Maz Development Directory

Ignorance is a Blister

Mazyad Alabduljaleel — Tue, 28 Nov 2023 20:50:23 +0000

Introduction

This is yet another reboot of the attempt to dish out more fast-paced, short-form content in order to keep the ball rolling. Previous attempts have not been successful, so my hopes are not high, but I’m going to give it another shot anyway.

That’s it for the …

Skinning a Cat

Mazyad Alabduljaleel — Sat, 25 Nov 2023 20:50:23 +0000

Introduction

I find the saying “There’s more than one way to skin a cat”, just as much as the next guy, quite morbid and gruesome. And yet, I like to use it and tell myself that people aren’t really skinning cats for sport or professionally, it’s just …

Appease Your AI

Mazyad Alabduljaleel — Tue, 29 Aug 2023 17:55:23 +0000

Introduction

Who isn’t talking about AI these days? This topic has made its way into every conversation, in every field, in every way imaginable (and unimaginable).

The obvious areas where AI is mentioned could be automation, robotics, and perhaps the hardware accelerator manufacturers. These areas are basically intertwined with …

Verdict: It's a Match!

Mazyad Alabduljaleel — Sun, 20 Aug 2023 16:55:23 +0000

Introduction

Second blog post since forever, and I have no idea what this one should be about. The main problem is I”m writing this a I finish my workout, so I don’t have much going on in terms of setup, but that’s fine.

After the rant in …

Playing the Part

Mazyad Alabduljaleel — Sat, 19 Aug 2023 12:55:23 +0000

Introduction

Boy, has it been ages since I last wrote a post. I can hardly recall my style, even, however that’s not really an issue as we’ll see.

Out With the Old

As you may (or may not) have noticed, the blog is finally migrated to a sensible …

Async Pipes

Mazyad Alabduljaleel — Thu, 10 Mar 2022 03:55:23 +0000

Introduction

Over the past couple of posts, I explored basic parallelism in Python with the help of Ray. Since then, I’ve adopted the library in my work and built some pretty cool things with it, all of which I would like to cover in detail someday:

Actor Pools: I …

Balance

Mazyad Alabduljaleel — Wed, 19 Jan 2022 20:30:23 +0000

Introduction

In the previous post, I wrote about parallelism, and towards the end, mentioned Ray, the ultimate python package for parallelism.

I played around with it today, and wanted to give my take as well as describe the new challenge that I am currently stuck on.

Prelude

Ray is just …

Not Fast Enough

Mazyad Alabduljaleel — Tue, 18 Jan 2022 20:30:23 +0000

Introduction

Why am I writing after such a long absence? Wrong question. Why haven’t I been writing for so long?!

I could just sit here and give all kinds of excuses and reasons as to why that is, but the truth is … I slipped. I think.

Programming was pretty …

A Quick Abstraction

Mazyad Alabduljaleel — Fri, 02 Nov 2018 22:30:23 +0000

Introduction

As software engineers, our job is to make sure computers behave in very specific ways when the software we have built is being executed. Now, this sounds extremely trivial, but this is what it really boils down to…

Unfortunately, the tools we are provided to make this happen are …

Ready, Set, Hsssss!

Mazyad Alabduljaleel — Sat, 18 Aug 2018 14:43:09 +0000

Introduction

I was waken up at 3:30 am by the sound of the fire alarm … I tried to ignore it, but that deemed a fruitless effort. So, I moved to the living room, tried my luck there. No dice. So? Screw it. Go to the nearest Costa, have some …

Problem Solving

Mazyad Alabduljaleel — Sun, 22 Jul 2018 09:04:11 +0000

Introduction

I wanted to quickly write a python script that would solve a relatively simple problem. The problem is, I needed to generate a plist file based on data defined in a Swift file.

This will involve file access, regular expressions, and file templates. Sounded a bit daunting at first …

Snakes, Everywhere!

Mazyad Alabduljaleel — Fri, 13 Apr 2018 19:29:23 +0000

Introduction

Ehm, for this one, I am really disappointed at my network of pythonistas. I was looking for such critical tool that would change my life forever when it comes to developing Python applications, yet no one could point to the ultimate solution I ended up finding by chance.

