Tag Archive: Code Learning

Friday the 13th…

So did something bad happen today? Ehm nope still the same. Nothing special. Was I extra special in everything that I did? I don’t think so.

I do wonder why it’s considered a bad day for most when you mention Friday the 13th or the number 13. Maybe I should look into it. Unlucky numbers.

My lucky number is 14. Why? Ehm I guess I was born on the 14th. Or that I have some good association with the number 14. It’s all about the memories that I linked to this number. And it would or could be another number I was born on a different day. Number 4 is also a good number for me. Anyways tomorrow it’s the 14th. The 14th of February….which means Valentine’s day. The day of bloody hearts. You know Saint Valentine and bloody sacrifices.

Back to number 13 then or Friday, the end of the week… what to do? What to do indeed. For me it’s not really weekend. Or more to the point I don’t really have a real work week. So everyday is a weekend or workday for me, when you work at home. To be honest I’ve been kinda lazy these couple of days. I didn’t do any coding at all. What I did do was read some books about Swift. Which can be considered studying, right? Maybe not. It was like read something and play Hearthstone. Read some more and do something else. Read it again and got distracted by another thing. Key word “Distraction”.

Not much more to say to be honest. I’m still waiting for a review response from Apple. I made a small widget app and submitted it at the beginning of January. It got rejected because I didn’t include a privacy policy link. So included it in website. And now a couple of weeks later the app is still in review. Sigh. And that’s partly why I’m not really in the coding mood. Because part of me want to know the result, before I can move on to something else. It’s like I’m stuck in a “for loop” and the only way to get out of it is a “break” statement from Apple.

Hmm looking at the above. I think I need to “switch” things up, instead of waiting for…

 

TweetPaper App

IconBig5TweetPaper is finally live after month of hard work. What is

What is TweetPaper?
TweetPaper is a Twitter Client.

So? There are a lot of Twitter Clients in the AppStore.
Indeed, you are right.

What’s so special about it?
It depends on what you consider special. It can’t turn water into wine or iron into gold. But what it can do is display your Twitter feeds in a new way.

In a new way?
Yes, TweetPaper organizes your tweets into 3 separate view-frames (today, yesterday and days ago).

Ehm… view-frame?
Yeah, weird name. Open for suggestions. But the point is that a view-frame only contains tweets for the day of interest.

Day of interest?
“Today” is for the current tweets and “yesterday” for all the tweets from yesterday.
“Days ago” is a special one, which allows you to select a day and all the tweets of the selected day will be shown to you. It acts like an archive function.

Hmmm….what else can you tell me about view-frames?
A view-frame collects all the tweets of a day and analyzes the tweets specifics, like hashtags, mentions and retweets. All this info is gathered in the “Daily Statistics” frame that you can select.

Another frame?
Not quite, it more a part of the view-frame itself. Because each view-frame has one.

So it’s more a sub-frame or sub-view.
Yes, that’s the right programming term. But going back to the “Daily Statistics” frame, here you can find all kinds of tweet statistics. Like how many tweets or retweets was send by you or the persons that you follow. And when you click on them you’ll see a graphic display of that info.
“Daily Statistics” also contains a daily top section. Daily top lists the top 3 in tweets, retweets, mentions and hashtags.

Hah…now I understand the name statistics.
Yes, but an easy and understandable one, with…

What ever! What else?
Daily Statistics also tracks your following and followers count.

Ahh…you’ve got my interest. Tell me more.
The info is listed at the top. When you gain followers, you’ll see the gained amount in green. This also applies for following and favorites.

In green?
Yes, in green. Because it turns red when you lose a follower or stop following someone. It’s a color choice.
Furthermore when you click on it, you’ll get a graphic chart about the changes.

Hmm ok. Anything else beside statistics?
At the bottom when you follow someone new, they will be listed there, profile picture changes and other updates.

No I mean something else beside statistics!
There is another sub frame called “My Daily Stream”. Just like “Daily Statistics” you’ll find it in all three of the view-frames.

What does “My Daily Stream” do?
It list all the tweets from the all persons that you follow in a “mini day” timeline.

Hmm that’s not really special.
Indeed, you are right again. But it’s there because… I can’t really omit it without other users complaining about missing it… can I?
It’s an expected feature nowadays.
But there is a twist.

A twist?
Yes “My Daily Stream” acts as the main stream of that day and contains all the tweets of all the persons that you follow.
And as the main stream it can be divided into sub streams.

Sub streams?
Yeah, sub streams… for lack of a better word choice. Again open for suggestions. Each person that you follow will have a sub stream. This opens up a faster way in navigating through your twitter feeds and allows you to ignore certain other tweets. There is also a hide function, by tapping on a user in the main stream you can hide their tweets.
Furthermore you can switch between the sub streams by swiping left or right and the next following person’s tweets will be shown.

Hmmm ok. What else?
To focus on the tweet message itself, all other non essential tweet info like replies, retweets and favorites counts are hidden. You can see them by tapping on the tweet.
Furthermore the reply, retweet and favorite buttons are all listed inside one button. A design choice.
Links in tweets can also be accessed with the more button.

