New Interest: Developing Mobile Applications

Tagged: •
11

Last semester, I had to learn how to develop an Android application. So, I visit the Android Application Developer’s Guide to check some simple tutorials. After trying out all of the tutorials on the website, I was able to develop a simple Twitter client that pulls tweets about Android. It was pretty interesting how I would learn something really fast. Developing for Android is easy since I had experience with Java programming language. Therefore, I was able to learn really fast.

I sort of stop learning once the winter break starts since I was busy improving both my knowledge on PHP/MySQL and Ruby on Rails. Plus, I am planning to write a script using PHP, I need to learn more about security. I bet I had forgotten how to develop a simple Android app.

Earlier this month, I upgraded my iPad to iOS5. They had a new app called iTunes U. I found great free courses in there and one of them is on how to develop an iPad application. There are two courses available; one is released by Stanford and another is by Carnegie Mellon. I gave one of the courses a shot and tried to learn the basics even though I had no prior experience in the C programming language.

So far, developing an iPad app seems easier than Android. You can develop a simple app for the iPad without writing a single line of code at all. If you are a Mac user, you can use XCODE to create a simple app. So far, it seems like a WYSIWYG editor. You can type “hello world” on your story board and it will show up on the emulator. Currently, I am learning how to create a calculator. Baby stuff. :P

If those of you who are wondering, I downloaded the Stanford’s iPad app course. It is free and it is available on iTunes U. So far, it is really easy to follow and very interesting. Apparently, iPad application development followed the MVC architecture. I have experience with MVC architecture since I work with Ruby on Rails; this framework uses the MVC architecture too.

I am not sure how complex developing an iPad application could be. I am still on the second episode; so maybe it seems easy now since we are just learning the basics. It might be hard soon.

I received an email from an alumni recently. He is giving me the opportunity to work with him on an Android application. I am very interested since I want to learn more. We’ll see how that goes.

I had a lot of experience on developing a web application. I develop not just for school but also for internships and also for my personal blog. I would love to try something different now; a mobile application would seem like an interesting one to learn.

Any of you have experience on developing an Android or an iPad/iPhone application?

So, It is Already 2012? Oh…

Tagged: • • •
3

I hate new year. It reminds me that I am getting older and soon, I have to get a job and pay my own bills. Also, I need to find someone that I can marry and have children. :P Time flies! So, was 2011 a good year for me? Indeed it is! I travelled, met lots of new and interesting people (and a few morons), maintained good grades and my blog was featured lots of times on other sites and CSS galleries. This will be a very long post with lots of pictures.

Entertainment

  1. Watch a musical in Singapore called Wicked. It is my first time ever watching a musical; I never watch one before. Surprise, surprise… I love it! I plan to watch more musical in the future: Chicago, Phantom of the Opera, Les Miserables, etc.

  2. I travelled to Portland, Oregon last November. I went there for the Grace Hopper Conference and it was fun. I met a lot of interesting people here; people who shared the same interest as you. I managed to see the city as well. Oregon is beautiful!

  3. I went to the Universal Studios in Singapore and tried out all of the rides there. Apparently, they have a new ride but I haven’t try that one yet. I was planning to go last month but it was raining heavily in Singapore and Malaysia. It is not the best time to go. I might go again this summer.

  4. Got myself a new MacBook Pro. I am now an Apple fangirl. I have been using windows since I was born. :P I LOVE MAC!

Games
I beat a few games last year. Despite being a gamer, I don’t play as much last year since I don’t really have the time to play. But, here are the lists of the games that I managed to play (and beat the last boss to a pulp).

  1. Assassin’s Creed 2

    I never played the first one since I don’t really like this sorts of games. But I bought Assassin’s Creed 2 one day and decided to try it out. Initially, I disliked the gameplay since it was slow and boring. I even complained on Facebook that I don’t see why this game is famous since it extremely slow. However, some of my geeky friends urge me to give it a second chance and play the game until Chapter 5 or so. Surprisingly, the storyline gets pretty interesting and I started enjoying it once I started to assassinate some characters. Although I had a rough time understanding the storyline (since I didn’t play the first one), it doesn’t really affect my gameplay and I still enjoyed the game. If I have the time, I wanted to try out the first Assassin’s Creed and Assassin’s Creed brotherhood. I bought Assassin’s Creed revelation but haven’t tried it. I was hoping to beat Assassin’s Creed Revelation last month but I don’t have time since I was busy with Dead Space and Dead Space 2.