The …

Pick Your Container

Mazyad Alabduljaleel — Tue, 03 Apr 2018 19:30:43 +0000

Dancing with the Snake

I’ve been engrossed in Python development lately, since we have requirements to build a unified platform for UI testing tasks, such as publishing results, browsing screenshots, … etc.

Being a “seasoned” Python developer, I didn’t think twice about going with Flask, so everything was build …

Ecto.Multi

Mazyad Alabduljaleel — Thu, 29 Mar 2018 02:46:53 +0000

Introduction

I have been ignoring errors coming in from my backend for a while now .. There is only one serious and frequent error, actually, and I’ve no idea how it’s happening, so decided to ignore it .. That was a grave mistake.

Today, a user reached out and complained …

Mining, ethOS and Bots!

Mazyad Alabduljaleel — Sat, 24 Mar 2018 22:33:57 +0000

Introduction

I’ve been into mining Crypto-currencies recently (I’m not sure what’s the proper way to type that, so will refer to them as cryptos from now on .. with the added bonus of triggering cryptography nerds :troll:).

So, what’s the big deal? I’m actually quite late …

Hello... Again.

Mazyad Alabduljaleel — Sat, 24 Mar 2018 21:33:16 +0000

Just Type

I literally just want to breathe some life into the blog again .. I am not sure what I want to write about, but I do want to address the fact that I haven’t written anything for so long, and I really miss this part of my life …

Growth

Mazyad Alabduljaleel — Wed, 30 Aug 2017 14:44:24 +0000

Introduction

To be honset, I thought I lost it. This flow of inspiration to write. Share an experience, learning or otherwise quite meaningless life story. Somehow, I feel it’s back now. After all this time.

What changed? Hmm .. This could be a separate blog post in of itself! Let …

ReactNative as a Framework

Mazyad Alabduljaleel — Sat, 05 Aug 2017 18:46:15 +0000

It has been a while since I have posted anything, and to be honest, I shouldn’t be posting anything, since I’ve got loads of other things to worry about..! But oh well, I have searched the Internets high and wide for tids and bits about packaging ReactNative as …

Shipping the Game

Mazyad Alabduljaleel — Sat, 25 Feb 2017 22:41:48 +0000

OMG, I STILL CAN’T GET OVER THE FACT THAT I’VE SHIPPED MY GAME!

Yeah, it’s that crazy .. When you’ve obsessed over a project for 5+ years, and it finally crosses the finish line .. I mean .. It’s probably like losing your leg for 5 years, then …

Let's Encrypt Phoenix!

Mazyad Alabduljaleel — Mon, 19 Dec 2016 18:53:02 +0000

Introduction

After a previous post outlining the importance of using SSL, especially when dealing with websockets, I needed now to implement auto-renewing certificates as a cron job or whatever.

Previously, I had used the “standalone” approach to get my certs, which worked great.. However, it’s not ideal when you …

Useful Unity Assets

Mazyad Alabduljaleel — Sat, 10 Dec 2016 21:49:46 +0000

Introduction

As I wait for my laptop battery to drain so I can do complete power cycle for the battery, might as well write a post!

I recently started digging through the Unity Asset Store, and found some gems of assets! Let’s take a look.

Moderation

Before I go …

A Sockety Tale

Mazyad Alabduljaleel — Sat, 10 Dec 2016 14:16:51 +0000

Introduction

On a fine Friday evening, after I went over my git repos making sure everything is synced with upstream, I delightfully pack up reminiscing the past week. It was a fine, productive week! Lots of trello cards moved over to the done column.

As my phone’s slack was …

Tech Buffet

Mazyad Alabduljaleel — Sun, 04 Dec 2016 23:45:23 +0000

Introduction

This blog has been side stepped for quite a while .. For some reason, this pattern happens every time.. During the beginning of the year, I’m like “I’ma blog all year!!”. However, I slow down during the middle, and near the end realize, “Oh crap, let me play …

Unity Ads

Mazyad Alabduljaleel — Sun, 13 Nov 2016 11:14:08 +0000

Unity ads is a great opportunity for games to make some serious revenue from the free players segment. These players would never pay a single dime, so making them watch a video ad results in revenue for your game.

The Unity platform is insanely good with video ads. Basically, you …

on second thought

Mazyad Alabduljaleel — Tue, 27 Sep 2016 15:59:32 +0000

Well, I did need to write about the current authentication design, not that I think it’s amazing or anything like that, but in fact, I need to write it out in order to properly think about it.

