David in Spain

Working at the camp site

Only another few days working at the camp site and being amused by the antics of the people there. The funniest is the boss and he alpha male activity. He loves to go around dishing out tellings off or simply telling how he thinks the job should be done. Most times he is over doing it and could spend his time more profitably by trusting the workers at the camp site. Mind you there is one guy that gets drunk every day and is useless in the afternoon. There is another that is a useless lump of lard that is so slow entering in the details of the customers as they arrive that there are often queues of people that could be instead putting up the tent or spending time swimming in the sea, or lying on the beach. Then there is the old guy that really is too ill to work and parks his car in the car park only 30 metres from the reception, but the walk across nearly kills him.

Learning Programming

I am itching to get learning more programming and hopefully build a business making applications for the iPad, iPod and iPhone plus some Mac apps too. I have a couple of good book and I have downloaded a pile of videos from the WWDC conference that show how to do many things and are pretty useful. There is the iOS 4 within the new Xcode that is to be released soon. I have been trying it out and it looks pretty good. To get my hands on these I had to pay up the 99 dollars to be a member of the Apple developer program for the iPhone. I am disappointed that they expect another 99 for the Mac developer program. But the code is very similar so by being in the iPhone side you get loads of info that helps with the Mac programming too.

New Monitor

I bought a new monitor for my wife and I am using it. No I am not being selfish or bad – It is just that the Minidisplay to DVI converter cable got broken by her the other day so we have to get another before she can use it. I ordered one from Apple and a Bluetooth keyboard to go with it to make her Mac experience better with the MacBook Pro she has.

I interviewed Steve a while back and he is a talented photographer so here is a chance to see behind the scenes. He shows how he works with his model on a shoot.

Brilliant to see Spain win the World Cup. I was in France when they won in 98 but this is better seeing as I live here and feel more a part of it because I speak Spanish too. I missed the first half of the game as aI was working at the campsite by the beach. I have been teasing the Dutch guest with shouts of Viva España.

All good clean fun really. I have a day off tomorrow or I would be able to tease them some more. I am tempted though to head into the local town to see how the celebrations are going.

Looking forward to the day off tomorrow. Unfortunately we change to the 10 hour work day as from Tuesday also. I was hoping it was going to stay with the eight hours, so I could have a bit of time to myself.

Back at the camping site again and the guy that was away for the last two years is back working, he really should retire. He is so slow processing the customers and he has another old guy for company working just as slow next to him. Because of this I have been pushed out to work more outside the reception which in some ways is good although I prefer being in the reception. A bit less stressful perhaps but quite a bit more boring. At least I have time to think about things I want to ponder.

The boss is a pain, but isn’t that in the job description for most bosses. Always ready with a telling off for the slightest thing to who ever is in the firing line even if not necessarily the culprit. Never has any words of encouragement for the staff and is not too good at motivation the workers, because of that. At least he does have a lighter side from time to time and can make a joke. now and then.

Good for me to practice my Spanish as I have to be speaking and listening all day long. I am missing my work on my Mac computers, and the experience with this working for other people convinces me that I should be learning programming and working freelance and also making my own products to sell. Getting only one day off per week hampers my learning efforts although I have been getting some study in before going i to work.

For the last few months I have been diving in to the programming. I started off with Objective C learning and some Ruby, and lately I have been getting stuck in with PHP which again like ruby is getting me to think like a programmer. I happened to mention on Twitter that I was learning PHP and was almost immediately asked if I was well on enough to be able to tackle a php programming job. That is a good sign that there is possibly work out there for me to do. Just have to get good at it thats all.

I do have a couple of ideas for the Mac iPhone and iPad applications centred on my interests of trading on Betfair and also for the education end of things. A lot of maths will be needed to do what I have in mind for the Betfair angle, but not an impossible amount. I can start with something that is more for information on a technique and later move into using the Betfair API to add more functionality.

The course I am following is on Lynda and is very good, fairly easy to follow. With this one I feel I have made some strides with the understanding of the processes of programming, learning things like For and While looping statements and the if then else logic that is the bread and butter of making computer programs work. Another area I have moved forward with is the using MySQL to make database type of applications and use with PHP.

I had the last episode of Lost waiting in iTunes for nearly a week to be able to have time to sit and watch it and although the first half of it was OK in pulling some of the strings together, the second half made me want to puke. It turned totally chick flick and religious in nature. I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised that the christian religion had to take front stage at the end with them going towards the light from the church.

The whole series had magic in it and for the writers to focus on the hocus pocus of religion should not be so surprising, but it did mean that the ending could have been as inventive as many of the stories from all of the show. They could have had the Smoke monster finish them all off. They could have had some sort of final ending on the island rather than the stereo typical ending that pandered to the need of christians to validate their beliefs.

There was a need for there to be a final ending to answer the basic questions of why and so on but I still think that they could have had a messier ending instead of the too easy all riding off into the sunset that they gave us. That’s a Hollywood thing though, they think that the happy ending is the what the public wants.

