briefs - powerful app prototyping, lets you and your clients try before you build

Follow me on Twitter @DaveWoodX

Today, Cerebral Gardens introduces Watchdog for Xcode. Watchdog is a helpful utility for iOS and Mac OS X developers that monitors Xcode cache files (DerivedData) and cleans out stale files before they interfere with your builds.

If you’ve been building apps in Xcode for a while, you will see the value in Watchdog instantly as you are familiar with the weird errors that can happen with Xcode. If you’re new to using Xcode, you may not have run into these issues yet, but eventually you will and that’s when Watchdog will save immense time and frustration.

A Watchdog user will no longer see these weird issues:

• Old images that you've replaced, still showing up in your app.
• The DerivedData folder growing continuously over time, often taking up 10+ gigabytes of space.
• Constants/Defines not updating in the app after you've changed them in the code.
• Localization file changes not being seen.
• Phantom breakpoints and/or breakpoints stopping on the wrong line.
• Xcode refusing to run a build on your device, only reporting something obscure like: "Error launching remote program: No such file or directory"

Sometimes the cause is related to your version control system updating files without Xcode noticing. Sometimes it’s random. Regardless, the result is the same: a bad build, time wasted, a frustrated developer, or even worse, an annoyed customer.

These errors can be mind numbing. Let Watchdog be your guard against these errors so you never again have your time wasted.

Watchdog gives you truly clean builds, saves time, and your sanity. It guards, protects and, most importantly, prevents.

Download Watchdog for Xcode

I'm sure by now most of you have heard of App.Net. A new microblogging type service that aims to be much more. At first glance it looks a lot like Twitter, but it is much better in a few fundamental ways.

The first thing you'll notice is that you have 256 characters per 'post' instead of Twitter's 140. It is very liberating. Think in terms of 140 characters, and then actually spell out all of the words, use punctuation and clearly articulate your point.

Ok, who's kidding? That's actually the second thing you'll notice. First you'll notice that you have to pay for an account! WHHHHHAAAAAAATTTT? Pay? Money? For a social network? Aren't they all free? - No, social networks such as Twitter, Facebook, Linked In, and pretty much most of the others (excluding Ping¹) are not free. You don't pay with money, but you pay with time, attention, and the loss of personal privacy. With most social networks, you are not the customer, you are the product being sold². With App.Net, you are the customer, and so you're the one paying with money. A normal member account is $50 per year. Which, is arguably cheap compared to Twitter. WHHHHHAAAAAAATTTT?

Let's take a quick look using some rough guesstimates comparing just 1 metric that you use to pay for your Twitter account: Time. Twitter is now starting to sell a lot of ads (promoted tweets) on its network. They've even started to push into selling a high volume of small accounts to users such as you and me, not just to the big guys. They've been giving away $100 starter accounts to promote their ad service. So, here's where we start to guess some numbers, we'll attempt to guess low in order to give Twitter the benefit of the doubt.

• Assumption 1: on an average day, you see 15 tweets that are ads (promoted tweets, spam tweets, etc).
• Assumption 2: it takes you 2 seconds to read/recognize and discard/move on.
• Assumption 3: your time is worth more than $20/hour.

This means, over the course of a year, you're wasting 365 days * 15 tweets * 2 seconds = 10950 seconds = 182.5 minutes = 3 hours. For a monetary cost of over $60/year. And I know my time is worth a lot more than $20/hour.

This example ignores the cost you pay with your lack of privacy; Twitter and Facebook both track you as you move from site to site on the Internet, even when you're logged out!³

Two other benefits of App.Net that I won't get into detail on are: conversation views — much improved as you can see the whole thing, instead of having it forked into uselessness. It's a platform, not just a Twitter clone. Other apps and services that aren't possible with Twitter are being built right now on top of App.Net.

So, I encourage you to get on board with app.net, own your content, be the customer, and if you act pretty fast, get the name you always wanted....

Follow me on App.Net as @davewood and @cerebralgardens.

Footnotes:

^{1. No one uses Ping so there's no cost in time. (back)}

2. Original quote via Gruber (back)

3. Original research (back)

Our latest app, Party Doodles was recently featured on TUAW's Origins Stories. The web series takes a closer look at the reasons why developers create their apps. Our very own Dave sat down with TUAW's Victor Agreda, Jr. to discuss how Party Doodles came to be and why it is such a unique app. Check it out!