So, what’s the deal with the authentication flow?

So, I decided …

i forgot about this

Mazyad Alabduljaleel — Tue, 27 Sep 2016 15:55:47 +0000

Holy crap, I completely forgot about this devlog >__< .. definitely should not have…

I don’t remember what the last post was about, but since then, just too many things were worthy of at least dumping here .. Learning new optimization tricks in python thanks to the interview process preparations, Swift …

Changeset

Mazyad Alabduljaleel — Fri, 12 Aug 2016 14:59:05 +0000

That was painful … Dealing with Ecto changesets.

The thing is, I’ve been trying to implement a way to use changesets in order to protect certain properties of the model from being modified by an external source. For example, users of the app can change their username, but not their …

Doing Yoga with C#

Mazyad Alabduljaleel — Mon, 08 Aug 2016 16:17:02 +0000

Introduction

Throughout my game development journey with Unity + C#, I have found the C# language extremely flexible and versatile. By utilizing the right techniques, one could eliminate lots of boiler plate and achieve remarkable expressiveness.

I talk about expressive code a lot in my posts, but if you need a …

Spitting It Out

Mazyad Alabduljaleel — Sun, 07 Aug 2016 18:26:02 +0000

Not a very friendly title, but I really need to throw out there what’s happening these days. It’s too valuable to be lost in translation or in a long term memory archives…

For starters, I finally realized that toon shaders don’t cut it no more.. They are …

Anonymous Socket

Mazyad Alabduljaleel — Thu, 04 Aug 2016 16:45:04 +0000

Even though I set the title as “Anonymous Socket”, I decided not to go that route after all…

Here is a quick brief of what’s going on inside my head:

I need anonymous clients to connect to the backend and generate a temporary guest account to use in case …

More Errors

Mazyad Alabduljaleel — Thu, 04 Aug 2016 14:08:23 +0000

Even more errors, and more edge cases to solve … If you are developing a game, really there is never a dull moment around here .. Every single detail is a challenge that requires careful thought and planning. The idea is that once you start executing, everything should just fall into place …

Errors Localization

Mazyad Alabduljaleel — Thu, 04 Aug 2016 12:01:48 +0000

Forgot that on a similar note to the previous post, I was wondering how I should deal with error message localization. I can deal with the localization on the frontend or the backend. If I choose either, there are also multiple ways to approach either one… Then, there is the …

errors

Mazyad Alabduljaleel — Thu, 04 Aug 2016 10:42:36 +0000

Hmm.. here I am again just typing stuff instead of working on my game .. This is the penalty of inexperience and lack of another brain to bounce ideas off of..

Well, the issue I am facing now is dealing with backend errors on the client side. The backend gracefully handle …

rants

Mazyad Alabduljaleel — Tue, 02 Aug 2016 15:14:01 +0000

Just needed a quick way to track some tasks, so here it goes…

Found a bunch of crap surrounding the dialog implementation. Most of it was easy to cleanup, however, the animation code I just can’t find it… Looking at how the dialog isn’t deactivated nor cleaned up …

Come Again?

Mazyad Alabduljaleel — Sat, 30 Jul 2016 22:04:18 +0000

So, after spending all that time perfecting the relationship between the game logic, graphics, and view, the game started coming together. Implementing new crap is much simpler, since everything is where it belongs, and it doesn’t take time to think about where to implement it.

With that, my trello …

The Fuck Up

Mazyad Alabduljaleel — Tue, 26 Jul 2016 19:31:34 +0000

I derailed, and I derailed hard…

I was simply focused on trying to implement animation ended hooks, so whenever an animation ends, the main game loop is informed, and the next task is processed…

Somehow, during that implementation, I found a nasty part in the project, but it was working …

Event Stream

Mazyad Alabduljaleel — Sat, 23 Jul 2016 18:06:19 +0000

After much struggling, procrastinating, and LoLing, I have finally set my mind to it. Previously, I have explained how I should be moving the game state within the game logic, but once I started looking at the code some more, something stood out.

