First iPhone and iPod touch application.

It has been a while since I have written a post, however I am currently happy to announced the first iPhone application called: "Dante's The Inferno". Simply it is about the classic poem of Dante and its journey through the arrogance and ignorance of his era. Currently publish V. 1.0 and V. 2.0 where the first version does not include the loading and saving system while in the other hand the second version we have included it.

Laptop audio device working, wireless still sucks

A few days ago after I had finished downloading and installing Windows 7 Enterprise Version for IT Professional I had two problems still remainning to be solve with my Laptop with the Audio Device and Wireless Device. Today I went to the Sony web site and found the drivers for my laptop for Windows Vista Home Basic Edition. Technically I just went ahead and downloaded those drivers to my laptop, however, the Audio Driver works great, but the Wireless does not yet work properly because it simply connects my wireless network but does not receive internet for the moment. First thing to do is always to check the web site of the manufactore of the equipment and download the lastest drivers, in this case Windows Vista drivers work well with Windows 7. Talk to you later.

AC/DC

No I am not talking about the rock 'n roll band AC/DC thunder sign. I am talking about power cord supply for labtops when they get damage and you need to buy a new one. It is important to understand the Input and Output voltages which there is a difference between them two. Many people might ignore the fact that they simply see "oh, there is a input voltage about 120 v", however we must understand the electrical voltages needed to have the outlet at the wall jack. However the output voltage needs to be look upon and not ignore because that will give you a great idea what general power cord you might need to buy. In this case it is 19 voltage for output instead I ended up buying a 12 voltage power cord. Oh,well, this happens.

Windows 7 Student Edition Discount!

Today is a nice day for good news for those of you who are still in college and want to purchase Windows 7 Home Premium without giving away $119.00 dollars for the upgrade version. Yes people there is a Windows 7 Student Edition Discount which you can check it out at this link: http://www.microsoft.com/student/ . For $30.00 dollars you can have a copy of Windows 7 Home Premium. Being this Microsoft this is a little of a surprise, well, not much however being a new operating system that corrects a lot of mistakes from Windows Vista, I guess this edition will be for the better, however I do not complain if Microsoft lowering the price for Windows 7 Ultimate Edition which is about $350.00 that no one really have right now.

However if you are quite a bit weird out about the whole Windows 7 Edition, because Windows Vista was release about 3 years ago and you probably have updated your system to Windows Vista Second Service Pack. If you have done this I would recommend to stick with Windows Vista Second Service Pack because its correct many mistake. The link to Windows 7 Enterprise Edition for download could be found here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter . Please try it out if you can download it, you would need to qualified as a IT Professional, however you would need to back-up you files and clean-up or format your hard drive. Plus you need to activiate the software within 10 days of the trial version. Even though you will have it for three months, so if you can check it out and try it out for yourself. Talk to you later.

Resolved internet problem and Windows 7 no Wireless and Audio

After a while of trying to figure out the internet access problem my appointment of the technical support personal arrive. He tested the equipment of the computer including the modem and determine the modem was the main problem. I was figuring that the problem lay in the modem for the reason that it was not detecting the phone line therefore not connecting to the DSL line as a whole.

As I trouble shoot before the software side of the problem, I had determine the modem might be the one with the problem because I made sure the phone line in my room was working correctly. The modem was eventually replace and the surprising true the technical personal told me was that each two or three years the modem stop functioning correctly or they eventually stop working as a whole. I guess you learn something new everyday.

After the new modem connection I came upon another problem which prolong the setup of the network connection of my three computers to get internet access. The first problem lay on the network router which is a Linksys Router for connection up to four computer, the router in this case was setup incorrect. It seems there was a wireless interference with another wireless network with the same name "linksys" around my neighborhood. So we change the name and the ip address to assign the rest of the computers.

The first problem was solve. However we had determine another problem with my laptop which is a Sony Vaio VGN-FS920 which I recently downloaded the 90-day trial version of Windows 7. Currently it seems the wireless network card or adapter is working fine or at least that is what Windows 7 is saying, however, the wireless adapter of the laptop is not working properly right now. Another technical problem I been having with Windows 7 is the Audio adapter of my laptop which is not producing sound for the moment. I will check with Microsoft and Sony with this dilema and how do I go about in solving them. Wish me luck. Talk you later.

Yesterday no internet, today with no internet!

It was Friday when my internet access was acting up. I have found it strange because I recently have finish downloading the 90-days trial version of Windows 7 for IT Professionals. After the download of about 2.4 GB of hard drive space, the internet access that I have is a Bellsouth AT&T fast access internet which goes about 700 kbps, so it is very cheap in my opinion. Saturday I was at church I did not need the internet for that day because of church activities and on Sunday I had an appointment to hang out with a friend of mine so I have not been able to throughly diagnose that well the problem. However I must confess that I did give it a try on Sunday morning in the software level of trouble shooting the network problem.

