Tuesday, August 28, 2012
Thursday, August 23, 2012
Two years!
I've just sat down at my iMac and tried to solve my WiFi issue, when I thought "This needs a blog post, it's more than a tweet..."
"Hold the phone!" I hear you say. Let's just comprehend that shall we... I said two amazing things. Firstly I said I sat down at my iMac. Secondly I said more than a tweet. Now it's more than two years since my last blog post and clearly a lot has changed!
I'm not arrogant enough to think there's anyone just using my blog for information, but let's suppose for just a second that were the case. Kind of a lot has happened in the last two years! I guess I should bring you up to speed.
Broad Strokes
Well over the last two years the family as grown older, but not bigger. Joni can ride a bike, Zach can run around like Batman and use an Xbox like a pro. Di is as beautiful as ever and is back at work (This wasn't the case 2 years ago. I have [recently] changed to a job in Haverhill, but more of that later. We are generally happy, ride bikes a lot (I have a road bike now, but think that needs it's own post!) and actually are having a pretty darn good summer!
The Technology
The last time I blogged it was probably from my brand new iPhone 4, which I sadly no longer have. Only because it belonged to my previous work mind you! If I was going to sit down and blog however it would most definitely have been from a Windows PC. Well... Wait for it... Here comes a shock... There is not a single Windows PC in the house. Strictly speaking that isn't quite true, but there certainly isn't a functioning Windows PC anywhere.
Let's think about how this happened. Well at Christmas 2010 I bought an iMac back from work after it had been repaired at the Apple Store in Cambridge. It wasn't a good start... I was forced to take it to the Apple Store as RM couldn't effectively deal with the minor problem (broken fan) in a professional manner. Partly RM and partly Apple at fault. In either case I thought it would probably be a good opportunity to learn a bit and so for that Christmas, much to my wife's annoyance, a 21.5" aluminium iMac sat on our kitchen table. It was pretty and I tinkered. It was confusing, but pretty. Zach and I worked on a stop go animation of a firman Sam story and this prompted me to put a DVD on the machine one day when Joni was watching the telly. When the DVD finished Zach reached forward, unprompted, ejected the DVD, took it out of the side, put the next one in and started it off. He was 2 and a half years old! Mouth open, jaw drop, epiphany... These Macs must be quite intuitive if you're not weighed down with years of advanced Windows background.
Fast forward a week and I return to work and talk with a colleague who has over the break finally published his iPhone app and, low and behold, starting making money. "That sounds fun" I think and duly head for eBay to find a Mac. another two weeks pass and I am then the proud owner of a busted old MacBook on which I can write an iPhone app.
The rest as they say is history. In March 2011 Monkey Maths was published to the iPhone app store having been developed on the 5 year old MacBook. Since then we've added a lite version of the same and a free app designed entirely by Joni. In total our apps have been downloaded tens of thousands of times (That isn;t an exaggeration!). I acquired a work MacBook Pro, subsequently returned said MacBook Pro when I left and then acquired a MacBook Air from the new employer.
And so to my shiny new iMac... Having inherited some money we decided that really we'd like to invest in a computer, since it was a bit naff the kids having to hunch over a MacBook (You see how I didn't say laptop?). There was a very short conversation about whether it should be a PC or Mac and we eventually headed off to the Apple store to get an iMac. Shiny features, a University discount and a desire for more development space means I am now sat in front of a beautiful 27" iMac, sporting a brand new installation of Mountain Lion and some well thought out custom features. (Wired keyboard as it's bigger then the bluetooth normally included and a touchpad as it's quite cool.)
The World
The world around us has changed a bit. We had some horrible riots that made us think England was an awful place to be, then we had lots of people with brooms clearing up which made us think it wasn't too bad. Finally we had the Olympics which made us realise actually it's a bloody awesome place to be! Facebook took over the world, Twitter tried to be cooler than Facebook, Facebook took back over but Twitter remained in a weird "The world needs two social networks of varying complexities" conclusion that no one really predicted.
Was that an over simplification of 26 months of recent history?
Why Are We Here?