The graphics part was tightly coupled with …

State, Logic, and Graphics

Mazyad Alabduljaleel — Sat, 23 Jul 2016 09:47:25 +0000

I am struggling to find the zen between three entities in my game:

State
Logic
Graphics

the game state is an immutable object that simply represents the state of the game. If you want to change the game state, a new copy is created. This makes game state super simple …

Smarter Game Results

Mazyad Alabduljaleel — Fri, 22 Jul 2016 13:10:21 +0000

Damn, that’s why I was stuck on this all along!!

Remember the GameResult problem where I was thinking of how to represent who won? Well, the reason it was a bit more complicated than it seems is because I have “smart game results”.

I don’t generate a single …

Better Late Than Never

Mazyad Alabduljaleel — Fri, 22 Jul 2016 13:03:01 +0000

Wow, I really should have started doing this since forever … But you you what they always say:

Better late than never

I mean, really, so many problems could have been preserved .. I’ve written a lot of them on white boards, idea paint walls, notebooks, notepads, and even voice notes …

Who Won?

Mazyad Alabduljaleel — Fri, 22 Jul 2016 12:41:26 +0000

In Dama, a game ends under the following conditions:

A player disconnects
A player surrenders
The players agree on a draw
The game reaches a draw state
The game reaches an ended state

So many different ways to end the game, and thankfully it was super simple to streamline all …

A New Beginning

Mazyad Alabduljaleel — Fri, 22 Jul 2016 11:53:31 +0000

to further lower the barrier of writing to my blog, I decided to start this devlog thingie. I can just do brain dumps here without even worrying about the structure, title, content, or anything like that…

Well, I actually started this because I am too lazy to create a live …

Speed Tests

Mazyad Alabduljaleel — Mon, 11 Jul 2016 08:29:57 +0000

Introduction

Finally, I’m back in the game (literally?), and working on the Elixir side of things for a change.

So, my Elixir backend is heavily tested using unit and integration test. For now, a total of 83 unit tests assert their way through my code, all way from checking …

Animator Trigger

Mazyad Alabduljaleel — Tue, 05 Jul 2016 22:14:01 +0000

Less programming these days, and more animation design. I’ve been using Unity’s animation system to bring the game to life, and it’s a pretty solid system, I have to say.

As with all things Unity, it has gotchas, so this post will cover some of them.

Triggers …

Back Me Up!

Mazyad Alabduljaleel — Fri, 01 Jul 2016 05:05:05 +0000

Introduction

The final post that concludes the series about game development is gonna be around the backend (server). It’s pretty big topic, but I figured I’d summarize it in one (probably) long post, so here it goes.

Quality of Service

Mazyad Alabduljaleel — Wed, 29 Jun 2016 19:20:13 +0000

Introduction

As highlighted by the nifty list below, this is part III of the four part series about game development!

I apologize for the ambiguous, possibly inaccurate, name “game services”. I just didn’t know what to call …

Rev Up Your Engine

Mazyad Alabduljaleel — Tue, 28 Jun 2016 02:59:55 +0000

Introduction

In the second article in this game development series overway, I would like to shed some light on the aspects that make up the game engine.

Overview:

The term “Game Engine” is arguably not well defined. For …

Chewy GUI

Mazyad Alabduljaleel — Sun, 26 Jun 2016 05:46:36 +0000

Introduction

There is always something to post about when it comes to game development it’s so vast!! So, this is a post just to talk about how vast it can be! (think meta).

Look, before you get all intimidated on me, game development can be as simple as drag …

Phoenix 1.2.0

Mazyad Alabduljaleel — Thu, 23 Jun 2016 06:24:58 +0000

This will be a quick one, since I didn’t really upgrade to Phoenix v1.2.0, unfortunately… Why, why not?!

The main reason I was eager to upgrade was the new Presence feature. It will really streamline my code, and allow me to easily implement the monitoring stuff I …

Elixir Metrics

Mazyad Alabduljaleel — Wed, 22 Jun 2016 05:42:02 +0000

Introduction

Yet another post about the Elixir game server, and this time it’s about how I should be monitoring the server metrics, such as the game rooms, matchmaking queues, and actual games…

Ideally Speaking

I guess, the ideal situation I’d like to be in is to have a …

Firebase Service

Mazyad Alabduljaleel — Sun, 19 Jun 2016 05:24:02 +0000

Introduction

It’s tons of fun running your own thing, working on your ideas and projects .. That is, until you’re broke. Now, if your thing makes enough money for you to sustain and grow, then kudos, you’ve made it. For the rest of us stuck in the chasm …

See Windows

Mazyad Alabduljaleel — Thu, 16 Jun 2016 05:46:36 +0000

Introduction

In this widely generic programming post, I’d like to go over the experience of building a C dynamic library (DLL) on windows. The reason I’m interested in building for windows is because my game’s logic is written in C, and my new programmer is running Unity …

Elixir Exits

Mazyad Alabduljaleel — Wed, 15 Jun 2016 21:22:24 +0000

Introduction

While working with Elixir and building a dope server, I came across an annoying error resulting from an “exit”.

