I could clearly see that it was in sleep mode because my MacBook has a small led that keeps blinking when it is sleeping in OSX or Windows. I tried pressing the keyboard to see if it turned on and it seemed to do so but the display was off in both the internal and external displays. I couldn’t bring it back.

I googled the problem and it was a known issue with the NVIDIA drivers included with Boot Camp so I downloaded the latest version from the NVIDIA site and the problem was solved.

After installing the SDK I started to read books and documentation about developing for the iPhone but one thing was really bugging me and it was Objective-C. It is not a bad language and it is not that difficult after you keep using it for a while but in my case I wanted to focus on learning all the concepts instead of learning a new language so after reading some tweets and blog posts by @migueldeicaza about developing with Mono and C# I  decided to give it a try.

I decided to give MonoTouch a chance so I went to http://monotouch.net/ and read all the documentation. I also got Mono, MonoDevelop and MonoTouch SDK installed  as all of them are requirements.

After I installed everything I created a new iPhone project in MonoDevelop and tried to compile but I couldn’t. The problem was that I only installed the iPhone SDK 3.1.3 but MonoTouch requires 3.1 so I had to ran the installation again and select the missing versions. Once I installed the missing versions of the SDK I was ready to go and everything compiled as expected.

Working with C# and .NET APIs is awesome as you can do the same as you can with Objective-C but with less lines of code and faster.

The experience is great and don’t get me wrong Objective-C is a great language but as I said before I am more interested in understanding all the concepts than anything else.

The only drawback with MonoTouch is that it isn’t free, there is a free version but you can’t deploy your app to the simulator or generate an App Store ready binary. The “cheapest” version is US$399 for 1 year of updates and 1 developer. If you are serious about developing for the platform and have a .NET background or even code that you want to reuse then it is a no brainer as you can easily get them back if your app is good.

I will definitely keep playing with it for a while but I will also get back to Objective-C.

I wanted a Windows partition with a size around 50GB so I had to free some space on my hard drive. After I got 70GB free I decided to start the Boot Camp assistant and to my surprise I couldn’t make it complete the first time due to an error: “Files cannot be moved…”. The only solution recommended by Apple was to backup everything and reinstall OSX and I was not happy so I decided to google for an answer until I found two that worked:

1. Free more space, I got 100GB free.
2. Defragment the hard disk with iDefrag

I tried the first one and it didn’t work until I did a quick (online) defrag with iDefrag.

After doing both steps I was able to create the new partition and install Windows 7 x64 and when I tried to install the Boot Camp drivers and utilities in Windows 7 I got another error saying that my MacBook wasn’t supported with any 64bits version, WTF? I had to run the BootCamp64.msi manually as Administrator from my Snow Leopard DVD and in order to update it I had to first decompress the BootCamp 3.1 Update and do the same with it.

Now everything is running fine even though my MacBook is “unsupported”.

This is a 24″ LED display with VGA and DVI inputs so I can easily connect my laptop or my XBOX with a HDMI to DVI adapter. The colors are not the best so if you are doing graphics you should get an UltraSharp model instead but as I am not doing anything graphics related it is not a problem for me. The resolution is full HD 1920×1080 so it is plenty of space and if you combine this with OS X spaces feature then you have a great workspace.

One small problem is that you can’t adjust it vertically as the stand has a fixed size but you can adjust the viewing angle. Again it was not a problem for me because the height of my desk helps a lot and also my chair is adjustable.

Overall I am statisfied with it and I can’t ask for more considering I got a discount from Dell and it was a lot cheaper than other monitors in the market (in México City).

• Application – OmniGraffle for OS X.
• Stencil – Konigi.com OmniGraffle Sketch Stencils.

I am currently using the OmniGraffle trial version but I will definitely buy the commercial version as soon as the trial expires although I still don’t know if it will be the standard or pro version. This app is like Visio for OS X but better.

The Konigi.com stencils that I am using are not free either but the price is really cheap, only US$10 bucks. They have a free version but is not as complete as the paid one and it only contains one sketch stencil and a few others that are not really sketches. The customer service is also great as  yesterday I sent a suggestion to request a couple of controls that are missing and I received an answer today with the answer I was expecting – the controls are going to be included in the next version. I recommend these stencils for anyone that design/develop UIs and needs an easy and fast way to do draft prototypes.

I know I can use paper but I don’t like wasting it when I can do it in my PC and only print the draft when needed.

BTW in my previous work they should have used something like this instead of NetBeans which is what A&D used to create the sketches that we, the developers, received to start our development tasks.

First I want to say that the memory was cheap compared to the prices I received from some Apple resellers and also from other shops that sell RAM. I got a 4GB kit for $65 dollars vs. $150 dollars for each 2GB module at the local shops so for me it was a great deal. I had to pay $20 dollars for shipping and a few more for taxes to UPS for importing it but I also bought memory for other computers so it was a reasonable price.

My advice for Mexican buyers is to pay with Paypal as the order is processed immediately and the product is ready to be shipped the same day. I ordered on Thursday and my package was in my door on Monday.

So far so good the memory has been working great and my MacBook feels faster and more responsive. I really recommend Crucial if you plan to buy memory and it doesn’t matter if it is a Mac or a PC.

It is a really stable platform and hasn’t crashed a single time since I started using it; not even when I use it 24/7. This can only be compared with my experience with ArchLinux which was also rock solid (even when I used experimental packages).

I am typing this on a MacBook Aluminum and is by far the best laptop I ever had, hardware and software wise. It is really solid and it doesn’t feel cheap like other laptops I have previously owned (Dell and Toshiba). This machine is woth every penny I paid. My only complain is that I had to buy an adapter in order to be able to connect it to an external monitor which by the way wasn’t cheap, $459 pesos or approximately $30 US dollars.

The screen is amazing, yes I like glossy screens, the mousepad is just awesome and the whole case as I said before is really solid. It has a slick design and that is always a big plus for me, specially if what I am going to buy ain’t cheap.

I will post more comments later but I can say that I am a happy satisfied customer.

• Learn C on the Mac – I am reading this one because I have plans to start developing applications for the iPhone. I started with this because it’s been a while since I wrote C code so I have to refresh some concepts.
• Wicket in Action -  I got this one because I have been reading a lot of good things recently about this framework to develop web applications using Java and I decided to take a look. So far it looks simple but at the same time different from what I’m used to with JavaServer Faces.

In the queue I have two more books about iPhone development: Learn Objective-C on the Mac and Beginning iPhone Development.

I stopped my previous site first because I lost interest, lol, and second because I was spending more time in my previous work at JPMorgan. Now I am no longer working there so I have a lot more free time although I already have a couple of projects in my desk to start working on my own but I will write more about that later.

For the time being I have been using twitter and you can follow me here.