A month of being self employed

I've now been self-employed for a month and things are going quite well. Right as I left my job, pieces fell into place which gave me steady contract work. My contract projects are going well with very little pressure (I don't consider a deadline a lot of pressure as I simply have to get the work done). Every morning when I start my day, I look at the phone on my desk expecting to see a missed call. It still hasn't happened; my work no longer consists of going from one emergency to the next.

The projects I'm working on are challenging in that I've taken over someone else's code, but I like challenges. At the moment, I'm mostly just doing bug fixes, but that's fine with me. I'm pretty much left alone; issues are assigned to me, I fix them. Everyone's happy.

My stress level has gone down significantly and I feel like I've gotten my life back. I'm still probably in the honeymoon phase (I know I've said that before) of self-employment, but I'm hopeful that this feeling will continue.

iPhone Developer Provisioning Portal Tips

Recently I've been put on 2 different iPhone development projects and on both projects, I'm responsible for doing the builds. Any developer that has dealt with the provisioning portal knows how confusing and how much of a pain it is to use. It looks to me like there is a bit of confusion over the portal, so here are some tips.

• There are 2 types of distribution mechanisms; one is through the AppStore and one is AdHoc distribution. So, they need to be differentiated in the project and on the portal to make it clear.
• In your project, I recommend creating 3 configurations; Debug, AdHoc, and AppStore. This makes it clear what you're doing.
• Only the Team Agent (the person that signed up for the developer account) can create the distribution mobile provisioning files (AppStore or AdHoc). So if you as the developer didn't set up the account, you either need to get the credentials of the person that signed up or bother that person when you need to add/remove devices for the AdHoc build.
• Name your provisioning profiles in the portal with AdHoc and AppStore (respectively) so you can easily select the right profile in Xcode. Naming one Distribution is not very helpful.
• Bundle the AdHoc mobile provisioning file with every build sent to testers; the file is small and then no one has to ask you for the file later.
• Save yourself some headaches and check the mobile provisioning files into source control.
• Export the private key and certificate used to create the distribution profiles as a .p12 file and check that into source control. Depending on how paranoid you are, you might also check in a file with the password for the .p12 file. The next developer that takes over your project will thank you for not making them jump through hoops.

While some of this may be obvious and I'm sure some people won't agree with what I say, I think that these tips really make it easier to manage iPhone development.

iAm

When the iPhone first came out, it looked amazing, but I hoped it would fail. Why would I wish such a thing? It was quite simple; my work centered around writing synchronization software for smartphones and if the iPhone succeeded, then I'd have to find other work which is always a scary thing to do. Then about 2.5 years ago, my work transitioned away from sync software, so I was doing some iPhone work and was generally pleased with the device. Fast forward another year. I went to work for a company that sold Sprint service, so while I didn't want the iPhone to fail, I couldn't  really go around saying it was the coolest phone out there, now could I since Sprint didn't sell it.

Another 18 months have passed since then and almost of all of my work is now iPhone development (and soon to be iPad development), so I can truly be excited about the iPhone without thinking that it will hurt my job nor will me saying I like the phone negatively reflect on my company. So now, I have an iPad, iPod Touch, and an iPhone 3GS (not activated).

When the iPhone 4 was announced, I had to make a decision if I was going to get one. For people that already have an iPhone, getting an iPhone 4 is a relatively minor additional cost. For me, an iPhone will cost around $2000 (the 2 year cost) as I don't have AT&T service. It's not practical for me to port my phone number and drop my Sprint plan as the plan I have is a family plan that is very cheap for what I have (over the years I've had a number of discounts applied and even the base plan you can't get these days). My wife, said to go ahead and get the iPhone. As I don't like spending large amounts of money, I hemmed and hawed over it and decided that if I'm going to say I'm an iPhone developer, it kind of makes sense for me to carry an iPhone.

So there you have it, iAm an Apple fan boy. I really like the products and enjoy writing software for them. Did I get my order in early enough to be one of the first to get one? Unfortunately no so I have to wait until mid July for mine to arrive.

How to print shipping labels from PayPal on a Mac

My wife does a lot of USPS shipping via PayPal for her jewelry business. She has been printing the labels on 8.5 x 11 on our laser printer, but to not waste labels, she would print the labels to PDF, put them in Word, crop them and print 2 to a page. This, of course, takes a lot of time. Things got even worse when she runs out of labels; she cuts out the label and tapes it to the shipping envelope.

I decided to look for a better solution and decided to get her a DYMO LabelWriter 4XL. The printer prints 4x6 labels. Unfortunately, PayPal's Mac support for this printer is non-existent. After a lot of research, I came across an article that explained how to get PayPal to print to the printer. I started following the instructions, but had trouble installing CUPS-PDF on my wife's Leopard machine. After I managed to get it installed and running (I finally found an older version), I was testing it and found a much simpler solution.

Here's the quick and easy way to print shipping labels on the LabelWriter 4XL printer using a Mac.

1. Install the DYMO drivers (make sure you grab them from the DYMO Web site as DYMO using strange numbering and version 8.2 isn't the same as 8.2; the latest version is 8.2.2.1172. I had an 8.2 version that was earlier and didn't support the 4XL.
2. Set PayPal to print labels to a laser printer or inkjet printer. From the PayPal home page, click Profile. Click Shipping Preferences. Click Edit Printer Settings. Select  Laser/Ink Jet Printer. Click Save.
3. Print the label by clicking Print Label on the Print Postage Page.
4. When you goto print, create a custom paper size called 4x6. However, configure it a little bigger than 4x6.
5. Setup the printer to be landscape, print page 1 to 1 (sometimes there is a second page).
6. Click Print.

The screenshots were taking on Snow Leopard, so Leopard is a little different. However, that's the jist of how to "easily" print shipping labels from PayPal. Granted there are a few steps involved, but this sure is easier than taking the labels into word, cropping them, printing them and then cutting them out. This seems quite simple, so I'm not sure why no one else figured this out with other 4x6 printers. Granted the LabelWriter 4XL is a new printer, but there are other printers like it.

I hope this helps someone.