Tag Archives: focus

Need More Focus: iPhone Development

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In the beginning, this post was just titled “Need More Focus”. I was going to talk about how I’ve been working towards making HanMeta a self-sustaining entity.

But then, I watching the iPhone OS 3.0 preview presentation after coming home. Then, I had to make some very quick decision about how I’m going to reach that goal.

How Far I Have Come: A Review

2009 started with a bout of laziness. Definitely a lot of resting, clutching onto the 360, all the while, trying to figure out what I wanted to with the blog. The month of January was spent on learning more and more about dealing with the Linux server as I moved my blog to slicehost and hoped to launch a Rails app on the same slice.

Oh, the joys of being the linux admin. Definitely learned to fear (the respect kind… and… the other kind, too… who are these great demigods placed on the Earth anyway?) the server admins that power the Pipes.

I visited Seattle later that month, and came back refreshed, ready to bite into something hard. I chose the guitar. Yes, the real kind, although, I did end up returning to the awesomeness that is Rock Band. I learned about how to learn again. (I’ve been writing up this in another post.)

February: a week or two was spent on learning Cocoa and iPhone development. It was a nice break from trying to futz around with linux server administration. DevPhone 2009 was extremely important in helping me get started. Also, there was a nice (much shorter) presentation on iPhone Development for Education at NCSA. And of course, I can’t leave out Hillegass’s amazing book on Cocoa Programming.

After that, my desire to finish a web application started to flare up again. I started hacking away with some libraries that I would need to make FeedSt a reality. Instead of doing a feed reader, I decided to finish up an easier non-paid project called GadgetGet. This was around the beginning of March.

Of course, on top of this, earlier this month, I started a tiny little podcast called JKast. All the while, there were blog posts waiting to be written.

The Multiple JKs

I sat down yesterday, trying to figure out how to divide up my focus. Instead, I avoided making any decision and continued to read Atlas Shrugged, a book that I’ve been meaning to read ever since I found out that there was a yearly scholarship for it back in college. It being in the news, I just had to get it for the Kindle to test some fiction reading on it.

Today, it hit me. I need to start focusing. Now.

Why Not Earlier?

The reasoning behind trying to do both Web and Desktop development was simple: To be awesome twice. Of course, what I forgot was that cloning hasn’t been perfected yet. And even then, why would the world need a second me? Ridiculous.

Is it the newness of the iPhone SDK? Is it the third 2 L of Dew I just cracked open in four days? Maybe, but I find myself wanting to do more iPhone development, over all the Rails hacking I’ve been doing. It could be because of all the other things that I have been having trouble with; more correctly, it could be because of all the other things that I’ve been learning.

Heck, my skills in vi/m has increased significantly. I find myself wanting the shortcuts in all circumstances. rails.vim, a vim plugin, totally blows my mind every time I load up MacVim. My desires to do things with the shortest amount of keystrokes and the least amount of time has been on the rise, with more and more usage of Quicksilver and GeekTools. The server admin insanity helped me understand more and more about the state of the Internet in general. Also, gaining a much more deep understanding of git and deployment through Heroku so I can just sidestep almost all the server admin pain…

So, I don’t discount the fact that my desire to learn and implement a web app has gotten be very far. It’s just that, from the business standpoint, time to market and any form of money seems to be much faster with the iPhone.

I also feel that there are many more possibilities for interesting human to computer interactions with the iPhone than a traditional web app. The other data provided by just having an iPhone from the GPS, accelerometer… and now, other iPhones in proximity… At times, it just feels more real to me. You’re touching your UI elements, goodness.

Also, I need to act on this excitement. I took way too long to commit myself to Rails. I’m still wondering why I didn’t latch onto it back in 2006, when I knew full well that was what I wanted then.

But again, learning from mistakes, and pushing forward. Hard.

Game Plan

It’s simple: Get it done. All the while, enjoy the awesome-izing process.

I could bore you with the list of things I want to get done, but I’ll do it in my notebook instead. Really, I want to make sure that the process I go through stays as transparent as possible.

FRICK, Focusing is HARD

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Seriously. I’m writing this as an effort to get me back on track.

