Individual Entry: Absence
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June 15, 2009

Life : Absence

Well, I hadn’t planned on taking a 2 week break from blogging.

Here’s the thing – I’ve been inspired of late to write some longer pieces which are unsuitable (both because of length and tone) for posting on my blog; and having written them, I haven’t had the energy to write something appropriate for this venue, so no posts. I may actually be working up to writing a book or two – we’ll see. What’s more, I didn’t write anything for this blog over the weekend (when I usually get ahead of things) and given that this is a busy week, it isn’t clear if I will have the time to do more posts this week. I do have some ideas for posts – it is just a matter of setting aside some of my own mind-share to write them up.

Since I am posting, I thought I’d put out a bit of a life-update.

Last week Apple finally announced a 32Gb iPhone. As previously noted on this blog, that was my minimum spec so I have pre-ordered an iPhone which I will be picking up on Friday. What’s more, since I am a programmer and I will soon have a programmable device with me at nearly all times, I have signed up to be a registered iPhone developer so I can develop some apps for myself. My hope is that some of them will be useful or entertaining enough to make available to others on at the Apple App Store. Unfortunately, this means breaking down and learning a new programming language (Objective-C) and a new Application Programming Interface (Cocoa). For those who don’t know, Apple’s OS X is a completely different operating system than System 9 and before, so while I was somewhat of a virtuoso at the old Mac OS, that is of no value to me now. Until now, I really didn’t have any reason to learn the new system (I don’t use it at work); but perhaps now I do.

Related to that, I have been using a Mac more at home (a hand-me-down from Anne). My desktop PC is quite ill, and I haven’t gotten it fixed yet, so I have been using the Mac for web surfing and writing. Anne is hopeful that the whole process will lure me back into the Mac fold. We’ll see. Certainly if I like developing for iPhone, it is a small step to developing for Mac (iPhone uses a striped down version of the Mac OS X). Plus, for development reasons I will have set up the Mac as the computer I sync my iPhone with, so I will continue to use the Mac for certain things regardless.

On more note: This Thursday (barring all unforeseen), I will officially “join” the Eucharist community (one of the groups of Jesus followers we have been involved with in SF). Their concept of being a member as opposed to just a participant is interesting and I hope to blog on it someday – I think there is some real virtue in their approach.

Well, until I post again. . .

Posted by Steven at June 15, 2009 05:00 AM