Chris' Blog.

My occasional thoughts on iOS development, developers careers, trying to make an income from the App Store, and updates on life in general.

Hi, I'm Chris Hulbert. You may remember me from such blogs as 'I'm going to start an business making iOS apps', 'Oh wait, forget that, I'm actually going to become a contractor', and 'Oh crap - my home builder went broke and so did I'... ;)

The above was a Simpsons reference if you missed it.

Well, I haven't been able to blog publicly in a while. Which may explain why half of you have forgotten who I am, and have your fingers poised about the 'unsubscribe' link. The thing is, I had a few issues getting the house approved and didn't really want to talk publicly about it, in case someone from council reads my blog (I know, unlikely). But I can talk now, because: (drumroll...)

The house is finished, all officially approved (we got our 'Final Occupancy Certificate'), and we've moved in!

That's it - we're at the finish line!

Thanks everyone for all the encouragement over the years. Well, we still have to do the landscaping, but close enough. And financially we're still in some debt caused by the crummy builder, but that'll be solved sometime this year.

Anyway, it's been a while, but after all the emails of support I've received from everyone over the years, I figured I owed you all an update. I'll understand if you have forgotten who I am and unsubscribe.

Keep in touch, friends!

So I've written in the past about how nice WebP is. I'm currently working on a personal project that'll incorporate maybe ~260 full-screen retina images on the iPad - lots of pictures! I want them to be WebP to keep download sizes sensible. So i tried a cocoapod (iOS-WebP) that purported to decode WebP for me, but it didn't work. So here's my solution which is simpler, and works:

Header file:

//
//  UIImage+WebP.h
//
//  Created by Chris Hulbert on 9/02/2014.
//  Copyright (c) 2014 Chris Hulbert. All rights reserved.
//
//  This gives you methods for sync and async webp image loading.

#import <UIKit/UIKit.h>

typedef void(^WebpImageCompletionBlock)(UIImage *image);

@interface UIImage (WebP)

/// Synchronously loads a webp image. This can be called from any thread.
+ (instancetype)webpImageNamed:(NSString *)name;

/// Async decoding of a webp image on a background thread. Callback is on main thread.
+ (void)webpDecodeImageNamed:(NSString *)name completion:(WebpImageCompletionBlock)completion;

@end

Implementation file:

//
//  UIImage+WebP.m
//
//  Created by Chris Hulbert on 9/02/2014.
//  Copyright (c) 2014 Chris Hulbert. All rights reserved.
//
//  This gives you methods for sync and async webp image loading.

#import "UIImage+WebP.h"

#import <WebP/decode.h>

@implementation UIImage (WebP)

+ (instancetype)webpImageNamed:(NSString *)name {
    // Load the source data.
    NSString *path = [[NSBundle mainBundle] pathForResource:name ofType:@"webp"];
    NSData *data = [NSData dataWithContentsOfFile:path];

    // WebP-decode it.
    int width=0, height=0;
    void *webpDecoded = WebPDecodeARGB(data.bytes, data.length, &width, &height);

    // Free the source data.
    data = nil;

    // Use the webpDecoded data to make a CG context.
    CGColorSpaceRef space = CGColorSpaceCreateDeviceRGB();
    CGContextRef context = CGBitmapContextCreate(webpDecoded, width, height, 8, width*4, space, (CGBitmapInfo)kCGImageAlphaNoneSkipFirst);
    CGColorSpaceRelease(space);

    // Convert it to a CGImage.
    CGImageRef cgImage = CGBitmapContextCreateImage(context);
    // Free the CG context and decoded data.
    CGContextRelease(context);
    free(webpDecoded);

    // Convert the CGImage to a UIImage.
    UIImage *uiImage = [UIImage imageWithCGImage:cgImage scale:2 orientation:UIImageOrientationUp];
    CGImageRelease(cgImage);

    return uiImage;
}

+ (void)webpDecodeImageNamed:(NSString *)name completion:(WebpImageCompletionBlock)completion {
    // Make the queue.
    static dispatch_queue_t queue;
    static dispatch_once_t onceToken;
    dispatch_once(&onceToken, ^{
        queue = dispatch_queue_create("com.splinter.webpdecoder", DISPATCH_QUEUE_CONCURRENT);
    });

    // Decode it in the background.
    dispatch_async(queue, ^{
        UIImage *image = [self webpImageNamed:name];

        // Callback in the main thread.
        dispatch_async(dispatch_get_main_queue(), ^{
            completion(image);
        });
    });
}

@end

You'll need to include Google's 'libwebp' cocoapod for this to work.

Hi everyone, Chris Hulbert here - the iOS guy who seems to always be blogging about my travails building a house, instead of, well, iOS.

So, what's new? My current contract is finishing in a week, and i'm currently looking for new work. If you know anyone in Sydney who needs a great app made, please get in touch.

How's the house? Well, we're still struggling to get it certified. The latest update is that we got three bushfire assessments made (as we back onto a bushy creek), 2 years ago. Two assessments said it's minimal danger. One assessment said it's maximum danger, strangely (this assessment later was retracted by the issuing company).

Well, guess what i discovered recently? The maximum danger assessment is the one that council and the certifier thinks is the official one, even though we've got an email trail proving that our original builder sent them the other (minimum-danger) assessment before they issued the DA. (A DA is an australian development approval. Redtape, basically.)

So, we now have to fight to get the correct bushfire assessment recognised. Priceless! We'll get there, eventually.

Anyway, i just bought a surfboard, which is great fun riding with my girls :)

Keep in touch, friends!

You can see older posts in the right panel, under 'archive'.