Two months into the new year with Medium

So it's been just over two full months since I had set out with the goal of writing at least one blog post each week. I'm actually ecstatic to say that it has been going incredibly well!

When I first decided to start writing, I tried putting all my posts onto this website, but I was very unhappy with how Squarespace handles coding blogs. I did look into customizing my SquareSpace blog to better suit my coding blog needs but chose to go with Medium's offerings instead. Since then I have published seven posts in total.

At first I started with "easy" posts relating to iOS developer resources (Videos, podcasts and newsletters) to help me get back into writing which something I haven't done since high school. And from then on I started writing whilst teaching myself some harder topics such as Protocol Extensions, Generics which took off really well. Surprisingly the more simpler topics have been a massive success too. It's amazing how no matter what you think people may or may not like, someone is most likely going to find it interesting.

I'd also like to mention that two of my posts have been featured in what I would consider to be the two most influential newsletters. Dave Verwer's "iOS Deve Weekly" and NatashaTheRobot's "This Week In Swift".

So yeah, it's only been two months and I've already (in my opinion) made a small impact within the iOS/Swift community!

This Week In Swift #73 - Natasha links to my medium post on CGGeometry structs

iOS Dev Weekly #241 - Dave links to my medium post on Tuples

The year that was and the year that will be

Wow, it's been about 15 months since my last journal entry. So much has happened since then it's crazy. I've been placed at an amazing company in the heart of Melbourne, which i'm also currently the lead iOS developer for. I learnt Swift at the worst possible time, it was crazy stressful around the iOS 9 release as well as Melbourne Cup but I believe i came out on top.

So many personal goals of mine were met and smashed, I'm in awe of how much the move to Melbourne has turned out to work in my favour. I'm aiming for 2016 to be the year where I make a name for myself within the iOS and Swift community, both local and abroad. I've set some goals of which are:

• Blog at least once a week, or have a total of 52 by the end of the year.
• Do at least 4 talks by the end of the year.
• Have at least one talk interstate or overseas.
• Amass at least 1000 followers on Twitter and Medium.
• Improve my writing skills.
• Be amazingly great at Swift

The Twitter and Medium follower goal is kinda dumb, i know, but it's one of the only metrics I have available that can give me some an indication of how I'm doing within the community. Speaking of Medium, I had to move my technical blogs to there, simply because Square Space isn't technical blog friendly, I tried, but it was an uphill battle to get code examples looking nice. Also the community of Medium is definitely something i can leverage because there is a greater chance of discoverability on there than on this website. If you want to check out my Medium page, just hit the "Blog" link up the top.

Will keep in touch and let you know how I go throughout the year. Until then, be safe, yo!

Suburban Weather

After watching the WWDC 2014 developer keynotes, i noticed they were pushing for developers to use Auto Layout constraints a lot... So i downloaded the Xcode 6 beta and started teaching myself how to use Interface Builder all over again. A couple years ago i decided to write all my UI programatically because of the speed of productivity benefits as well as because I thought IB was incredibly slow and buggy at the time. The end result is Suburban Weather which i've put up on GitHub if you want to have a look and play for yourself. Enjoy. 

An update for 'Please Help'

Wow, what a year its been. Please Help was created as a part of my university degree project nearly over a year and a half ago. It was developed by myself and fellow student Adrian Jurcevic, with the help of our supervisors from ECU and support from the WA Police and Therapy Focus.

Since then, we were entered into the 2014 WAiTTA Awards and were chosen as finalists for the Student Category. Please Help was also featured on Channel 7's Today Tonight show and hopefully it can help get the word out about the app so more people can have a piece of mind when their loved ones are out by themselves.

Thank you to the ECU staff, WA Police, Therapy Focus for helping us create something great.

Links

Please Help (Free)

Channel 7 Video

My new home

I've been recommended to use SquareSpace over Wordpress. At the moment, i think it's pretty amazing. And more than capable of handling what i want to do. I'll use this page for uploading current projects and designs, as well as including means to contact myself.