  2. Dead Space and Dead Space 2

    Dead Space is pure awesome. I love Resident Evil and Silent Hill’s series. Unfortunately, Resident Evil 5 is not that scary anymore. It doesn’t retain its original horror genre. It feels more like a war game like Battlefield or Call of Duty. Dead space, however, is really awesome. It was a nail-biting experience. Enemies will jump at you unexpectedly; I get quite jumpy after playing the game for about an hour. It is quite addictive since it has a good storyline; you would want to play it till the end just to know the ending.

    There is one down side though; the final boss fight for Dead Space 2 is not as awesome as Dead Space. However, Dead Space 2 has more cinematic bost fights compared to Dead Space and Dead Space 2 is scarier as the main character keeps on hallucinating. Non-stop adrenaline rush when I played this one. It took 5 days for me to finish both of them.

  3. Shadows of the Damned

    What is it like walking around in hell with just your “Johnson”? This game is a fun one and it has such a weird storyline. Garcia (main character) wants to save his girlfriend from Fleming, king of the underworld. It has a lot of profanity and sexual innuendos; It makes the game even more enjoyable. My favorite character is, of course, Johnson, Garcia’s sidekick (the gun that he is holding). I have a few of my favorite parts in the game. One of them is the Big Boner chapter where we get to shoot monsters with an upgraded version of Johnson. It is another chapter filled with sexual innuendos.

    I love the music; it is composed by Akira Yamaoka, a composer that composed the songs in Silent Hill. And I also love the graphic; very vibrant in color but it has a “moody” feeling to it at the same time. There are a few downsides; the game control is a little weird. Also, you don’t get to replay the game with all of your upgraded weapons. Therefore, it is useless to play the game multiple times since there is no point in playing the game more than once without those upgraded weapons. Upgraded weapons are important to me if I want to play the game more than once.

School Life
It is always important to network. Most importantly, be nice to your seniors. I managed to gain so many experience because some of them love my work and they either suggest me to the professors (who are looking for research assistants or web developers) or take me as an intern to work on their projects. Which reminds me, I need to send each of my seniors a thank you note for giving me a helping hand. Some of them gave me really good advice and I appreciate that. I do love my seniors. As for my juniors, that is another story. *coughtheyaresoannoyingcough* :P

  1. A paid internship with one of my seniors (he is an alumni). He asked me to create a prototype for a web application that he plans to work on. I learn more about jQuery and Backbone.js. It was such a good experience!
  2. Worked with the Computer Science department on their website. Again, I have to thank one of my seniors for giving me the opportunity to work with him.
  3. I get to be a Teaching Assistant last semester. It was my first time since I never had any experience in working as a teaching assistant before. I was the Teaching Assistant for statistical reasoning and practice. Again, a good experience. Grading papers are both hard and annoying, believe me!
  4. My GPA for both Spring and Fall semester last year: 3.75 and 4.0. :) I hope I can keep it up and maintain my performance.
  5. Mom had to buy me both an iPad and a MacBook Pro because she is happy and proud!
  6. Professors telling me straight up in the face that they are impressed with my work. It motivates me to work harder.

Life as a Bitch
Because life can’t be wonderful all the time. Why? Because not all people you interact with are nice; some are extremely stupid, dumb and can’t keep their mouth shut. For example:

  1. Mr. Twat who told some of my classmates that I told another student to do my homework for me. Mr twat is just a below average student who majors in Business Administration. You can read the whole story here. Listen, I have nothing against BA students. In fact, some of my friends are majoring in Business Administration and they are brilliant. I can’t say the same thing about Mr Twat though. I guess he is just a jealous bitch who can’t accept the fact that I am better than him. Seriously, his allegations are not even logical to begin with. Seriously? Me? An Asian student who is raised by a tiger mother would ask someone to do my work for me? Mr Twat is not only dumb but he is also ignorant about the fact that most Asian students are just plain hardworking and they can ace almost everything effortlessly (you’ll know that I am talking about the common stereotype that Asians are just plain smart) :P

  2. Lady Gremlin. Where do I begin with this bitch? Talked shit about my family on her blog and her father ignored it and said it is the “freedom of expression” but when I started to express my feelings about her openly on Facebook, he got pissed. Such double standards! Oh, the irony! He is not that smart for a doctor me thinks. Can’t even understand the concept of “free speech” and “freedom of expression”. After sending him back an extremely long private message explaining what exactly is the freedom of expression and why I have the rights to express myself as well and also telling him that he is a shitty parent because he had raised an ugly child (inside and out; I emphasized more on the “inside” though. Don’t care much about “outside”.), he finally told her to delete her blog and she did. We are not talking to each other but I guess it is better this way. It is better not to associate yourself with such a person. This is such an important event to me because I don’t have to act all hypocritical and be nice in front of them. Her blog opens the Pandora’s box but I think it happens for a reason. I can finally tell him how I feel about him, his daughter and their whole family. I don’t have to put up a fake smile anymore; it is so liberating.

