Lost . . .

The day drags on, tearing at my consciousness. I feel lost, not knowing where I am, not knowing what I should be doing. I look to my left, seeking your face, but find emptiness. I reach to my right, grasping for your warmth, but cold blankets are all that I find. I mumble to myself 'Why was I sitting here?' lost in my thoughts, forgetting all that I once longed to do, all that I wanted to reach, now replaced by you, my love, my sweetheart, my dearest, my one and only.

Something Technical

As most of you know (if you've read my into post) I'm studying to be a computer scientist, and in this semester, we finally did something technical already, well, a week ago now, but I haven't gotten time to write about it. We had to analyze and write a short summary of a article that was released in late 2008 about the iPhone. The article was about designing and publishing applications for the iPhone as a third party company. As a sort of test to people aside from my professor, here's the article;


The iPhone SDK, a development kit meant to be used with the iPhone. It was first portrayed that the iPhone wouldn't support 3rd party applications, but it was soon after reviled that with the Safari browser, that web applications could be made to feel like native applications, and about a year later, Apple reviled that they had a development kit for the iPhone, the iPhone SDK. The SDK is rather straightforward, and easy to install, unlike some, though it has some quirks, like that it must be run on a Mac, and can't run on a Windows machine.
For one to use the iPhone SDK, they would need a basic understanding of how programming works with the language C, though that really isn't enough. To be able to program for the iPhone, one needs to learn Objective-C, a language almost exclusive to the iPhone and the Mac. The difference between the two languages is mostly in syntax, and a few extra keywords that were added. A simple example is a method invocation, in C++ it looks like; "object.method;" where in Objective-C, it looks like; "[object method];" Slightly different, yet different enough that some extra knowledge is needed.
The tools that come with the SDK are in essence, all that one would need to program for the iPhone. The tools include a IDE for project and resource management (the Xcode IDE), a companion tool for the Xcode IDE, an Interface Builder, a debugger, and an iPhone simulator (note not a emulator). All of these tools do what one would expect. The Interface builder is a drag and drop IDE that works with a layout of the iPhone. It can as well tie buttons to method calls, so that when the button is clicked, it activates the associated action, or method. As well, An outlet can be bound to a variable, for example, a text label would be exposed as a Outlet, and when bound, it would on runtime, be bount to the controls on your use interface, so as to say, when the label's text property is set, the Outlet's text would change as well.
The simulator is exactly that, a simulator of the iPhone, but it must be noted, it is not a emulator, so it does not include some features that the real iPhone does, such as GPS input data and the accelerometer, though that could be somewhat easily remedied with a interface that sends the simulator data to sample. As well, since it is not a emulator, it does not cycle-for-cycle equivalent of the actual iPhone. Though most of these can be over looked slightly, there is still great benefit to having at least one actual iPhone to test the code on.
For the small team, there are a few obstacles that are hard to face, especially for a small private company. To use the iPhone SDK fully, publish the finished program, and distribute it, assuming that each of the developers had a Mac computer, it would realistically cost only a $99 subscription fee, or $299 for in-home release. However, if on-device debugging and testing, costs another $99. All things considered this isn't so bad, $198 to get everything done, after a few sales, you should be all made up for, however, if each of the team members does not own a Mac, or have one to use, the price is much higher, with the lowest priced Mac upward of $550, have a team of half a dozen, and the cost quickly becomes a few thousand dollars. For a small group of people, if everything is already had in hand, and money isn't a problem, then it can be done, however, it depends on the group, and what is had in hand.

Photoshop

I've recently tried to flex my creative muscles, for both personal reasons, mostly betterment, but partly because I've needed mildly different images then I was able to find, such as this one;

The original image had brown hair, but I needed it with greyish white, which I was able to do. But as I fiddled, and fooled around, trying to make things work, things kept coming to my mind about what I was doing, and what I probably should be doing to make it "proper". It could only be taught from basics, but then the rest was inspiration, like painting, or drawing. It takes time and practice to get it right. In layman's terms, learning Photoshop to create art in a digital formal is like learning to paint or draw, it takes practice (time), and inspiration.

However, after some more time of fiddling, a few hours really, things began to make more and more sense, and something nagging at me came to the top of my mind, despite it being complicated, it was rather easy to figure out the basics, it was frankly, user friendly, especially in transferring images. One thing that I had played around with in my past, though never used to it's full extent, was dreamweaver, another program made by Adobe for the HTML and JavaScript programmer (technically scripter but we can look over that.) One of the things that is sometimes a bit of, frankly, a pain in the butt, is moving between programs especially editing programs, and making it an easy flow, not having to stop, think, configure, play around, then finally be able to what you wanted to in the first place. But that wasn't quite so with PhotoShop, it was veryeasy to move between programs, easily transferring the image, and then being able to manipulate it further as I needed.

In short as an overview, in case you don't like reading huge amounts of text, instead just like to read the last paragraph, in the digital world of PhotoShop, Dreamweaver, and other editing programs, it takes time, practice, and inspiration to use photoshop, yet, it is an enlightening and easy experience due to the program's ease of use and user friendliness, especially with our most daunting of tasks, working with finished products, by moving them between programs, then finally to our clientele, be it that I have none... Yet...

Dedicated to Chantel Odom

Sunrise

The suns rays began to filter through the branches, tumbling into my eyes, ambers, oranges, and reds painting a perfect picture against the window. The sun had only just began to slide over the horizon, making it high enough to see, once more. I squinted slightly, the brightness painful at first, I adjusted, my eyes no open once more as I absorbed the scene, it's beauty amazing me, captivating me. It had been years since I had seen the sun rise, or set, and it was beautiful, truly beautiful. As I stood there, I remembered the beauty I had seen while tossing the morning news one neighbors front doorsteps. I moved, hoping for a better view, but none could be found, and sighing, I returned to my place, watching as the sun rose a little more, it's rays tumbling through the branches, then suddenly, I felt a hand on my shoulder, my father's, it was time it seemed as he spoke, "There's work to be done, breakfast starts at eight." Nodding, I looked back over at the sun, and turned to begin my work a few last words echoing through the scene "Can't they eat breakfast at noon?"