Barbara Tozier https://www.barbaratozier.com/posts.html Personal website and blog https://www.barbaratozier.com/assets/messy-bee.jpg Barbara Tozier https://www.barbaratozier.com/posts.html quarto-1.9.36 Sun, 27 Sep 2026 04:00:00 GMT WESP 2026-09-27 https://www.barbaratozier.com/posts/260927-wesp-20260927/

2026-09-27

This Week’s Puzzle

Name a well-known U.S. geographic location in six letters. Move the last letter two places earlier in the name and you’ll get a regular English word. Say that word out loud. It will sound like a well-known geographic location abroad. What places are these? Here’s a hint: Neither place name is a city.

Denali -> denial -> [Th]e Nile

]]> puzzles https://www.barbaratozier.com/posts/260927-wesp-20260927/ Sun, 27 Sep 2026 04:00:00 GMT 100 Days of SwiftUI https://www.barbaratozier.com/posts/260912-100-days-of-swiftui-day-92/

Day 92

2026-09-12

Project 18, part 1

Layout and geometry

How layout works in SwiftUI

Alignment and alignment guides

How to create a custom alignment guide

Absolute positioning for SwiftUI views

]]> 100 days SwiftUI https://www.barbaratozier.com/posts/260912-100-days-of-swiftui-day-92/ Sat, 12 Sep 2026 04:00:00 GMT 100 Days of SwiftUI https://www.barbaratozier.com/posts/260830-100-days-of-swiftui-day-91/

Day 91

2026-08-30

Project 17, part 6

Flashzilla: Wrap up

Quiz: 11/12

Challenge

  1. When adding a card, the text fields keep their current text. Fix that so that the textfields clear themselves after a card is added.
  2. If you drag a card to the right but not far enough to remove it, then release, you see it turn red as it slides back to the center. Why does this happen and how can you fix it? (Tip: think about the way we set offset back to 0 immediately, even though the card hasn’t animated yet. You might solve this with a ternary within a ternary, but a custom modifier will be cleaner.)
  3. For a harder challenge: when the users gets an answer wrong, add that card back into the array so the user can try it again. Doing this successfully means rethinking the ForEach loop, because relying on simple integers isn’t enough – your cards need to be uniquely identifiable.

Still thirsty for more? Try upgrading our loading and saving code in two ways:

  1. Make it use an alternative approach to saving data, e.g. documents JSON rather than UserDefaults, or SwiftData – this is generally a good idea, so you should get practice with this.
  2. Try to find a way to centralize the loading and saving code for the cards. You might need to experiment a little to find something you like!

My job is really draining my brain, so I’m gonna just stop here with this project.

cartoon image of a brain with a battery at low level

]]> 100 days SwiftUI https://www.barbaratozier.com/posts/260830-100-days-of-swiftui-day-91/ Sun, 30 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT WESP 2026-08-30 https://www.barbaratozier.com/posts/260830-wesp-20260830/

2026-08-30

This Week’s Puzzle

Think of a state capital and say it out loud. Change one vowel sound in it to name something many schoolkids study. What things are these?

Phoenix -> physics

]]> puzzles https://www.barbaratozier.com/posts/260830-wesp-20260830/ Sun, 30 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT Scenes from the week https://www.barbaratozier.com/posts/260823-scenes-from-work/

2026-08-23

I started a new job recently and I am enjoying it very much. The office is near to my house – about a 30-minute walk so I won’t do it every day (yet), but I did walk home on a nice afternoon this week and saw this nest.

Bald-faced hornet’s nest 

It’s a bald-faced hornet’s nest which I am informed isn’t a hornet but a type of yellowjacket wasp. (I was on the other side of the street!)