Well that is that the confusion is all over and the actors will have to leave Hawaii where they did the filming and go get a proper job.

Seeing as a I used to be a teacher I have always had an interest in teaching, education, learning. I have a particular interest in the thinking processes and how the brain works. I have read a good bit on the subject and including ‘Emotional Intelligence’ by Daniel Goleman. There was another I read about that I can’t remember the name of right now but will update when it comes back to me which was along the lines of thinking processes and creativity with thinking. When I was in business I read a number of books which have some great ideas in about things like Neuro Linguistic Programming, and how to get the best out of yourself and the muscle in between the ears.

One of the area that interested me a huge amount was the book by Tony Buzan. In it was the story of a young guy that decided one day that he should be a A student and not a C level student. His teachers didn’t believe him and nearly laughed at him for his audacity, but he had made up his mind. Though working out what it was he needed to do from the business end, such as the product he would have to hand in to get the best marks, to the way that he would have to work on himself to be able to achieve what he wanted from his educational life.

Much of it comes down to attitude and the desire to do the best you can do. But there are also tools that you can use to enhance your own learning such as MindMaps and making your short term memory become long term memory. There are tricks that do work and when you know and understand what sort of a learner you are, such as how you best learn material, audibly, reading, visual like video or by doing, then you can design a system for yourself that will ensure the top marks in the tests and exams that you have to put yourself through.

Another of the reasons that I believe this is because of my own story. I was failing at the English class at school, in particular and in other classes too. I was given a talking to by the English teacher, Mrs Dawson and she turned my head around. I had to get a certain number of essays done in a short time or I would be on the educational scrap heap. I didn’t fancy being a van driver or a road sweeper, I knew I was better than that. My attitude changed beyond belief and weirdly I found I enjoyed doing the essays and being successful. I think I even did extra work.

Tony Buzan has a product that is really useful and every person in any form of learning or education should consider investing in themselves by buying and using it. It is the MindMap. You can of course just get a piece of paper and draw the mind maps with coloured pens and that’s great but these days the computer is the way forward. Better legibility, speed of creation of Mind Maps and extra tools all make it worthwhile to get your hands on a copy of the iMind Map. There is a trial version you can use to see if if is worth your while getting so there is no need to just take a chance, spending money before you know if it will suit you or not.

The software will work on Windows as well as on the Mac and is good for writers that want to explore some ideas, getting some ideas out in the open and also for a business project management tool. I am using it in my quest to learn to be a software programmer. There is such a huge body of information I have to learn that I need iMindMap to be able to learn faster and get up to speed.

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It is the sort of thing to make your head hurt in the brain region. I suppose it is always good to give the old noggin a bit of a workout though. I bought some books and I have been working my way though some examples of making applications, starting with some foundation type apps that you have to view the output in the console. These are to explain the basics of programming and when you have got some of that done you can move on to making some that have a GUI.

I have said before that when I tried to learn programming I hit the hump as it were – that moment when the book or tutor or whatever hits you with some stuff that is either not explained or os badly explained as far as a beginner is concerned, is seems that programmers forget what it is like to be an ordinary human being and have normal thinking processes. I have had a couple of moments like that this time with looking at the Apple developer website for a tutorial while the tutorials on the Cocoalab.com web site has been much easier in comparison. That one is called ‘Become an Xcoder’ It really is good in feed in the info in small baby sized chunks.

So I am starting to think that I really could become an Xcoder of Mac, iPad and iPhone applications. I do have a couple of ideas of applications I want to create in a niche market that has not yet been covered. I will not be making any tip calculators that’s for sure, seeing as every man and his dog has already made on of those. On the Apple site it went in to so much detail that it was bordering on unintelligible so I ended up copying in code that I had no idea where it came from, why it was there and what it was supposed to do. I am working on the basis that if I go through it a couple of times or more I will pick up things bit by bit, I will be able to understand more as I go along.

I have been following the book mostly but I think it is a good idea to get a different view and take on the process by looking in other sources, like the cocoalab site and the Apple developer site. I think if I has started with the Apple tutorials I might have given up already.

OK then so if it is so difficult then why am I banging my head against the brick wall? Seems to me that creating applications for the iPad and iPhone has been proved to be a way of earning a living and I want a part of the action. I know that maybe a lot of people have a head start already and it could be a while before I can come up with something that will be useful enough to have people willing to give me money for it. But hey I do have to start somewhere.

Yes it is one of those days when I have to spend time in the garden. Still mare more trees to chop up after the snow storm that felled them a month or so back. The Electric chainsaw broke and is not fixable, the motor saw is still being fixed under guarantee in Girona. So that has cut back on what I could get done. Still did a bit of sweating though.

