I honestly don’t understand how so many people teach themselves to program. All I want right now is an expert at my beck and call to answer all of my terrible beginner questions. Apparently, my latest problem is so basic that no one has even asked about it on Stack Overflow. So, I signed up and asked and now I’m sort of dreading the responses I might get.

On the bright side, I’m getting more and more familiar with Swift. So much so that Objective C now looks super weird and unnatural to me. O.o

Learning about CloudKit with my trusty sidekick, Daisy. She likes to nudge my hands while I’m trying to type.

The AppCoda beginning Swift book that I’m going through has a very helpful chapter on creating simple animations using the built-in CGAffineTransform methods. The book is primarily centered around a single project: building a restaurant rating and discovery app called FoodPin. Each chapter either builds new functionality into the app or improves its appearance. The “now you try it!” project at the end of the animation chapter asks you to create a custom share view that has two buttons slide in from the top and two from the bottom. This was my result…hopefully it’s sort of what they were going for!

Well, I did it: I finally finished something. No, it’s not my first iOS app (I wish), but rather a masters degree in Educational Technology Leadership. I started the degree back in the spring of 2012 and it sure feels good to be done. Now that I don’t have to worry about endless readings and an epic quota of mandatory discussion forum posts, I can focus my attention on learning to program iOS apps! Yesterday I began digging into AppCoda’s Beginning iOS 8 Programming with Swift and am on page 111. So far, everything has seemed comfortably familiar, so that’s encouraging. Even though I eventually want to develop games, I also want to have a thorough understanding of UIKit and get plenty of practice using Swift. I feel like this is a good start!

My memories of the first video game I ever played are so fuzzy that I’m not even sure if they’re real. After all, I would have only been 3 years old when Chip n’ Dale Rescue Rangers: The Adventures in Nimnul’s Castle was released. I have a hazy memory of the 5.25″ floppy disk and of this scene from the game:

The next memories I have are of sitting in my aunt and uncle’s basement, watching my older cousins play Sonic the Hedgehog on their Sega Genesis. I freaking loved Sonic the Hedgehog (though technically, I liked his sidekick Tails better). My parents bought me a Sega Game Gear and I think I only had two games: Sonic the Hedgehog, and World Series Baseball. Those two were enough to keep me entertained for hours on end!

I remember visiting my grandparents in Maine and playing Mortal Kombat at the neighbor kids’ house. I think I was also in Maine the first time I played Super Mario Bros. on an original Game Boy (not sure who it belonged to, but it wasn’t mine!). My real love affair with games, however, started when my family moved from Connecticut to Ohio. I had a Super Nintendo and my parents would take me to Blockbuster to rent games. The day that I picked up Donkey Kong Country was the day that I became really, seriously interested in video games.

Not only were the graphics gorgeous and ahead of their time, but the story was fun and the gameplay was challenging and varied, especially for my 8-year-old self. It wasn’t just that I loved Donkey Kong Country. I was sort of obsessed. I’m not sure if we actually subscribed to Nintendo Power or if my mom just bought me a copy whenever I was interested in the content, but one year they ran an art contest, asking fans to submit ideas for a new Donkey Kong character. Winners would receive a copy of either DKC2 or 3 (I can’t remember which). Anyway, I drew a new character called Kenny Kong, named after my best friend at the time. Kenny Kong wore a baseball uniform and carried a baseball bat and had several special abilities, none of which I remember. Anyway, I placed in the contest and won a copy of the game and was so flipping excited over the whole thing. I decided that when I grew up, I wanted to make video games.

So my mom did what any good mom would do: she took me to the library. I remember checking out a book on video game programming. The problem was, I was only 8 or 9 years old. All of that stuff was way over my head. I remember reading about sprites and thinking wow, I could never do that.

Fast-forward a few years. There were two terrible, erroneous assumptions that I made when I entered middle school. Even though I was a bright, straight-A student, I decided that I somehow wasn’t smart enough to do these two things: 1) play an instrument in band and 2) program computers. And so I didn’t try. I think I was afraid of failure…of being less than the best at something. Basically, I was the Hermione Granger of my class, and I had an image to maintain! …Gosh, I was a prick.

When I went to college, I sought to rectify the mistakes I had made. I majored in music education, learned how to play a bunch of instruments (albeit really terribly), and basically had a blast learning all about music. As it turned out, I wasn’t too dumb to understand it.

And as it turns out, I’m not too dumb to understand programming either. And I still love video games. All kinds of games. Sim City, Dogz, Pokémon, Mario Kart/Party/Tennis, Donkey Kong 64, Super Smash Brothers, Call of Duty, Guild Wars…the list goes on and on. In fact, I have to draw attention to two more of my favorite games growing up: The Neverhood (PC) and Fin Fin (PC). The Neverhood was an awesome claymation point-and-click adventure released in 1996. Most of the members of the The Neverhood team are currently working on a spiritual successor called Armikrog that I’m SUPER excited about. Seriously. It’s gonna be great.

Fin Fin on Teo the Magic Planet, also released in ’96, was a virtual pet game that was way ahead of its time. It had voice recognition and a huge variety of plant and animal species that could be observed as the seasons changed in the game…it was really, really interesting, and I don’t think anyone has made a similar game since then, which is a shame. Also, Fin Fin had really awesome Avatar-like graphics:

Anyway, all of this is to say that I know that a lot of people (women especially) are weary about getting into the video game industry, but I just wanna say this: whether the things that are holding you back are internal (as in my case) or external—don’t give up the dream. I haven’t. Learning to program is the first step for me, and it can be the first step for you too. :-)

 

Just wanted to jot down a few things I’d like to see at Apple’s iPad event tomorrow. Quick background: I use my iPad 3 for academic research (downloading journal articles & annotating them with PDF Expert), editing photos, watching iTunes U videos, wading through my Safari Reading List and RSS feeds, playing games, and messing around with fun music-making apps. Occasionally my workflows get a little convoluted, but iOS 8 has certainly helped (hurray for share extensions!), and I’m eagerly looking forward to what Apple has in store for tomorrow.

Here’s my wish list:

• Touch ID – confirmed
• 2GB of RAM – not sure if confirmed?
• No color gamut issues in either model
• For the 64GB iPad Air to move down a price point
• Better battery life (who wouldn’t wish for that?)
• Some sort of better multi-tasking support
• An anti-glare display – there were rumors about this; would be awesome if true.

If Apple is truly going down a list and checking off features that people have asked for (or that people tend to buy Android/Windows devices for), then I expect them to announce an upcoming software feature that will allow you to view more than one application at the same time. I would love to, say, be able to watch an iTunes U video on one side of the screen and jot down questions that I have about it on the other. Or simultaneously play a casual game and keep an eye on my Twitter feed. If they can make this feature somehow more elegant and better-named than Reachability, I will consider it a success.

I don’t think Apple is done innovating with the iPad. In fact, something tells me that many folks who have become disinterested or disenchanted with it will find themselves once again excited about the possibilities offered by this form factor.

Anyway, I’ll be attempting to watch the event live (ha, we’ll see how that goes…), with The Verge’s lovely liveblog as backup.

I’m sure everyone’s planning to watch Apple’s live-stream tomorrow (10 a.m. PDT), but in case you’d like to keep an eye on a liveblog or two as well, here’s a list of as many as I could find.

• The Verge
• TUAW
• Macworld
• CNET
• MacRumorsLive (Twitter account)
• Gizmodo
• Ars Technica
• Engadget
• Mashable
• Re/Code

Merry Apple-Announcement-Christmas! 🎄