Exits in Elixir are propagated in processes similar to how errors and exceptions do in your other familiar languages. When a process exits abnormally, the “exit” hits the linked nodes …

Sysadmin

Mazyad Alabduljaleel — Tue, 14 Jun 2016 05:21:00 +0000

Introduction

I’d be committing treason not showing this xkcd comic in a sysadmin related article:

With that taken care of, what is this post about exactly? Well, recently I had to wear the sysadmin hat. Here is what wiki has to say about sysadmin:

A system administrator, or sysadmin …

GenServer

Mazyad Alabduljaleel — Wed, 08 Jun 2016 17:42:57 +0000

Introduction

In the previous post, I didn’t have enough space nor time to cover GenServers in Elixir. This is a follow up to cover just that. Before actually talking about GenServers, let’s discuss the design pattern behind it, namely, the Actor model.

Cameras, Light, Action!

The actor model …

Elixir Tutorial

Mazyad Alabduljaleel — Sun, 05 Jun 2016 21:30:37 +0000

Introduction

This is so nice… I’ve recently updated my sublime text theme, and the markdown plugin rendering is looking gorgeous.

Ehm, anyways. So, Jim has more ideas to share, and they still keep me up at night. I am not sure what this says about my personality, but usually …

Phoenix Channel with a User

Mazyad Alabduljaleel — Sat, 04 Jun 2016 00:47:29 +0000

Introduction

Phoenix is a productive web framework written in Elixir. It excels in many things, but nothing nearly as amazing as realtime websockets.

Phoenix provides an abstraction over soft-realtime communication called “Channels”. This basically handles structuring realtime communication for you. The way this structure works is out-of-scope for the moment …

Backend Testing Using Bots

Mazyad Alabduljaleel — Wed, 01 Jun 2016 10:59:31 +0000

Introduction

With the rise of chat bots, concurrent programming, and elixir, I thought I might as well shed some light on the elixir bots server I wrote for my own needs.

The reason I wrote a bots server was mainly because I found it difficult to test my game’s …

Structuring Firebase Data

Mazyad Alabduljaleel — Tue, 31 May 2016 12:17:32 +0000

Introduction

This isn’t the first Firebase post, however, it is the first since the recent revamp Google introduced to Firebase. It has a neat new logo, website, and features! It’s no longer just a datastore, but includes analytics, crash reporting, push notifications, and tons of other features.

Recently …

Be Animate!

Mazyad Alabduljaleel — Sun, 29 May 2016 11:04:13 +0000

Introduction

Apparently, the word “animate” can be an adjective to “being alive or having life”. Well, that could apply to animate and inanimate objects alike … This is getting confusing.

Well, the point is, this will be a quick post about an animation prototyping tool called “Origami”. I’ve been using …

Unity + JSON

Mazyad Alabduljaleel — Thu, 26 May 2016 22:56:47 +0000

Introduction

JSON is such a trivial matter to be discussed .. but for whatever reason, it’s quite a chore on Unity.

Newton?

Newtonsoft.Json, also known as JSON.Net, is the defacto JSON serialization in C#. It’s superb, with great features, like automatic object serialization/deserialization, which reduces tons …

Unity on iOS

Mazyad Alabduljaleel — Thu, 26 May 2016 19:08:35 +0000

Introduction

So, over the past three days, I spent two sleepless nights, and kept on working with one goal in mind .. Get the game working on iOS.

Wait, this is Unity! The game engine that promises painless cross-platform compatibility! Why do I have to spend over three days to make …

A Game Dev Tale

Mazyad Alabduljaleel — Mon, 23 May 2016 22:44:06 +0000

Introduction

The main reason I sit on the computer these days and write code is mostly to ship a game .. A game that has become a serious stigma I can no longer ignore.