Last but not least… Rogue-Dolls
I changed my blogging theme last year and you are looking at it now. It got popular and most of my visitors love it. I got featured many times in CSS galleries and design blogs. I just want to say thank you to all of you who had featured my blog on your website/galleries. It does give me a lot of exposure and it helps me gain many new readers. I even receive many job offers through my blog but I have to decline them since my top priority is to study and learn as much as I can for now. I know that most of my visitors are probably not interested when it comes to reading about my life update and my adventures. I also seldom post helpful articles that would help retain my visitors. But knowing that they love my design and my blogging theme and that I can inspire others to start designing – that really makes me happy. Thanks guys, it really means a lot to me. Thank you to all the sites mentioned below:

  1. CSSMania
  2. Vandelay Design
  3. WeLoveWP
  4. CssGirl
  5. Blog Design Lab
  6. Noupe
  7. Entheosweb
  8. Web Design Showcase

…and to all the sites/galleries that I may have forgotten to include here.

Even though the current blog theme receives a lot of praise, it does receive some criticism as well. This thought me a very important lesson; not everyone is going to enjoy your design. At the end of the day, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Some designers even gave me a list on what I should change about my current theme design (including the way I blog since this blog contains a lot of profanity :P Some even ask why my picture only shows my mouth). I was about to re-design my blog but I changed my mind. While I value their criticism, I have the rights to choose whether to accept it or not. Their criticism is their opinion and not all opinions are correct. I am happy with my current blogging theme and I designed based on my own input and whatever makes me happy. If people enjoy it, I’ll be extremely happy. If they don’t, I’ll still be happy as well. I don’t see the need of designing based on other people’s opinion or input since it is MY BLOG. It belongs to me. You can’t please everyone.

Jascha Heifetz, a violinist that I adore, is regarded as one of the greatest violinist. And believe me, he does put a lot of emotions in the songs that he played. Even with such a talent, he is still not immune to criticism. So, even if you are awesome, not everyone is going to like your work. So, just move on and don’t stop doing what you do best. ;)

High Heels Are For Dumb Girls

Tagged: • •
8

I love high heels but I can’t find the energy to wear them. I remembered when I told one of my friends about how I can’t walk flawlessly in heels but he just replied by saying, “High heels are meant for dumb girls. You don’t need them.”

He is not the only one who thinks high heels are for air-headed girls. I was pointing out a girl who was wearing a 5 inch heels to another friend of mine:

Ren: Check out that high heels on that girl! That is pretty cute! Some of the girls here are pretty fashionable.

Friend: Yeah. The height of their heels are inversely proportional to their brain.

I don’t agree with him that high heels are only meant for girls who are not academically gifted. Geeky girls who are fashion conscious can wear them too. However, I can’t help but notice that there is a bit of truth in what he was saying. I noticed that most of the intelligent girls (who often get into dean’s list or are widely known for their talent in their own respective majors) tend to wear flat shoes, flip flops or plain sandals. Most of the girls who are not as academically gifted (some are very moronic) tend to wear high heels that are no less than 3 inches high. I know that this is very stereotypical since it is a just based on my daily observations but I hate to think that some of my friends believe high heels are only for dumb girls just because they seldom see geeky or smart girls in heels.

As one of the studious students, I have to say that I do not like wearing heels because it is just not practical. I love wearing flats; it is very convenient: slide in, slide out and just run whenever you are late for class. I won’t be able to run to my classes in a 5 inch heels right? I guess this is how most of the studious students feel. We value practicality and we don’t give a damn about our looks. At least I don’t and I don’t mind walking to class with my pyjamas.

Two days ago, I went to a premium outlet here and I can’t take my eyes off from this nice pair of high heels. I try it out and it fits me. I tried walking with it for a bit and it wasn’t so bad. The sole of the shoe attracted me the most since it is really unique and it seduced me. I just can’t resist and ended up buying them.

Hi assholes. Would you like me to print this sole on your face? If you do, please keep on talking. – Ren’s thoughts when she first saw the heels.

And yes, it is a 5 inch heels. And yes, I am going to put them on and walk, walk, walk. I have been told many times that I am tall for an Asian girl. I stand at 5’8″ and that is around 173cm according to Wolfram Alpha. So, wearing this heels would definitely boost up my height even more. Mom told me that I look at least 6 foot tall with those heels on.

Personally, I don’t think so high heels are only meant for dumb girls and I don’t think girls who loves wearing them are dumb. My aunt loves wearing heels and she is one of the smartest women that I know. I guess I should just put this heels on and show them that stereotyping girls based on their shoes are just stupid. Besides, there is no harm in looking sexy once in a while, don’t you think? ;)