David in Spain

A little bit of everything

Category Archives: programming

New 24 inch monitor Learning Mac Programming and camping

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.

Platja d’Aro going crazy for the summer

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.