Well my friends one restaurant in Arizona has done just that.  A burger that defies all burgers.  A meal that you can eat happily all while knowing that this just may be the end.  The end with a smile!

With that introduction I bring you the Heart Attack Grill.  An Arizona restaurant known for the Quadruple bypass burger with flatliner fries (deep fried in pure lard), beer, coke, and of course one pack of unfiltered Lucky Strike cigarettes to suck it all down.  I haven’t had a reason to fly to Arizona but suddenly I find my self wanting to search for tickets!

I think that this restaurant has single handedly put the Krispy Kreme Bacon Cheese Burger (Better known as “The Luther”) and Fools Gold Loaf to shame…at least until they make a Quadruple Krispy Kreme bypass with BACON!!!

I don’t know about you, but I always thought spring water was better than the stuff from our tap. Apparently I was wrong, but Dasani is here to set the record straight. Check out their video for more insight.

Thanks Dasani! Its good old tap for me and the family for now on!

The class teaches how to program in AS3 and gets into the nitty gritty with new features like e4x (oh e4x how I love the).  Students also get to build Asteroids from scratch and learn about moving instances across the stage, dynamically instantiating them, and even building Flash applications with OOP (if you’re down with OOP..yeah you know me).

If you haven’t checked it out take a look at the outline.  It runs every month and I’ll look forward to seeing you there.

Oh yeah here is a sample of the Asteroids game:

Once your done you can build on the foundation to build other games or add new features (like a start screen or lives).

Something about it and its very unique syntax (and memory management - remember alloc and dealloc) takes a while to fully, grasp.

As you may know I’m busy writing a new class for Fig Leaf on Objective-C development for the iPhone.  The class is currently scheduled (as a a beta) in late September.

During my busy days and nights writing I have searched the web for the best Objective-C material I can find.  The community (at least before the iPhone) was very tiny so getting resources can be tough.

To help I’ve included a list of my recommendations.  These books, blogs, web sites, and videos have been an important tool and can be an huge asset to all of you as well.  Hope this helps!

Books

• Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X - This is the only book even worth your time…

Blogs, Web Sites, and Tutorials

• Apple’s Developer Connection - Great Objective-C and iPhone Primer (FREE subscription for web access)
• Theococoa - Great tutorials
• Cocoa Dev Central

Early signs have been extremely positive with one developer reporting an average of $1700 a day in sales over the last 3 days.  The Crossword Puzzle app in question managed to become an Apple Staff Pick and sells for only $5.99.

Even Apple upstart Tapulous announced that their new FREE application Tap Tap Revenge will reach one million downloads by this weekend, giving them a 20% penetration rate into the Apple touch screen device market (iPhone and iPod Touch).  

More amazing is Pangea’s Engimo which is rumored to have pulled in $1.2 million in the opening weekend of the iPhone 3G alone.  The application, featured at WWDC has garnered impressive reviews and sales for $9.99 from the AppStore.  That figure suggest sales of around 121,000 over 3 days or 40,000 downloads a day (Apple sold 400,000 iPhones in the United States during the opening weekend and reportedly than 1 million worldwide).

As you may know Apple announced over 10 million downloads (paid and free) from the AppStore in just the first weekend.  While a 30% fee for listing is still a hefty chunk to fork over to Apple, the AppStore’s visibility to all IPhone and iPod Touch owners does indeed appear to be huge for small developers looking to reach this market.

Appleinsider is quick to announce that these trends are not universal.  Just like any sales venue a select few applications have quickly risen to the top showing impressive numbers of downloads and sales.  However, less popular apps are reporting that downloads have been small or nil.

My assumption is that quality apps that fill a true void have potential in the market, but many users do not feel the need for 8 different iPhone flash lights, even if their free.

All that said, it is time for all of us to pick up Xcode, take Fig Leaf’s upcoming iPhone class, and get some new and compeling products to the AppStore.

I’ll keep you posted as my own development projects get closer to completion!

Apparently, a Beijing restaurant looking to appeal to a broader audience during the Olympics decided to translate the restaurant’s name into English using some online tool.  They plopped the name into a popular site, translated the name, purchased a huge sign with the new English translation and placed it above the restaurant.  Can you guess the name?

If you guessed “Translate Server Error” then you my friend are right!

I’m am always amazed at how they can take something like Al Gore, and his battle for the environment and transform it into something so relevant yet so amazingly hilarious!

If you haven’t seen the latest story making the rounds check out “Al Gore Places Infant Son In Rocket To Escape Dying Planet”.  Anyone who is a Superman fan will truly appreciate this humor.

Comedy at its finest!

In this session I will discuss:

• Installing and configuring BlazeDS
• BlazeDS versus LiveCycle Data Services
• Making RemoteObject calls to BlazeDS
• Making Messaging calls to BlazeDS
• Community Support, JavaDocs, and some other advanced tidbits…

For a full description of the presentation or to RSVP visit the Use Adobe web site.

Did you know that Hannibal Lector never blinks once throughout Silence of the Lambs?

If so, you and I share the same quest.  The quest for knowledge neglected by so many and important to so few.  To help me in my quest I found a very special site, unkno.  One random tidbit of information after every refresh, and it is loaded with tons of unnecessary knowledge.

Check it out at Unnecessary Knowledge.  Oh and by the way, More people are killed by donkeys annually than are killed in a plane crash.

Anyone who has sat in my classroom knows that I have a “small” obsession with bacon.  Something about its smoky and salty flavor just makes it the best piece of meat any man (or women) can have.

The idea of such a scrumptious and delectable thing as Bacon combined with chocolate just blew my mind.  Then I saw it:

If you find your self in disbelief visit the makers of the fine treat Vosges.  There you will find many other exciting chocolate treats and this amazing description of my new favorite snack, Mo’s Bacon Bar:

Breathe…engage your five senses, close your eyes and inhale deeply. Be in the present moment, notice the color of the chocolate, the glossy shine. Rub your thumb over the chocolate bar to release the aromas of smoked applewood bacon flirting with deep milk chocolate. Snap off just a tiny piece and place it in your mouth, let the lust of salt and sweet coat your tongue.

Until today this candy was just a dream until student John Brassil decided that Bacon Chocolate and I could no-longer bare to be apart.  Lucky for me his hotel was only blocks from Biagio in Washington DC, a fine reseller of exotic chocolate.

Needless to say last week me, bacon, and chocolate all came together and this happy picture was taken by John:

Two bars made it to my desk that day.  One I shared with that lucky class of ActionScript 3 students.  The other bar…

If you find that you to love bacon the following links may help you on your quest in savoring that salty treat:

• Bacon Cups
• Best BLT Ever
• Bacon Soap
• Bacon Mints
• and Elvis’s contribution to Bacon