Tonight, as part of Tampa Bay Startup Week,Anitra and I will be helping the people from the coding school The Iron Yard Tampa Bay with their Hour of Code event! It’s an hour-long training session where kids ages 8 – 12 and teens ages 13 – 17 can get a quick, fun introduction to coding with the help of Rey and BB-8 from The Force Awakens and Princess Leia and R2-D2 from the original trilogy.
Here’s a quick video intro to what the Star Wars Hour of Code’s all about, courtesy of Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ producer Kathleen Kennedy and Rachel Rose, lead engineer for Star Wars’ animation and creature development team…
The programming interface that Hour of Code participants use is delightfully simple and fun. They drag and drop “blocks”, which represent calls to functions, to move the droid characters like BB-8 and R2-D2 around, arrange them into sequences which function as programs, and then click the “Run” button to see if their code worked.
It starts off with the simple task of moving BB-8 towards a single piece of scrap metal:
Click the screenshot to see it at full size.
…but about a dozen lessons later, you’re writing considerably more complex stuff that includes concepts like variables, branches, and loops, and changing droid characters:
If you’d like to have your kid or teen participate in tonight’s event, go to Tampa Bay Startup Week’s event schedule and sign up for the appropriate event. You’ll need to bring a fully-charged laptop (and it’ll be a good idea to bring its power cord) or tablet with working wifi and browser in order to work on the code. It can run Windows, Mac OS, Linux, iOS, or Android — as long as it’s got a relatively recent browser and can connect wireless to the internet, it’ll work for this class.
Happy new year, experienced and aspiring iOS developers in the Tampa Bay area!
If you’ve made a new year’s resolution to take up iOS, Swift, or game development in 2016, the upcoming Tampa iOS Meetup topic might be just what you need to get started. It’s called Get Your Game On: Getting Started with Sprite Kit, and it’s taking place in Tampa next Tuesday, January 19, 2016.
Tampa iOS Meetup is a monthly meetup run by local mobile developer/designer Angela Don and Yours Truly. While Tampa has a couple of great iOS developer meetups — Craig Clayton’s Suncoast iOS and Chris Woodard’s Tampa Bay Cocoaheads, we figured that there was room for a third iOS meetup in the Tampa Bay area, and especially one that would stray into other areas of mobile development. So we made one.
Despite the fact that games are the most-used type of mobile app, there are far fewer game development tutorials than there are for “standard” apps. That’s a pity, because one of the best ways to learn programming is satisfaction, and there’s nothing more satisfying than seeing a game you created in action. While games can be complex, the concepts behind them are simple, and some of the most popular games are pretty simple as well. Why not try game development as a way to learn programming, Swift, and iOS?
Join us next Tuesday, January 19th at the Tampa iOS Meetup and start the new year by getting your game on!
The Details
What: Tampa iOS’ Meetup’s “Get Your Game On” session. Please sign up on our Meetup page so we can plan accordingly!
When: Tuesday, January 19, 2016, 6:30 p.m. – 9:30 p.m. We’ll have some snacks at 6:30, with the presentation beginning at 7:00.
Where: Energy Sense Finance, 3825 Henderson Boulevard (just west of Dale Mabry), Suite 300. See the map below.
What to bring: Yourself, but if you’d like to follow along, bring your Macbook and make sure it’s got Xcode 7.2.
What to read in advance: If you’re one of those people who likes to do some readings ahead of a presentation, check out the Sprite Kit tutorials on Ray Wenderlich’s site. We’ll be using our own tutorial material, but Ray’s stuff will come in handy.
Have you ever wanted to present something at an iOS meetup, but it was on a topic or technique that could easily be covered in ten or even five minutes? Well, this meetup is your chance to be an iOS rock star, as short presentations is what it’s all about! Whether you’ve been building apps since the Objective-C days or picked up Swift a couple of weeks ago, you’ve got knowledge to share with your fellow developers, who in turn have knowledge to share with you! Join us for an evening of demos, information exchange, and that buzz that you get when you’re in a room of smart, interesting people, one of whom is you!
In order to help kick off the event, I’ll start by presenting some tips and tricks that I’ve picked up while working on my own apps, and I’m sure Angela will be doing the same. After that, it’s everyone else! We invite discussions and questions throughout the meetup, as it’s the best way to learn.
Here are the event details:
What: Tampa iOS meetup, a new gathering in the area that complements the Suncoast iOS Meetup and Tampa Bay Cocoaheads, both worthwhile gatherings. We want to make sure that if you can’t make one local iOS event, there’ll always be another one in the near future!
When: Wednesday, November 18th, from 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.
Where: Energy Sense Finance, located at 3825 Henderson Blvd., Suite 300 (just west of South Dale Mabry)
OpenHack Ybor’s August gathering at New World Brewery.
Click the photo to see it at full size.
If you’re in the Tampa area tonight and would like to get to know your fellow developers, show off your current passion project, find out what their passion projects are, and enjoy some pizza and beer (or whatever beverage you like) in a friendly, convivial atmosphere, you might want to come to tonight’s OpenHack Ybor meetup!
Another scene from the meetup at New World Brewery.
