Week 7 - The Unexpected Passenger
(Note that the Pebble watch is not the “Unexpected Passenger” mentioned in this post’s title)
I know I’m late by a day, but I was busy until yesterday finishing the latest touches before wrapping up. It doesn’t feel like it’s my first update since I held off from programming a full 7 Days, mainly because after a day I was completely into it again, and because right now it feels as if I never stopped, and that I completely did the right thing back then.
I have to warn you, though. There won’t be many pictures to showcase this time, mainly because I didn’t feel the need to draw a lot more, and because the project as it is right now is in an inconsistent state: the Engine is kind of disabled for timeframe refurbishments, so I can’t run the new code, and even if I did there’s nothing new to show. But some interesting work was done, and I can’t wait to tell you all about it.
Week 6 - Rest and No Relaxation
(Cover art by mqken at DeviantArt)
Beginning to write this is getting harder than I thought, since to keep my 17” MBP comfortable to write (50-55 degrees Celsius) and without over-heating I’m watching last week’s episode of This Week in Tech on my iPad next to me and thus getting the closest thing of an idea to what it is to have a pair of Google Glass on and above your eyes.
So, what was it for this week? I guess I sounded pretty down seven days ago, needing a big break or something. To be honest, by Monday I was already feeling the “need” to get to work, but I told myself that was precisely the reason why I had to stop for a few days. Then a couple more days went on, and I started feeling like maybe stopping was not a good idea, that it’d get a bit hard to get back on the groove, but then I started really working towards the kind of problems I wanted to solve, and here I am with a big picture of what the Zealot Engine is missing.
So yes, no code this week. I read Ender’s Game, and I also put my eyes through multiple WWDC sessions on Grand Central Dispatch plus a few Apple Developer Guides on Objective-C, Concurrency, OOP, etc. What we’re going to do is quickly review again what was the main issue which brought me to a halt last week, and after that we’ll cover the main four features I believe are missing from our Zealot Engine concept.
Week 3.5 to 5 - Gap Technology (Part II)
This is the week where I’m going to admit to myself, and to you, that this little project has become a lot more than I thought it’d be, because it’s now a part of me. It no longer seems to be just “an exercise” or “a prototype”. It’s my work now; part of what I am. A channel through which I’m trying to give form to something entirely abstract (software) using what others judge to be “my experience”. Things got real this week, specially because I went through a hard time to get here, and it’s tough to admit, because in practice, all the hard work was done two weeks ago, before the “Android break” we came to know as my Facebook Newsfeed (yeah, I know it’s “News Feed”, but anyways) Sample code, and in reality it was too, but I crashed against a barrier that, as stupid as it sounds, didn’t even exist to begin with.
Week 3 - Gap Technology (Part 1)
Sunday. I’m back, and it’s honestly been a long week for me. I had a lot of fun doing this, and I seriously thought I would either not hit my goals or not dodo as much work as I wanted to. For the first time in the last 21 days, I failed my own expectations, but given how complicated everything came out to be, I’m really really glad about how things ended.
Are you ready? This might get long again. Just to be sure, I won’t be writing this in the Tumblr site itself but using iA Writer for the Mac :)
Week 2 - Laying down the keel
Let’s get right to it.
Week 2 was the week where I decided the occupation that’d keep me working on iOS for an unforeseeable number of weeks, or at least that’s the idea I was pursuing. I had a rough idea at the start of what I wanted to do, but again, I did not want to mark an “X” in the calendar saying “this has do be done by then”. No. It hasn’t proven to be a good solution for me in the past, and I won’t be able to change the outcome of things if I don’t change the process itself. Yes, there were goals for week 2, but there were very reasonable goals, and there were goals I knew I could do without rushing in. So let’s dive right in.
Week 1 - Password Protection
OK, time to fill you in on what’s been going on.
21 days after my last post, it’s time to bring you back up to speed. I have been publishing some photography, as you’ve seen from my Twitter and Google+ pages, and even though I’d normally be posting my own words next to all of them, I haven’t: something else has been eating into my writing, which is programming.
