morrowlife

Here’s LRN2’s new computer booting up for the very first time.  Ahh . . . what a thing of beauty!  Great Art courtesy of the exclusive iPhone-cam and part of my famous Machinery series.  Those are LRN2’s hands there, shortly after he Pushed the Button.

Extreme Short Shrift.  It’s already bedtime, and I’ve been staying up WAY too late recently.

We got a great invitation from our cruising buddies Connie and Doug yesterday – they have a house at South Lake Tahoe for the Labor Day weekend, and they invited us to join them.  So we’re going.  Apparently, the house is in her family, so there’s also no charge.  Nice.  We’re looking forward to seeing that area and to having a nice weekend with Connie and Doug.  LRN2 is coming on this trip, of course.

Had a nice time at iOS devcamp.  I went on Friday and Saturday.  Didn’t really do any software development – I spent my time studying iPhone programming and attending various talks, all of which were very interesting.  There was one unhappy-looking young man who talked about how an application  for which he and some colleagues spent a grand total of three hours in development has made over $100,000.  The app is free, but they have advertising on it, and they have a company that allows you to choose who will serve your ads on a minute-by-minute basis if you want, and they managed to get a lot of downloads.  Hence, they made a lot of money.  Kind of sad.

And it’s time for bed already.  I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this exciting new Morrowlife Employment Agency opportunity: mosquito catcher!

See you tomorrow.

Here’s . . . ummm . . . . a US Forest Service . . . ummm . . . thing.  I do know it goes on railroad tracks.  I have no idea what else it does.  I’m assuming it’s just supposed to transport a person or two, but I’m not sure I see how.  Or where those people would sit.  Great Art courtesy of the exclusive iPhone-cam and part of my famous Machinery series.

Greetings from the train! I finished a few emails, indexed a hundred names, updated my to-do list for the weekend – all while listening to Jesus the Christ – and watched a little bit of my iPhone class, and now it’s time to blog a bit. I only have a bit more than ten minutes before we pull in to Lardville, and writing on my beloved iPhone is a bit slow, so I’m unlikely to finish this before I get home. Might as well get a start, anyway.

Devcamp starts tomorrow afternoon! I’ve been a bit worried about going, seeing as how I’m still a student and rank amateur iPhone-programming-wise, but I’ve decided to go, listen to the speakers (if any), and work on my own. I’ll spend as much time as necessary learning, and I have an idea for a program I hope to write during the conference.

I’m kind of excited about the idea. It’s easy enough that I think I can accomplish it, and I think it might find an audience in the App Store. I won’t charge for it, so there’s no money to be made, but I’m thinking it will be good experience and maybe get me some exposure. I think something good might come of it. Details on the app next week.

Nothing else new, other than that the weekend is here! I have a million things to get done tomorrow before the conference (which doesn’t start until 5:00, and I probably don’t need to be there before 6:00). LRN4 apparently has a pretty long list, and I have a few things of my own. Ought to be a busy day.

We’re slowing down for the Lardville station. See you in a bit.

– Later –

I’m back.  Checked the devcamp website, and it looks like a fairly large percentage of registered attendees also have little to no iPhone programming experience.  So at least I’ll be in good company.  I’m expecting it to be fun.  And I plan to just dedicate my time to finding a quiet place and working on my app.  And maybe I’ll make a friend or two.  Wish me luck, Loyal Readers!

And that’s about it for tonight.  I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this exciting Morrowlife employment opportunity (which is an actual job opening with the actual United States Federal Government!  I’m not kidding this time!): Native American Medicine Man.

See you tomorrow.

Here’s the sign for the Route 66 Inn, in Williams, Arizona.  Great Art courtesy of the exclusive iPhone cam and absolutely un-photoshopped or -gimped or -anythingelsed.  I like the clouds.  Part of my famous (and underutilized) Motel Sign series.

Extreme Short Shrift.  I’ve been working on the iPhone app this evening, and it’s already past time for bed.  No post yesterday, either.  Busy, busy, busy.

I’m looking forward to iOS devcamp 2010 on the weekend.  I’ve been a bit nervous about going to it, since it’s supposed to be solely for experienced iPhone/iPad developers, but I paid my fifty bucks and I’m sure I’ll get something good out of it.  Might not get into a group developing the next cool app, though.  I might just go to the presentations, which aren’t exactly set in stone yet, as far as what they are, technically.

Anyway.  Time for bed.  I’ll leave my Loyal Reader with this shocking food violence news: burning cheese!

See you tomorrow.

Here’s LRN2 with his strangely radioactive birthday cake.  Great Art courtesy of the exclusive iPhone-cam, taken slightly before the view of a few days ago, and possibly even more frightening.

No post last Friday.  Got busy.  LRN12 was with us on the weekend, for one thing.  We had a nice visit.  LRN5 came on Friday also and spent the night.  We hadn’t seen her in a while either, so it was nice to catch up.

Speaking of Loyal Readers, LRN3 and LRN15 have decided to leave Arizona and carry themselves back to old Virginia!  They’re planning to leave on LRN3’s birthday, which is coming up in only a couple of weeks.  I’m sure they have lots to get done in preparation.  I think they’re planning to sell/give away/donate lots of their stuff.  Good luck, Loyal Readers!  We’ll miss having you here in the West, that’s for sure.  Who knows, though? We may be back in the East one of these days.

