New Project - Bloomin' Bouquets

Hi Everyone - long time, no post. I decided that the next few posts were going to be about the process of creating the next iOS app that I am working on. This one is for someone else. A friend of a friend (of a friend maybe?). One of the ways that she produces income is to do floral work for weddings. She decided that an app that let her work out the design of the bride's wedding bouquet would be useful, not only to her but to others. Hence, the app.

We talked about it for an hour at Tim Horton's a month ago. At that time, I was working on the opera, stage managing for a group doing a production of The Barber of Seville. She had jotted some ideas down on a piece of paper. Always a good place to start! I told her I wouldn't be able to begin to really work on the project until late in the month of August, which brings us to this point.

I recalled once finding, somehow, a prototyping application for the iPhone and iPad. I would like to think that I saved the link or the name or something, but I did not. Yay! My thought had been that I would use the prototyper and save myself some coding work, as this particular one output xCode files. So I searched a bit and came up with Prototyper from justinmind (I wonder if that is someone's name...justin - mind). It is doing the trick for me for this project. I did, eventually, find the other app that I had seen - but it runs only on iPad (or iPhone) and I couldn't see doing all of my work on the iPad. Not at this point at least. Though the exporting code is a pretty cool thing...

My "client" has not been breathing down my neck, which is nice of her. She has, in fact, come up with ideas for other projects. And she is working on creating some of the images for the app. My goal was to have some sort of something for her by the end of the month. Which is tomorrow. Eeek! I have a good start on it, I think. And it is helping me to clarify my thinking about how to implement the application. First of all, we need three separate databases. One for the flowers, one for the dresses and one for the bouquets being built. That was a surprise to me. Also, I eliminated one screen that I thought was needed because it just didn't make any sense any more. Yippee! We shall see what the 'morrow brings!

Getting started Again (still)

After a month's vacation from writing, besides the travelogue and starting a new blog, I really haven't been doing any writing or work on Flippety. And I really need to get cracking. The travelogue/blog was good. And I do think I will turn it into a book - at least for mom - if not an actual e-book, that is yet to be determined. And the new blog should be a book eventually as well. I did monetize that one, but so far, no one is clicking on the links so far as I can tell. Apparently, I am not allowed to suggest to people that they click the links. Nor am I allowed to click the links myself. Yet the links and the ads are so underwhelming, I will be surprised if anyone at any time clicks on them. So much for monetizing a blog.

I am getting closer to being willing to publish one of my political blogs. Which one is still a question for me. I am thinking that I might start with the one about a world without money. When researching, I found a few websites out there with posts on the same idea - but they wanted to somehow replace money, not do away with the idea of things having value. But more on that in my "world without money" post at some point.

Meanwhile, I did get another post on the brewpubs blog out. And two more are almost ready. Those were easy ones since they were visited long ago and need a revisit before I can actually evaluate them. (Ok, got these up - I hope to do at least one more this weekend).

Back to Flippety - I really need to make a list of the things I want to do, so that I can do them. I hate it sitting around at 80% complete and not getting that last 20% accomplished. It isn't doing me any good just sitting on my phone. And I am not getting any younger...

It seems like I write a lot everyday - and say nothing. Yay.

NSLog is my friend

NSLog is turning out to be a bosom buddy. It has helped me to figure out what is going on where and how to fix problems. Or rather, cludge around problems at least. What is funny, is that all of what I am doing could end up being even poopier than I think it is. I haven't broken down yet and spent the $99 to become an apple developer so I can't put the application on my iPhone yet. A lot of people say that the simulator and the actual device end up having different issues. Sigh. Anyway, this was supposed to be a happy post about the wonders of NSLog. The main thing trick for me, especially when I have lots of NSLogs flying around or lying in wait, is to be as precise as possible in the message presented - so that I know which log is saying what to me when. And, tadah! After a few hours of work, I have gotten the preferences to work the way I expect them to work. Without nearly as much cludging as I thought I would have to do. Actually, this has given me an insight into how I can better streamline the app. One day....

Now, back to High Score persistence...

And when in doubt, do an exercise. The one I am doing now is an exercise on storyboarding from Big Nerd Ranch's iOS Programming. Yippee! Ok, that was silly. Fun, but silly. On to a webview application. Yippee!

And back to persistence. I am getting very close to being able to retain scores. Any month now...

Fear of Experimentation

For some reason I have a fear of experimentation where my computer program is concerned. That is slightly irrational since I know that I can just undo the stuff I add fairly easily. Weird. This is one place that the fear of failure ought to be negligible.

What is giving me pause is the whole persistence thing. Saving things and then reloading them. So, I decided to take the plunge. I am using Big Nerd Ranch's IOS Programming Book (3rd Edition) and Beginning iOS 5 Development and morphing their examples into my application. It seemed like a pretty daunting task, to tell the truth. I have taken a few steps forward and a step or two back. It seems like it will eventually work. Maybe. Yay! Fear is the mindkiller!

