No silicon heaven? Preposterous! Where would all the calculators go?

Stage 1 complete!Gutentag world!

Another week, another single post. I know I promised daily at the start of this, but this is certainly more blogging than I've achieved in quite a while. With any luck I will be able to at least increase the number of posts to a few a week. I think that's a reasonable balance.

Project wise; I spoke to my project supervisor on Monday and discussed what progress I had made over the Christmas break and where I planned to go from here. Since then I've finished the iPhone Programming book I was reading, and decided how I plan to store data in iWhisky. The choice basically comes down to directly using SQLite or using an Object-C library that sits on top of SQLite called Core Data. Core Data is pretty cool in that it works in a (kind of) similar fashion to Microsoft's entity framework that we've studied in Advanced Internet Applications Development. Instead of using raw C libraries and writing SQL yourself in SQLite, Core Data speaks to the SQLite database for you, and returns objects that you can work on instead of records. The book warns that much of the power of SQL is inaccessible when using Core Data, but as I plan to only have a very simple database inside the app I don't think this will be an issue.

Going forward from there, I've officially started development on my application! I've broken down the start of my development into three components to help me find a place to start.
Stage 1) Develop an app that can communicate with a web service and pull down a feed of products.
Stage 2) Extend the app so that the web service is a component called the first time the app is used, and store the data feed in the local database using Core Data.
Stage 3) Use the data stored in the app to construct the navigation and views.

Once these three stages are complete I should have the core structure of the app complete. The app will be able to communicate with the server, get and store product data, and allow you to navigate to products. From there it will be about adding features, both front end (adding products to lists, adding tasting notes, buying a product) and back end (syncing data with the mothership).

This week I already completed that first stage. I created a very simple RESTful web service in .NET and C# that returns just a Product ID and Name for just over 2000 products in my clients test database. I then developed a very simple app that calls that web service, parses the XML returned and displays the results in a table view (ironically table views on the iPhone only have a single column, so they are in fact lists…).

In other news, computers suck. In the past week I've had both my machines fail on me. The MacMini I mentioned last week that had it's hard drive die is at Apple being repaired. Meanwhile, my (three year old in September) white MacBook's back light is on the fritz. Occasionally I can get the back light to stay on on the lowest brightness, but for the most part it switches itself off a couple seconds after coming on. I'm going to have to take a trip to the nearest Apple Store (Brightion or Lakeside…) to get it fixed as I can't really be without it like I can with the Mini.

In other, other news, I completed the second Assassin's Creed over the weekend. The sequel is a great improvement over the original, which was incredibly repetitive after the first few assassinations. In an insane plan to play all three back to back to back I've immediately moved on to Brotherhood. I kinda wish I didn't ignore this series for so long. Which reminds me, I still need to write a post about the games I played last year. I should get on that…