OpenHack Ybor, held once a month at one of Ybor City’s many beer-dispensing hangouts, is run by local Ruby developer Tony Winn for software developers of all stripes who want to get to know other local developers, see what they’re up to, and enjoy some free pizza. We’ve already had two OpenHack Ybor meetups — the first at the new pub at Coppertail Brewing, and the second at New World Brewery. Tonight’s meetup, which starts at 6:30, takes place at the Brass Tap in Centro Ybor.
If you’d like to attend, RSVP on OpenHack Ybor’s meetup page (there’s no admission, the pizza is free, you’ll have to buy your own beer) so that Tony’s got an idea of how many will be there and can order pizza accordingly. It’s fun, it’s friendly, and it’s one of my go-to geek events. I’ll be there, and I hope to see you there too!
Things have been quiet lately here on Global Nerdy. I have a couple of good excuses. Here’s the first one:
Anitra and me, shortly after getting married. Click the photo to see more.
On Saturday, March 7th, the lovely lady for whom I moved from Toronto to Tampa and I got married. We had our ceremony on St. Pete Beach followed by a brunch reception on the penthouse ballroom of the Grand Plaza Hotel, a stunning room that looks like it would’ve made a great hideout for Sean Connery-era Bond villain. As you might expect, this big life event took priority over a great many things, including blogging.
“El Guapo”, my trusty early 2011 15″ MacBook Pro, circa 2012.
My other excuse is technological: “El Guapo”, my trusty early 2011 15″ MacBook Pro, was beginning to show some glitchy behavior just before my wedding. (Maybe it had some reservations about leaving the bachelor computing lifestyle.) At first, it started running hotter than usual, and its fans would often be going full bore. Then came the random restarts. Finally, it would fail to boot up. It would start up fine…
Photo taken from the Stack Exchange Forum Ask Different. Click to see the source.
…but after the progress bar filled up — a process that seemed to take a little longer than usual — it would display a blank gray screen like the one shown below:
Photo taken from the Stack Exchange Forum Ask Different. Click to see the source.
At this point, the computer would either hang there or spontaneously reboot, which would lead back to the blank gray screen.
The first resort: Resetting the NVRAM, a.k.a. the PRAM
Long-time Mac users know that when a Mac starts exhibiting wonky behavior, resetting the PRAM — that’s short for Parameter RAM — often does the trick. Those same long-time Mac users are also the ones who still call it PRAM; Apple’s moved on from that old name and now calls it NVRAM, which stands for Non-Volatile RAM. No matter what you call it, NVRAM/PRAM is a small store of persistent, writable memory that contains a number of system settings and configurations, including:
Which disk is your startup disk
Networking and port configurations
User input settings such as autokey delay and rate, mouse speed, the blink rate of the “text insert point” cursor, how quickly you have to double-click for it to register as a double-click, and so on…
All manner of memory settings, including virtual memory, disk cache, and RAM disk
When your Mac starts acting strangely, it’s often the case that the configuration data inside your NVRAM somehow got corrupted. Luckily, there’s a simple but not-very-obvious way to reset your NVRAM, and it’s all based on a combination of keys that you need to press simultaneously when your Mac boots up. This trick goes back to the days when it was still called PRAM, which explains the keys you have to press:
The steps are simple:
Shut down your Mac. Don’t just log out or put it to sleep, shut it all the way down.
Press the power button to turn your Mac on. Get ready to pounce on the keyboard.
Hold down these keys simultaneously: command, option, P, and R. Make sure that you’re holding down this combination of keys before the gray screen appears. You have to be quick.
Your Mac will reboot. Wait for the startup sound, then let go of the keys and let the machine boot as usual.
While this trick has served me well in the past, it didn’t work in this case. It was time for the next trick: resetting the SMC.
The second resort: Resetting the SMC
The SMC — short for System Management Controller — doesn’t have as long a history as the PRAM, as it was introduced with Intel-based Macs (prior to that. Macs were based on Motorola CPUs). The SMC controls a number of interesting hardware goodies, including indicator lights, the display and keyboard backlights, the cooling fans, power, and more.
The steps for resetting the SMC vary depending on the model of Mac. For my particular machine (once again, it’s an early 2011 15″ MacBook Pro), here are the steps:
Shut down your Mac. Don’t just log out or put it to sleep, shut it all the way down.
Unplug the power cord and all peripherals.
Press and hold the power button for 5 seconds.
Release the power button.
Reconnect the power cord.
Press the power button and let the machine boot as usual.
I’m told this trick fixes a lot of hardware weirdness, but not for me. It was time to take it to the shop, but before I could do that, I wanted to back up some files.
Target disk mode: turning your Mac into a drive that other Macs can use
Target disk mode allows a Mac to function as a drive that other Macs can access. My plan was to hook up the following to my wife’s perfectly-functioning Mac:
My Mac, with a Thunderbolt cable, and
An external hard drive, with a USB cable.