Up until two weeks ago, I’d been heavily working on picking up my iOS skills which had been pretty much left to dust since the Summer of 2011. Back then I was pursuing a very, very big project which was completely out of scope for the time I had available it even if I was unemployed back then (the primary reason why I took the chance to follow it). Now, I know things don’t count unless you finish them, so that scar has been on me since back then: a ghost telling me there’s something I set out to do, but failed to deliver.
The specific reasons why that project failed are not for today to discuss. What you should know though, is that it’s been a weight I’ve been carrying over me for a very long, long time, and perhaps I might sought out to lift it off my back now, step by step, correcting everything I did wrong that time, and not “running into” things, but eating the cake piece by piece: starting from the outside, and carefully running to the inside from all sides, not biting from different angles to eat it from different directions managing different goals at the same time. I’m going to take this slow, but in a very methodical manner.
Against The Informer(s)
Apparently, I’m not the only one who deeply misses Manhattan’s most flattering show in recent years. I thought I had it bad, chasing every week the ups and downs of a set of cool kids fresh out of high school, fresh out of college (wait! did they ever finish? I can’t remember a graduation episode…) who clashed with each other barely understanding what was the right way to cope with their feelings, but at the same time, I absolutely loved the show. It wasn’t entirely reasonable, the show barely made sense in the real world, but it made sense to me, because it got rid of anything else that wasn’t just “feelings” and it allowed its characters a “do what you want and get away with it” approach, no strings attached; it was all pure desire, emotion, and self-satisfaction. Something we barely get in a world where we’re more busy of being kind and taking care of others instead of pursuing what we really want and asking for it if it’s in someone else’s hands to give it to us: and yes, you’re allowed to take those words and give them the meaning you need them to have, that’s why I wrote for you.
Right, let’s cut to the chase.
About a week ago, I noticed my group of close friends started “liking” a page in Facebook, it was called “El Informer de la ULL”. Its cover picture and its name, translated to Spanish “The Universidad de La Laguna’s Informant” made me believe at first it was some kind of politics movement; an insider who was within the main campus of the University and who was happy to spill the beans on what exactly was going on with the money the University has been raking in, especially this year when they handsomely increased our tuition fees. Except it wasn’t that.
The relentless month of gaming
Here it comes; the month when two of the most anticipated games in recent years will suddenly be released, as if nothing else were happening this year. Not another entry in one of the most successful gaming franchises of all time, not another insane year in which we’ll see yet another Die Hard film, what looks like an extraordinarily insane render of what a Transformers vs. Godzilla fight on Earth would look like, not to mention a sixth installment of one of the most loved racing franchises ever recorded in my own island, as well as, say, a new Start Trek film, a reboot of the Man of Steel (oops!), Iron Man 3, Thor 2… am I leaving anything behind? Oh, I’m sure I am.
2013
I come with pictures!!! Haha. So here we are, beginning our new year, 2013. And since I’ve recently promised I wouldn’t skip so much this year and that the blog will be back with some technology and even some development stuff, I wanted to kick start things soon, instead of playing Final Fantasy VII.
Ending 2012 (Nikon 50mm f1.4g prime first impressions)
I’m not really sure whether I would’ve loved someone to tell me, when 2012 began, what I was going to go through in just 12 months. I guess you could say the year could be split into two halves, the half that went quickly and at the same time slowly, and the latter half, which has gone slowly, but at the same time feels like a blink. It kind of has to do with all of the things I lived through in these months; first six were all personal, later six were all about re-discovery, self-satisfaction and some key, major decisions taken.
You must have realized by now this blog started all well and fired up, until a rock hit somewhere in April slowing me down. Then we picked things up in the summer, and we went back down. On the second half of the year, it’s all been about photography, while on the first part, it was all technology. Going into 2013, I’d like to mix both things a lot more, but I have to admit I’d also like to get a third part in: development. I still believe this has been my most successful blog so far, because 2012 has shaped me in many ways, and I knew from the start personal blogging would have a big part in it. I needed to somehow rebuild myself in the second part of the year, and a small & humble Nikon D80 has been my anchor in that department.
Getting back to reading and re-discovering after many months what I really enjoyed about software development in these last few days has lifted the veil on what 2013 could end up being, no matter the outcome I’m pretty excited about it, and once again, I’ll be here letting you know what’s going on, whilst sharing my knowledge on technology as well as discovering my photography next to you.
