On Saturday Bhav and I went sea fishing for the first time. We had the chance to do it since Bhav works for Recreational Services at the University of Otago. We woke up early (by our standards) to drive up to Port Chalmers to get on the catamaran. On the way out Bhav got the opportunity to steer whilst Alan, the skipper, set up the rods to catch some barracuda as bait.
It was about an hour and a half up the coast on quite calm waters before we arrived at the kelp forest, one of the largest in New Zealand, where we would fish. We were out there because the trumpeter fish we were after live in shoals and prefer the habitat and relative safety of the kelp. I really got into it and was loving the whole experience, others were suffering a little from sea sickness. I caught 5 trumpeter (would have been 8 if 2 hadn’t fallen back into the water and the other had been bigger).
On the way back I got to steer for most of the time. There was a yacht race near the peninsular though so Alan had to take over as he knew how to avoid interfering with them. It was a really enjoyable day and a successful catch. I don’t eat fish but Bhav’s dinner is set for a while to come.
So it turns out that I was on to a good idea with my iPhone app. The problem is that on the 6th Feb someone else released exactly what I had in mind. They even used the same open source libraries as I was going to use. That’s the second time in recent months when someone else has beaten me to it. Unfortunately there isn’t much opportunity to differentiate my app from what exists, with a similar approach and functionality the only room for improvement is simply charging less. The underlying problem with accuracy is the quality of the iPhone camera and it’s lens, but that’s something only Apple can really fix. The amateur (me) going after the software company with a “me-too” product isn’t going to work, so it’s back to the drawing board.
Haiku, the operating system (not the poetry) aims to pick up where BeOS left off. BeOS was an operating system for personal computers created in the 1990’s. It was famed for it’s ability to multitask and it’s many other ground breaking features. Whilst it wasn’t based on any of the more familiar alternatives to Windows (such as Linux) it was positioned as a competitor in this market. In the days before Mac OS X, Apple’s current operating system family, it was hoped by many (including Be Inc) that they would be purchased by Apple and their future OS would be built on BeOS. This didn’t happen, Apple bought NeXT in 1996 and a few years later Palm bought Be.
Whilst this is all very interesting it doesn’t explain Haiku. The goal of the project is to recreate BeOS and extend it, bringing it up to date whilst still being compatible with BeOS and it’s existing suite of software. I really don’t see any benefit to Haiku, other than a curiosity of a system kept alive by loyal fans, but with it being freely available to try I thought I’d see what it was like.
Not only is it easy to try Haiku it’s also completely free. I downloaded my favourite virtual machine programme – VirtualBox, the latest Haiku test image (VMware images work in VirtualBox), created a new virtual machine gave it at least 128MB of RAM told it to use the VMware disk image as the hard disk and pressed Start.
It has to be one of the most unfortunate and uncanny coincidence I’ve heard in a while. A German woman who travelled to the Roslyn suburb of Dunedin, New Zealand (where I am currently sat) has been rescued by police from a man “not who he had portrayed himself to be”, Detective Senior Sergeant Steve McGregor told the Otago Daily Times. The woman had travelled to Dunedin only a few days before me to be with her partner who she had met on the internet (This is where the story is different, I met Bhav in Australia).
The full story is available on Yahoo!Xtra. Freaky!
Before I headed of to New Zealand I performed as the Bass Trombonist in Callander Brass at their first concert. For such a new band containing a number of players who had only recently picked up instruments we made a good noise. Watch the video below of our opening number, Southdown.
After 5 flights I’ve made it to Dunedin, on the east coast of the South Island of New Zealand. This is my fifth day here and I’m really enjoying it. Apart from the minor sunburn (it’s strange to think it was snowing when I left Glasgow) I’ve had no ill effects, even managing to avoid jet lag.
I was quite impressed with Emirates this time round. The free hotel room in Dubai was a really good addition to what was the cheapest ticket I could find.
I didn’t do much art at school on account of not being very good at it so I appreciate a cheat when I see one. Recently I’ve been learning to programme Objective-C with a view to creating my own app for the App Store. Through that I decided that I should mock up the various stages of my application, and although I’m not trying to impress any investors I though I’d make use of an iPhone GUI components file for Photoshop.
The end result looks pretty good and didn’t take much time or effort. Sure, it’s just the unlock screen but I don’t want to give my idea away!
Objective-C seems to be quite fashionable at the moment and it’s something I’ve been meaning to learn for a while. Objective-C is an extension of the C language and so allows you to do normal C programming but with added extras like Objects. If you’ve done any programming before you might have heard of Object Orientation (OO). I’m not going to explain it here but it’s not a new idea and is implemented in a number of languages such as Java and C++. I’ve never done C++ but at uni we were taught Java and then introduced to the more utilitarian C (of which many languages, including Java, are descendants). Objective-C is the language of choice for the various Apple platforms (including iPhone) and as a hardened Apple fanboy with the desire to create iPhone apps; Objective-C is a prerequisite.
What I’ve found to be helpful to getting my head around Objective-C quickly (making use of the OO languages I already know) is a series of screencasts and a book called Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X. I watched the screencasts first to see if I could get interested in it enough to stick with it and found that they were created in such a way that you can get stuck straight into the code. They’re US$5 a time but I found the first 2 very helpful (at the time of writing there was only 2 of the series). Apple also has a number of resources available for free (requires registration) on the Developer site. From my perhaps limited experience of development environments I’d have to say XCode is one of the best I’ve used and makes coding a very logical and easy process. XCode, various other applications and even an iPhone simulator are available to play with through your free developer membership.
I’m still working my way through the book but I hope to be making my own apps for the iPhone soon. All that remains is to actually by one!
So having spent the last few months trying to find the ideal job I’ve decided that it’s better to move to New Zealand for a few months. I’ve got a number of reasons; such as the kiwi economy being more buoyant, the desire to live abroad when I’m young and having friends over there. I’m really looking forward to going but I’ll miss home I’m sure.
I fly out early next month and I’m due to return at the start of December but you never know what the future might hold.