I later call Bellsouth technical support and we went through the basic procedures to diagnose the internet access and we were unable to put the internet to work properly. After all that trouble I decided to make an appointment for a technical support personal would come a take a look into the DSL connection I have at home. For the moment I have been using a wireless internet connection in my neighborhood to post this blog for today. Later on I will continue posting other blogs about some technical aspect or reading that I have read.

iPhone Development and OpenGL ES

Currently learning how to program in the iMac with Objective C it has been quite a challenging year since I started programming back around May or April of 2009. I also purchase the one year subscription to the iPhone Developer program to develop applications for my iPod Touch. The overall plan, of why I am doing all of this is because I had a desire to develop video games for the iPod Touch and iPhone and make some profits by publishing them in the App Store. As I said before it has been a challenging year because this is the first iMac I ever had in my life. However I have use before a Mac back in the early days of my young, that is when I was 12 years old.

In our days, I have decided to become a Mac fan because of the Apple iPhone technology. I really like the overall style and feel of this mobile device, not to mention the video game applications that I have been able to download and install, even when they are only demo version of the video games. One of my favorite games on the iPod touch and iPhone for that matter is Fieldsrunners link: http://www.fieldrunners.com/. Among many of the free versions I have downloaded, many of them being simply video games such as Guitar Hero 2, Pac-Man, Resident Evil 4, Assassin's Creek, Dante The Inferno (I recently created), Wolf-3D Lite, Metal Gear Solid, KnightsLite, etc...

But the most impressive application for now that I have seen right now is Doom Resurrection for the iPhone and iPod Touch. I know is Id Software which has many years of experience in creating very great video games, but we have to give them credit for this version. In part it is a rail shooter where you just follow alone without the control of the character instead you have to guide or aim of your weapon by using the accelerometer of the iPhone and iPod touch. It works fine and does the trick, however we are expecting much more impressive applications from Id Software in future releases.

Going back to the topic at hand in developing for the iPhone and iPod touch back when I started developing for the iPod touch I got a hold of an iPhone programming book call "Beginning iPhone Development" Amazon link: http://www.amazon.com/Beginning-iPhone-Development-Exploring-SDK/dp/1430224592/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1256353489&sr=1-1. With several techniques that were taught here I created my first application of the digital copy of "Dante The Inferno". Later on while I was trying to figure out how to use OpenGL ES to create a clone copy of the game call "Tetris" which is currently copyright by EA link: http://www.eamobile.com/Web/iphone-games/tetris.

While in the search for a book on OpenGL ES, I had found several general books or online manuals for the OpenGL ES, some reference manuals where I did not understand how to use the information they provided me with and how to go about in using OpenGL ES. Maybe I have problems understanding the general concepts of 2D and 3D graphics in how OpenGL ES works or should I say how OpenGL works in general. I have visited web sites such as the Nehe tutorials web site on OpenGL link: http://nehe.gamedev.net/. And I have done several of the tutorials of Nehe however not all of the materials found in this web site could be easily translated to Objective with OpenGL ES by a Junior Programmer like myself.

Then I found it, OpenGL ES tutorials in the web by no other then one of the authors of "Beginning iPhone Development" his name is JEFF LAMARCHE link: http://iphonedevelopment.blogspot.com/. In his blog I have found some few tutorials on programming OpenGL ES for the iPhone and iPod Touch and I must say they are very informative and simple to follow. It makes sense now or for the moment how to take some of the concepts of 3D programming and try to figure out how to use the OpenGL ES system on how to pass these parameters and functions I have learn from college. This does not mean I know it all already, however, currently I am learning from those that have better understanding on the concepts of 3D programming and know how to apply them to your applications. From this point forward if I need any help in programming for OpenGL ES I will try to first figure out how to program it and research first like I have done in figuring out through reading books and experimenting with programming but sometimes I need some extra help by going to forums and looking for tutorials.

I am happy to see what else will Jeff cook out in his OpenGL ES tutorials and see how can I apply those tutorials in my iPhone applications.

Julio A. Cruz

Introduction to Blog!

First Blog!

Thank you for coming. This blog was created to document some thoughts about programming and maybe about other things that I have in mind however you can check out my myspace web page for further information about other stuff that I like.

Link: http://www.myspace.com/leaftyjulio

Journal, Column, .plan

Author : Julio A. Cruz

Volume 1, Issue 1, Part 1

Introduction:

The purpose of this writing was in the hopes to document my effort into writing applications for various platforms and APIs. Not to long ago, about a month ago I started writing an iPhone and iPod touch application which its main focus and functionality was a simple digital textbook of the famous book called "Dante's The Inferno" Poem for digital distribution into the Apple Store. After the long hours of inputting the text into a text editor and conducting research to program different functionalities of the application I finally finish it.

However, while in the publishing process the programming interface configurations of the IDE of Mac OS X which is Xcode; the configuration settings were change inappropriately (by yours truly) which prevented the application of "Dante's The Inferno" from running in the iPod Touch Simulator and my iPod Touch. Technically I do not know about you, but I hate when this happens after long hours of programming and conducting research, your whole effort has gone down the drain so easily without documenting (that is my fault of not documenting my own programs) the application. Therefore the purpose of this column is to document my future and current applications for both the Mac and PC.

By documenting my programs and sharing my research with you, the reader, it will give me an opportunity to have a record keeping of my previous and current research and development of my applications plus received feedback from you, the reader, on the information found within these pages. However this does not mean by all means the information presented in front of you, the reader, is correct and unbiased. In the contrary even it is possible the information presented might have miss-spell vocabulary and not so good use of the english language, in other words, bad english grammar.

Julio A. Cruz