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 Science/Technology / I Made A Yik Yak Like App For Igbo People by kncokolo: 10:20pm On Jan 13, 2016 |
| Phones / Igbo Keyboard On Ios by kncokolo: 1:09pm On Oct 27, 2015 |
There is now a dedicated Igbo keyboard available in the App Store. All iOS devices can render the special characters used in Igbo but none of the native keyboards have them available to use with apps. It's now possible using this app, which works within all other apps on your phone (or iPad). https://itunes.apple.com/app/id1050448890 |
| Programming / Re: What I Learnt From Building My First App by kncokolo: 1:07pm On Oct 27, 2015 |
Hey I've developed a native Igbo Keyboard Extension. It's currently available on the App Store https://itunes.apple.com/app/id1050448890 1 Like |
| Literature / The Amoral Beast We All Subscribe To by kncokolo: 3:30pm On Oct 17, 2015 |
Hi guys, I just started a blog where I will share my thoughts on various things going on in my life personally and going on in the world. I'm from Enugu but I live in Europe. Below is the first post, which can also be found at /p6IJmY-o. Have a read and if you like it, maybe you could share it and subscribe to my blog? I have a lot of content that I'll be releasing weekly, and this ranges from opinion pieces to short stories, so check it out  . Blog address: blog.kenechi.orgThe Amoral Beast We All Subscribe To People are complex. It’s hard to understand what makes someone tick, what they want, what they’re afraid of. It’s even harder to understand yourself. I often find myself struggling to figure out my own behaviour, in particular my negative reactions to things. This struggle can be extremely rewarding if successful and it often gives me insight as to how I can become a better, or more rounded person. That being said, I had one such negative reaction recently, and I’m still struggling to understand the reasons why. At the beginning of last month, a shocking picture circulated media outlets around the world. It was of a drowned child washed ashore a beach in Turkey. The child was one of the many ‘migrants’ the media had been telling us about trying to gain access into Europe. The picture distressed me, but it’s not the negative feeling that spurred me to write this. What can be said about this child that hasn’t been said already? There’s nothing insightful about the fact that the death of a child is a tragedy. No, what bothers me is the media. I looked in the newspaper then, at the end of September and all articles covering the crisis were pointing the finger at European governments and their apparent dodging of responsibility in the face of such a huge humanitarian crisis. But this wasn’t always the case. Before the start of this month, before that picture went around the world, months ago when mainstream outlets had just started reporting on this crisis, I remember the nuance of the story. I remember questioning why these people were being referred to as migrants, when even within the same story, it was made apparent that they were fleeing war in Syria and other conflict zones. I questioned why, but I didn’t have to question because I already knew the answer. Call a person a migrant and it implies they are migrating; moving from one place to another of their own volition. This implies that they have the freedom to stay in their place of origin, when clearly with conflict zones, this isn’t the case. I saw through the media’s propaganda — the underlying, unspoken implication that these people weren’t welcome in Europe and the stories back then focused on their brazen attempts to illegally gain access. The media didn’t need to speak the unspoken, the connotations were clear — migration is bad because foreigners are bad, and they come only to leach off the system, that is, to freely reap the hard earned benefits of domestic labour. This is a storyline that is told so often that all we need to hear is the word migration or some form of it and the narrative is triggered within our minds. The xenophobic among us need no more cue to sharpen their pitchforks and join the mob to patriotically chase these free riders out of our beloved nation. I saw through this facade then, and I’ve been privileged enough to see through such things for a long time. Still, that isn’t the issue here. The issue is that even when the media turned around and started reporting the truth; that indeed these people desperately need the help of European governments, rather than applauding the media for doing the right thing, my disdain for the media grew further. Why? Was it because the insincerity in such a one hundred and eighty degree turn? I wish I could say that I was that sentimental. On the contrary, in most cases, I’m the person who argues that the end justifies the means. The real reason for my disdain was that there was no turn; that what the media was doing by painting the refugees in a positive light was no different from what it was doing