There are so many tales and angles to this journey, I cannot hope to cover it all …

See Sharp

Mazyad Alabduljaleel — Sun, 22 May 2016 18:26:04 +0000

Introduction

In order to see sharp, we eat carrots! Unfortunately tho, that’s now how we C#. C# is a language brought to us by Microsoft in an attempt to beat Java (I think?). Since the dark ages, I misconceived C# as a Java close that didn’t really bring …

Alchemy

Mazyad Alabduljaleel — Sun, 22 May 2016 01:29:27 +0000

Introduction

At least, that’s what I feel like when writing Elixir code .. Like an Alchemist… Constructing a bunch of flasks and burners, interconnected with a series of glass tubes, working seamlessly together to produce meth- erm.. I mean, Magic!

You High, Bro?

I can’t deny the high feeling …

Reboot!

Mazyad Alabduljaleel — Sun, 22 May 2016 00:59:54 +0000

Introduction

Onto the reboot! Reboot what you ask?! Reboot the very fundamental reason I blog for! Looking back at how long it has been since I blogged, I realized that my actual productivity has an inverse relationship with the amount of articles I dish out .. So, this leads to two …

Swig Swag

Mazyad Alabduljaleel — Tue, 16 Feb 2016 11:31:02 +0000

Introduction

Whenever programmers talk about programming languages, and how amazing those new languages are, they always end that discussion with how kick-ass C still is! It’s amazing how this primitive language is still at large and being used throughout the industry.

While working on my game, I have built …

MonoDevelop For N00bs

Mazyad Alabduljaleel — Tue, 16 Feb 2016 09:53:31 +0000

Introduction

Over the last weekend, I had the pleasure of committing to learning all about MonoDevelop. For those of you not in the know, MonoDevelop is the default IDE shipped with Unity.

In this article, I wanted to share my experience, and explain why I hated MonoDevelop so much in …

Contributing on Github

Mazyad Alabduljaleel — Mon, 28 Dec 2015 16:40:38 +0000

Well, here is a video blog post about contributing on Github:

Youtube link

Kitz is Live!

Mazyad Alabduljaleel — Sat, 19 Dec 2015 20:11:44 +0000

Kitz Debut

I am officially announcing the simultaneous release of four Kitz. Well, Kitz is the name of the project, and it is a collection of quality Swift libraries. Four of those libraries have been released today! In celebration of this prosperous release, I propose a toast! (Make sure you …

Nomad Review - San Diego

Mazyad Alabduljaleel — Wed, 16 Dec 2015 23:27:10 +0000

Introduction

Since this has turned into a “Digial Nomad Journal”, it is only appropriate to mention the places I’ve been to and how that relates to the work environment. As I write this, I am one stop away from the final destination, but there is a lot to cover …

Constructing URLs in Foundation

Mazyad Alabduljaleel — Mon, 14 Dec 2015 19:23:26 +0000

Introduction

While building Appz, we had to deal with a lot of URLs; constructing URLs for both opening other apps as well as websites.

Once the first Kitz contributor started submitting pull requests, it was apparent that it was error prone for developers to add support for other apps. The …

Developing tvOS Apps

Mazyad Alabduljaleel — Thu, 10 Dec 2015 00:28:04 +0000

Introduction

“Hey, Maz. We would like a port of our iOS app on AppleTV within one month max”

My response ....

Yes, lots of work is involved in porting an app to tvOS, but it wasn’t too bad all things considered. Let’s see the highlights of this experience.

RingoTV …

Swifty NSNotificationCenter

Mazyad Alabduljaleel — Mon, 07 Dec 2015 12:32:25 +0000

Introduction

This is another post about Kitz. This time we will be looking at Notificationz. We will cover the motivation behind the library, and how it can easily turn your code around to be a lot more readable.

The Problem

One of the frequent pain points of iOS programming is …

Playing With ReactiveCocoa

Mazyad Alabduljaleel — Sat, 05 Dec 2015 02:10:51 +0000

Introduction

ReactiveCocoa is a long standing library, it’s by no means something new. The cool kids were already high on ReactiveCocoa since the Objective-C days. Alas, it wasn’t something I decided to try before today.

