Andy Girvan

Freelance Web & Mobile Developer, London – HTML5/JS/CSS3 – PHP/MySQL – iOS

Monthly Archives: April 2011

Balancing Personal and Professional Development Projects

Apr 13

A few months ago, I decided to start developing my first iPhone game, Little Devil, alongside my full time job as a Web Developer in Central London. I didn’t have much experience with Objective C or iPhone development so I knew that it was going to be quite a daunting task. Alongside this I have a girlfriend & a relatively good social life, all of which contributed to the issues with developing something difficult in my spare time.

Now, 5 months later, I’ve learnt quite a bit on how to balance my professional, social and development life and here are a few tips/pointers for anyone wanting to do the same.

An introduction to the world of APIs

Apr 11

At its most basic, an API is simply a way for two programs to talk to each other. They’re a set of rules, regulations and restrictions, dictated by one applcation to allow another to interact & manipulate the content. API’s are, in general, offered as a free service – however there are often premium or paid versions of API’s which remove restrictions allowing more data to be captured.