when it called them migrants and portrayed them as unwelcome; making money. The mainstream media as an entity is an amoral beast and it cares not who it brings up or tears down, as long as it continues to feed itself and its audience. The sudden change of tone caused by the picture of the drowned child was, for me, a harsh reminder of this. News outlets exist, in theory, to inform us of things going on the world, things that are of interest to us and that have the potential to affect us. They’re supposed to be informative, but the older I get, the more I see its bias and almost calculated way it wields its power. Bias is inevitable but one can at least aim for impartiality. The way in which the mainstream outlets move in waves, only covering that which is currently popular, makes me feel like news coverage is a solely a commercial business venture and nothing more. Its purpose is not to inform, but to entertain, because entertainment is inherently more lucrative. And what else is a business’s objective than to make money? Do you have any thoughts on this? Comment and add your two cents. |
| Programming / Re: What I Learnt From Building My First App by kncokolo: 12:48pm On Sep 22, 2015 |
ipain: About 6 months from no experience and/or knowledge to having an app on the App Store |
| Programming / Re: What I Learnt From Building My First App by kncokolo: 10:58am On Aug 28, 2015 |
Stconvict: I'm self taught. I learnt everything I know about computer programming online! |
| Programming / Re: Building My First Ios App. I Will Upload Videos Of My Progress Daily by kncokolo: 3:33pm On Aug 22, 2015 |
iiffaanneenn: Yeah that's me lol. My masters is in Economics! |
| Programming / Re: What I Learnt From Building My First App by kncokolo: 3:32pm On Aug 22, 2015 |
syllas007: Check out the CS106A videos on YouTube, that's a very good place to start. Also CS193P -- those are the two courses I followed. The rest I learnt through Google & Stackoverflow |
| Programming / #12 Web-scraping W/ Python & Learning Nscalendar (from My Blog) by kncokolo: 2:40pm On Aug 09, 2015 |
This week, I’ve learned s a little about web scraping with Python as well as trying to better acquaint myself with the ins and outs of NSCalendar in iOS. I’ve split my time this week working on different projects. I’ve got two projects in the pipeline, one small and one large, if albeit that one is also starting out as small. I’m also working on the upcoming update for studyBreak, which includes translation into 3 new languages, performance improvements, user-defined reminders, and the exporting of statistics. It’s a lot to do but rather than just grind out one project, I’ve decided to do bit by bit on each project, depending on how I feel. That’s the great thing about Object Oriented Programming — you can just work on little blocks at a time without feeling like you’re leaving things incomplete when you go to work on something else. One of the projects I’m working on requires me to build a template to be populated with information from different sources. At the moment, the source will be the web, hence why I’ve spent some time learning how to web scrape with Python this week. I found a very good tutorial series on YouTube from a user named Chris Reeves. It’s good because it’s straight to the point and gives you exactly what you need, without going into too much explanation. I understand that this can be frustrating for those that don’t know too much about programming, but for those of us that are already familiar with other languages, we don’t need to know every minute detail about a new language, we just need to know how to do what we want to do. That’s one thing to keep in mind about programming, and one thing I like to keep reminding myself of — people don’t want programs or code, they want solutions. A computer program is a solution, and often people don’t care about the specifics of that solution, they just care that it solves the problem they’re presented with. I have to say that I quite like Python as a programming language, not to mention the infinite possibilities one has when working with the wealth of information on the web. Programming for iOS has, in a way, pigeonholed me into a mindset that I can or can’t do something, as determined by what is allowed by the Apple iOS ecosystem. I think that anyone that works exclusively with one platform or one language will experience a similar thing. So taking a break from iOS, and looking at Python has reminded me of the infinite capabilities that knowing how to code offers. I also feel like I’m coding more now, because I’m thinking about algorithms on how to automate things that would take forever if done manually. Working with iOS, sometimes I’ve felt like I’m just grinding out code to get a quick brute force solution for a problem that I might have with a particular app. Talking of iOS, I have to say that I don’t like the way that NSDates & NSCalendars work. It’s confusing. It would be so easy