The office building is a “Class-A” office space, meaning it’s schmancy. I haven’t worked in such a building for a long time, and never in one that had multiple tenants. I can’t photograph inside the office itself, but here is something I saw the other day…

Modern steel stairwell next to tall glass wall 

There is always something interesting to photograph 📷

]]> photography life https://www.barbaratozier.com/posts/260823-scenes-from-work/ Sun, 23 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT WESP 2026-08-23 https://www.barbaratozier.com/posts/260823-wesp-20260823/

2026-08-23

This Week’s Puzzle

Spell out the numbers from 13 to 20 – THIRTEEN, FOURTEEN, FIFTEEN, SIXTEEN, SEVENTEEN, EIGHTEEN, NINETEEN, TWENTY. Select one letter from each word, in order, to name another number. No anagramming is necessary. What number is it?

INFINITY

]]> puzzles https://www.barbaratozier.com/posts/260823-wesp-20260823/ Sun, 23 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT 100 Days of SwiftUI https://www.barbaratozier.com/posts/260822-100-days-of-swiftui-day-90/

Day 90

2026-08-22

Project 17, part 5

More with Flashzilla

Fixing the bugs

Improving accessibility and UX

Adding and deleting cards

He shows using UserData, but of course we could use SwiftData or something else. I’d probably want to have a way to import questions and answers.

In Swift 6 I got “Call to main actor-isolated initializer ‘init()’ in a synchronous nonisolated context” for the .sheet line.

.sheet(isPresented: $showingEditScreen, onDismiss: resetCards, content: EditCards.init)

The fix is to use a closure – which in his example he removed, saying something something syntactic sugar.

.sheet(isPresented: $showingEditScreen, onDismiss: resetCards) {
            EditCards()
        }

Apparently Swift 6 went low-sugar for this code.

]]> 100 days SwiftUI https://www.barbaratozier.com/posts/260822-100-days-of-swiftui-day-90/ Sat, 22 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT 100 Days of SwiftUI https://www.barbaratozier.com/posts/260811-100-days-of-swiftui-day-89/

Day 89

2026-08-11

Project 17, part 4

Continuing with Flashzilla

Coloring views as we swipe

  • Swipe right → correct
  • Swipe left → guessed wrong
  • take care to consider differentiation without color

Counting down with a Timer

“Add a little bit of pressure to get the user to speed up”

I really don’t like timed games

Detect when the app is moved to the background so the timer doesn’t cheat you out of seconds

Ending the app with allowsHitTesting()

Use to disable swiping cards when the timer runs out

]]> 100 days SwiftUI https://www.barbaratozier.com/posts/260811-100-days-of-swiftui-day-89/ Tue, 11 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT 100 Days of SwiftUI https://www.barbaratozier.com/posts/260810-100-days-of-swiftui-day-88/

Day 88

2026-08-10

Project 17, part 3

More with gestures — starting on the Flashzilla app

Designing a single card view

  • since flash cards are traditionally on 3x5 index cards, we’re going to force landscape mode

Building a stack of cards

Turtles all the way down

samoyed sketch

Moving views with DragGesture and offset()

Moving and rotating discussion that sounds a lot like RoboRally

]]> 100 days SwiftUI https://www.barbaratozier.com/posts/260810-100-days-of-swiftui-day-88/ Mon, 10 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT 100 Days of SwiftUI https://www.barbaratozier.com/posts/260809-100-days-of-swiftui-day-87/

Day 87

2026-08-09

Project 17, part 2

monitoring notifications using Apple’s Combine framework

Triggering events repeatedly using a timer

timers can become publishers, which are things that announce when their value changes

So if your timer publishes every second, then your receiver onReceive() can run something every second until the timer is stopped.

You have to go the “upstream publisher” in order to cancel the connection (if it is an autoconnect)

No guarantee of precise timing

How to be notified when your SwiftUI app moves to the background

@Environment(\.scenePhase)

3 scene phases we need to consider — .active, .inactive, .background

Supporting specific accessibility needs with SwiftUI

Using more @Environment variables to see if the user has certain accessibility

samoyed sketchsamoyed sketch
]]> 100 days SwiftUI https://www.barbaratozier.com/posts/260809-100-days-of-swiftui-day-87/ Sun, 09 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT