If you follow me on twitter (or via the side-bar here on this blog) you might know that I’ve been spending some free time on making an iPhone application.

It’s finally in the store and if you want it right now instead of reading this blog entry then go over to www.simplecardsapp.com.

I wanted to write a little bit about how this app came into creation, since it’s my first one that I’ve actually put on the store.

I get a lot of ideas, maybe 1-2 ideas a month that are good enough for me to write down. My selection process of what I actually then work on is something like this:

1. Write down the idea very concisely. I actually didn’t do that with SimpleCards but just kept it in my head. Usually not recommended to do, but sometimes it’s a useful method to sort out ideas too. The ones you can keep in your head for a long time are usually better.
2. Sketch it out roughly on paper, either UI right away like I did for SimpleCards, or just put down some more details into the idea to see if it could work and how it should work.
3. Sketch it out in photoshop or omnigraffle to get a better idea of if it’s actually doable.
4. Start coding.

If at any point in this process I see that it wouldn’t work or it’s just not as interesting as I first thought, I just stop working on it.

SimpleCards is a flashcard app that intended to replace the normal paper flashcards that I use a lot. When studying Japanese you have to learn the Kanji (chinese character), the hiragana (pronunciation) and the what it means. So when you use normal flashcards with 2 sides you actually loose out a little bit of practice because you always get pronunciation and translation on the same side. So not only did I want a super-simple (as simple as paper) way to flip through flashcards, but I also wanted to be able to have 3 sides per card.

Now to show a bit about the creation process of SimpleCards, as I said I got this idea and kept it in my head for a while. I kept thinking I wanted it and thought about it for maybe 1-2 months before sitting down and sketching it. Which resulted in the next picture.

SimpleCards initial sketch

Then after doing this I still liked the idea really much, pretty much the same day I started transferring it to the computer and putting in some more detail with OmniGraffle.

SimpleCards graffle

I thought this looked so good that it was a real motivation booster. Everything seemed to work and it was just as simple as I wanted it. I then checked out maybe 5-10 apps of the competition and saw that no-one had the one critical feature that I designed my whole app around: Multiple sides per flashcard.

I then spent two weekends coding this thing and got out a beta version following my own design. In the picture above nothing is real, it’s just sketches, in the picture below, all the screenshots are real from the actual application.

SimpleCards prototype

I do know however that what sells an app in the Appstore is design, graphics and nothing else. I also know that design is my extremely weak point. That’s why I got the excellent Anders Davén who I’ve worked with before to do the design for me. As Emma said, “It’s like upgrading from a Mac from 1995 to the latest OS X”. As you can see below, it truly lifted the app from being something only I would use (a fathers love) to something everyone could use!

SimpleCards finished version

So then the App was done! I created a website for it to be able to link to it (and to help you guys, readers, find it), and to be able to promote it a bit easier. That website is www.simplecardsapp.com.

So now that you know how it was created, go download it!

Get it even if you don’t plan on learning new words. Here are some alternative uses for it:

1. Shopping list
2. Memorizing names of people
3. Counter for how many times you have swiped across the screen
4. Pretending you’re learning a language.

and so on and so forth…

And once  you get it, make sure to rate it 5 stars and write a good review! ;P

Today we started getting ready to go back to Sweden. We have another two weeks left now and the return is closing in really fast.

School Material

The picture above is school material (books and paper hand-outs) from one year of study. If you subtract the big dictionary in the middle on the left stack at least. Though what is in the picture is for two people (both mine and Emmas stuff), it’s pretty damn much!

We have so much crap in fact that we’re going to have to send home 3 boxes full of it. Extra clothes, rice-cookers and books are going home in boxes. But it’s not as expensive at I once thought. You can send home 30kg of stuff for about 2000 SEK by plane or around 800 SEK by boat. The books alone would cost more than 2000 SEK to replace and I would want to replace them, so I think it’s worth it. And I think we’ll be sending home around 30kg including all the books (we’re just bringing home the books, not the papers).

Anyway, it feels really strange to go back home. I’ve become accustomed to living here and having 10-15 good, cheap restaurants within 500 meters at all time. But there are some things I’m pretty tired of. The apartment we live in is not really ment for living in longer than this, it’s getting pretty tiresome to not have enough space. I’m also aching to do something different than this school now, they treat you very much as a child and that’s getting extremely tiresome as well.

Getting back to Sweden will be a relief in some ways, but of course I’ll be extremely sad to leave Tokyo. It’s spectacularly wonderful city and if I could get a nice apartment and a non-japanese job I could absolutely see myself living here.

I will however not be in Sweden for more than 2 or 3 weeks once I get back. Almost as soon as I get home I’m leaving again for San Francisco. I will be working full-time for www.rightrental.com for a month and then get back to Sweden again in time to start the school-year. I’m very excited to see how it is to work in SF and meet all the awesome people there. Of course I’ll try to keep the blog filled to the brim with photos and videos!