Hmm design choice you say.
Yeah, that’s the hype and keyword nowadays.
Designed for iOS 7.
Minimalistic Design.
Colorful.
Gesture based navigation.
And some other design oriented words.
So yes a design choice. But also it felt right when I coded it like that. Of course things can change. Again open for suggestions.
Anyways try it out and let me know what you think.

So that’s all then?
No there is still a lot more to tell, like you can navigate between the view-frames with a swipe-drag gesture and see the paper folding animation (hence the name TweetPaper and also the newspaper aspect of news for a day).
TweetPaper was designed with the mindset: checking Twitter once or twice a day is enough.
To handle timezone difference and with it the date selection. All tweet follows the Twitter GMT-0 time and date creation notation. But but you can select a specific time zone in the settings menu (view-frame days ago, top right side).
Then there is customization where you can select a background image. And the special thing about this is…. you have to see it to understand it.
As for privacy concerns, all I can say is that I don’t collect them. All your Twitter statistics stays in TweetPaper. And when you delete the app all the data is deleted as well. You Twitter account is accessed using Apple’s social framework. You can allow access to it in the general settings menu.

 

TweetPaper Promo

TweetPaper Promo

 

App update: Vitamins 101 (2.4)

20131108-110623.jpg

Like everything: it all starts with an idea. In this case an update for Vitamins 101. An idea for adding new features to it, like what about a compare option? Ok, I can do that.
What about some wiki info? Ok I can do that.
What about a DRI table? Ok, I can do that.
What about a conversion table? Ok, I can do…no wait a moment… I already did that.

Next question: where to put all this? A slide in table with buttons for all those option? A toolbar at the bottom? One button in the navigation bar that calls up a popover menu? A menu that comes up with a gesture?
Those are all possibilities. I guess it all depends on the taste and personal preferences. But I chose the separate button options…or more I started drawing a general layout of what I got from my previous update. Start at what you have. And from there I started to add the things I want. Draw a button there…and add an arrow. An new interface (which is just another square drawing). Put in some scribbles. No need for fancy things. Because it’s just me. I don’t have an independent developer who needs to read my scribbles & decipher the things I want. But sometimes I do need to switch between thought processes. Design issues in layout. I want it t look like this. But then the programmer in me thinks no… I can’t do that, it will lead to a crash. Or the Apple Human Interface Guidelines will reject that straight away. Yeah there is something like that. Anyways, where was I?

The creative process starts with an idea. And from there…it all depends on the person. I for one have to put it on paper first and visualize it in my mind. When I have the general picture. Then the coding starts. Sometimes fast and easy to execute. And sometimes painful with lots of crashes & error messages. Sigh…back to looking up through code examples and libraries. And the painful feeling man I don’t know anything. I don’t understand it. Why can’t I do it in one try? So needless to say lots of negative feelings. And some inner screaming. Arghh….

But why do you keep or choose this line of work? Ehm…don’t know. But one thing is for sure when I do find the answer I’ll let you know.
Live is full with ups and downs. Negative feelings…and positive feelings. All I can hope that it balances out in the end.
Anyways enough of my random thoughts. The update for Vitamins 101 is done. It’s at version 2.4 now. Let me know what you think….

 

The digital result:

Guide1_Vitamins

Learning Cocoa… zzz

cocoa_cupSo finally decided to try Mac OSX programming. This should be easy with some experience in iOS programming. True, true… but also not true.

My first impression while still using X-Code as the main programming tool and objective C as the language. There is still a lot that I’m not familiar with: first so many new options in Interface Builder. This is all nice, but a new list of Outlet names and connections to learn. Second new frameworks & methods to learn. Third the feeling that I don’t know anything at all… guess it’s research & reading time for now.

 

Personal note: I already fell asleep twice while reading a Cocoa Programming book. My mind trying hard to learn the content by heart (new and interesting things and also a repetition of old things). So how would a describe: why I fell a sleep? A psychological explanation called Cognitive Restructuring or just plain old NLP.

The content wasn’t that boring and it didn’t cause my mind to wander off into NeverEverLand….. oeps NLP would make this into:

The content was that boring and it did cause my mind to wander off into NeverEverLand…

So something new then. Ehm the content contains a mixture between old and new information. The new information did catch my interest and attention. But the old one didn’t and made me think of boring old repetition.

The word to look out for is “boring”. Because “old” can and is in someway the new “new”. Vintage is in nowadays. And old can be associated with wise. With age comes wisdom.

To me repetition is a good word and it equals hard work & progress. It’s training, training and training again. Like grinding for XP.

How to reframe “boring”? Boring can’t equal sleep, because I already have my daily dose of caffeine & it’s 13:00 now. The sun is shining, certainly not night time & bed time. So what about distractions? What are the things that causes my mind to wander off? If I picture my mind as a processor, then a part of the attention/resource is focussed on something else instead of reading the Cocoa Programming book. Pinpoint it and resolve it before going further.

Give in to the distraction, enjoy it but put a time limit on it.

Do something totally different like writing a blog post. Which is what I’m doing now. Plus updating the website, something that I keep putting off.

Find another book to read. Sometimes it can just be the wording that a writer use, which does’t connect with you. So glad that I’m not in school/university anymore and that I have the freedom to choose & gather my own information resource. And the internet is a big, big resource pool.