adronh

April 7, 2012
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Well shit! Still no time…

Still have not had time study any.  I have been glancing over what I have covered so far but have not went forward any.  Maybe tomorrow.  I help a guy that has a storm shelter business and that has been tying up all of my free time and then some.  Last weekend and for half of this week I have been working on some 3d designs and 3 sets of blueprints.  I really like doing the 3d stuff.  I use Sketchup for the 3d work.  I like it a lot.  Would love to play with some of the other software out there for 3d but they are so damn expensive.  So ofter completing the model in Sketchup, I use Kerkythea for rendering my model.  It does a really good job…again I would like to play with other rendering engines but they are so damn expensive.  For my blueprints, I use AutoCad.  It does 3d as well, but I have had not the time to learn to do that.  Its just so easy to use Sketchup and it does everything that I need it to.

March 30, 2012
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Time problems…

Last night I started on the chapter about looping in Objective C.  Went over the “for” loop for an hour or two.  It has been really hard to find time lately to study…and that’s is not going to get any better anytime soon.  I have a wife and three girls.  All three girls will be starting their softball seasons and there goes a lot of time.  Practice starts next week…oh and guess who was volunteered to help…yeah.  So I will be hammering away when I have time.

March 28, 2012
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Got my Mac….now what?

So after I finally got my Mac, I had to find resources for learning to program in Objective C and Develop apps.  I tried reading through Apple’s documentation but soon got frustrated. It’s not really for an absolute beginner like me.  I have always used books more than anything else to learn new things…anytime I get into anything new, I just buy the corresponding book in the Dummies series.  The Amazon reviews for Objective C for Dummies tuned me into the fact that it would not be the best route to take.  After looking at many, many books, I ran across Programing in Objective C by Stephen Kochan.  I had also read about Cocos2d.  It seemed like a good fit for the type of app that I am wanting to create.  So I also bought Learning Cocos2d  by Rod Strougo and Ray Wenderlich.  Soooo….these are the first books that I have gotten to start learning.

So this brings me to where I am now….5 chapters into Programming in Objective C.  So far, so good.  One really great thing about the book is that it has a forum just for the book.  It is a great place to check when I run into some roadblock or just to reinforce fundamentals.  http://classroomm.com/objective-c/

I am also watching Bucky’s video tutorials on The New Boston website.  This just further reinforces everything.  He has a great way of making hard to grasp concepts…graspable….is that a word?  Anyway, I highly recommend it.  I would like them a little more if they was updated with him working in Xcode 4.3 but it is understandable the way it is.  http://thenewboston.org/list.php?cat=33

March 25, 2012
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My MacBook Pro

I had been thinking that I wanted to try and learn to develop apps as soon as I got my first iPhone…but to do so you have to have a mac.  I have always been a pc guy.  I know pc computers very well and work on them for extra money on the side.  I am very comfortable with them.  I knocked around the idea of making a hackintosh but with my limited funds, I didn’t want to sink any money into something that  wasn’t going to fly.  So with my wife’s approval, I started shopping for a mac.  It was a tough decision between the MacBook Air and the MacBook Pro but I finally settled on the Pro.  The deciding factor was the larger hard drive.  I got the 13″ Pro instead of the 15″ mainly because of the price.  I was a little worried about the smaller size….I have always worked on a 15″ pc, but as it turned out, I shouldn’t have been.  The 13″ Pro is perfect.  Small, light, and easy to use from bed or couch.  This is the MacBook that I have ever touched and I have fallen in love with it.  I still prefer my pc for some things but for coding or surfing the internet….it’s my MacBook hands down.  The learning curve has not been as bad as I was afraid it would be.  So with my MacBook in hand, I set out to figure the first steps it would take for learning to develop apps.  (MacBook Specs below for nerds)

MacBook Air 13″
2.3 GHz Intel Core i5
4GB 1333 MHz DDR3

March 18, 2012
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Hello world!

Hello.  My name is adron.  I am 37.  I created this blog to document my experience’s learning objective c programming and learning to develop iOS apps.  I know, I know…everybody and their brother is a wanna be app dev.  But, Computer related things have always come easy to me.  This is not to say that learning to develop apps will be easy, but I do think it’s a damn good start.  I also hope to network with some other wanna be’s and maybe pool our knowledge or resources anyway.  I am not a writer…as a matter of fact, I suck at spelling and grammar, so forgive me if my posts come across as gibberish.  I have one idea for an app that I am knocking around in my head and I will elaborate on that as the months roll on.