Graham Hayes's blog

Flashcards Free Now Available In The App Store

Just a quick one to say my first App is in the Apple App Store, for anyone who is interested it took seven days from submission until being available to download. Currently it isn't appearing in search results, apparently it will within 24 hours but it can take up to a week. In the meantime you can download it from this link, let me know what you think about it.

Also, I used the new storyboard method of app creation. But I didn't research it properly and this really basic app is only available on iOS 5 or greater, so that's the first thing to change for the first update.

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My First App - How Flashcards Should Be

I had in mind from the beginning what my first app would be, a simple flashcard program that lets you make cards with text, sound and pictures. Apps like this already exist but I wanted something with less features. Basically a step up from actual cards.

The reason for this is flashcards are not an important part of learning anything, they're good for familiarisation, revision and quickly learning a small set of knowledge. An app with a myriad of features distract from that, they make flashcards a bigger part of your life than they should be.

A popular feature is being able to download sets of flashcards from a repository like quizlet.com, it sounds great, you can save time by downloading hundreds of cards without having to spend time creating them.

Let's now look at the reality, what is the chance that someone has made a set of cards where every card is just what you need to learn right now, it's not going to happen. You will find either they have stuff you already know, stuff you don't need to know yet, with some of what you should be learning now.

Instead people end up downloading random mish mashes of cards some of which will have the same questions as other sets, and then as if they feel the need to balance out the time they saved not creating those cards, people will spend hours learning these cards and keeping track of meaningless statistics, like how many cards they've mastered according to the app.

Another misuse of flashcards is when people also decide 'oh! I think I'll learn kanji' and get a flashcard app with the 2000 most frequent characters and begin. In their defence they do need to learn the 2000 kanji but not all of them now and not in the order that they've been written.

Here's another way, start reading. That's why you are learning kanji in the first place, if you can't read a kanji skip it or look it up, but lean toward skipping it. If it comes up again start leaning toward looking it up. If you've looked it up a couple times now and it's not sticking then start leaning toward making a flashcard. That's possibly four exposures minimum, before you resort to flashcards. Now you've learned that kanji and can read it every time. Delete that flashcard, you don't need it anymore, it's now inhaling your time and attention which could be spent reading more.

Anyway this is the motivation for this style of flashcard app, I hope people understand it and come to value it, but the original intended audience is me and for me it is exactly what I wanted.  

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Back To Programming - Leaning The iOS SDK

 

 

 

I recently purchased an iMac so I could start programming for iOS systems. From ages 12 to 23 programming was an obsession. Academia killed it for me, but six years later the bug is back.

As soon as I got my iMac up and running I downloaded the iOS SDK and enrolled in to the developer program. Then I downloaded a couple books from the Kindle store and got to it. Firstly I was apprehensive about using Kindle books to learn programming but in the end it wasn't an issue. They do tend to wrap long lines of code but if you know what you are reading then it's fine.

What I didn't expect was the large difference between iOS 5 and previous versions, or at least my inability to deal with it. The first book I bought was iPhone Programming: The Big Nerd Ranch Guide(affiliate link). This book is really well written, the concepts are explained brilliantly and the examples are worth doing and complex enough that you are almost writing full applications. The only problem, is that it's already out of date. I struggled my way through the first three examples before I'd had enough.

Now I'm familiar with the SDK I could probably go back to it and have an easier time making their examples work for iOS 5, but there's not much point now. (You can download a template so that their examples work as written for newer versions of iOS and Xcode).

So I got a different book, iPhone iOS 5 Development Essentials (affiliate link), this book is for iOS 5 and nearly all the examples work out of the box, this book starts with a lot of filler that you can skip unless you've never seen an iPhone before (in which case why are you trying to program for it?...Well?). The examples are good, they adequately explain and demonstrate the functionality of the different elements in the SDK but they are overly simple.

They literally give you enough knowledge to get the individual components to work but leave extending that knowledge up to you. Integrating a few of the chapters in to building a more complex app would have made it a more interesting and useful book. This would have reinforced the Model View Controller pattern and also brought out a lot of issues that you will come across when you make a proper application.

The Big Nerd Ranch book actually has this, over the course of several chapters they take you through making an app which integrates a lot of practical components of the iOS SDK and flicking through these chapters has been really useful for me progressing from the basic level that iPhone Essentials has given me.

This was a pretty quick and dirty way to get me up and running with iOS development. I did about 60% of the examples from iPhone Essentials and started making my first app which is nearly finished and ready for submission. Now I'm moving toward improving my coding style so my apps are more manageable for future updates. 

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Spiced Rum Hot Chocolate With Coconut Whipped Cream

Here's how to make this festive, delicious and decadent beverage.

Ingredients:

Spiced rum

For the hot chocolate,

2 cups of milk
80-100g of 70% dark chocolate
Pinch of salt
1 tbsp of sugar

The whipped cream,

1 can of coconut cream/milk
2 tbsp of sugar

Heat the milk in a saucepan on a low heat, break up the chocolate and put in the milk. Stir occasionally. Don't let it burn.

For the cream you need to separate the water from the coconut cream, so don't shake the can before (or after!) opening. Drink or discard the water. Put the cream in the fridge in the morning and fetch it at night, when your supposed to be drinking this. Or blast it in the freezer for 5-10 mins. Do the same with the mixing bowl and whisk.

When everything is chilled start whipping the cream until it's no longer viscous, and looks like whipped cream. Stir in the sugar and set aside.

When the chocolate has melted add the salt and sugar, stir and dissolve. Pour from the saucepan into a measuring jug so it's easier to pour into your drinking receptacle.

Pour the spiced rum into a tumbler, mug or whatever your using. As much as you like. Then pour the hot chocolate, leaving a bit of space for the whipped cream. Which you will spoon on top of the hot chocolate until you have a generous layer of cream on top.

Enjoy!

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