Evening.Keeping warm? It's 30 degrees right now. Yesterday, the high was 72! How does this happen? Only in Texas, I'd imagine...Unfortunately, I failed to create a blog post last week. Shame on me. There wasn't too many interesting things going on (other than the abnormally cold weather spike), so I didn't want to bore you with any details. Trust me, you probably would've stopped reading by now. You'd be surprised how hard it is to keep an interesting life all the time.Speaking of life, it's only been the 28th day of the year and I'm already having a hard time trying to find an interesting thing to record every day. Especially since I insisted that no video could repeat itself (i.e. showing off me sitting at work every day). It's been hard, but hopefully the end result will make it truly worth it! I promised that I would post a preview of what I was working on, so here it is! Enjoy.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4Vop6TnAls LifeA few friends and I are planning out a pretty epic road trip...appropriately titled, "2014 Epic Road Trip (title pending awesomeness)." It'll be about a two week road trip, which is a little bit insane yet exciting to think about. We'll be hitting major parts of the United States, including the White Sands National Monument, Grand Canyon, the Bean in Chicago, Cedar Point in Ohio, and much, much more. If all goes according to plan, this trip will definitely be one to remember. I haven't really been on any road trips for that matter, so it'll be pretty fun!DevelopmentI found a pretty interesting library for anyone developing on iOS. The library is called fui, and it basically scans through your codebase and suggests classes and files that aren't being used/referenced anymore. This is particularly useful for those who deal with major codebases and have either deprecated or old classes but are unsure if they're being used anymore. Of course, exercise caution when using the library, and make sure your code compiles after you delete. :)I've been dabbling in a bit with Ruby and Python these days. I love how these languages are so succinct and can beautifully express concepts. Other languages tend to take a more verbose path (here's looking at you, Objective-C) in order to convey their ideas better to those who may not have seen someone's code before. I honestly like both sides of the spectrum. It's easy to read Objective-C, and if you're experienced enough with Ruby and Python, it's just as easy. I'm always a fan of keeping things as short and simple as possible, so long as it gets the job done. This post has a really interesting table of the comparisons between these two languages. I honestly don't have a preference, as they're both great languages. What do you think?MusicI intend to leave a tidbit of my blog reserved for music. This will mainly comprise of music I find on soundtracks for games, movies, and anime. Why? No real reason. There are often songs I find that are either beautifully orchestrated, have very creative syncopated rhythms, or just sound pretty damn cool. This track comes from the original soundtrack for the upcoming game, Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=am_JT77d2doChaos - Written by Mizuta Naoshi & Hamauzu MasashiI'm a huge fan of Hamauzu Masashi's work. He also was the composer for the first two installments of the Final Fantasy XIII series and has created some pretty amazing soundtracks. My favorite part about this track is the syncopation. The rhythm that is defined between the strings and percussion is pretty fun to listen to. The unison within the first pattern dissipates a little with the drums in the second. You could call the rhythm 6/4+5/4, 4/4+2/4+5/4, or hell, maybe even 11/4. Either way, writing things with a little bit of 5 beats to the measure always produces unique results. The emphasized notes kind of give it a small sense of unease, pushing the theme a bit forward. Near the end, it looks like we hit some 6/4 stability, which is a nice change. Masashi then alludes to the battle theme from Final Fantasy XIII, which is one of my personal favorites. Pure genius. I've only listened to the first soundtrack (don't want to spoil the game for myself), but so far it's been a pretty good one. I'm excited to hear what all he's produced for the final installment of this trilogy! That's about it for tonight. See you Starside.- Corey