WEEK 44 2012
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Saturday - Update: 9/Nov - the Vista laptop has problems, so updates will be later!
Friday
- Working on this and that. Making some progress, but changed the target app to a much simpler one. Baby steps, baby steps...
I've started walking again this week. Various things conspired to
prevent me from doing much over the summer, so I've gotten fat and
stiff. I've a split toenail on the left foot right now, and some sort
of pull on the instep of the right foot, so I'm taking it easy. A mile
a day until Monday, then I'll up it to two miles for a week, then up to
three. I've some newer (non-Merrill) boots, with more room in the toe
area, so maybe the nail will survive.
There's pretty much a media blackout on the whole Benghazi thing.
Apparently the President and Secretary of Defense sat and watched, in
real time, as an Ambassador and his men fought for their lives, for
seven hours, calling for help. And they did nothing. This got all of
two minutes on all the networks (except Fox) combined on the weekend
talk shows last weekend. No coverup lasts forever, so I suspect that
even if Obama wins the election this will cripple him in the future.
There've been attempts by the administration to play it off as (1)
random crowd violence, (2) military ineptitude and (3) CIA evilness. We
know now that it was an expected (by the ambassador) preplanned attack
by militants and the military and CIA have made it clear that they aren't taking the fall.
Thursday 1 November 2012
Thursday
- Okay, got the storyboards working. I actually had to start a new
example - whatever the old version of Xcode did to the project was
enough to corrupt it under the new version too, but a new project
worked OK.
I also updated the laptop to the new version of OSX and got the 'black
screen of death' upon reboot for taking the trouble. Jeez, I thought
Apple was better than this (well, not really, I've learned better over
the summer). After fooling around and learning how to boot into single
user mode I was able to fix it, but... There was also a new new update
to Xcode - since yesterday - and new versions of Safari and iPhoto. Bah.
Using XCODE takes its toll on you.
I was going to try the HDMI out to the flat screen TV, but discovered
that there is no HDMI-out port on the laptop, you have to buy some sort
of converter dongle. The hell with that. No more unneeded expenses
until December!
My friend called in the evening with more ideas for apps. Well, it's good that one of us is moving ahead at a run, I'm feel I'm just sort of crawling, two steps forward and one back.
One forward step is that Xcode now has grid containers for views. Maybe
it always did, but when I looked before I didn't see them. I was
complaining about this to someone earlier this summer, so it's only
right that I now compliment Apple for getting it right.
Yeah, feeling a bit grumpy about it all.
Oh well. Eventually it will pay off.
Wednesday 31 October 2012
Wednesday - Halloween! Went over to
my friend Roger's, as usual. As usual he had an outstanding display,
terrifying to the young and amazing to the older kids. And the weather
was the warmest Halloween night weather (shirtsleeve) that I can
remember in 25 years here in the valley. Very nice.
Still pounding my head
against the iOS programming wall. Today it was storyboards. I tried,
for nearly three hours, to get one to run. Without any success. There is a YouTube video where they do it in 3 minutes....
Examples were out of date, versions of Xcode incompatible, and so on
and so on. When finally I couldn't even drag and drop a control onto a
screen I realized something was really screwy. Yep, just like last time. Another
version of
Xcode was available, with 'improvements' for iOS 6 and some bug fixes
and stability improvements. Which is pretty much what the last update
said. Another 1.6GB download. So I started that and went
off to have a cup of tea and a few Ibuprofen. We'll try again tomorrow,
as I've Halloween obligations tonight.
Also I took time to order some reading glasses. I'm getting headaches, literally, from this stuff.
Xcode shows, to me, all the signs of a software package pushed beyond
it's design limits. Stuff works or doesn't work, almost at
random. Things are added or removed from package. It's almost
impossible to use older documentation because it - Xcode - changed so
much in just the last year. Good luck trying to use a tutorial or book from 2010.
Ah well. I've been here before when programming. It's just more of the
same, I'll get it, I had hoped that it would be less drudgery this
time.
Household things I've learned lately
- coasters should be turned over in use, so that the cork bottoms absorb spills & condensation
- the upper, non-fitted sheet should be laid upside down, so that the turned-down bit exposes the good side
Tuesday
- It's official, the Bounty
did sink, about 90 miles from Cape Hatteras. The Coast Guard rescued 14
of the crew, one more has died, and the captain is still missing at sea
(though in a survival suit). Grim news. There is no ship so sturdy that
the ocean cannot take it.
HMS Bounty, awash & sinking.
Warm, hot even, here. I actually turned on the swamp cooler in the
afternoon. I was going to decommission it for the winter, but didn't
have time last week. So I lucked out a bit there.
I have set the sprinklers to 'every other day, once'. That should help with the water bill.
Working on the iOS stuff. Coming up to speed on the outlets and actions
stuff. But it seems oddly hard to filter input text for numbers only -
essentially it seems one has to write a C or C++ routine to handle
this, which is odd. It would be nice if you could just bring up the
10-key keypad for entry, but all you can specify for text entry is
variations on the standard keypad - which allows the user to enter
alphabetic characters and special characters. I may just not be looking
in the right place. For now, not super urgent, but it needs to be done
before a shipping product (and to satisfy my OCD proclivities).
Also working on transitioning between views and view controllers. The
easiest way is to use 'storyboards', but I want to do it by hand a
couple of times, to understand what is actually happening.
Meanwhile my partner has said that she's come up with ideas for two new apps in the last couple of weeks! I really need to get on the stick here.
Monday
- Tired, but cleaning up the house and doing various chores after the
big weekend. Since it's cleaner now than it's been in a while it wasn't
hard to clean, but there's a lot of stuff to bring out of the garage,
and sort through for keeping/disposal.
The hurricane, Sandy, is hitting the east coast today. So far things
seem OK, but there is a report that the Bounty replica, built in the
1960's, is in trouble offshore. I sure hope not.
Sunday
- We all got up and had a relaxed morning, then headed off to Marie
Callendar's for lunch with D's cousin, who I think I mentioned meeting
at the car wash earlier in the year. They are related through their
maternal grandmother. They too had young(ish) kids, the older in high
school, both polite and well behaved. Nice to see. For some reason MC
had excellent enchilada's, so I had seconds of that and skipped desert.
Then it was a visit to my friend Roger's haunted house, still in preparation, then it was time for everyone to head home.
Tim headed off to San Diego and I walked home from Roger's (with my sore but not too painful foot) and fell asleep again.
But woke up early enough to watch the Giants sweep Detroit to win the
World Series. Detroit finally put up a real fight, taking the game into
extra innings, but it wasn't enough.