if there was a function for Monday or Tuesday, and to find out what day a given date was, it was only necessary to send the receiver a message such as .isMonday or .isTuesday. There isn’t such functionality, however, and you have to implement workarounds with what Apple has provided. That being said, I think I’m going to write a code snippet to provide that functionality as in the future it would make things so much easier. For now, however, I’m stuck with learning how Apple has done it, then trying to figure out how to translate that into what I want and what will work with my program. As for resources this week, I’ve already mentioned the YouTube user Chris Reeves. Aside from his tutorials I’ve just been using Google and Stackoverflow so I don’t have anything else for you guys, but come back next week for more! Kenechi Blog address - http://learnscode.kenechi.org YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6aCKjVJtXvnI-s2yDYYcOg |
| Programming / Re: Building My First Ios App. I Will Upload Videos Of My Progress Daily by kncokolo: 4:04pm On Jul 26, 2015 |
My app was accepted. It's now on the App Store. Free for a limited time only - http://itunes.apple.com/app/id1020691962 1 Like 1 Share |
| Programming / Re: I Built My First Iphone App In 28 Days. This Is My Video Diary. by kncokolo: 4:03pm On Jul 26, 2015 |
App link - http://itunes.apple.com/app/id1020691962 |
| Programming / What I Learnt From Building My First App by kncokolo: 10:35am On Jul 20, 2015 |
I've copied and pasted most of this from my blog post, so if I've broken the rules somewhere, so be it. I just thought I'd share my experience for anyone who might be interested. 28 days — that’s how long it took me. From the day I stopped following Stanford’s CS193P course, to submission. Granted, I had already envisioned the idea I had for my app prior to that, but 28 days ago was when I first started building. I’ve learnt a lot of things along the way, things that I think you can’t actually learn unless you build something so this post is going to be about those things. Obviously I can’t include everything, as I’m sure there are things that I’ve learnt that I don’t even realise yet but I’ll just try to list the things that stand out to me. Simple? What does that mean? When I set out to make this app, studyBreak, I conceived of it as a simple timer. Its functionality is similar to a Pomodoro timer but in building it I discovered that the word simple, as far as programming goes is quite a complex concept. What is simple? Sure enough, the concept for my app seemed simple but all the extra functionality that I wanted to put in it, all the ways and tweaks I could think of that would make my app better, made it anything but simple. It’s a struggle to keep things simple, for me at least. It’s a struggle to curb my ambition and tell myself, that that feature I want isn’t unnecessary, that in fact the app would do better without it. During the past four weeks, I’ve learnt that any app can be as simple or as complicated as you make it. It’s up to you to decide where on that spectrum you want to be and I think one learns with time where one should be on that spectrum. One thing that I can say that I’ve found to be true, is that less is more. Take Apple & Google for example. Much of their success is based on minimalism and simplicity — that’s for a reason, and I became acquainted with that over the past 28 days. I can always add extra features to my app if need be, but making something that is complicated less so, is more difficult. Object Oriented Programming Takes Getting Used To Building things so that they are objects that function ‘blindly’ takes some getting used to. I think that stems mostly from getting used to how to think and design in those terms. This hampered the design of my app but as I built I became more used to it and it came more naturally to me. The more object oriented I tried to be in my programming, the better my app functioned and the easier it became it to continue building. This is something that I can’t really describe well but when you start building something you’ll see it for yourself. Debugging Feels Different to Programming I’m sure you’ve heard it before that programmers spend most of their time debugging. I’d estimate that during the past four weeks I’ve spent between 30-40% of my time debugging. Debugging isn’t very difficult when you’re working with just one class, but once you start building and app and you have several classes, things change. Most of the bugs I encountered were to do with the logic of my program — I’d made an incorrect assumption somewhere, and I’d have to adjust things accordingly. However, doing that had a ripple effect throughout the program and I’d have to start rethinking the logic of other parts of my program to accommodate the changes I made to fix that initial bug. Again, object oriented programming helps here. The more isolated and self sustaining your classes are, the less this