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)?

Something Satisfying

There is something satisfying about doing computer programming. At least for me. Clicking Run on an application that I have typed into the computer and have the application do what was expected is awesome. True, I am not doing much from scratch yet, but still. And I like adding little differences when I can - when I understand how to do so. And after a book and a half, I am beginning to understand how to do things on my own - and what the heck I am typing. Now, when the book says something like, let's implement a method that does such and so, I am already beginning to think of what I might type to make that happen. For instance, in the language I am using - I start a method with a hyphen! Go me!

Tracking down why things aren't working is also a lot of fun for me. Yes, it can also be very frustrating. But the debugger tools in the xCode SDK are very helpful (for the most part). Often the reason something isn't working is because I didn't read the text closely enough. One of my major lifetime issues - skimming and assuming (yo, Ming, where are you?).

So far, so good. I don't know that I will be ready to craft my first public application any time soon - I just ordered two books on game programming - but I can sense that I might just one day actually be able to do it. Of course, I am also programming myself for failure - gee, where is Mr. Positive Mental Attitude when I need him - thinking that I am going to a) not get the app up on the app store at all and b) if I do I am going to be sued by the beer people. Who knows. Life is short and I am doing the best I can...ok, maybe not the best, but doing ok...

Am I crazy?

Am I crazy to want to try to teach myself how to program for the iPhone and iPad? Probably.

I first became interested in computers when I was a tot. My brother put me behind a big cardboard box (a refrigerator box or two) that he had decorated with various doohickeys and lights and such. He then took old used computer cards (used for programming computers at one point) and would ask a question of the "computer" by writing on the card. He shoved the card in a slot - I wrote the answer on the card while making a lot of noises and shoved the card back out. Yay us!

There was a "computer" lab at the colleges here near where I lived. My best friend at the time, Chris Crenner, who I still love and miss, no he's not dead, he just lives in Kansas and we don't communicate much, used to go in and play with them a bit. It was awesome! Punch cards, punch tape. Lots of fun. I learned a teeny bit of fortran back then. I don't think I even managed to achieve "hello world" but it was cool.

Played with the computer at my high school a bit - but not too much because the truly nerdy/geeky kids really spent all of their time there. I worked on a BASIC game that was an aerial dogfight between two biplanes for a while. Never got very far.

Next up, I fell in love with the Macintosh computer. Ended up doing some system administration, some light scripting in various applications, played with Hypercard (what an awesome app that was), played with databases etc, at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory for 5 years or so. After that, I worked at Macromedia during its heyday. First as a tech support person and lastly as a Sales Engineer (still one of my favorite jobs of all time). In the middle there, I played with scripting with Director and created a nifty little app that stripped all of the text out of a Director file - put it in a spreadsheet - after it was translated, the app put the now translated text back into the director file. Worked decently. I think that was probably my most ambitious programming effort to date. Sigh. Oh, forgot to mention playing with HTML since it was first created.

So, the long and the short of it - I understand programming concepts and am not afraid of coding. I am not looking at an impossible task, just an unlikely one. We shall see. The first project is going to be a beer related game. I was even thinking of asking Jessica Frech (though she is getting too well known already) to take part by singing for the project. It could happen.