Learning Swift

When Apple announced Swift at WWDC, I knew that if I was going to keep up with the youngsters, I had to learn Swift. Unfortunately it has been a long time since I learned a new language; I learned Objective-C in 2000, I think. While I am capable of learning, finding the time to learn it and use it are getting harder and harder. However, I know that I didn't have a choice.

I started reading Apple's books on Swift and made it part way through when I got distracted. I've restarted a few times, but still haven't finished. So I decided to take my automation app and completely rewrite it in Swift. While I could have re-used my existing code, I decided to do my implementation completely in Swift using a few open source libraries (there may have been better libraries to use, but the ones I picked seemed reasonable for now). While I'm still learning Swift, I thought it was a decent attempt to learn it. I've put my rewrite on GitHub for all to mock.

I'm going to keep learning and I think that reading the books will make a lot more sense now that I have a project under my belt.

Time Flies - 20 years in mobile

It dawned on me yesterday that I've passed 2 milestones in my career. The first is that I've now been writing mobile applications for 20 years. Yes, there was mobile way before the iPhone and Android! I started writing mobile applications my senior year in college when Apple sent me a Newton MessagePad in exchange for licenses of my NotifyMail program. I sometimes think about all the changes in this industry and it just makes my head hurt! Development 20 years ago was generally not treated as a hobby due to cost; today, anyone can write an app with no skill (not sure if that is good or bad).

The second milestone is that I've been working from home for 15 years. I worked in an office setting for less than 4 years before I started this. It is a choice that I don't regret and can't imagine working in an office again. Even though I work for a large company, I have tons of flexibility and am far more productive than if I was in an office everyday.

Who knows what the next 15-20 years in my career will bring, but I look forward to them.

Giving up on Xcode Server

Several weeks ago, I started having problems with my media center where recorded shows started stuttering in playback. There were a huge number of variables that could have caused it as lots of things changed, like an update to EyeTV, update to my HDHomeRun, Xcode update, OS X Server update, etc. While I'm still trying to identify the cause, I think I've narrowed down the problem to Xcode and Xcode Server.

Why am I blaming Xcode? Well, I went into OS X Server and looked to disable it. It wasn't turned on and didn't have Xcode selected. Since I hadn't turned it off and had selected a version of Xcode, I knew something went crazy. I selected Xcode again, restarted the Xcode Server and then turned it off. I noticed that even after I did this, there were still log entries related to Xcode Server. Huh? If I disabled it, why was it still doing stuff? I found a blog entry which identified a way to completely reset Xcode Server.

Before I had completely disabled Xcode Server, I had noticed periodic log entries about the server doing stuff which wasn't a complete surprise as it had to check source code and do other things. However, the status showed a huge number of little spikes in CPU usage. After I disabled Xcode Server, the spikes stopped. When it wasn't doing builds, it really shouldn't have done much to warrant the CPU spikes.

I can't say that I'm going to miss fighting Xcode server; I installed Jenkins and got it configured how I wanted my jobs configured. Jenkins, itself, was easy to setup and do the builds; the tricky part was getting my release notes to TestFlight and to get the archives named the way I wanted. Even though Jenkins is written in Java, I'm not seeing spikes in CPU usage; in fact, when idle, I'm seeing a decrease in CPU usage.

The victims of airbnb and short term rentals

I've heard people say that airbnb and the like are disrupting the hotel industry by letting anyone rent out his or her residence. This may seem like a great idea until you're the person living next door to one of these rentals. Instead of having a neighbor that you know by name, you have random people staying for 1 night, 3 nights, a week. This can bring more crime, noise, and reduce property values. San Francisco just passed an ordinance regulating short term rentals putting a cap on the number of days a place can be rented a year. This number is capped at 90 days, but that is still far too many, in my opinion.

My neighbor decided earlier this year to kick out the family that had been renting his house for a few years and turn it into a vacation rental. He claims that he is a "family man", but the only motivation for doing this is greed. He "fixed up" the house by putting in a hot tub, redoing his deck and planting grass. His vacation rental doesn't fit into our neighborhood as all the houses in the immediate area are single family houses that are either owner occupied or long term rentals (I'll ignore the mini-dorm across the street owned by another greedy person). So now we're going to get random people staying at the house and have to deal with potential noise and the feeling that we may not be safe because we have no idea who is supposed to be next door.

The city of San Diego is too chicken to pass regulations on short term rentals because that would affect beach rentals and other rental properties that bring the city money via the transient occupancy tax (provided people collect and report it). Zoning laws are supposed to separate different uses for properties, i.e. commercial and residential. A short term rental is definitely commercial as a residence is where someone lives. Shouldn't short term rentals fall under commercial zoning regulations?

People could have similar arguments against bed and breakfasts, but they are more regulated (one we stayed in said that they could only serve breakfast and not any other meal) and have a host/manager on site.

The rise of short term rentals anywhere someone wants may be good for the property owners, but in my opinion, is not wanted by many residents of neighborhoods.