is of a problem. There’s a major difference in the feel of debugging to building a program. When you’re designing, you start out with an initial problem you’re trying to solve. You have a blank canvas and the ideas flow in. You’re optimistic about how you want to solve that problem and every thing you come up with seems like a good idea. But once you start coding, you realise that they aren't all good ideas, and instead of solving the fundamental problem you set out to solve, you get bogged down solving all these little problems of your own creation. Debugging can also be very draining, especially when you spend hours trying to figure something out without making any progress. It’s tough, but it’s something you just have to live with. Good planning is the best gift you can give yourself If you want to save yourself time on debugging, spend more time planning. If you've followed my blog posts, you can see I didn’t spend a lot of time planning. This is partly because I already had a good idea of how I wanted my app to be, but also because I felt like I would be able to plan better if I could visualise the app better, which I would be able to do once I started building. However, everything I failed to plan properly in the planning stage, ended up being built into my app as a problem. Did I do things the wrong way? Maybe. But I do still believe in the value of having a good visualisation of the product to be able to help in improving the product. Google (and stack overflow) is your friend I guess this goes without saying, but I feel like I have to say it. 90% of the problems I encountered, Google had the answer to. The only problems that Google seemed to not have the answers to were the extremely new ones; ones related to using beta software. DON’T USE BETA SOFTWARE! If you’re an advanced programmer, fine go ahead. If you’re just starting out and you only have one primary machine, don’t upgrade to the betas. I made this mistake and looking back it just wasn’t worth it. Yes I can say that my app functions great on iOS 9, but iOS 9 isn’t out for a few months, so what’s the benefit of that? And the major cost of it was unexpected functionality. From migrating my code from Swift 1.2 to Swift 2.0, to Xcode 7 behaving differently to Xcode 6, I encountered problems and gave myself extra work from day one. Then when I finished my app, I realised I couldn’t even submit it to the app store from Xcode 7, so I had to go back to Xcode 6, which I realised I could no longer use on my system because it is incompatible with El Capitan. To cut a long story short, DON’T USE BETA SOFTWARE, unless you have specifically good reason to do so, and you’re not using it on your primary system. Pace yourself I was very ambitious when I started this project and I wanted to blaze through it, which I did. The problem is that after about 3 weeks of working on it for several hours every day, I started to feel a little burnt out. Debugging has a lot to do with that, but I was starting to feel like I didn’t want to code at all. Like I didn’t even want to look at a screen. I picked up a book, an actual paperback novel (The Plague by Albert Camus) and I went outdoors somewhere nice and just read. It refreshed me, but it wasn’t enough. There were days when I felt like I just couldn’t think straight or like every line of code I wrote was trash. You can overdo it. I did, and I know for my next project I’ll take it easier. Keep Going When You Feel Like Giving Up This sounds like a contradiction to the previous point, but it isn’t. Breaks are good, and pacing yourself is good, but never give up. Even in the face of a problem that you feel like you can’t overcome, just keep going. What does a computer scientist do? A computer scientist uses computers to solve problems. Let me repeat, solve problems. Whenever you encounter a new problem, treat it as just that — a new problem. Isolate it, identify and quantify it as a distinct problem, then figure it out. Even if that means breaking it down into even smaller problems, that’s what you do, because that’s what it takes to succeed. Maybe it turns out that a particular problem will take too much time to solve, so it becomes something you have to work around, but never quit because of an obstacle you encounter, just keep going. It’s a learning process I mentioned in one of my video posts that I’m currently learning Swedish, and that this has helped me in building my app. It’s helped me because when you learn a new language, if you try to understand absolutely everything that is said you’ll fail miserably. You’ll get demoralised and you’ll give up. You just have to accept it as a fact that you won’t understand everything, but if you at least try to pick up on the things you do understand and follow the gist of things, then you can make progress. This applies to programming in the sense that, if you feel lost, sometimes it’s best to just accept it and keep going — things often start to make sense