At least, with working out, you didn’t really have to think. You’d count, and memorize. And push yourself to your limit. But there wasn’t any of this planning or thinking or critiquing…

Programming with the crew at HanMeta is FUN. But man, it’s freaking draining after a day of work at NCSA. I might be able to get a few hours in every night, plus all the other personal crap I have to do.

And just because it’s fun, it doesn’t mean it’s draining. I guess I signed up for this when I made HanMeta anyway. My eyes hurt immensely.

Yeap. That’s all that you’re going to get from this blogger today. Wee.

Quirk: Not turning off bathroom lights

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I keep forgetting to turn off bathroom lights.

Last time I was at home, my mom told me how I left the first floor bathroom light on. I only remember doing it once, but I she told me that I do it quite often. It turns out… I actually left it on twice already that week.

I wasn’t sure why I would forget to do such a thing… then I figured it out. Right now.

I left the bathroom light on at my apartment because I was so focused. I was watching Jessica Livingston’s Tech Talk at Google.

Focus. Wonderful! But… eccentricity… crap.

Just one more reason to call Josh Kim “weird”. And “metacognitioner”.

New Goals: Pre-Month in Review

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Before the month’s over… and I have to do yet another one of those crazy Month in Review’s… I think I need to take this time to refocus a bit.

Lent Commitments… Uh oh…

Originally, it was:

Initially, for Lent, I had given up things like YouTube, TV shows, and movies. Then I started to play Quake… ONE. Oh man, how much fun. I think I must have sunk a good chunk of time into it. Well… I’m going to say this here: All forms of electronic entertainment is forbidden until Easter.

This includes: ANYTHING Flash, ANY passive media… It’s quite hard, seeing how almost EVERYWHERE I go, there’s a TV on or a browser open to YouTube. Time to strategize how to avoid those situations…

Bible reading is going well. Kinda getting behind (I think… I’m not sure…), because I’m really trying to learn Philippians before Easter… but that’s only an excuse. By the end of this month, I want to be fully caught up. I need to do some math in terms of how many chapters I, then, have to read to catch up. We’ll see, at the end of the month.

Let’s just say I’ve broken… a few of them. I probably pulled a JK^extreme again and went overboard on making up incredibly difficult and unnecessary commitments. For example, I picked up playing StarCraft again. It’s fun. It’s not nearly as addicting as before (I’ve matured, hooray!), and so I’ve been playing to get my mind off of things… I didn’t really feel guilty about playing it, but after thinking about a little bit, I feel bad that I didn’t feel guilty enough to not start it up.

So what do I do… Do I go into insane failure layer mode, give up everything and just forget about Lent? Well, I have to question my motives in even setting up these incredibly insane goals for myself.

I don’t want to give up something that I don’t do normally anyway. So something like watching TV… I don’t do it that much to begin with. I might do it occasionally, but giving that up to…

You know what? From the time I joined Covenant Fellowship Church until now, I’ve never been a fan of Lent. I’m still very much unsure of why we even do this thing. While going through the Internet, I ran into this interesting page: The True Meaning of Lent. While it is from a different denomination than mine (PCA), it definitely brings up many great points.

So before this turns into a post that I should create a new category “Religion” for, I’m going to end this here with this:

I’m going to get rid of all the things I’ve abstained from. This doesn’t mean that I’m going to go start getting addicted to gaming or movies or whatever, but that I won’t be feeling guilty whenever I break the “promise”, or at least, the illusion of it that I’ve created for myself.

However, the things that I’ve decided to add to my list of “things to do”, I’m going to keep. Reading the Word as well as memorizing Philippians has been incredibly helpful for me (even though… I’ve fallen behind quite a bit). I’m not doing these things merely because they’re on the list, but because I genuinely believe that they are helping me in my walk with God.

As soon as I focus on doing the positives, these unnecessary things will fall by the wayside anyway. I just need to make sure I follow through with the things I know will help me grow.

And seriously, Josh Kim, it’s your pride for setting up these insane goals. You wanted to feel all high and mighty if you kept them, right? You idiot…

I love setting up myself for failure. Yummy.

