Too many hours

30-09-12

Jack and Helen went off on an over night mother and son excursion this weekend. I'd been looking forward to having time to myself, I'd got a lot of work to wrap up before I shift my focus exclusively to my studies. So the moment the plans were official I meticulously scheduled all sorts of things I could get done and hopefully even left some time for a movie.

Saturday came and at 3pm I hugged them and waved them off. The house went quiet, so after a few minutes relaxing and getting used to the stillness I set too with my schedule. I had a lot too do, three apps to finish up and submit and quite a bit of preliminary research to do for uni. I'd planned on it taking most the night so in order to leave myself some movie time I opted to start with the smaller thing and walk the dogs.

An hour later I sat down and got to work. I started with the uni stuff.
5:00 and I could do no more. I'd built up a lengthy reading list and got to a point where I was going to need lecturer input. Excellent didn't take nearly as long as I thought it would. I hopped up and made myself some dinner and took care of some housework.
6:15 I finished my dinner and sat back down in front of my computer... Here we go... I hacked away at the computer in a programming trance and pounded through the apps. As I submitted the last of the work I sat back and looked at the clock. 7:00...
So now what? It's just gone Jack's bed time and I'd finished everything. 4 hours ahead of schedule.

Never in my life have I had such a hard time filling the time. I hadn't decided on what movie I would watch because I wasn't sure I'd have the time. I had such a hard time finding one to watch that I gave up twice, only to resume the search after 10 minutes of not being able to find anything else to do. I tried to play some WoW but with it being a very busy time for the game there was a queue well over an hour long. Of course now I can think of a list of things I could have done, but you know how it it, the bored have a hard time getting un-bored. It was a long night.

Children take so much more time than you realise, they take all your attention and sap all your strength. Normally with Jack in the house my night doesn't start until 7pm at the earliest, and that's if everything goes smoothly. At which point it's a race to get everything done with what energy you have left. By the time you start your focus is already waning. I sometimes try to get work done with him around but I'm slowed to such a pace that I might not as well not even bother. Even when it's just Helen and I at the end of the night I struggle to concentrate if I have some work to do, we talk and watch TV and it really slows the progress.

So it turns out that in a quiet setting I can get work done at a phenomenal pace. Maybe this is something I should arrange closer to the end of term.

Cleverlist

Presenting my latest creation, Cleverlist.
This is a shopping list app that I wrote for my wife. She designed the interface and everything else and I developed it. This app learns your shopping habits and tries to predict what item in the store you're going to arrive at next. The more you use this app, the more accurate it becomes. 

http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/cleverlist/id540316238?mt=8

Danger Meter

Did you realise that you could be in danger right now, if there was only some way to find out. Well now there is. Announcing the release of my third app, the Danger Meter.

It uses real statistics as well as some things that I just made up to tell you just how much danger you're in. Think of the applications, first off your safety, if you know how much danger you're in then you can plan accordingly.

Or just when you need an excuse to leave. "Sorry gotta go, I'm in danger."

You can verify certain claims made by your psychic.

The possabilities are endless.

Dangermeter is free and can be found here http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/dangermeter/id494654553?mt=8

A little bit of self promotion

There really will be an app for everything when I'm finished.

I'm feeling pretty proud of myself right now because I've just written an app from start to finish in about 2 hours. The only reason it took that long was because I was chasing a phantom bug in the programming.

Anyway I wrote this little app that I've called FlipCards. Jack is learning to read and from time to time he comes home from school with a set of new words to learn. He loves to play with my iPhone so while he watched the last half of The Lion King this evening I whipped up an app for him with all of his words so far.

It's not on the app store, for now I can't be bothered to get it approved, it can be found here instead.

FlipCards

iOverlay

Announcing the release of iOverlay my second iOS app. 

An overlay app has been on my mind for some time. Even as a minor sufferer of Irlen Syndrome it can be irritating at times to not have some sort of visual stress relief with you. So knowing that I'm never without my phone, and it's got a perfectly functional camera and retina display, it only seemed natural that I could use it as an overlay. I've got to say, it works better than I'd hoped.

iOverlay can be found at http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/ioverlay/id492205880?mt=8