My plan: to boot my Mac into target disk mode, after which I would copy the files I wanted from my Mac to the external hard drive. I crossed my fingers and booted my Mac into target disk mode using the magic key:
Luckily for me, my Mac was working just well enough to boot into target disk mode. You’ll know when a Mac is in this mode by what it shows on its display: a screensaver-like display of a Thunderbolt or FireWire icon that pops up on random locations on the screen. I used a Thunderbolt cable to connect my Mac to my wife’s (it feels a little odd typing wife rather than girlfriend), and the setup looked something like this:
With my files backed up so that I could work on them with my backup machine, a Windows/Ubuntu box, it was time to take it to the shop.
Good news, bad news, and a NetBoot at the shop
The closest authorized Apple dealer and repair shop to me in the PeachMac at Citrus Park Mall. A number of people I know from the Suncoast iOS Meetup group consider it their go-to store for Macs and Macessories, and they’ve generally done right by me as well. I took my machine to the service desk, where they plugged an ethernet cable into it and performed a netboot in order to run their diagnostics application:
“And how much is that going to cost?” I was already wondering if I’d have to drop some cash for a new machine. I was hoping to put off that kind of purchase until next year.
“It’s the replacement battery you put in. In order to qualify for this repair, your machine can’t have any non-standard parts in it. We can’t fix it as it is right now, but if you were to go home and put the original battery back in and bring it back here, we wouldn’t know about it, nudge nudge wink wink.”
I had a new problem: I’d already recycled the old battery, as it barely held a charge and was just taking up space in my home office as an inert, useless block.
Replacing the battery
Click the screen shot to visit the eBay page.
eBay to the rescue! I found a dealer selling A1382 batteries — the kind that early 2011 15″ MacBook Pros take — for much cheaper than even the replacement battery I bought through OWC. I didn’t need this battery to be any good; I just needed it to be a genuine Apple one in order to qualify for the free repair.
The battery on the 2011-era MacBooks is technically replaceable, but Apple make it a little difficult by holding it in place with tri-lobe screws, which look like Philips screws, but with one less “wing”:
Your local hardware store doesn’t typically stock tri-lobe screwdrivers, but they can be ordered online, and the non-Apple replacement battery I got from OWC comes with all the screwdrivers you need to install it. Luckily for me, I’d decided to keep them, which made this operation possible:
Back in action
With a standard Apple battery back in its belly, I brought my MacBook back to PeachMac. They ran the diagnostics again, and this time, the support guy — not the same guy I talked to during my earlier visit — pointed out that I should discharge my battery from time to time. “Don’t leave it plugged in all the time,” he said, not knowing that I’d had the battery for all of one day.
“We’ll call you when we’ve finished swapping out the motherboard,” he said. “It’s pretty quick to do. The slow part is getting it shipped to us.”
With my main machine in the shop, I pressed my backup machine — a Lenovo T430, the quintessential TPS Reports writing machine — into active duty. It has an annoying habit of dropping wifi connections, even with the latest drivers installed.
“El Guapo”, my trusty early 2011 15″ MacBook Pro, at the time of this writing (April 2, 2015).
They got the job done in a couple of business days. The new motherboard looks newer, as the markings on the chips don’t look as faded by the heat of regular operation, but the real sign is that it takes a little extra force to insert cables into the USB and Thunderbolt jacks; it feels like breaking in a new pair of shoes. The PeachMac guys even replaced a couple of the rubber feet that had gone missing from the bottom of the machine over the years, as well as one of the screws I lost while upgrading my RAM a little while back, all free of charge.
With my preferred machine back in action, I’ll be able to get back to writing iOS apps, as well as iOS development tutorials here on Global Nerdy. Keep watching this space!
Monday marked the beginning of Tampa Bay Startup Week, a five-day-long series of events meant to bring creatives, techies, entrepreneurs, and anyone who’s a combination of any of those together to meet, plot, and party. There’s a small but interesting tech scene here in the Tampa Bay area, and a number of factors including the subtropical climate, low cost of living, and the influx of people to the area — you might call it a brain gain — could help it grow dramatically over the next few years.
Me and Anitra, working the room. Photo by Laicos.
The week’s kickoff party took place at the Chase Basecamp, a rented venue on 7th Avenue, the main street of Ybor City (pronounced “EE-bor”), Tampa’s nightlife and party neighborhood. The Basecamp (located at the corner of 7th Avenue and 20th Street), serves as the central meeting place for Startup Week participants, as well as a venue for many of the scheduled events.
Photo by Laicos.
While chatting up the people from local mobile development shop Sourcetoad, I was introduced to the friendly-looking gentleman below, who went up to me and said “I just have to tell you, I love that accordion!”
The people from mobile app development shop Sourcetoad
Vanessa and Conchetta from Embassy Suites, who want me to get in touch with them so they can add me to their list of local entertainers (they were sold when they heard me play along to Happy by Pharrell)
Photographer Ashlee Hamon, for whom I plan to build an app
Adam Caskie from Edward Jones, with whom I have to start talking about getting an IRA (I’ve got retirement savings vehicles in Canada, but none in the US just yet)
A couple of women from New York for work for a K-pop recording company and were here to check out the local scene
Here’s what’s happening with Tampa Bay Startup Week today and tomorrow. These events are free — just visit the Tampa Bay Startup Week site and sign up!
