Recruiters

It seems the IT sector in the SF bay area is quite, I wouldn't use the word desperate, maybe, eager to find bodies. It's a very different feel from when I was searching in Chicago. The Chicago job search of 2001/2002 was an exercise in futility what with the .com bubble burst and all. I've heard people around here (SF) talking about how is level of recruiting and head hunting is nearly pre-bubble levels. This is good and bad. All tho I am getting many calls from recruiters, those calls aren't translating into as many actual job interviews. I've had a few phone screens, a few tech tests, but so far no offers. I still have at least 3 weeks out here house-sitting/couch surfing while I job search. I just need to be mindful of my pennies. Another downside is that I'm spending so much time job searching that I'm not getting progress made on my 3 personal iOS projects. I need to block out some time.

Sidenote: At first I was getting a lot of what I thought were collect calls from recruiters. Turns out I think it is just Google Voice calls.

Project Repatriation

My repatriation continues to go somewhat smoothly. I've "settled" into the Bernal Heights area of SF. When I say "settle" I mean I am couch surfing. So far I've been getting a lot of recruiter calls. I have had one technical phone interview, which is leading to a face-to-face interview with a VP on Friday in Mountain View. Once I have a gig lined up it will be easier to find a place of my very own.

All personal projects with sellschicken.com have been sort of taking a back seat to job searching. But just before Project Repatriation started I begin rethinking and redesigning a few of the projects I had in the pipeline. I've been using sqlite3 but felt that the effort to reinvent that wheel each time I do a project is kind silly. So I began learning Core Data and incorporating it into the projects. A little awkward at first, but OMG, so much easier and faster.

It's frustratingly difficult to balance time between job searching and personal projects. One I want to do. One I need to do. One I should do. And each effects the other.

New Projects.

I have to projects in the pipeline. One is a dictionary/study app. The other is an organizer app. Not going to go into details, because I don't want any one to rip off my idea. Though my ideas are inspired from others. Been having fun with sqlite3 and searches. Too slow. And fun incorporating Google's Data API into the app. Should work nicely when done. Just need to find time to work. I have plans to do a lot during the upcoming Spring festival vacation. Will have ~4-5 weeks rest/free time. Hope to post more then.

Also need to renew my iPhone App Dev membership. Have I even recouped the first time yet? Maybe not quite...

Hope to have some more too post soon.

I'm starting to think I am not really much of a blogger!

Uploaded, Approved and ready for sale!

The title pretty much says it all! On March 18 (Beijing time) I jumped through all the necessary hoops and uploaded my app using itunesconnect. It was pretty easy. I was abit worried about how long it would take to be approved but it turned out to be just under 7 days. (6 days, 20 hours or so)

Clicking the above pic will take you to iTunes! Over all the hardest part has been teaching myself programming in Objective-C. But it has been very fulling. So far I have give out one Promo Code and supposed 2 have bought it. I already have a few ideas for upgrades and future versions. Namely integration with Facebook Connect and news feeds. my goal is to integrate that by April 17th.

Well I hope a few people find it interesting and mildly entertaining. (By few I mean several 10's of thousands!)

Busy-ness & Business.

Been having a lot of free time lately. Putting polishing touches on the game. Oh, I can now tell you it is a game. Also been learning about and using NSNotificationCenter as well as AVAudioPlayer. Objective-C programming itself is becoming much much easier. I guess you could say I am becoming more and more fluent. I was having an NSTimer issue awhile back. Turns out, after the timer would fire it would been dealloc'ed. And so I was unable to call [timer isValid] or [timer invalidate] on it, because it was no longer available. Adding a "retain" in the right place and all is well. NSNotificationCenter is pretty great and useful as well. And easy to use once I figured it out.

The difficult part lately has been music. Not using it in the game, but making it. The choices are buying royalty-free stuff or making my own. I opted for the cheap choice! So I've been playing composer this week! Yikes!

But the bulk is done. Time for testing (and refining). Bundling. Documenting. Signing. Zipping. Uploading then selling.

NSTimers

I've found NSTimers to be pretty useful. Good for timing a game level or setting a timeout for a particular action. Though the first time around I was getting some funky run-time errors. Had to do with how the timer is retained. I was trying to use a [myTimer isValid] as a condition in an if statement. Well after it expires it seems to go back to the ether, and was causing an error. I changed the structure to have a the Timers method set a flag which was then checked in my control statements. Problem solved.

Converting an int into a NSString is mildly problematic. Easy to deal with. Using a unichar pointer and pixie dust.

I've started to realize that this project is actually coming together into some sort of actual game. Which leads me to a problem. Music. I need music during game play, right? So I guess it will be a good opportunity to play with Garageband. 'Cuz, you know it's free, and I need some royalty-free muzac!

Need to start on dealing with levels. And handle the on screen clock... leading us, most likely, back to the topic of NSTimers...

Animation...

Played with Core Animation today for about an hour or so. Managed to add a little bit. This addition gives the user feedback as whether there touch was successful. Very easy to do.


[UIView beginAnimations:nil context:NULL];
[UIView setAnimationDuration:0.40];
CGAffineTransform transform = CGAffineTransformMakeScale(1.5, 1.5);
bananaView.transform = transform;
bananaView.alpha = 0.0;
[UIView commitAnimations];


How it works. beginAnimations starts the animation block. you can guess what setAnimationDuration does. CGAffineTransformMakeScale basic sets the end product for how you want the View scaled, in this case 150% of original size. You then assign the transform to the View, and set the final alpha. Then finally commitAnimations. The overall effect is that in .4 seconds the View grows to 150% and fades to invisible.

Very interesting and very easy. Will play with it more.