Tag Archives: programming

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What is a GPS Logger?

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This might seem like a silly question for me to ask but what is a GPS Logger? Any ideas? 

I’ve got an iPhone app called “Simple GPS Logger“, that displays location (longitude, latitude, altitude) and allows you to save locations. It will also show the distance from those saved locations.

The only reason it was called Simple GPS Logger is because AppStore names need to be unique and “Simple GPS” was already taken. Weirdly, my app is actually”logger” with a lowercase L and logger with a capital L was already taken, but I didn’t realise that until I was searching later.

I’m looking at adding some new features and am wondering what a “GPS Logger” should actually do. The obvious thing I am looking is something like Runkeeper that would create a trail, provide details of that trail during and after recording it (avg speed, total distance, etc), and probably allow that trail to be exported as a GPX or similar. 

Any comments or suggestions? 

This app is currently pretty basic and was my first real attempt at iPhone development. It has been about as successful as I might have expected considering it has had no marketing, with downloads in the hundreds in the past couple of months since I released it.

I’m happy doing some extra work on it to add some new features but don’t want to spend too much time since I’m giving it away for free and therefore it isn’t making me any money. I’m looking at adding a tip jar similar to what David Smith has done with Pedometer++ to try and a bring a little bit of money in but I don’t think I want to add advertising to the app and if I charge any money, I think that downloads will go to zero pretty quickly.

 

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Programmers block

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I’ve been trying to keep busy at home the past few weeks by writing an iPhone app to try and learn some new skills. This has been an interesting task after years of working as a database developer because of the need to learn a whole different style of programming.

I have got a nice simple app to work on that provides some useful GPS data in a simple format. I’ve been working on it for a few weeks now. There is probably only about one more week of work before I’m finished but I’m struggling to get that week of work done.

Last week I was investigating using the computer to generate BitCoins (well DogeCoin actually). That might’ve been a good idea a few years ago but now my computer can’t process anything fast enough. I even rented an Amazon server for a couple of days at $0.15 per hour to generate coins. I’m now the proud owner of 1900 DogeCoin (worth about $2) and an Amazon server bill of $5. I am no Satoshi Nakamoto!

The week before that I was mostly just distracted and didn’t get much done at all.

I’ve learnt a few things from my time spent trying to program:
1. Finding the focus to stay motivated without a boss telling you what to do is pretty hard. I have been good quite a bit of the time but am starting pretty late in the morning and wasting quite a lot of time.
2. Without a client setting the requirements it’s pretty hard to pin down the functionality that I require. I’ve got some features added and want a couple more but I’m having trouble actually designing them. Making progress but only slow progress.
3. My skills are pretty limited and being a one-man development shop requires a wide skill base. Even just simple things like designing an icon or doing other graphic design tasks are outside my usual skill set but I need to find a way of getting them done (without paying someone).

So? Where to from here? Next week I need to make a plan, decide what progress I need to make and actually complete this application. How hard can it be?