2-7-2018

Submission Accepted!

My iPhone app has been approved by Apple. Nice!

React Native to iPhone

2-6-2018

Submitted my first iPhone app for review on the app store. Big day. Less than two weeks from opening React Native for the first time to producing a MVP and submission. I have to say, that was a rush. Now, on to the next.

React Native II

2-3-2018

The past week has been insane. In my last update I mentioned that I was able to get a quick 'Hello World!' type app running on my device with react-native. Since then, I've really marathoned through react-native learning, and I'm very pleased to say that yesterday I was able to get a more advanced app I'm working on up and going. This one is for those learning Japanese. It's a simple visual matching app for learning the basic hiragana. I could style it up and submit it now, but I want to add more functionality. We will see.

React Native

1-28-18

I've begun working with React Native. I'm really enjoying it. I was able to get my first app running nativley on an iPhone today. It was only the equivilent of a 'Hello World!' app, but it was still really fufilling.

Conversion

1-22-2018

Today is a big day. I'm going to begin the process of converting this into a WordPress blog as an offshoot of my main portfolio site. I'm going to be building a custom theme for this, as I have done in the past.
I've also begun something new. I'm currently reading 5 books at the same time. I've never tried something like this before, and I'm curious to see how it goes. I know that in areas like language aquisition and in regards to habits in general, there is a lot to be said for the solidifying mental value of spaced repetition. I will note the specifics of the books later, but 2 are re-reads. There is a book on coding in general, a book more specific to the C programming language, a book on graphic design, a book on typography, and a book on color design.
I've also begun something else interesting. While I've known it's been possible for some time, I've finally started to hack into the Atom text editor, adding in a bit of my own custom snippets. I look forward to playing around with this more and seeing what I can work out of it.
Speaking of Atom, I've also integrated a package into my client so that I can compile and run C programs in the terminal with a press of a button. I had done this before on Mac OS, but the experience has been better on Windows. Doing this required me to manually install a C/C++ compiler, I chose minGW. Then I had to update the PATH environment variable. Interesting stuff.
Yesterday I was in a small Sav-a-lot grocery store in Eastern Kentucky. I love places like that. It was a bit more rough around the edges than the stores in the more urban places. The closest thing I can think of, is that sometimes the small Asian or Mexican grocery stores have a similar vibe to them. I saw a big pack of off-brand pop-tarts. I would love to eat a whole box of those.

Sketch

1-19-2017

Super busy lately. Updated my website completely. Working a lot more with sketch these days. Have some clients I'm currently working with. It's fun though.

WORDPRESS

1-15-2018

I've had several people ask me to set up a wordpress for them this week. I have done wordpress themes in the past. Would be good to brush up on it. I'l like to convert this to a wordpress blog! Still working through the C book. Getting a lot of new material. Any instruction involving pointers tends to brush it under the rug early on. JavaScript does the same thing with objects. Just be straighforward. People can handle it. I think it might hurt to delay it to later, even. But I could be wrong! I still have a lot to learn about pointers but stuff is starting to clear up. I think I at least 'get' them at this point. I'm not so sure why they would be used versus just a normal variable. A bit about stack and heap, but not enough to clear it totally up for me. Maybe it's circumstance. I expect more to clear up. This is pretty exciting stuff.

UPDATE

1-14-2018

I've decided to learn C more thoroughly. Going through a book called teach yourself C in 24 hours - then moving on to the highly recommend 'The C Book'. I had previously gone about halfway through the recommended C Programming Absolute Beginner's guide as recommended by CS50 and found it to be underewhelming. But I think each book has something valuable. I'm understanding more about a few things this time around, specifically streams and bitwise operators, but I've got a fair bit of reading left yet. I've also uploaded a few docs related to the design of my app. My ideas continue to come, so they are already outdated, but I'm excited about future iterations. I also have a couple of web sites under development for various clients. I added one recently to my github page. I think it's a nice design. Good night.

CS50 - PSET4 - RESIZE

1-10-2018

Hard, hard, hard at work on this PSET. Understanding of C structs, pointers, and data buffers is going up, but it's a lot to absorb in just a few days. Not much else to say on that. It will take some time.

