What is this place?

Can you believe I made a deck of flash cards to study command line functions?
Can you believe I read articles from 1999 about commands and they were still accurate?
Can you believe that anyone would do StarWars in ASCII??

  I was really impressed with the Ubuntu 12.04 I installed on my laptop. It was a much more grown-up GUI than I was used to. The community was very helpful in strange DELL wireless problems and volume switches and everything was running in a couple of hours. I did this months ago not really even knowing what a Linux distribution was. I easily found some great programs and had everything anyone needed  for daily operations. Plus it ran a lot faster. I used the laptop by switching drives so that I could go to XP, Vista, Ubuntu at will for several months. Then, eventually I stopped putting in the Windows drives and left it at Ubuntu.

 At work we have some deployed RedHat 5 systems, but we test and develop in Centos 5. My gut says they are different but the geeks call it the same - yet fear unplanned updates. Jury is still out.

 I did some training in Fedora running in a VM on Ubuntu.

 I installed Centos 6 on my home laptop to replace Ubuntu (entire rant here withheld).

 Between all these systems, there is nothing that seems the same at first glance. I remember (90's) when Windows decided that it's vendors had to follow a spec for applications so that there was a consistent look and feel to all programs. Sure that started as printer drivers (if you haven't heard of printers they are electronic devices that kill trees - go as your Father) and then progressed into the Tsarist regime we have today; but that consistency was important.I liked hitting the same key in all programs. It really cut the learning curve and made all of us more productive. These days, even Windows isn't following those rules very well so maybe that is now a moot point (another rant that could have been). That familiarity is missing in these non-windows systems. I think it will yet play a role.

 Being NOT on a MAc, and NOT on a Windows machine is very very freeing feeling. I totally am getting my geek on these days. There is a great satisfaction getting something done now. Of course, it is a bit harder. But I really know what I just did. I had to research what my choices meant. I had to decide that what I was doing was best for my goals. I was learning throughout the whole experience.
  I've built a couple of dozen systems from scratch now; On laptops, PC's, VMWare, VMBox and HyperV platforms. They are the same, yet they are different. There is subtlety and finesse and domain knowledge and discovery and mystery. But nothing catastrophic . Nothing unusual. Nothing insurmountable. 

 Where am I? I'm at the point where I have learned that you will get out of a Gnu/Linux system what you put into it. Its pretty linear that way. In Windows you get what you pay for.

REFS:

Ubuntu
Centos
blinkinglights.nl
   or if you are windows without telnet just watch Josh's recording here!
 Cygwin This is the best tool ever! 

Closing thought(s):

 I've learned so much and know so little, and I now know I know so little now that I know now what I need to learn now to know how to now the know how.  Now you gno.No?

The universe is against me (or for me)

Got roped into working on a Linux deployment at work. Dug deep into Redhat, Centos and Ubuntu in the last two months. Gnu/Linux (outside of apple) has actually come some lengths since I looked at it five years ago.

Dropped my apple iPhone, bought a Google with 4.1 and dove straight into the abyss. Again.

I was getting bored with Windows anyways ...

Closing thought(s):

Could be worse. Could be out of a job.

Quit quitting quitter

OK, I'll try it again (lawsuit won, jobs in demand), plus one of those crazed deviants from the edges of society has pointed out that there is MonoDev. Is this goodbye to the 3rd World of objective c?  What will I complain about when it works?

REFS:

Mono Dev

Closing thought(s):

Is it to late?

Don't remind me

I see it here just off my desk and I cringe. I hate your slim figure, you remind me of futility and waste.

REFS:

Everyone else is thinking it aren't they?

Closing thought(s):

Reoccurring theme ...

Still meh on the Mac

But I got this cool game on the iPhone!

Looked into the Windows 7 phone now that their new version is up and running. Guess what? It looks just like Mac. Developer tracks and distribution follow the same motif ($100 bucks and a cloud store). One has to hand it to Apple for the innovation as they got that in spades.

Here's the deal though: I can run the wPhone out of Visual Studio. I can write in c#, write games using XNA.I don't have to feel like I'm in a Conan the Barbarian spin-off when I code because I'm bashing cron. Wait, that sounds kinda fun.