Summary: Read Bible. Memorize Philippians. Keep fighting. Don’t waste time.

Books

Definitely want to finish up Hackers and Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age… I think I might do my first ever book review on this blog on this book. Heck, it’s the first non-programming book I’ll be finishing up in years.

The book Textmate: Power Editing for the Mac (Pragmatic Programmers) doesn’t seem that useful… at least… $20 useful. This book definitely adds to the online documentation at macromates, but I feel as if the pdf version of this book should have been included with the crazy price of TextMate. Definitely want to take my time with this book, though… seeing how I use this app hourly.

Agile Web Development with Rails (Pragmatic Programmers): What is wrong with the manufacturer of this book? The text is printed on a slant. It’s readable, but it bugs the crap out of me. And also, THIS?

Binding Issue

It’s not just this book, but it’s also the case with the TextMate book (it’s not as noticeable because that book is thinner and the pages are thicker). I hope it’s just this batch of books of the Pragmatic Programmers series. I asked for a return on this one… so I won’t be able to dip into the Ruby on Rails just yet. Besides, I want to learn more Ruby before I go deeper. Should I just go and buy Programming Ruby: The Pragmatic Programmers’ Guide, Second Edition?

Waiting for Founders at Work: Stories of Startups’ Early Days to come in the mail. I know for a fact I will love this book.

Summary: Read Hackers & Painters by end of the month. Textmate, take your time. Founder’s by the end of next month.

Consulting/Freelancing/Blogging/Entrepreneurship…ing

I felt like all these things go hand in hand. This is basically my life, or at least, it should be.

I like my “job”. I like having a steady income from a part-time job with College of Education at University of Illinois: Urbana-Champaign. I like having clients to work for. I like setting my own hours (as you can see with the insane timestamp of this post). I like working wherever I want… from my apartment to the library…

I like my blog. I love being able to write about whatever’s on my mind on whatever subject I please. I love being able to strategize about how to best present the content, the information… how to monetize… ahem

I love thinking about the company I’ll be starting soon. I love doing market research. I love being my own marketing department, almost tearing my hair out trying to come up with a cool company/service names. I love imagining all the services I could provide through the company. I love thinking about the tax benefits of incorporating from one state compared to another.

The only problem I see right now… is the lack of health insurance. I don’t bring in enough to have a personal plan for myself, nor do I have health issues to begin with… it’s just something that bothers me from time to time.

But in terms of things to get done before the end of the month:

  • College of Education
    • Get Active Directory working in ColdFusion
    • Templates for moodle working
    • Fix moodle bugs, submit to moodle CVS repository
  • Freelancing
    • Finish up drupal customization
    • Finish up portfolio
    • Actively seek out clients
  • Blog
    • New template, new categories, new… old posts… blah blah blah

Summary: Get work done. Finish redesign on paper by end of the month. Finalize what is to be done with hanmeta.

I Can’t Sleep

I’m currently sick. And yet, I don’t really feel like going to sleep.

I really hope I don’t start writing another post tonight…

Focus: All But Gone

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Starting with Sunday, my focus has been dwindling.

I can’t seem to get back what I had since last Thursday.

Sorry for the depressing post, but I’m just thoroughly spent.

To make up for it, let me describe the snow situation in Urbana, IL.

I stepped outside for about 30 seconds to throw away some garbage. To my surprise, when I looked up, the dumpster was filled to the top. Then I looked around into the winter wonderland AKA WHITE DEATH.

I was quite amazed. More amazed than the… one night in Chicago where the snow flakes were as big as the palm of my hand. In my lifetime, I’ve never seen so much snow.

Alas, the college students (and also the people who work for the university… mostly, anyway) will have a second snow day tomorrow. I’m really sad that I won’t be able to spend it at ISR, seeing how WHITE DEATH is covering the entire parking lot.

I’m almost positive the snow was up to my knees when I stepped out last. And it’s still snowing.

Right. Valentine’s. This day has never meant anything to me. For some reason, when I look to the snow, I cannot help but to be amazed at how romantic the snow CAN be.

[hurl]. If you want a more full blown post on love, I’ll think about posting one tomorrow.