Hexadecimal/Pointers II

1-9-2018

Spent a long time today learning more about pointers. I can't help but feel like they aren't being explained adequately. I have to keep trying. I also spent a bit of time learning about file pointers, stack vs. heap, and the stdio library in C. After that I spent a lot of time reviewing and furthering my understanding of hexadecimal notation. I actually get that now, and bits and bytes, and I was taking that knowledge a bit for granted before this point. I also finished the question on CS50's first PSET problem. I installed windows on my PC, so we will see how that goes.

As for my app, I've realized now that in order to keep a tally of how many days a under has met or been equal to their calorie goal, the best way is to add a log button that will finialize the day's data. For every logged day in a row, a value will be added to that particular day, something - perhaps a boolean that will indicate success. The count will begin at the day before, relative to the current day. If yesterday was a success, that's a count of one. Then it will check the day before - if not, the count stops there. If it was a success, the count will increment by one, and then check the next day, and so on. If that value doesn't exist, it also stops - as that means the person didn't log that day, although they could go back and do it.

Once a day is logged, you can't edit it. That's what I'm learning towards. I think it would be ideal to give a warning, something to the effect of - ARE YOU SURE? THIS CAN'T BE UNDONE. But maybe not in all capital letters.

So I have a bit of a to-do list going. The good news is, I'm pretty sure of how to do it, and many of the pieces are already in place.

I'm putting styling off until the end. I've drawn what I want. It's pretty specific. Still no power here.

Planning

1-8-2018

As of today, I have implemented the basic functionality in my app that I originally set out to do. Users are able to log in, select a date, and add meals to that date. The app with keep track of the total calories consumed for a day, and the user is also able to set the number of calories that they want to eat per day. I've also implemented quite a bit of testing for these features. Of course, a long the way, I've become a bit more ambitious. Tonight I spent some time drawing out and planning the UI and some more advanced features. I'm pretty excited about this, and I hope to have it on the app store at some point. Also did a refresher on how recursive funcions work in terms of the call stack tonight. I'm glad I'll only have to wrap my head around the basics of recursion one time. I got a new toothbrush today. Nothing beats feeling those fresh bristles.

Git + Github

1-7-2018

Added some more tests to my app. I keep coming up with ideas for what to do with it, what I want to do going foward. My goal is to make the thing as simple and fun as possible. It has to be both of those things for me to be satisfied. I'm learning a lot about testing. And I'm picking up more and more about Git and Github. I think Git has potential for cool application outside of software. I'm sure people are using it for other things somehow. The thing that jumps out to me though is for writing, like a novel or a screenplay. You could have different branches for different possible plot threads and so on. That really excites me. That could be a fun app. Git is good. Nothing much else to report, except my email on github was linked to the wrong account - so I finally got some answers as to why some of my projects have a different email account popping up as a contributer. But it's all good now. One final thing - trying to install windows on another computer. The experience of creating a bootable USB with the windows iso running on a mac OS has brought me nothing but pain.

Redux

1-5-18

I have an electric blanket now. Work has continued on my app. I've started to get more comfortable with how Redux works. This, along with my experience using React, has made me more comfortable with the idea of managing state. My initial forrays into state management were back when I was using jQuery - in hindsight, it all seems so primitive. I found an old email from where I started back on CodeAcademy. It was back in Sept. 2016. So, 15 months ago. I remember I took a pretty long break after that still and really didn't immerse myself in programming until March of 2017. When I started CodeAcademy, I knew so little. It is amazing what can change with dedication. Even though the path going forward remains endless, it is rather nice to be able to look back and see the progress made. I would recommend CodeAcademy along with MIT's Scratch program to any person who is very technically green but wanted to peek behind the curtain.

Pointers

1-4-18

Today a fuse blew. So half of my sockets aren't working. Things have gotten pretty cold now. The outlet was brown. I guess it's a good thing. Replacing the fuse didn't seem to fix anything. Moving on. I can better appreciate the language of math now. The deception with math is that something so complex can be represented by something so small. That turned me off of formal math for a long time. A couple of months ago, I spent virtually all of my free time on Khan Academy catching up. What a great resource that would've been in my school days. I wonder if today's youth know how lucky they are to have it. My gut tells me... maybe.