Yet, when I conceptualize an application I think in terms of iPhone not wPhone. I own an iPhone, not a wPhone. My iPhone is free (company paid) whereas a wPhone would cost me an AT&T bundle. My company doesn't seem to want wPhones 'cause they already made that major deal for hundreds of iPhones. An iPhone is still pretty utilitarian for an Outlook-and-occasional-phone-call guy.

REFS:

Microsoft's App Hub - Home site.
Apple's iOS Dev Center site.

Closing thought(s):

... and I just got that cool game that only runs on the iPhone.

Still there?

Gathering gloom

I looked at the mac just laying there the other day. It brought back all those horrid things I learned so far; the marketing hype and later withdrawal; the tribal knowledge learning curve; the intuitively obvious that was only available to non-windows users.

I even fired it back up and started giving it another go. That lasted about five minutes. I don't even like the screen-saver I made for it. I get a sickening sad feeling in my gut sitting with it there so I put it back on the shelf.

Closing thought(s):

My iPhone just told me that the applciation I made and downloaded from the iMac is about to expire. Just reminds me of the $100 I'll never see again.

Mac depression

Slumping from the schlepping

The best thing about the conference was the sushi we drove to San Diego (technically Mission Bay) to get. Really, the best meal of my life. I think we dropped $160 and ate almost everything on the menu. The next day, we went there for lunch and made sure (I am serious about this) that we did in fact get everything on the menu that we missed the night before.

There just aren't words to describe the high art that can be achieved with sauce, care, dedication and recently dead fish. I have nothing to compare many of the new tastes that I was introduced to in those two days. Simply inspiring.

On the other hand, the conference was an abysmal disappointment. Even the keynote was about how the market for Apple stuff was going the way of the dodo. Although I liked the logic and arguments behind the talk, there wasn't a big take-away for development efforts.

Add to that the fact that there really are no business applications for an iPhone as it isn't really conceptually capable of it. Sure, something small and throw-away might help you for a month or two but its not the platform for the next killer app. I'll give in that we all can come up with a lot of simple applications that do that one thing so well. I sure have. But you can't have 1000 of them on your phone, you'll have to delete stuff just to stay organized. Odds are that your user is going to delete you eventually. Got a corporate application? Better check with the users. Unless you have something that is load/check/close all in about 15 seconds it won't get used like you think.

So you got games, and your price-point is $1, if you are really good maybe a little more. The development system is still a toy in itself and gears itself toward this. Why? This is a hobbyist platform (the new hobbyist not the one from 25 years ago) and quickly falling short of the new entries into the market, notable Google and Microsoft not to mention the big jump in $130 eReaders. Apple kids will be making flashlight copies while the rest of the world moves ahead.

I have thousands of dollars in a Mac, iPhone and development licensing from Apple. The Mac I haven't turned on since this show, the phone I mostly forget at home cause its a pain to carry around and the $100 development license I paid for so that I can get MY OWN apps onto MY OWN phone - well, lesson learned. 

REFS:

Sushi Ota for the meal of your life

Closing thought(s):

All that potential. Tsk, I am hoping for a change and will monitor.

The intuitiveness of the Mac

In windows, there is a keyboard button for this ...

If you want to do a screen capture for a particular application window, you can follow this:-

Switch to the screen that you wan to to do screen capture

Hold down Apple key ⌘ +

Shift + 4 and release all key

Now, You will see the mouse cursor will change to +

Press the space bar once

You will see the mouse cursor change to a camera

Now you can use the camera to select which application window to screen capture

Once finish, you will see a picture file in at your desktop.

That’s the screen capture picture!

REFS:

Answer source:

Closing thought(s):

And here I thought it was me...

Learning and relearning

Wahhaaaa?

The only thing I am learning is how much I don't know about UNIX.

REFS:

I Still feel like this!

Closing thought(s):

Practice not saying "In that space ..."

iThink therefore iMac

iSuppose

iThink iStudy iMac i2much.

What is this place?

New iMac is in ...

