What I got up to in September 2020
Made a lot of progress on my app but completely failed to get a mortgage sorted :(
I failed to buy a flat
At the start of the month I put an offer in for a flat just outside of Leeds City Centre and it was accepted which was surprising to me as it was about 10k under what was being asked for.
I had decided now was a good time to buy as with COVID-19 kicking about it felt like a good excuse to get somewhere away from people as the block of flats had about 20 flats in it, opposed to the giant block I live in currently.
For the last year and a bit I had managed to save up a 10% deposit for a flat going for the average price around Leeds so I was feeling relatively confident but with COVID-19, the US Election and Brexit in works there are basically no 10% LTV mortgages around.
I ended up getting the services of a IFA to help me with my search as I was constantly getting rejected and I finally got a call to say that of the 96 lenders he had on his system there was finally one that had a deal I could apply for.
This deal however was quite frankly shit, I’m guessing the idea was that as that lender were the only ones offering that kind of deal that I would have to reluctantly sign up for it but instead I decided to just not bother with the whole thing.
I’m going to take a year to save more and wait until at least until January when hopefully the hairy Wotsit in Chief is kicked out of the whitehouse so he’s not impacting my abilty to buy a house anymore.
I’m also going to commit to getting a house further out from the city centre as I’ve lost all interest in paying through the nose for a flat and instead want something I can live in for at least 10 years.
Relived my teen years playing Tony Hawk’s
I played a lot of THPS when I was growing up, getting to the point where my combo ability was good enough to get in one of the UK’s Playstation magazines.
It was great to play those levels again and in HD but the modernisation left me feeling a little like I will never be able to just sit down and enjoy those more mainstream video games again.
Worked on my app
I’m getting very excited as the app is getting to the point where all the main functionality is in place and there’s just a bunch of random edge-cases to clear up.
I had a week off work this month which I used to get the bulk of the app done and while my sleeping pattern is now completely screwed up (I went to bed at 6AM today) I’ll be able to regain that pattern soon once it’s in the Beta Tester’s hands.
Once the Beta Test has given us a steer on what works and doesn’t then I’m hoping that we’ll get the app out in October or at the very least November but there’s some legal stuff I need to get in place before that can happen.
Even if the app fails I think I’ve got enough experience working with Expo and Appium to work on a series of tutorials covering how to automate React Native apps.
