General

Escape from Jaws of Steel

Earlier, I got into a lift from the basement parking. It went up a floor then opened and a lady got it. But the doors wouldn’t close. We decided it’s out of order so we got out. But as soon as we got off, the doors started closing. Figuring it’s not broken after all, I extended my trusty Starbucks bottle between the closing doors to reopen them. They didn’t stop and caught my poor bottle in a tight grip! I twisted and turned for what seemed like an eternity until I was finally able to pull it out. The door then closed and the evil elevator went up on its merry way.

UPDATE: I figured, it’s the reflective finish of the bottle that confused the sensors of the elevator doors.

Smartphone Market Share

image Credit: Nielsen

Nielsen released data on smartphone market share as of Nov 2010 to Jan 2011. From an OS perspective, definitely it shows the Android juggernaut’s seemingly unstoppable rise to the top. From a hardware perspective, it’s interesting to note how Apple and Blackberry(!) still hold a huge chunk of the market. But HTC is waiting on the wings.

It seems that at this point, focusing on iOS development is still a good strategy. Noting, of course that the other iOS devices, iPad and iPad 2, are the leaders in the tablet space. But investing in Android development should already be in the pipeline.

Objective-C: Getting Down and Dirty

Delved deeper into Objective-C programming over the weekend. As a challenge, I ported a Java program  that I cooked up in roughly 30 minutes. No, it’s not Hello World :P After several hours, I was still not done! Okay, so I got a little bit fancy with the Objective-C version but most of the time I was slowed down by syntax, API adjustments, and memory management. That’s just the way learning goes, I guess. I certainly look forward to the day when I can cook up an Objective-C program in 30 minutes.

Baby Proofing

Jeanne is wandering around on her own a lot now and I spent some time during the afternoon to do a bit of baby proofing. I put on corner bumpers to the TV table and installed safety latches on low-lying kitchen cabinets. That should keep her away from the contents for a while.