Yesterday I completed the music problem in CS50. Now I'm moving on to the next lecture. This is my first real explanation of pointers, although I was already aware of some of their workings due to how objects work in JavaScript, although there's probably quite a difference lower languages, C included. Still, it's been helpful. I spent a lot of time cleaning today. I swept the dust out of my room.

CS50 Music

1-2-18

I'm continuing on with the CS50, I'm now into the music problem as I mentioned in my last post. It took a bit of work, but I was able to get my solution working properly. That's only 1/3rd of the work to be done, but I think it was the hardest part. It was the last thing you were supposed to do anyway, but I did it first. It's been over two years since I started coding. The first thing I started on, I went and bought a book called 'Code' by Charles Petzold. I do recommend this book. It gets a little bit too technical for a pure introduction to programming, but that's towards the end of the book. For the first half or so, it's an amazing book that talks about coincidence, discovery, and the history of code. Code surrounds us, binds us together. It's literally in our DNA. Again, I do recommend that book.

Game of Fifteen

CS50 - 1-1-18

After finishing the find problem in PSET3, I moved on to the Game of Fifteen problem. This took a considerable amount of time. I spent hours tracking down a bug. I had accidentily modified the main function beyond the original parameters of what was asked. It was very frustrating. I thought I was going crazy at one point, I had become Ahab, crazed in pursuit of my white whale. because I knew the logic made sense, but it just wasn't working. I did eventually find it. Upon completion, to paraphrase a very, very famous quote - in that moment, I was eurphoric.

I did some work on my app as well, adding in more testing. I'm going to be adding a new feature shortly. I've also begun work on a React project - a tic-tac-toe game. Let's see what I can cook up.

Back to the Game of Fifteen problem. As it happens, CS50 has rolled over in the new year, and that particular problem will no longer be worth any credit. I now have to do a Music problem, which I am hard at work at. I am actually pretty proud of the solution I'm working on, so we will see.

I believe that the temperature reached below 0 here last night. I have put pillows around my doors to try and keep the heat in. I am cold in my dreams now.

CS50

Algorithms - 12-31-17

I resumed work on CS50. I'm on week 3, currently doing PSET3. This one involves constructing some basic algorithms. For my sorting algorithm, I've currently went with insertion sort, though I may change that. For my finding algorithm, I implemented a binary search. I was able to successfully pass all of the tests. With binary search, I really took time to understand every single part of the algorithm. Then I did the same with the insertion sort. The success cases, the failure cases, the way everything increments. I also did a little work on my app, implementing some more tests. I'm starting to get really comfortable with testing. As I write this, there is less than an hour until 2018. May it be the

Jest

Spent the night testing - 12-30-17

Finished book one of 'You Don't Know JavaScript'. The book promises on the fly compiling will be discussed in a later chapter, so I will hold that thought. I started my app over, this time with a more thorough implementation plan. I've already made much progress. I've implemented testing on a feature - asynchronous data retrieval from a database. I am begining to like testing. It is below freezing. I spent those hours beside my tiny heater, under my blanket. And I ate a lot of peanut butter. It is a good food.

Day II

YDKJ - 12-29-17

I continued work on my app. Ran into an issue trying to re-render based on data in the redux store instead of component state. Sorted that out. Began re-reading 'You Don't Know JavaScript' by Kyle Simpson. My second read through. chapter 1 was all review. One sentence caught my attention this time. The book states that JavaScript is not interpreted, but is instead compiled on the fly and immediatley returned. This seems like an inefficient way of operating. Further reading necessary.

Regarding yesterday's post, my new setup has proven productive, though not perfect. My chair is comfortable for a $5 dollar chair. But in the grand scheme of chairs, a back-breaker.

Hello World

Initial comment - 12-28-17

Today I set up my computer. A long story. I installed Ubuntuu and set up two screens. Nearby, I have my laptop. Until this point, I'd been doing my development work on the laptop. Having this much screen - a joy. Possibility.