Sunetos, Inc.

The official conference sessions have not yet begun, but I am already invigorated by 360iDev in San Jose. It is good to see friends and acquaintances I met in Denver last fall, and to meet new developers as well. I spent the morning in Kendall Gelner’s Advanced Debugging session and gained some useful new tools for app development. I split the rest of the day between the beginning stages working through some iPad app ideas and getting to know other developers a little better.

The energy level certainly picked up at the welcome reception this evening, and will probably continue long into the night without me. I’m lousy at Rock Band, but had a good time trying anyway, and it was fun watching other groups pretending to be musicians tonight!

I am looking forward to a very full three days of learning cool new stuff, meeting great people, and building on relationships already begun.

My original 90 day project plan has faded without completely failing or succeeding. I don’t know if I will do any more 90days posts before 360iDev or not, but I know I will be able to spend more time each day between now and the conference focusing on iPhone development.

Since I set my own goals, I get to define success — so I’m declaring success for my 90 day project, regardless of the details.

My general goal was to spend steady and regular time working on my skill set, knowledge, and comfort level with the tools.

• I am very comfortable with the tool set, and most sessions I get into the “flow” fairly quickly.
• I am pleased with my knowledge and understanding of key APIs, and look forward to expanding that over the coming weeks.
• I wish I could have spent more time on app development, but I am reasonably happy with what I was able to do.
• I am definitely learning what it takes to carve out time regardless of other projects.

I am disappointed that I do not have an app ready for the app store. A combination of things kept me from getting close on my initial idea, and the app I am pursuing now languished for almost two weeks with no activity. I have been working to get ahead of the game on other commitments so I could focus more time on iPhone work in general and my app in particular.

I am very pleased that I lined up some contract work for iPhone development this past week. Some of my non-iPhone work commitments are coming to a close, so I can be more aggressive in pursing iPhone contract work in the coming weeks.

I am really getting fired up about the 360iDev conference, only 10 days away!

• I don’t know how well I will “perform” at this year’s GameJam, but I have high hopes.
• I am completely immersing myself in iPhone/iPad development by spending the following weekend at iPadDevCamp, I hope to be able to pass some new threshold of comfort and flow with the tools and APIs before it’s over.
• My lofty goal is to have the solid core of an app working after the 9 day trip.

I do know I will be renewing old friendships, making new ones, and exploring new opportunities while in San Jose.

T-10!

Over the last several days while visiting my daughter and son-in-law, I have done some reading and playing with alternative ideas and decided to put my game idea on hold for the time being. Even though I won’t be using OpenGL or very much of the code I’ve developed recently, I know I am more proficient in Xcode, GHUnit, and other frameworks and tools because of the time I’ve spent on my game — so I view it as time well spent.

I am pursuing an idea from a friend, and I will be working with him to develop the idea and app further. It is an entertainment/information app, and uses frameworks and patterns that I am much more comfortable with. I know I can execute better and faster on this idea than my game idea and I believe I will be able have an app ready much sooner.

Also, like most every iPhone or mac developer I follow on twitter or whose blogs I read, I too pre-ordered my 64GB (no 3g) iPad Friday morning, along with a wireless keyboard, docking station, and holder. When I’m not using it for development, my wife will be trying it out as a replacement computer. If she takes to it, I will probably be ordering a second one for myself.

Day T-32 to T-28 Accomplishments (Wednesday-Sunday, March 10-14, 2010)

• Evaluating my current level in various iPhone related frameworks and skills
• Brainstorming and sketching ideas and UI elements for app
• Pre-ordered an iPad!

I had a conversation today with a friend that I work with regularly in my day job. We had talked a couple of months ago about an iPhone app idea that we both believed had merit. After our conversation today, I am beginning to think it is the right time to at least build a prototype.

My thought process has been something like this:

• By continuing with my idea, I will keep my focus and steady progress will eventually produce a product I am pleased with. But even with overly optimistic estimates of available time, I will not have something ready for the app store in the next month
• Some of my game ideas could benefit from a few weeks of gestation
• I still have much to learn about OpenGL game development, and what I learn at 360iDev in San Jose will be good leverage in further development
• I am much more comfortable with UIKit development (non-OpenGL), and could produce a workable prototype for the joint idea much more quickly
• My game (so far) is a solo endeavor, the other app would be a joint effort which should help keep me on track
• The scope of the joint idea is narrow enough that we can have something in the app store much sooner than I could on my own

I haven’t lost interest or hope in my game idea, but tonight I will spend my development time playing around with the other idea.

Day T-33 Accomplishments (Tuesday, March 9, 2010)

• Consider options for how to spend my limited iPhone development time

I got fixated on a particular calculation Monday evening, and ended up spending too much time figuring out something that I most likely will not use. By the end of my session on Monday it was working, but I should have bypassed the issue until I was sure I needed to finish it.

Day T-35 to T-34 Accomplishments (Sunday-Monday, March 7-8, 2010)

• Finished a task that probably did not need to be finished

The first week of March was spring break for my college son, so we spent time at family in Florida, then Alabama (both were a little cooler than normal.) He had been hard at work sketching and thinking about his game idea during the break, and during the last part of the week, I got to help by building a prototype for him to try various combinations of game gestures and timings. It was fun working together on it, and well worth the diversion of my iphone dev time.

Day T-38 to T-36 Accomplishments (Thursday-Saturday, March 4-6, 2010)

• Spent time with my son on his game idea
• Developed a simple prototype to test gestures for his idea

I narrowed down my memory problem to an extra release of a custom property, but it took me too long to find it. It is a little frustrating that my Objective-C debugging skills feel so far behind those I have in the Java world.

I tried several different methods of tracking down the extra release, but the simplest method proved effective–double checking every possible reference to the property by visual inspection. I need to find better methods for this sort of thing, but for now I am back on track.

Day T-39 Accomplishments (Wednesday, March 3, 2010)

• Found the double release error causing me grief

I didn’t spend much time on iPhone on Tuesday.

Day T-40 Accomplishments (Tuesday, March 2, 2010)

• Not much

I so dearly love memory management problems — they are always so easy to find and fix…sure. I had a couple of hours of focused time this evening for development work, but unfortunately wasted the last half trying to find a memory allocation bug.

In some recent refactoring I introduced a double release somehow, but after an hour of late evening head banging, I could not find it and decided the wisest course of action was to drop it for the evening — hopefully I will find and fix the issue within the first little bit of my next session. I believe I at least know when I introduced the bug, so hopefully this will be another demonstration of “version control software is my friend”.

Day T-41 Accomplishments (Monday, March 1, 2010)

• Remembered there is a point where it’s best to just put down the keyboard and walk away

I did no coding on Sunday, but did get comfortable on the couch with a couple of development books:

• iPhone Game Development, Zirkle & Hogue
• Mobile 3D Graphics with OpenGL ES and M3G, Pulli, etal

Day T-42 Accomplishments (Sunday, February 28, 2010)

• Spent a couple of hours with some iPhone development books