Category: Tutorial

Coding, Off-day, Swift, Tutorial

Well, then

Here’s today’s good news: I got my 3D printer leveled and working fine again! I hadn’t printed anything on it for months because last time I tried, I just couldn’t level the bed. That pretty much meant I couldn’t print anything. I even thought of declaring my old printer dead and buying a new one. But I gave it just one more chance today and it really wasn’t very hard to level it using my old trusty method of using a piece of paper to set the space between the print head and the bed on all four corners. Of course, I had tried that way back then too, but here we are. At least it’s working now. Pictured above is a tiki drink coaster. It’s the first thing I printed today. Also the only thing. It took a couple hours. My printer is not fast.

I didn’t code for a couple days, and then I did code yesterday but didn’t document anything. There’s not much to document, though, since I have an error somewhere that’s been challenging to find.

The section I worked on was supposed to teach me how to create some graphical elements of the app. It’s pretty slick, but I clearly have a bug somewhere there. Here’s what it’s supposed to look like:

And here’s what my version looks like:

That’s kind of close, I guess, but I definitely missed something somewhere. I hope to figure it out tomorrow and move forward. I’ll report back here.

Nothing more to report. See you tomorrow

Off-day, Swift, Tutorial

Added Favorites

Behold the cat in repose. Complete relaxation. Not a care in the world.

I’m not sure what I’m going to use for pictures after Baymax goes home in a couple weeks.

Yesterday was an off day. I spent it resting comfortably at home, at least partially. Mid-day, Joanne and I went to Home Depot and made arrangements to have our townhouse recarpeted as part of the sale preparation. The painting is done. After the carpet goes in (or probably simultaneously, now that I think of it), we’ll get somebody out to either repair or replacing the sliding back door. It’s in pretty bad shape and I don’t think it would be possible to sell the place without fixing that.

Shortly after we got back from Home Depot, we had just a little while to get ready to go out to dinner with friends. We went to Che, an Argentinian restaurant in downtown Cincinnati. Good food, good drinks, good company.

It looked kind of like this:

One of the advantages of living in Northern Kentucky is that Downtown Cincy is close. Lots of fun stuff to do.

This morning, I got through Handling User Input, which finished the SwiftUI Essentials section. Next section is Drawing and Animation.

The latest part I added was the ability to select and filter by Favorites. Here’s the latest picture:

Note the yellow stars. It’s a small addition, but the education was useful.

The tool still isn’t taking me anywhere, so work on following the tutorial continues. Something good will come of it.

Swift, Tutorial

More tutorial progress

Hanging with Baymax again tonight. I’m really going to miss him when he goes back home. Even considering the damage he does to our house.

I got through the end of lesson two. My app now displays a list of parks of interest all over the country and allows the user to click on one at a time to view their map, a photo, and some descriptive text. I’ll add a screenshot below.

It was a useful session.

I’ve moved my laptop out of my office. It was struggling to keep up with a work session and it didn’t really run Xcode all that quickly either.. I think the old Intel machine is just getting a bit tired of the current MacOS version. Larry the laptop moved to the Rumpus Room where he’ll be happy and free to frolic and play with all the other computers. My M1 Mac Mini is now in the lab and hosting Xcode and work. Doing just fine in that role. I probably should have moved him back into there a while ago. Stop resisting the M1 Macciness.

Tutorial

Progress

Well. Not only did I get this website (sort of) set up, but I also got xcode set up on larry, my trusty old 2019 MacBook Pro 16″ laptop. It’s my newest laptop, sadly. I have an M1 Mac Mini and a M1 Max Mac Studio around the house, but the laptop is convenient for sitting with Mrs. Morrow and coding in front of the TV of an evening.

Anyway, I’m using this Apple tutorial.

I’ve gotten through the first tutorial session. Here’s what my screen currently looks like:

Pretty decent start. I’m not sure I can include any of the code here because I suspect Apple has it copyrighted. But trust me. It’s Swift code and it’s not too hard to figure out. This first version is compiled for iOS. I think there will be an Apple Watch version and then it goes to the Mac. I’m hoping it will be a good overview.

After that, the computer will guide me. I have no idea what I want to write – just something. Time will tell.