I really meant to get my weekly letter off to LRN1 last night, but just didn’t get it done.  I figured I’d work on it during my lunch break today.  Imagine my surprise when he sent a note at about 10:15 this morning, telling me he was receiving and sending emails early!  I quickly called LRN4 and we both got our letters written.  Fortunately, he got them before it was too late.  I’ll have to remember to get it done on Sunday from now on.  I’d hate to let a week go by without a letter for him.

My new iPhone book arrived from Amazon today.  It’s called: “iPhone Programming: The Big Nerd Ranch Guide,” and my iPhone project co-volunteers tell me it’s about the best one out there right now.  I’m looking forward to going through it Real Soon Now.  I still have to read the very good Qt book I got for my birthday, too.  I’ve been going through my old C++ book in preparation for that one.  So there are lots of technical books to read right now.  But I’m pretty serious about iPhone development, so I’m giving priority to that one.

Speaking of which, I found an entire college-level iPhone development class from Stanford on iTunes U and downloaded it the other night.  It was taught Winter term this year, so it’s nice and fresh (although already about two generations of Xcode tools old – that’s an impossibility to keep up with).  I am within two minutes of finishing the first session – watched it on the train this morning and this afternoon, in between working for an hour in the morning and doing a bit of indexing in the afternoon.  The class is formatted for a 640×480 iPod, so that’s convenient train-wise.

Speaking of taking iPhone development seriously, I’m heading off to iPhone boot camp this Friday afternoon.  It lasts through the weekend.  I’m told it’s less of a tutorial than an actual working session, so I’m hoping to get as versed as possible before I get there and use it to get some real practical hands-on experience.  I know I’ll be getting a t-shirt (the registration form asked for my size), and I hear there may be other cool goodies distributed as well.  I’m excited to get started.

In more appley-goodness news, I installed iOS 4 on my iPhone yesterday afternoon.  I was really nervous about doing it, and the jury’s still out on the long-term effects, but so far, so good.  My phone wasn’t running particularly fast before, so I had very little to lose.  If it gets lousy sometime soon, I can revert back to the previous OS without too much trouble.

I’m pretty sure I mentioned that I’m listening to Jesus the Christ on the old iPod.  I’m really enjoying it.  Highly recommended.  We just started reading the New Testament at dinner, so I’m getting a double-dose of Jesus’s life.  Which isn’t a bad thing to get a double-dose of.  In spite of the reader having forgotten to remove his fairly regular speakos (the verbal equivalent of a typo – and who doesn’t do such things?), it’s well done and interesting.  Doesn’t put me to sleep, either.

Time for Home Evening, so I have to quit.  I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this fascinating toilet news: Canada has its own toilet museum.

See you tomorrow.

Here’s LRN2’s new iPod Touch, as photographed from my beloved iPhone.  Slightly fuzzy Great Art courtesy of the exclusive iPhone-cam, of course.  Part of my famous Machinery series.

Another Extreme Short Shrift night.  It’s already almost 10:00 and I need to get to bed.

Worked, ate, and commuted.  My train ride this afternoon was especially productive – I listened to some more of Jesus the Christ (turns out I’m enjoying it – the reader is interesting, although he forgot to eliminate his mistakes from the recording, which is kind of amusing in the world of audio books), indexed 150 names, finished the current draft of my Arduino program, and wrote this Sunday’s talk.  Also worked for an hour in the morning.  Whew.

I was a bit surprised to hear today that Glenn Beck has kinda sorta endorsed gay marriage.  His argument seems to be that as long as they’re not harming him, he doesn’t care what they do.  While I agree with his argument in principle, I couldn’t disagree more in practice.  The problem as I see it is that it’s never enough for the gay lobby.  As soon as something becomes permissible, it isn’t long before it becomes mandatory.  Assuming gay marriage truly becomes legal in California in the near future, it won’t be long at all before anyone legally licensed to perform marriages is required to perform gay marriages, regardless of their own moral standards.  The LDS church (and many other churches, of course) will never agree to such a thing, so our right to perform marriages will be stripped from us.  The designs and purposes of God can’t be frustrated, of course, but people who make themselves our enemies will make it as hard for us as they possibly can.

Besides, the idiot (and, incidentally, gay) judge who took it upon himself to overturn the will of the people of California argued that the people have no right to impose their morality on the state.  What he doesn’t seem to understand, and what every intelligent creature in the universe except for him and his friends does understand, is that all law is based on generally accepted standards of morality.  What else is there to base it on?  We believe it’s wrong to kill, it’s wrong to steal, and it’s wrong to harm other people.  So we make those things illegal.  What’s the difference?

Anyway.  I can’t understand what Mr. Beck is thinking.  How can he not see that these people mean us harm?  How can he not see that they’re nowhere near finished?

Okay, that’s it for politics for today.  In the good news arena, we got the new PDA for the pool today.  I got it paired with the transmitter, and it works!  The pool is back in business.  Meaning that we can turn jacuzzifying mode and the heater on again.  It was very trying without those things for a few days.

And I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this shocking food violence news: melon chaos!

See you tomorrow.