Saturday - Rather than weeding I
decided to get some weed cloth and rock, and start the ground covering.
Holy cow, what a lot of work. The river rock is only covering at about
1/2 the claimed rate, so it took 31 bags to cover the cleared section
of flower bed. Then HD ran out of rock - thank god. I was pretty tired
by early afternoon, but it looks a lot better. The rock is a bit faded
though. I wonder if I can dip it in pool acid or something to get the
oxidation off? It's very pretty when wet, kind of dull when dry.
I also tried a second sample of tan paint, but it's worse than the
first, far too white. I suppose it isn't too important, it's just the
pillars at the porch in front and the patio pillars in back, but I'd
like to get it right.
Then I pretty much passed out. Sucks to get old...
I did wake up in time to see Matt Kemp win the game for the Dodger's
with a home run in the 10th inning. He's turning into quite a pleasure
to watch...
Friday 27 April
2012
Friday
- Most of the day spent on yard work. There front rose bed is a
disaster, I had help pruning the roses earlier this year but by this
late in the spring they were pretty much completely buried in other
weeds. So I spent a good five hours just weeding out half the bed - it
just got too warm in the afternoon. When I say weeding, that involves
using a Sawz-All to remove some of the bigger bits of vegetation!
Tomorrow I'll finish the weeding, then put in some new ground cover -
probably rock this time, as the bark didn't last long.
Then I planted some flowers in the back yard, and some other
miscellaneous stuff, including an attempt to paint some faded paint
here and there. The dark blue-green looks OK, but the tan is too light.
I have two shades of tan on the house, the original stucco and the
siding, so I'm trying to match the siding. It was a standard Sears
color as I recall, but the local Sears stopped selling paint several
years ago so I'm stuck trying to match colors at Home Depot or Lowe's,
and since HD is a bit closer...
Still working at getting even a simple app from the Mac to the iPad.
I'm trying the "development" option (I think). This is where you
connect up the iPad and transfer (I think) via the USB cable, rather
than through iTunes. First I read up a bunch of stuff on the whole
signing and certificates and provisioning thing, including various
non-Apple places. Not very helpful, honestly. My printer is dying, but
I can get it to work by feeding pieces of paper into it, one by one, so
I printed out a lot of this obfuscated stuff.
Then I tried opening Xcode ... and suddenly it won't open any projects,
claiming that one is running already. Checking via the terminal by
using ps -aef | grep -i xcode
didn't show anything running. WTH? Quit Xcode and shut down the machine
completely and then rebooted. Exactly the same problem. Eventually I
was able to get it to open with the usual splash screen.
About the simplest app out there is the "utility-flip" app. It runs
fine in the Simulator. When I try to run it and push it on the iPad I
get an error. No indication of what or where the error is. It isn't in
any of the code, because I looked through it and there are no error
messages/icons. Then I see a little message that Xcode is "Downloading iOS 5.1 Library".
I mean, why the hell did I have to spend two hours downloading a newer
version of Xcode for, yesterday, if basic libraries aren't included?
Essentially the Apple development process is a pile of **** Just
like Windows, just like Unix, just like Linux. Why am I surprised?
<end rant>
Anyway, in the evening I got the damn thing to send an app to my iPad
using a "development" certificate. I can now write any app I want, and
as long as it's initially transferred by USB cable and named "test001" it'll work.
Happy Dance time! It doesn't actually do anything, but it's a start.
Wednesday 25 April 2012
Wednesday - I worked on the Mac
stuff for a while - until noon, but dropped it in the afternoon,
completely frustrated. The developers of the system need a prolonged
and merciless beating.
Book #44 was Star Carrier: Earth Strike: Book 1, by Ian Douglas. Eh. Two colons in the title, that's got to count for something, though.
Tuesday
24 April 2012
Tuesday
- Working in the morning, hot and humid again. We are actually supposed
to get a storm passing through here on Wednesday and Thursday, with
winds, rain, and chance of thunderstorms.
So, I downloaded and installed Lion (not Mountain Lion, which isn't out
yet). This took a long while, but finally got done. Then it needed a
bunch of updates, which I did. Then it needed the new version of Xcode,
which I went and got. Speedwise the system is still quicker with 2GB of
RAM than the old system was with 1GB, which is nice.
It kind of works. The thing I needed most, iTunes, for provisioning apps, is broken.
How I hate computers.
Monday
23
April 2012
Monday
- Still working away on the yard(s). It's miserable hot and humid after
about 10:00, but I kept working until about 1:00. I can't believe the
house is taking this much work, but it's been pretty neglected.
The RAM for the Mac Mini arrived, and I installed it in the evening. It
took a while, but I just followed the YouTube video's and it was mostly
OK. The exception being the removal of the hard drive cable, where I
almost pried off the connector, rather than the cable itself. Funky.
Also there was a spring left over after I put things together - I think
it goes under the antenna, but I'm not going to take the case apart
again (putty knife required!) for that!
Snow Leopard and Xcode Simulator ran a LOT faster with 2GB, rather than
1GB, it's a shame to put the probably slower and bloated Mountain Lion
on, but it has to be done. I started the ML download and went to bed.
Sunday
22
April 2012
Sunday
- The nice weather has returned. It is also humid, so just mowing the
back lawn mean I was dripping sweat by the time I was done. Still, it's
looking better back there. Now that my back and foot have healed, and
the weather is warm, I don't really have too many excuses for not
installing the paver's I bought last summer. Except for the sheer amount of other
house maintenance/improvement stuff.
The Blue-Ray player wanted a software update. When I allowed it the
streaming seemed a lot smoother than before, so that was a plus. The
Vizio TV hasn't asked for an update yet.
I saw a review of Battleship
- apparently it's already being released in other countries. A "meh" for plot and a "thumbs up" for FX, which is kind of
what I expected.
Picture of
the Week Photo Notes: Archway at San Diego's
Balboa Park.
