What I done did in October 2024

It’s been right scary

Got the basic idea of my new app down

This month I explored the idea for the app I’m building a bit more, building up designs in Figma for the different flows in the app and finding a bunch of edge cases I hadn’t thought of when I was just coding it.

I’ve settled on a small set of functionality for the initial launch and I’m confident I’ll be able to execute the idea really well. I’m just prepping to start the work in a way that makes it easy to document it so I can drum up some interest as I build it properly.

Hopefully in November’s update I’ll have the app designed and in testing so I can talk about that process.

Went to SwiftLeeds

As I’m now building iOS apps in my spare time I was able to attend SwiftLeeds, my first mostly-mobile conference since I went to DroidCon in 2013.

It was a really fun couple of days, I feel like the Swift community in Leeds is a lot more open to sharing their experiences compared to some of the other developer communities so it’s been refreshing to see people excited about what they work on.

Finished the World of Warcraft: War Within Campaign

I started playing the new WoW expansion last month and this month we finally hit level 80 and completed both the War Within campaign and the post-level-80 storyline.

It was a pretty enjoyable game, I especially enjoyed the Nerubian storyline. My only critique would be that the ending was a little “meh” as this expansion was the first third of a three-part arch so things didn’t feel complete enough for me.

I’ve also been playing a lot of Hearthstone so I’m sure I’m probably going to be invested in that world again.

Started Warcraft 3: Reforged

After playing WoW I decided that I wanted to play the original Warcraft games but after finding Warcraft 1 was nearly impossible to play on my 4K screen due to how small the window was an with no means to resize it I instead opted for the modern remake of Warcraft 3.

It’s been really fun seeing the events that led up to World of Warcraft, seeing Arthas fall from grace, turning Sylvanas into a banshee and more. I’m still learning the best strategy to use but it seems like not immediately attacking and investing in research that builds attack and defence works.

Went to Leeds Mobile

After Swift Leeds I decided that I’m going to attend the Leeds Mobile meetup which I did this month. It was really well put together, with Monzo doing talks on their Design System and adoption of Swift 6 concurrency features.

I think there’s a bunch of stuff I could learn from Leeds Mobile in terms of what the meetups I help run do. It has a lot of polish, with a list of speakers already set up which means that people know what to expect and can get excited for, there’s also a pretty good AV setup.

Finished watching Star Trek: The Next Generation

I think it’s been 4 months in the making but I finally made it through Star Trek: The Next Generation, a TV show I occasionally watched as a kid and something that I was hoping would get me interested in Star Trek.

It kind of has, I’m definitely invested in certain characters and want to see what mayhem they get up to but I can’t say it’s made me like Sci-Fi as much as others probably come away from it feeling.

I like the chaos that Q brings a lot more than I enjoy Picard’s dealing with exploration so I’m thinking my next Star Trek will be Deep Space 9 as I’ve heard it’s quite fun like that.