Saturday - Not much to say. Mostly
eaten by gremlins of one kind or another. I did go out to lunch with
friends, at our favorite Thai cafe, and our favorite waitress is back,
after being absent some time, so that's nice.
Not much else going on - I wasted about an hour fruitlessly trying to
download my droid Stellar picture folder via USB, and when that
wouldn't work, via Bluetooth. Both attempts failed, using up over an
hour of my time. Samsung apparently broke the Plug and Play USB stack!
Every few weeks, after I've talked myself into acceptance of the phone,
it does me some dirt. Gahh.
In the end I just copied the entire photo folder into Dropbox, and that
worked, albeit slowly. I made sure the phone was connected to my Wifi -
that's another Samsung 'feature': losing connectivity to a strong
close-by Wifi signal, and having to be rebooted to connect to it.
Almost weekly
This wall all in aid of my usual backup effort at the beginning of the
year of my photo, video, and web page folders. There is the old phone,
the new phone, the T3i, the Optio, and the iPad now, so it's a bit of a
chore to assemble it all in one place. I moved all the stuff over to
the MBP which has a 750GB hard drive, and will back that upon an external drive backup, and I'll burn some DVD's of the year's work when everything is assembled.
And, this year, I'll start backing up the Xcode stuff as well.
Friday
18
January
2013
Friday
- Working away on the app again. S
came over, and we spent a couple of hours going over changes to the
app, artwork and presentation. We both came away with some to-do stuff,
so it was a good meeting that moved things forward!
I got a call in the evening from B, who is back in northern California. I guess his old cat Rita has signs of kidney failure, and was at the vet. I told him about the vitamin drops that seem to help with Riley, and reminded him that our sister's cat Blackie lasted many years with the subcutaneous water injections. Fingers crossed, but like Riley his Rita is 13 years old.
Thursday17 January 2013
Thursday
- A long day working on the app. S
is coming over tomorrow, so I was pushing to get the logic and features
that I have working reasonably well. And spent a full day on it. My
whiteboard is already out of date...
One annoying thing about using the old XP laptop is that it doesn't
have an SD card reader, so I have to read things on the Mac, or use the
USB cable. Not a big deal, but still a bit annoying. I'm keeping my
photo's backed up on the MBP anyway, but I still tend to download and
edit things on the PC because I'm used to the software on it.
Earlier in the week I heard a familiar roar, the sound of a U-2 in
flight (nearly a straight turbojet I think, at least on the old marks).
I grabbed my camera, but the strap got entangled in some stuff, and by
the time I got outside the aircraft was already well to the north,
moving away. And I didn't have the telephoto in. None the less the T3i
came through with a recognizable image. From the photo it's clear that
it's a NASA ER-2,
the white livery and big wing pods are unmistakable. I'd surmise that
it was down at Plant 42 for some sort of work at Lockheed. Then again,
the SOFIA people work out of there, so if there was some sort of
astronomy package/mission that's probable where'd they'd go.
NASA ER-2 over Lancaster.
Wednesday 16 January
2013
Wednesday
- Still working on the app. Put everything on the whiteboards, and
started renaming and re-organizing objects and functions, so the logic
is working again. Still to do:
adding more scenario's and artwork (placeholders for the real things, when they arrive).
and adding the logic for new artwork as well.
work a bit on adding more audio prompts.
work on more highlighting prompts.
and probably add a display timer.
add some "reward" items in there as well.
start hooking things back to the "settings" page, rather than hard wiring everything.
take a hard look at the audio cut-out problem.
We have another artist answer our ad at the JC. Not much of a
portfolio, but better (I think) than the first. May be a little young,
since it's a toy train and Yu-Gi-Oh stuff....
I went to see The Hobbit,
in Imax 3D. Not bad. Very much an action flick, but well done. 3D isn't
my preferred format, but I figured it being expensive and going to the
early mid-week matinee meant that there'd only be a small crowd. And
there were a grand total of four people in the theater, including
myself!
It occurs to me that I haven't "done" anything in a while. No real
vacations or treats. Just work on the house, job and app. All work and
no play...
Apparently my brother B came down this weekend, and is staying with M. I haven't seen him, but from email he and M
went to see my tax people (I recommended them) about the Trust and
income from it, and got some good advice. I guess they are drawing up
new partnership papers, so that's good.
Tuesday 15 January
2013
Tuesday
- Looking at my taxes. It looks like I overpaid already, since it seems
that some money that came in had already had taxes withdrawn, so that's
good.
Working on the app, treating it like a real job (looking at last years
income will do that to you). Got the tiles presenting, animation
working, sound kind of working - it works for a while and then cuts
out. It may be a memory leak of some kind. I'm just throwing stuff in,
and not really managing resources currently. In theory the new ARC
should take care of it, in reality...not so much, apparently.
There is apparently an instrumentation panel that allows one to track
resources, so I'll have to learn how to bring that up and how to use
it. But I always assumed that this would be an issue, after reading my
first Xcode book, so it's not a big surprise.
Monday 14 January 2012
Monday
- Working on the app mostly. It really takes a lot of attention to get
right. The new presentation method is working pretty well, so that's
good.
Sunday 13 January 2012
Sunday
- Cold again. Watched some football, worked on the app, did some
household chores. Got a handle on the UIView's I think, but I made so
many changes to the code, adding and deleting stuff, that the
logic is messed up again. Oh, well.
Note the painting underway in the picture below. This might be my
grandfather's assumption of command ceremony, which would make it
1947. The AA gun has a shield, missing in other pics, and the funnel is
pure white.
Picture of
the Week Photo Notes: The
USCGC Minnetonka, assembled crew, 1947?.
