I saw my first Wagner opera yesterday at the Wiener Volksoper (Vienna People’s Opera, the second major opera house in Vienna). Wagner operas don’t have a very good reputation. They tend to be very long and not very easy to comprehend. At last this is what I had heard before.

I won’t say that I don’t understand this bad reputation, in fact yesterdays performance of “Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg” (The Mastersingers of Nuremberg) took more than five hours, but I have to say that I enjoyed the evening. The production was very good and only during a lengthy scene in the third act I got a bit bored and my bum started to hurt. But this was bearable and the endurance was rewarded with a great final.

I decided to get one of the new iPod nanos, Steve Jobs announced at this weeks special event. The new nano was a logical choice. My last two iPods died upon HD failures and flash drives tend to life longer. Although the 8 gig version is much too small for my music library, it’s enough for my on the go needs (mainly podcasts).

I received my nano on Friday and I already had some time to play with it. At first I was a bit disappointed. The scroll weel is a bit too small for my fingers and the screen doesn’t look very crisp. But I’m getting more and more comfortable with it. I’ll try to use it over the course of this week and if I find it useable I’ll keep it.

I’ve been running the latest Windows Vista Release Candidate for the last 24 hours on my Macbook Pro and to be honest, I like it. Wait a second and give me a moment to clarify this statement. Microsoft got some very bad press in the last couple of years. Bashing Vista had become a mass phenomenon, especially in the Apple user base. Really disliking the XP user interface, I had very very low expectations and this is probably the reason why Vista exceeded them. It’s hard to describe, but it just feels snappier and the graphic style looks much more appealing when compared to OS X. Just look at the ugly brushed metal theme. Please Apple, dump it!

Having said that, Vista looks very appealing, but the interaction is a nightmare. There are too many things that rival to get my attention. It’s really a surprise that people can actually use this interface productively. Oh … and Microsoft, … two different Buttons for stop loading and reloading a website??? Do you have too much screen real-estate or is it really soo hard to understand why every other browser only has one button for this functionality?

It’s been green for a while now and I’m starting to wonder if it will ever become yellow. Anyway, I think it will be tasteful.

Sometimes writing code can be a very frustrating experience. This is especially true if you are new to a technology and you are unable to interprete the runtime’s errors correctly. Well after several frustrating hours I finally figured out a solution for a problem I’ve been having for some time now. The funny thing is, the solution came to my mind while riding the subway and starring out into the dark underground tunnel. I’m somehow getting used to funny things happening to me underground.

I just wrote the correct code in seconds. The solution is so simple that I have to start to cry thinking about all the hours I spent thinking about my problem. Btw, this is the code:

- (NSSet *) transactions;
{
[self willAccessValueForKey:@"transactions"];
id transactions = [self primitiveValueForKey:@"transactions"];
[self didAccessValueForKey:@"transactions"];

if ([transactions isKindOfClass: [NSArray class]]) {
return [NSSet setWithArray: transactions];
} else if ([transactions isKindOfClass: [NSSet class]]) {
return transactions;
}

return nil;
}

It took me a while but I finally settled with an interface. Basically it’s a standard Master-Detail-Interface which tries to mimic the Apple Mail look. What you can’t see on the screenshot is a drawer that contains the interface elements to edit the transactions. I hid them in a drawer because you can also edit them directly in the table view. The drawer doesn’t fit in the overall design and I’m thinking about getting rid of it.

I’m pretty happy how this little project turns out. Although I’m spending a lot more time as intended, I’m learning a lot and this will hopefully help me with my next IC project.

Ryan Estrada wrote and illustrated a wonderful children’s book for LiveJournal featuring their mascot Frank. He also created an infinite canvas version which can be found on his website:

• Frank: The Comic Strip, Chapter 4