Udacity update

I haven't to well over the last couple of days. I've had a chest infection and have a couple of days off work trying to recover. During these days I have have mostly been sleeping but there is only so much I can do before my back start to hurt and I feel worse than when i went to bed.

For the rest of the time i have been sitting at my laptop on Udacity.

I wrote a review on Udacity, when I did my reviews of the coding tutorial sites not long after I started this blog. I was impressed with how the content was delivered, the fact I could do most of it on my iPad but the price for a paid course was huge compared to the other site I had reviewed.

Anyway I received an email to tell me I could now do my courses on my phone through the new android app. I thought "cool" so I checked it out and it does offer a great on the move option for learning. It's presented very well through a Samsung Note 3 that I have. A Few months back I sat down and finished lesson one and some problem sets of the intro course. So when I went on the app I thought i'd look at what else was available. I found a couple of interesting courses and one was about app building in Salesforce. So I sat down and worked through the courseware and I enjoyed it. It wasn't quite what I expected but still well delivered course and very informative.

Think i expected it the be building mobile applications but i would of realized it wasn't if i had have read the course data properly. 

Real Racing 3

Something a little different, at the back end of last year I started writing a blog about how I want to improve my kill/death ratio on call of duty. That then turned into a gaming blog as I discovered the world of professional gaming. I stopped writing it because I have a terrible memory and most of all I get forced on something and it tends to consume me. I started with call of duty then I found star-craft 2, then I'll get frustrated and put it down and find something else.

Anyway strictly speaking this blog will be about me and my journey coding but I’ll put the odd post in about something else and at the moment I’m really enjoying Real racing 3 at the moment.

Its a mobile racing game with game play and graphics to rival gran turismo or forsa. It really is that good and a mobile game!

I'm playing it while I write this, do a race write a bit more, do race and write a bit more.

I was talking to some guys at work about it the other day and getting them to take a look, its free also did I mention that. A mobile game that rivals gran turismo and its free!

While I’ve writing this I’ve been playing(until this bit, my battery died!) and looking online and I found a review by eurogamer that rated it 3/10!

WHAT!!! are you mad! This game is fantastic! As you read through the review he talk about how good the game is but he main issue is the in app purchases. And yes the game doesn’t have in app purchases but you don’t need them. He talks about the amount to upgrade and service you vehicles. Well durr! This is a necessary part of owning a car and it cost money.

I don’t know what some people except when they download a FREE app, it will have two things, Ad's and/or in app purchases. How do they except the company that has spend I don't know how money developing this game to make a profit if its free!

Some people need to wake up! Rant over!

If you like racing game I strong recommend Real Racing 3. I have never spend anything on this game I have got to level 47, have over 4 million worth of cars in my in game garage and completed 5 race series without spending anything on it! Not a penny! Its more than possible, if you don’t want to spend then don’t but give it a go its a great game.

update

After my frustrations with JavaScript, I have turned a corner. Watching the Tutorial I linked to in my last post, I have been able to understand a little bit more. I have now progressed on through my JavaScript course on codecademy. Not finished it yet but I’m getting on a lot better with it.

I edited my website a couple of times since uploading, changing so layout and adding bits of content. I have a couple of other thing in my head to put on there and will do when I get round to it.

I had a bit of look at treehouse the other day after seeing an advent. I wasn’t overly impressed I searched for reviews and the content looks limited and interface not overly friendly but one way to find out is take the free trial. Which I will do when I have the opportunity to take advantage of it. 

New laptop

I'm have been looking at code editors for my new laptop. Buying a new laptop very exciting!

I was looking at either a Samsung series 7 ultra book or and macbook air. Both very nice laptop full of tech, good speed and plenty of power but both about a grand!

Looked at a couple of other options but still felt drawn to the macbook air. If I want to develop apple apps then mac is a must but at this stage I'm learning so spend so much on a bit of kit I am unlikely to use is pointless.

I found a great alternative on ebay however, a two year old lenovo thinkpad t410.  Now thinking two year old laptop is out of date already but this is an  ex business lease laptop so has 128gb ssd, 8GB ram and around 5ghz from its processor.

This lead me on to my next series of posts, I'm going to review some code editors.

Stay tuned!