Through this article, I’d like to cover my initial impressions in using …

Freelancing Stories

Mazyad Alabduljaleel — Wed, 02 Dec 2015 11:24:16 +0000

Introduction

It wouldn’t be unusual to be sitting at some day job thinking… Wouldn’t it be great to be one’s own boss? Taking vacations anytime, no one pestering you about what you wear or when you wake up … Sounds like the perfect lifetime plan! But how…

Of …

iOS or Android Remote Logging

Mazyad Alabduljaleel — Mon, 30 Nov 2015 22:42:15 +0000

Introduction

I have highlighted in a previous post that I’ll be writing a topic about Sentry. The reason I said that was because I was in the process of building a remote logging service for an iOS app. Ultimately, it took less than two hours to implement.

Here is …

Oh My Zsh!

Mazyad Alabduljaleel — Sat, 28 Nov 2015 15:18:38 +0000

Introduction

Hardly any developer can go about his career without interacting with the terminal on daily basis. Many tools continue to be developed as command line apps, like fastlane, Jekyll, and many more … With all that being said, we need to make terminal more usable!

Recently, I’ve been ssh-ing …

Lavish Ideas

Mazyad Alabduljaleel — Fri, 27 Nov 2015 00:33:33 +0000

Introduction

While thinking for a topic to write about, I realized that just the fact of choosing a topic is a whole post in itself! Recently, I’ve been discovering cool new technologies, and I just can’t wait to write about them .. I’ll post them here for remembering …

Hacking With Jekyll

Mazyad Alabduljaleel — Wed, 25 Nov 2015 18:03:49 +0000

Introduction

For those of you who are new here, welcome! For the rest of the old time readers, yeah, the blog has been completely redesigned .. From scratch. I hope the new design is a step forward at least, and in this post, I’ll be covering the transition experience.

Where …

One More Time

Mazyad Alabduljaleel — Mon, 23 Nov 2015 16:08:12 +0000

No introduction, no conclusion, just pure anticipation of the new blog design to be rolled out. Yes, the blog shall be redesigned and relaunched one more time. I am spending my free time on the redesign rather than blogging, so here is something to generate some hype:

Coming soon

Wrangling Autolayout

Mazyad Alabduljaleel — Sat, 21 Nov 2015 20:30:58 +0000

Autolayout Ambiguity

I’d like to share today a short story about autolayout. Before I get into that, however, I’d like to give some background regarding my experience with autolayout for the sake of helping you better relate to the upcoming story.

Auto-layout was just an unusable nuisance for …

Generic Constraints with Optionals

Mazyad Alabduljaleel — Fri, 20 Nov 2015 13:13:34 +0000

Introduction

Recently, I’ve been spending a lot of time polishing and testing a collection of Swift frameworks and releasing them on github. You can see the website here.

The lessons learned from this experience were unbelievable. There is way more to Swift that I could have ever imagined. The …

UIApplication Trap

Mazyad Alabduljaleel — Wed, 18 Nov 2015 17:03:03 +0000

Introduction

To all my readers out there .. An apology is in order. I have been blogging non-stop for a while, but there was a very unsettling series of sudden pauses recently! I promise it wasn’t due to lack of motivation nor interesting topics .. It was a simple matter of …

Where is Maz?

Mazyad Alabduljaleel — Sat, 07 Nov 2015 13:35:42 +0000

🇯🇵 Tokyo

Where Next

Just staying in Tokyo for a while :D

About This Page

A friend said for fun:

We need a WhereIsMaz.com site, we never get a hold of you!

Well, I decided to make it anyway, so here I am!

The reason for this is my current …

App Submission Nightmare

Mazyad Alabduljaleel — Sun, 01 Nov 2015 10:36:47 +0000

Introduction

It’s that time of the year where I need to submit an app to the AppStore. This time around, I had a completely new setup that I’ve never attempted to ship before. As expected, since it’s a new setup, it came with its own submission error …

Shipping With Realm

Mazyad Alabduljaleel — Fri, 30 Oct 2015 15:45:59 +0000

Introduction

I have recently announced starting to use Realm for my iOS projects. Then, I had just started using the technology, but didn’t really reach shipping stage until now. When it’s time to ship, that is when every ugly detail surfaces.

Note: This post is sponsored by fastlane …

Welcome to Realm

Mazyad Alabduljaleel — Wed, 09 Sep 2015 00:01:28 +0000

Finally .. I’ve made the move to Realm.

What Happened?

