New blog post: Core Data debugging with SQLite - describing how I access the Core Data SQLite store directly for debugging and testing during iOS development.

New blog post: iOS Dev, Beta & Production builds installed side-by-side

New blog post: iRaspberry 1.6. A fun client project I worked on recently.

New blog post: git sharing with dropbox.

New blog post: Locayta Search Mobile for iOS beta5. Explains a new feature in the latest beta of Locayta's full text search library for iPads & iPhones.

New blog post: Locayta Notes 2.0. Announcing the release of Locayta Notes 2.0, a project I've been working on for Locayta Limited, available free in the App Store.

New blog post: Janken Battle. Announcing the release of my new iPhone game, available free in the App Store.

Hi, my name is Chris Miles and I'm an Angry Birds addict :-)

100% completion of Angry Birds Halloween Edition on iPhone 4. Final score was 4,013,950 which, at the time of completion, gave me the 17th highest score worldwide! Now to return to my regularly scheduled life...

I've been busy at Locayta lately preparing some Locayta Search Mobile demo apps. We have released the first of these, Locayta Notes, a free iPad/iPhone note taking app. Even better, we've released the source code too! I've written about the Locayta Notes release here and you can get Locayta Notes from the App Store.

On my Python blog I share my joy over discovering a PYPI mirror just when I needed to deploy some Python based software while the main PYPI site was down.

Over on my tech blog I posted details about a feature in the latest version of River Level: iOS 4 Background Task Completion.

A mate and I recently teamed up in our spare time to produce an iPhone app aimed at Socceroos fans. (For those who don't follow the world game, Socceroos are the Australian National Football [Soccer] team.) We built exactly the type of app that we wanted to use ourselves, focussing on quality and attention to detail, unlike many of the other apps that have been pushed out lately in time for the World Cup. Our app is called Roosfan and is available in the App Store.

At the start of July we spent a week up at Mount Hotham getting in some early season skiing & snowboarding.

One of the most exciting parts of the week was seeing Cooper learn to ski for the very first time. He only turned 3 a few months ago, but he was very excited about hitting the slopes and he really enjoyed his two half-day ski lessons with the "Mighty Mites".

Here's a short video I put together highlighting Cooper's first ski lessons.

I have put some new photos of Lucy, who is now 4 months old, and Cooper, who will be 3 in a couple of months, on flickr. Enjoy.

Our second baby has arrived! This time it's a girl and we've called her Lucy. We're very excited, and you'll be able to find more photos of Lucy here.

A lot has happened since I last posted an entry! Let's see if I can remember it all:

• In October 2007 we relocated back to Australia (Melbourne) after nearly 6 years of living in London. London, the UK, and visits to Europe were a lot of fun, but by then we'd done & seen all we wanted to do & see and, with Cooper getting much more mobile, we wanted to get ourselves a lot more space. The easiest way to do that was to return to Aus.
• After moving back we lived a semi-gypsy life in Australia, staying with relatives (and babysitting a friend's house over Dec/Jan) while looking for a house to buy. I continued to work during that time, staying on with Locayta, who I'd been working for in London, but working remotely. The temporary/gypsy living lasted longer than we probably expected, 5 1/2 months, but it does take time to find a house that you actually want to buy.
• Eventually we did find a house to buy and a bank that would give us a loan, and on March 7 we moved in! We are very happy with the place so far. It is an oldish (~25 years) house that has been partially renovated over time, but there's still plenty of DIY projects to keep us busy. The exciting feature for us is the in-ground pool, which showed its value almost immediately after moving in, when the local temperature was floating around 35C+ for over a week.

Last week I was in Vilnius, Lithuania to attend EuroPython 2007. It was a nice city to visit with friendly locals. The beer & vodka were both tasty. Oh, the conference was good too.

My photos are on flickr.

In March we spent a week skiing/snowboarding/sledding at Val Thorens, in the French Alps.

Here are some photos and some videos from the trip.

I have published photos from our Australia holiday so check them out.

Cooper enjoyed his first Christmas and naturally got spoilt with presents. Big thanks to Bern & Mel & Gemma who hosted a Christmas feast at their place. Delicious as always.

I've decided to start hosting my photos at Flickr, so check out our Xmas Day 2006 Photos.