Hello and welcome to my first ever blog -- the blog MacNeil. If you'd like to learn more about me, here are links to my tiny company, personal website, LinkedIn page, and résumé.

The blog's name comes from my distant ancestors who were members of the Clan MacNeil, from the island of Barra off the western coast of Scotland. I have yet to visit Scotland, but my lovely wife Meg and I are saving our pennies and hoping to travel there soon.

To start out, this blog will be a place for me to share programming experience and code with the iPhone developer community. There have been many occasions when a useful piece of information in someone's blog helped get me over a programming hurdle. Now that I have one iPhone app under my belt and I'm well into app number two, I have some code and insights of my own to give back. So, my first few posts will be resuable code and tips for iPhone developers. From there, I'm not sure where I'll take it. Maybe some music chatter? I don't have a drop of musical ability, but I inherited a great of love of music from my dad, who has the largest collection of LP's (and CD's) of anyone I've met. Ever. We're talking more music than your typical public library.

Now that I've brought up music, there is something that's been on my mind. It's a music history "what if." I've been wondering how history would have unfolded if David Byrne and Billy Joel had crossed paths in a New York bar during their formative years? What if they had hit it off and started a band?

Have you ever heard someone say, "They could be the next Beatles." It's generous praise to be sure, though it also seems like the kiss of death for a band when music critics start putting it in print. Squeeze and Oasis come to mind. Those bands were doing fine until they got saddled with the "next Beatles" moniker. This got me wondering whether the whole idea of "the next Beatles" is a false premise. Maybe there can be no such thing? But then... what about the Police? (Similar to the Beatles, especially with the evolution/reinvention thing, but too quick to self-desctruct.) What about U2? (More like the Stones, hot and cold and built to last.) So I've been thinking about the individual musical styles of John Lennon and Paul McCartney and the chemistry that took place between them. Song credits on Beatles albums always say, "Lennon/McCartney," but it's not hard to tell which songs are Paul's (Hey Jude), which are John's (Across The Universe), and which bounce back and forth between the two of them (Happiness Is A Warm Gun or A Day In The Life). When I listen to their solo work and think about how it relates it to the music they made together, it all gets so dang fascinating that Meg ends up grabbing my shoulders and yelling, "Snap out of it dude!"

So what's the point? I guess it's just this. The solo work of David Byrne, Billy Joel, John Lennon, and Paul McCartney has some distinct parallels. A couple Brits and a couple Americans an ocean and almost a decade apart, but with the same basic chemistry. Try imagining a music history in which the Beatles never happened -- just solo Lennon and solo McCartney. Or better yet, imagine that you could sit a 21 year-old Billy Joel next to an 18-year old David Byrne sometime in the early Seventies, shortly after the Beatles broke up. Just try not to say something dumb like, "You guys could be the next Beatles."

But enough with the hypothetical hogwash. Music is for later. First it's all about code, gadgets and geekery.

So... welcome again to the blog MacNeil. If you find anything useful, or have any thoughts, suggestions or whatever, please post a comment! I'd love to hear from you.