Recently, I’ve been working an iOS project for some client, and obviously went with Swift for everything. The app is a very typical RESTful consumer, with a relatively simple data model.

For the first phase of the app, I …

X-Men

Mazyad Alabduljaleel — Mon, 10 Aug 2015 00:32:31 +0000

Introduction

This C++ language never ceases to amaze me .. Something new to learn everyday, and today I learned that mutating creatures aren’t X-Men exclusive, C++ has those, too!! The first time I was mutating was actually in Swift. In Swift, struct functions are const by default, unless declared mutating …

RAII

Mazyad Alabduljaleel — Sun, 02 Aug 2015 22:38:51 +0000

Introduction

Unfortunately, we often overlook cool concepts in programming just because we simply weren’t lucky enough to have stumbled upon them during the course of our work. The blame is ultimately on us, for not searching for simpler solutions to our design problem .. I have no idea what kind …

Multiplayer

Mazyad Alabduljaleel — Sun, 02 Aug 2015 02:00:07 +0000

Introduction

I am really high on game development these days .. Much of my time and focus is on building this core game “framework” that will basically be the building block of all future awesomeness. I can’t make any compromises at this stage, as the technical debts accumulates insanely fast …

Graphic Agnostic

Mazyad Alabduljaleel — Wed, 29 Jul 2015 05:33:44 +0000

Introduction

I’ve recently committed to writing my whole game on terminal. This had two great advantages:

1. Worry about graphics later I am 100% focused on the technicality of the game, and low level experience. I don’t have to worry about graphic details just yet.

2. Maintainability Using …

Will You Be My Friend?

Mazyad Alabduljaleel — Thu, 23 Jul 2015 23:37:28 +0000

Introduction

A friend is someone who you can share private secrets with, and they will never betray that trust. A friend is someone you choose, not the other way around. A friend makes your life safe by helping you out.

In short .. Friends are awesome.

Friends in C++

In C …

Basic C Programming

Mazyad Alabduljaleel — Wed, 22 Jul 2015 13:14:11 +0000

Introduction

After all this absence from my blog .. I just have to add an introduction! Well, since I stopped blogging a few months back, I was actually back home and for some reason, life is so easy going there, that I end up not able to work as effectively.. Weird …

'HTTP Game Server: The Rewrite'

Mazyad Alabduljaleel — Tue, 05 May 2015 18:03:22 +0000

Introduction

I’ve stopped blogging for a while, and for no good reason, really. I will not make up any excuses, but will try to get the ball going once more.

The Past

I’ve been blogging recently about my experience regarding building a game server on top of Google …

Benefits of Unit Tests

Mazyad Alabduljaleel — Mon, 13 Apr 2015 10:53:37 +0000

Introduction

There is a very common problems among programmers that haven’t tried unit tests .. They don’t know how to start. Most of the programmers that I’ve met, including myself, had this problem, and the natural way to go about this is to buy a book and start …

POCO

Mazyad Alabduljaleel — Thu, 09 Apr 2015 09:21:51 +0000

Introduction

Recently, I’ve quit my job, and started doing lots of things I had in mind for years now. Point is, I am my own boss, and I would like to make stuff as perfect as possible.

When you are working in a very small team (1) the number …

Enlightenment

Mazyad Alabduljaleel — Sun, 05 Apr 2015 22:17:27 +0000

Introduction

I’ve been blogging recently about Swift and SpriteKit, and that’s mostly eating up all my time, making me miss a blogging day, and also writing a completely useless post.

Now, to justify this, the previous three posts before that have been quite lengthy and informative, so it …

Brain.Dump()

Mazyad Alabduljaleel — Thu, 02 Apr 2015 21:21:43 +0000

So much freaking work to do, so little time
Awake for more than 28 hours, and counting
Game development in Swift is just amazing
SpriteKit is crap, and crashes unpredictably
We have an amazing prototype already! Yay!
The component system built is a piece of art
I must blog or …

Marry CircleCI to Hockey

Mazyad Alabduljaleel — Thu, 26 Mar 2015 15:10:25 +0000

Introduction

If I were to tell you, today we shall marry CircleCI to HockeyApp, who do you reckon would be the bride, and who would be the groom? Doesn’t really matter actually, as nowadays, that’s not the only allowed typed of marriages!

Enough with the silly introduction, and …