Hi, I'm Sam.

I like to create software, make music, and write about technology.

Find out more about me.

#open-source Posts

On My Own Again

Posted in development, freelance, life, and open-source

So if you remember, I wrote a blog post about a year ago about life and such. I quit my job and then freelanced for a bit. After doing that for a bit and hating it, I started working at Tasteful Works. It's been a good ride here at Tasteful Works, but August 31 is my last day. Still friends with those guys. Quality dudes.

What I'll Be Doing

I'm already booked for the next 3+ months with a lot of iPad and Rails work. It's for a client or I'd say more. It's a really cool project. After that, I'll be doing looking for some contract projects and work on my own stuff.

I plan to focus more on fun open source projects now that I'm my own. I already have a bunch of stuff started on my GitHub account, but more on that later. It will also be good to have more time for music and life in general.

I've already gotten a few job offers. For now, I plan on sticking with working for myself, but who knows how long that will last. This seems to be a bit of a cycle: keep a job for a year-ish, freelance, new job, freelance, etc. I'm hoping to keep working for myself for a lot longer this time.

What About...

Double Shot - No idea. Tasteful Works owns all of that code. Hopefully it will get released eventually. It's some of my best work.

TWToolkit - Check out my forks: SSToolkit, SSOAuthKit, and SSZipArchive. The Tasteful Works versions will remain, although I won't be working on them anymore.

Countdown Maker - Countdown Maker and Stage Time will remain Tasteful Works products. Kinda hate to see them go, but oh well. Hopefully they will continue to be maintained.

Open Source is Rewarding

Posted in development, open-source, and sstoolkit

I released SSToolkit awhile ago. It's an open source library for doing common things in iOS. It's the overflow of stuff that I use on a daily basis. It's pretty much everything I've ever written that is iOS related that is reusable, open sourced, and released for free.

I recently received this email from a developer using my framework.

Dear Sam

Thank you for SSToolkit. I'm using it to display images from a folder.

your code is easy to use and the instructions to import it into an Xcode project, on your website, are clear and simple.

Regards
Ehab

Totally made my day. Here's another example.