"What made you want to blog again?" I hear no one ask. Well it all started with the WiFi problem in OS X 10.8. I'd never admit it to anyone but actually my iMac has upset me. The shiny screen, beautiful features and general awesomeness wasn't compensating for the fact the WiFi was dropping signal literally every 3 mins. Having sat down to write an app I had once again headed for Facebook to procrastinate and the wifi had dropped again. I read more google articles and suddenly fell upon the "Change your DNS settings" solution. Seemed unlikely but I have written this entire post of nonsense without a single disconnection. I breathe a sigh of relief and think I need to tell the world, but need more than 140 characters... And so here we are. On an iMac. Not writing Apps. Connected to the internet. Back in love with Apple.
"Hold the phone!" I hear you say. Let's just comprehend that shall we... I said two amazing things. Firstly I said I sat down at my iMac. Secondly I said more than a tweet. Now it's more than two years since my last blog post and clearly a lot has changed!
I'm not arrogant enough to think there's anyone just using my blog for information, but let's suppose for just a second that were the case. Kind of a lot has happened in the last two years! I guess I should bring you up to speed.
Broad Strokes
Well over the last two years the family as grown older, but not bigger. Joni can ride a bike, Zach can run around like Batman and use an Xbox like a pro. Di is as beautiful as ever and is back at work (This wasn't the case 2 years ago. I have [recently] changed to a job in Haverhill, but more of that later. We are generally happy, ride bikes a lot (I have a road bike now, but think that needs it's own post!) and actually are having a pretty darn good summer!
The Technology
The last time I blogged it was probably from my brand new iPhone 4, which I sadly no longer have. Only because it belonged to my previous work mind you! If I was going to sit down and blog however it would most definitely have been from a Windows PC. Well... Wait for it... Here comes a shock... There is not a single Windows PC in the house. Strictly speaking that isn't quite true, but there certainly isn't a functioning Windows PC anywhere.
Let's think about how this happened. Well at Christmas 2010 I bought an iMac back from work after it had been repaired at the Apple Store in Cambridge. It wasn't a good start... I was forced to take it to the Apple Store as RM couldn't effectively deal with the minor problem (broken fan) in a professional manner. Partly RM and partly Apple at fault. In either case I thought it would probably be a good opportunity to learn a bit and so for that Christmas, much to my wife's annoyance, a 21.5" aluminium iMac sat on our kitchen table. It was pretty and I tinkered. It was confusing, but pretty. Zach and I worked on a stop go animation of a firman Sam story and this prompted me to put a DVD on the machine one day when Joni was watching the telly. When the DVD finished Zach reached forward, unprompted, ejected the DVD, took it out of the side, put the next one in and started it off. He was 2 and a half years old! Mouth open, jaw drop, epiphany... These Macs must be quite intuitive if you're not weighed down with years of advanced Windows background.
Fast forward a week and I return to work and talk with a colleague who has over the break finally published his iPhone app and, low and behold, starting making money. "That sounds fun" I think and duly head for eBay to find a Mac. another two weeks pass and I am then the proud owner of a busted old MacBook on which I can write an iPhone app.
The rest as they say is history. In March 2011 Monkey Maths was published to the iPhone app store having been developed on the 5 year old MacBook. Since then we've added a lite version of the same and a free app designed entirely by Joni. In total our apps have been downloaded tens of thousands of times (That isn;t an exaggeration!). I acquired a work MacBook Pro, subsequently returned said MacBook Pro when I left and then acquired a MacBook Air from the new employer.
The World
The world around us has changed a bit. We had some horrible riots that made us think England was an awful place to be, then we had lots of people with brooms clearing up which made us think it wasn't too bad. Finally we had the Olympics which made us realise actually it's a bloody awesome place to be! Facebook took over the world, Twitter tried to be cooler than Facebook, Facebook took back over but Twitter remained in a weird "The world needs two social networks of varying complexities" conclusion that no one really predicted.
Was that an over simplification of 26 months of recent history?
Why Are We Here?
"What made you want to blog again?" I hear no one ask. Well it all started with the WiFi problem in OS X 10.8. I'd never admit it to anyone but actually my iMac has upset me. The shiny screen, beautiful features and general awesomeness wasn't compensating for the fact the WiFi was dropping signal literally every 3 mins. Having sat down to write an app I had once again headed for Facebook to procrastinate and the wifi had dropped again. I read more google articles and suddenly fell upon the "Change your DNS settings" solution. Seemed unlikely but I have written this entire post of nonsense without a single disconnection. I breathe a sigh of relief and think I need to tell the world, but need more than 140 characters... And so here we are. On an iMac. Not writing Apps. Connected to the internet. Back in love with Apple.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)