A friend sent me an article yesterday about a guy who went from his deathbed to rich by selling apps. I think he has 40 of them. I don't know what they are or what they do, all I know is that the article depressed me, though I am sure that wasn't her intent. I think it was meant to be inspirational. Unfortunately, it didn't show me that all things are possible, it showed me that again, quantity and marketing are both more important than quality. And that luck is also important. As another friend pointed out, it was mainly an anecdote, and not a roadmap to success.

Ok, so I backed out of all the work I did and am going to work on something else for the time being. It is just going to take time and experimentation for me to get my head around it and get it all working. I think 10 years will be long enough...Wish me luck!

Catching Up

Hello my two faithful followers! It is about time that I wrote something in the writing blog. About writing. Duh.

I have been keeping up with the blog, for the most part. I have taken a few days off this year - not many. But when I really had nothing to write, or when I got up too late, or when I got too absorbed in all of my other daily activities, the thing that got skipped was my blog. Part of me writes the blog just because I can. Because it is good writing practice. And as I have mentioned before, writing the blog is like a laxative, it keeps my writing from being less blocked. And that is a good thing.

Writing for the computer application is not the same thing at all. Similar, yet, but not the same. It certainly does require a bit of creativity, but not in the wording - that has to be, by definition, exact.  But it still feels like writing. A game has to have a plot. And a through line. And characters, of course. The cool thing about a multimedia game is the addition of graphics and sound!

As I mentioned in my regular post today, I had a few thoughts about one of my writing projects - my self-help book. I am currently planning on this to be an e-book only. Unless I sell lots of them. Which is always possible (but in my life (says he sort of dejectedly) but not very likely. I will keep on plugging along, though...

Just going to slog through it

One step at a time. And it isn't going to be pretty. What I am talking about is creating my first actual application. So far, none of the books has been overly helpful. Sure, they have good information in them, but for the most part, they just aren't helpful to me. So I have decided to try and grab what I need from examples and tutorials and cobble something together. If I can do that, perhaps I can then fine tune it into a project that is actually interesting. Sadly, for some reason, I am having a problem accessing Apple's Developer information. I don't understand what the issue is. They want me to a) sign up with a different ID than the one I am already using and b) to pay $99. A year. So, since they aren't playing nice, I am going to the non-Apple internet to find my answers. And so far, the answers are starting to show up. As I slog, I will make little updates on my progress. I am not guaranteeing anything, as this is a hit and miss sort of process. It took me 20 minutes to add icons to my file. And to make some basic changes in a file that demonstrates how to flip a graphic. Next up, trying to figure out how to flip a graphic. Wish me luck!

Found it on the internet! Exactly the code I was looking for: a piece of code that told me how to place an image where I wanted an image placed. Yippee! Next, trying to figure out how to make the graphic flip when I click on it, not when I click a button...Yay!

Wow, what a bad book

Mr Jordan, if you read this, I am not saying you are a bad person - just that your book - iOS 5 Games Development is not written in a manner that appeals to me personally. That being said, eeeek!

I will work through the book just because I bought it. And then I will try to sell it as quickly as I can before it becomes obsolete.

First off - the very first chapter starts off well enough - baby steps in how to set up a project in xCode. Fine. Assume we know nothing. And then, instead of taking us through the code of how to write the game, the author says "copy these files into your project." Woo hoo! I copied! Now I can feed myself? Not really. I can copy. Heck, I have been a good copier ever since I learned how to copy off of other students back in 1st grade. And though many find mindless typing of text from a book into a file useless, I find it helps me a lot. If I type it all in, it gets into my brain a little. And I can also experiment if I see how things are put together. For instance, he creates buttons in his code - rather than having us use buttons from the library. Well, he lets us build two - the main, meaty buttons, nope - just drag the file in and "lookee what I done!" Sigh. I hope it gets better...Onward to chapter Two.

Not to mention typos galore!

In the current chapter (2), there is a screen shot show two .xib files with a caption saying - your project should look something like this - create groups (he just says that he likes to do it) and then move files around. Sigh. This is a book like Juliet was mentioning - a book where the guy is all inside his own head and does what he does without thinking about it - not realizing that others haven't done this a thousand times...

Wow. I just finished the second chapter. And it is even worse than the first chapter. The man points out things that are obvious and leaves other stuff completely out. For instance, we were supposed to change some files from the first project and incorporate them in the second project. Nowhere was this explicitly pointed out. And it is unclear, often, what code he wants us to write. Finally, he says, run the application and it all should work. Well, it doesn't, because we didn't hook it all up - unless I missed a sentence that said - then do this for all of the other views...

The one good thing about the lack of effort that the author has demonstrated, is that it makes me work hard to try to figure out why things aren't working the way that they ought. At least there are sample files with the finished products in them for me to compare against! Yay! Ok, I just can't be bothered to try and fix the stupid application. I can't find a sentence that sugguests we are supposed to hook up everything. Glarg. On to the next chapter!

Now I am reading chapter five. That is all there is to do with this book - read and look at the examples. The author has not created a hands-on book. Why not give us a sample and have us add something to make it function the way that we want it to? I guess what I am going to have to do is take the example files and play with them to see what changes I can make and where I can break it. And when I break it fix it again. Sigh.

Long and short - this is not a book for doers. If you like reading about code, this book is for you! Want to buy it? Cheap (ish)?