Andrew Russell is an independent game developer from Australia; he developed Dark for the 2009 Dream Build Play contest and more recently released Light Blocks for iPhone and iPad. Last weekend I had the opportunity to talk with Andrew about his newest project: ExEn, an implementation of XNA for the Silverlight and iOS platforms. →

Last year, my friends and I went to Morimoto for dinner. We wanted to do something like that again this year, so a few days ago we went to one of Jose Garces restaurants, Amada. I had been to Tinto, another Garces establishment, around Thanksgiving — so my expectations were high. I wasn’t disappointed: we all had a great meal. →

Boolean function parameters should be avoided: the parameters of a function or method should be strongly correlated to the name of that method for optimal readability when the method is invoked. Booleans tend to be used as ancillary parameters more often than most, and they also tend to be passed as literals fairly often, which can lead to extremely obtuse code: →

There are many reasons why I don’t find the iOS App Store terribly great for the task of browsing for new applications — for example, the lack of any kind of wish list functionality. But I think the main reason is that the way the store presents popularity is based on a handful of simple metrics: number of downloads, total gross, user ratings, et cetera. →

According to Apple, the Mac app store shouldn’t be used for trial or demo versions of software. Instead, developers should use their own website to host such versions of a program. I can’t fathom what Apple’s motivation for this is — after all, demos don’t seem to hurt the iOS app store (I’d still prefer an XBLA-style model for trials on the iOS platforms, but that is neither here nor there). →