This is not as intuitive as people say. After working in Windows since its first release there are a lot of things I do without even thinking about them. Everyone of them is a discovery or , more often, a painful search. It's not the OS or what it does. It's a computer. It does the same thing the windows systems do. It's simply getting around right now.

I have no doubt that for a new user everything here is intuitive. I have to unlearn a lot of habits. Lots. It's not like its hard but it certainly just increased the time I have to invest.

Just editing this post is painful for me right now. Where the heck is the HOME key? Why does the delete key act like the backspace and where is the delete? Not to mention the fact that I keep trying to control-c/control-v when I should be doing the command-c/command-v paradigm and all the function keys are only accessed when using the function button? No wait, that actually makes sense.

Closing thought(s):

Function keys. Hmmmmm.

Essential videos

Brain swimming

Just finished the last in the 15 part series of "In-house App Development Essential Videos" that apple had in their development area. About 20 hours of initial immersion into the Mac world. My head is swimming but it certainly is a decent start.

My favorite was the one on design for iPhone (#13 in the series) named "iPhone User Interface Design". Lots of juicy concepts and things to think about.

REFS:

Apple Developer Center

Closing thought(s):

Just look for the "Getting Started Videos"

Apple Developer Library

Might be the FIRST place to look

I'm expecting the things in this version of C to be at least a little different. Probably in the implementation  but for sure in the memory management area. So this is my list of things to read in order to flush out what I don't know - as a starting point.

These are Apple Developer deliverables so you will need to be signed up to access them.

REFS:

Minimum Read
Apple Developer Objects
Apple Object Oriented Programming with Objective C
Apple Developer Objective C
The library at large ...

Wait wait wait

The hardest part

Computers won't be here until next Thursday. Serious bummer as I had hoped to get some "hands-on" over the long weekend. Not sure if its the waiting or the reading about it and not being able to do anything to solidify it.

If I knew I could get away with it I'd buy one at Fry's Electronics and return it when the one from work came in.

Bah!

More free education

From Apple

Here are Apple's technical sessions fro WWDC this year. Just use your Apple developer account to get in. Play it on your phone, mac, or iTunes if your still stuck in windows.

REFS:

Apple WWDC 2010

Closing thought(s):

Wonder what WWDC stands for?

Free iPhone Development

Lots of free courses on iTunes

I always avoided letting iTunes into my windows world. When they gave me an iPhone 4 for this development effort, I needed it so that I could enable it.

Since then, I have been finding more and more great stuff to use, the latest all the free education from top Universities. Today I found an iPhone course and I am looking very much forward to getting that computer to do the exercises.

REFS:

iTunes at Stanford

Closing thought(s):

I just started it but it looks really great!

Apple's got zombies

Should I be concerned?

Development has a nice helper concept that leaves the SHELL OF AN OBJECT around after it is removed. That lets there be something there to respond if you reference it again. That's a good idea.

Apple has a tendency to have a "fun" names. You would never see windows name something NSZombies.

Closing thought(s):

Now, how to make that into a t-shirt. Hmmmmm.

I didn't know I used that so much

In Windows they call it "hover help"

At least they used to. Microsoft changes marketing names of things all the time. Trouble is that the more I explore Mac stuff, the more this minor help feature seems to go the way of the dodo.

I first noticed it navigating around an apple store on the web. The links just didn't seem to pop up at you. Then, when I installed iTunes on my PC, I was looking for the PAUSE button for some downloads from the free SDK lessons. You cannot tell that's a button!

I mean, the color doesn't change, the size, the cursor icon remains without response. I found myself hovering and hoping for a tag - hover help that is - a little help - moving parts.

The next thing you know I'm asking myself the big question: When I press this, will it pause it, try to play it or some thing that I can not guess yet?

REFS:

This is the stuff I was downloading ...

Closing thought(s):

See if Cocoa or Objective-c has this capacity. Maybe it's just a cultural thing.

Our special food needs for DevCon

 

… will be handled by ourselves

 

http://www.cafejapengo.com/?src=ppc_google_brand_sitelink_officialsite

http://www.hashhouseagogo.com

 

Scary Clowns

This is why C scares me

Was it really a joke? Think about it.

REFS:

Thompson, Ritchie and Kernighan admit that Unix was a prank