later. Following the CS193P course, there were a lot of things that I didn’t understand while doing it, such as extensions, closures, computed variables & optionals. I ended up making use of all of those things in my app. I encountered problems, and then I realised that those things were created specifically to solve the problems I had. Even now, there’s a ton of things I don’t know and throughout building my app I kept referring to the documentation and to Google. You’re always going to be learning if you’re a programmer, so accept it and get used to it. There’s a lot more to building apps than just programming If you’re working with graphic designers, web developers and marketers then that’s great, there are a lot things they can do for you. Even better if you have those skills yourself, but if you don’t, you’ll have to learn them. As well as building my app I also had to design the app icon, make the screenshots for the app store, write a description for the app, create a website and give it a good title. You won’t learn most of these things in many of the free programming courses that you might take online so it’s good to know that you’ll have to deal with them at some point. And that’s it! This is a long post and even then I’m sure there are things that I’ve left out, but I’ve really tried to cover everything that comes to mind. Building an app turned out to be easier in some ways than I anticipated but also more difficult in many others. All in all, it has been a fulfilling process and as I wait for my app to be reviewed I feel a sense of accomplishment as a programmer that I could only feel having built something of my own from scratch. To all you learners out there, I say this to you: build something, it’s definitely worth it! For those interested, my blog - http://learnscode.kenechi.org & my daily video posts - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZ-jzXxkMmVM-DBxYGa8Yql6xBOCdhTUX. 12 Likes 2 Shares |
| Programming / Re: Building My First Ios App. I Will Upload Videos Of My Progress Daily by kncokolo: 6:43am On Jul 20, 2015 |
Mrkelv: Thanks! Now I'm patiently waiting for the outcome of the review! 1 Like |
| Programming / I Built My First Iphone App In 28 Days. This Is My Video Diary. by kncokolo: 10:04pm On Jul 19, 2015 |
2 Likes |
| Programming / Re: Building My First Ios App. I Will Upload Videos Of My Progress Daily by kncokolo: 7:15pm On Jul 19, 2015 |
1 Like |
| Programming / Re: Building My First Ios App. I Will Upload Videos Of My Progress Daily by kncokolo: 1:12pm On Jul 19, 2015 |
| Programming / Re: Building My First Ios App. I Will Upload Videos Of My Progress Daily by kncokolo: 8:57am On Jul 17, 2015 |
| Programming / Re: Building My First Ios App. I Will Upload Videos Of My Progress Daily by kncokolo: 11:41am On Jul 15, 2015 |
| Programming / Re: Building My First Ios App. I Will Upload Videos Of My Progress Daily by kncokolo: 9:04pm On Jul 14, 2015 |
| Programming / Re: Building My First Ios App. I Will Upload Videos Of My Progress Daily by kncokolo: 10:19am On Jul 13, 2015 |
Fulaman198: Thanks! Day 21 (3 weeks have flown by) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2UScWbFJwM 1 Like |
| Programming / Re: Building My First Ios App. I Will Upload Videos Of My Progress Daily by kncokolo: 4:11pm On Jul 11, 2015 |
The videos haven't been great lately because I've been feeling drained, but I wrote a blog post today for motivation: /p6gw4q-1s |
| Programming / Re: Building My First Ios App. I Will Upload Videos Of My Progress Daily by kncokolo: 8:10am On Jul 08, 2015 |
1 Like |
| Programming / Re: Building My First Ios App. I Will Upload Videos Of My Progress Daily by kncokolo: 12:32pm On Jul 06, 2015 |
| Programming / Re: Building My First Ios App. I Will Upload Videos Of My Progress Daily by kncokolo: 1:20pm On Jul 04, 2015 |
| Programming / Re: Building My First Ios App. I Will Upload Videos Of My Progress Daily by kncokolo: 12:26pm On Jul 03, 2015 |
1 Like |
| Programming / Re: Building My First Ios App. I Will Upload Videos Of My Progress Daily by kncokolo: 6:41pm On Jun 28, 2015 |
1 Like |
| Programming / Re: Building My First Ios App. I Will Upload Videos Of My Progress Daily by kncokolo: 5:00pm On Jun 28, 2015 |
1 Like |
| Programming / Re: Building My First Ios App. I Will Upload Videos Of My Progress Daily by kncokolo: 5:42pm On Jun 27, 2015 |
AAinEqGuinea: Thanks! I'm not ready to post any code yet but I might post bits in my blog post next week. I'm aiming to have finished the majority of the app by then but that might be too ambitious! |
| Programming / Re: Building My First Ios App. I Will Upload Videos Of My Progress Daily by kncokolo: 11:39am On Jun 27, 2015 |
1 Like |
| Programming / Day 3 - What It's Like To Build Your First App by kncokolo: 12:02pm On Jun 25, 2015 |
2 Likes |
| Programming / Re: Let's Code by kncokolo: 11:42pm On Jun 24, 2015 |
Try Code Academy! It's very good for HTML etc. |
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