I am on the search for a decent and cheap mobile phone provider. Yoigo seems to be winning that war at the moment and I am so pissed off with Telefonica that I will get away from them as soon as possible. They annoyed me even more the other day with refusing to un lock my iPhone. They as so bad with the way they treat their customers. Any other company will be better. I might go with Orange if it works out that my wife can get a better deal and so we will be both on the same network. But their tariffs are very difficult to understand, I think they nearly all make them as confusing as possible.

I still think that the prices in Spain show contempt for the people here and it is a rip off.

It is high time that the Spanish people and the rest of us that live in Spain get together and complain about the prices of some things here. In particular I am thinking about the high cost of internet and mobile phone tariffs. Have to get totally jealous of the services and the prices that the people in the UK are getting. I have seen where they are paying only ten pounds or maybe 12 pounds to get 20MB download speeds.

Here in Spain the stupid thing is that the slower the internet speed the more you pay….. No honestly it is true. Here I can only get 1mb and it is more expensive than the price that I could get 6MB for if I was living in an area that had that speed available.

I don’t know what it is that make the Spanish not complain about the high cost of the internet because they are not shy with complaining about other things. I have seen that when I have been working in the camping site

Today I am looking at the prices of the mobile phone plans, and they all seem to make it as complicated as possible. Most have this thing where you pay a certain amount per month and get x number of calls or x number of minutes. Then there is the different prices per minute of the calls depending on where you are calling. What is confusing me most is whether I will be able to get my iPhone unlocked so I can use it on another network. I really don’t like Telefonica and I would have stayed with Vodafone except for the fact that the iPhone was only possible with Movistar/Telfonica

Does anyone out there have any experience of getting a phone unlocked at the end of a contract. It would be great to be able to continue using it and preferably without a contract. That way I will be able to think about the possibility of the next version of the iPhone which may be available in June or July this year.

For me another consideration would be the idea of just having a cheap old phone because I don’t make many phone calls and then get an iPad. That would be nice. I would get the iPad without the 3G and then get a MiFi device that will give me a wifi bubble wherever I am. The deal that Orange have with one of those now is €19 per month an with a 1GB limit per month. That is much better than the €15 per month with Telfonica that only gives 200mb per month. How bad is that then?

I have been working over Easter in the Camp site again. Due to the financial crisis thing there is less work. Also this year and last year I have had to Spread myself out more. Seeing as they had fewer people working such as the guys working at the gate I have had to come out of the reception more often to take over from them when the one working there has to go into the camp site to do some other job, like show a bungalow or fix the electric or water heating.

I have not minded that because it is good to get out of the reception for a while so that I get a bit of a change of scenery & some fresh air. Whatever part of the job I do it is good for me to learn a bit more Spanish, always good to practice some more. I still have a few lessons to go to for the Spanish class I started during the winter. The teacher is very good, great attitude & approach to the learning process.

Other News
New iPad website available at Amazing iPad where I will be talking all about the new device from Apple

Flamin’ heck – I have missed my online life. Eight days is too long to be without internet. Is that a bit nerdy perhaps? I think I will have to confess to being a geek.

At least I will be able to get in contact with my mom today, who has just bought a MacBook and help get her past the initial stage of making the switch. She has had so many problems with WIndows viruses that she was bound to go and buy a Mac sooner or later, especially when you consider that she has been looking over my shoulder here when she has been visiting and seeing how easy it is to do things.

I could see my brother taking the plunge next, last time he was visiting he was impressed with the way I threw a slideshow of some photos that we had only just loaded up into the iMac.Wicked or what??

I wanted to keep working with making some podcasts while I was offline but then I had no electric either so I was having to stick my nose into books and read. Mind you I do enjoy that. I read the latest Dan Brown, ‘The Lost Symbol’ As usual a good story that required the brain to be put in idle mode while reading. I did start yo get a bit miffed with the repetitive nature of the story at the end though and I was glad to put the book down and say – Done!

I was able to get working away with the Twitter numbers again with Tweetadder. Soon to hit 15,000 followers on the Wizardgold account

Nice sunny day here in Spain which is great because it allows the electricians working out in the fields for the mains power electric provider here in Spain to fix the pylons that have broken. There have been about 30-40 pylons broken with the storm last week.

Wimax Internet

Because my internet comes in via the Wimax over the air signal and not directly through the phone line I have to wait until the antennae has power. It is right at the top of the hill and it could be a few more days before the internet is working back at the house again.

Today I have been able to use the internet belonging to my sister in law.

On Monday the weather was blizzard conditions and since then we have had no electric, no phones and no internet. There is a possibility that the electric might come back today but I will not be holding my breath waiting.

It is amazing how much we depend on the electric. My neighbour was lucky enough to have a generator available but for the rest of us mere mortals we have to survive on batteries. I do have an inverter but it just gives me light to be able to see where I am going in the evening and to be able to read without messing up my eyes.

The news said there were about 30 or 40 pylons blown down with the wind on Monday. I think it will take ages to get back to the way things were before. If I had internet through the phone line then I could have internet before that but mine comes in through Wimax and that needs the electric power to work.