Week 4 begins... XCode be trollin!

Today (Monday) I finally got to really start my code. I have many problems to solve in the next few weeks. Things just seem to be continuously added to what I have to do. Monday has been very productive I have been firing through the Galaxy part of the app which is now called Astronomo. I was working on switching views between portrait and landscape which was much easier than I thought it would be. I need to get some table stuff sorted out tonight and start implementing my core data then tomorrow I hope I can get what I get stuck on in core data explained and have a huge amount of the basic framework out of the way.

Towards the end of last week we were given lectures on Maps and annotations and also a lecture on core data and web access. The lectures were good but somewhat hard to follow with not much background in the subjects and the lovely XCode crashing in the middle so I just sat and took notes. I am making a lot of progress now and I think I will have my app finished on time as long as my mentor Luke doesnt go "dya know what would be cool" another dozen or so times. he is very good at adding layers of complexity to everything. Its all off course productive but you sometimes see people with apps where it is just the normal stock Apple tool kit that is used, something in the grand scheme of things is very easy to implement. although he is right for the most part. i did something today that i though would take like 3 days in 2 hours. well i have the foundations for what i need to implement down, I just need to do a bit of math and the the graphic work from the designers to implement. I think Luke see's something that I dont know, he knows these things are not hard to implement but i dont know how to do and im like this will take ages to do, considering I thought core data something that should be so simple to implement is so difficult, I have no idea how to do it but with my good friend the internet most tasks can be accomplished pretty easily. some things you would expect to easily find are very difficult to find but you always get there in the end.

this is an image from Code Slice which is an interesting sort of monthly technology conference internal to Kainos where senior engineers and people from other departments come and fill you with their wisdom. I have gone to 2 of these and they are really good. helpful and interesting. Have to be in work at 8 on a Friday morning to go to it but I think it is really worth it because learning from professionals is the real way to learn.

The following 2 photos from Kainos board room is where we get much off our lectures and other interesting stuff. its where we learned about the Google maps api and annotations, Core data and off course web parsing. Google maps is lovely to use Core data however is definitely not. Sometimes I think I would be better off smashing my head repeatidly off of a wall then trying to get through core data. Once it is implemented though it is brilliant. 

And as promised my proposed splash screen from the 2 geniuses in graphic design.

Week 3, half way through.

It’s been some week. This is the first coding week and I have not done a tap of coding, mainly because I have to get my database done and out of the way, I have been an information gathering machine basically for the past 3 days. Today Wednesday seems to have been the most productive day out of the three, I think it just takes getting used. Basically now I think I am finished gathering information. I gathered it and added it to an excel spreadsheet to save time and now I have to convert it to a well laid out XML doc. Transferring the data will probably be time consuming. I’m not sure I might try and get it out of the way tonight or just relax a bit. Feeling a bit exhausted to be perfectly honest. Being somewhere, where you do not know anybody is hard.  There is no support structure or nowhere to go, My friends go home in the evening to where ever they live which is non Belfast. I don't just go home and work but even when I do try and relax all I seem to do is stress over what I have to do. It’s like a horrible infinite loop, my tiredness is leading me not to do work in the evening and the amount of work I have to do is what is making me feel tired and lousy.

However I do feel a lot better now that most of the information I need is gathered and that the user interface design geniuses Gavin and David are hard at work. I always felt as though I did not want them to have to do so much work for me that I could do it myself given my interest and experience in design and they have their own huge work load but compared to what those two can do I am nothing. They always come around with something and my mouth just drops in awe thinking omg. The first time I thought maybe it was a fluke(they couldn’t possibly do something like that every time I was thinking) but they seem to be doing it every time they come down from whatever lab that they build these amazing concoctions in. I think maybe I will need them to do more to keep the whole flow of the app right but it looks more amazing than I ever thought it would.  Well anyways some cool looking stuff due soon. Get a look at the user interface in the next I would say.