Every time I think of leaving Tokyo I get extremely sad, but every time I think of arriving in Sweden I feel relieved. I wish I could bring the best from Sweden (family+friends, bread, cheese, candy, in that order) to Japan and everything would be perfect!

Japan has a wealth of new exciting products coming out all the time for an ever growing bored market. This makes it really fun to walk around Japanese stores.

Though there are some things I can’t try myself. So I bought this product and sent to my dad, we’ll see what he thinks. Watch the video below and you’ll know what it is!

So it’s been a few weeks since I bought the iPad now. It still feels very early to give a definitive judgement on wether or not it’s worth it.

Basically what I use it for so far is still pretty much what I said before. I use it to surf in the morning. I use it to watch videos, though I’ve changed video players and do actually stream most of the content from my computer because it’s less hassle than transferring the files (I can transfer wirelessly if I want to bring the iPad with me or shut down my laptop). I really like watching video on it, it’s usually very comfortable and the screen size is good enough for almost everything I want to watch.

I’ve also downloaded the Kindle app, since I have a Kindle I have quite a few books on there and all the books I’ve bought for the Kindle are automatically downloaded to the iPad as well. It’s quite nice to read on the iPad in the dark, where the Kindle needs a light and thus is slightly more uncomfortable to hold.

Since I don’t have a second screen I have actually used it as that a little bit lately with work. I am doing something where I constantly have to look at a PDF to compare results and it fills the job as an extra screen like that very well. It’s obviously not something I would do at home, but at home there are other things I could imagine doing.

When I get back to school in Sweden I do believe it will come in very handy. I usually bring the computer with me to study because I need to look at PDF’s or look up formulas and to do some surfing during breaks. I think the iPad will be a very nice replacement for a laptop there because it fills all the functions and minimizes distractions. And obviously it’s a very good music player as well so I don’t have to drain my iPhone during the day.

There is one thing I want to complain about with the iPad so far. The App selection is significantly worse than for the iPhone. I was expecting that almost all people who made an App made it for the iPad as well. With most apps it’s really not that much more work and you get a lot bigger market, but no; that’s not the case. There is only a fraction of the Apps for iPad as there is for the iPhone. Often I’ve gone to look for something and have been disappointed in the selection. Furthermore, the price of Apps in Apples App stores seem to be directly related to the size of the screen. The average price for an app on iPhone (for apps I look at) is 7 SEK and on the iPad it’s 22 SEK or above. Even really crappy Apps that should be free are 22 SEK.

I’m still happy I bought one. I use it every day for a little something even if it’s something I could easily do somewhere else. I’d still like to hold out judgement on if it’s worth the money or not. It’s definitely not a life-changer and if you’re strapped for cash then forget it. But if you have the money laying around and want to make you’re life just slightly, slightly more convenient? I think it could be worth it.

Of course, I have the Wi-Fi version so that’s all I’m talking about. Are you on the move a lot and want to always have a good way to do E-mail, surfing or whatever else; then the 3G version could change your life.

As you might have seen on my Twitter (or Facebook), the course registration in Sweden started about a week ago. For the past year I’ve been absolutely determined to study “Scientific calculation & Simulation” as my “specification” of my Masters of Engineering Physics.

But as with most things, the decision becomes harder when you actually have to make it. There were 2 factors weighing in on my decision, the specification (inriktning in Swedish, there is no real equivalent in English/American schools) and the time in which I should study it.

I have two big hobbies in my life, Programming and Physics. The former is something I’ve worked with the past 10 years and the latter is something that have been exclusive to study, I don’t actually really see myself going into a career in Physics, but I absolutely love to study the subject. To be able to understand how the world works and perhaps even have the ability to explain it to someone else is fantastic.

I have also thought for the past year that “If I can do it in 1 year, I will.” During my second year I studied 11.5 credits extra. I need 300 credits to graduate and have 191.5 currently. One term is 30 credits. In Swedish schools we study 3 terms normal courses and then spend one term doing our thesis project for another 30 credits during our last 2 years. However, if I just study another 20 credits extra during the 4th year I will be done with all my courses and can then do the thesis project during the summer and thus finish in slightly more than a year. I think 20 credits extra in a year is by no means impossible and frankly, after having spent the week planning and looking at schedules, I don’t even think it’s going to be difficult.

Because I think my thesis project will be more applicable to my future career if I choose the calculation specification, I will choose that over “Accelerators – technology and physics”. Because I think I can finish in a year without much further difficulty, I intend to so as well. It was quite a lot of work to find a plan that involved enough physics to keep my interest in that field satisfied, but I think I finally found a plan that works. There were quite some compromises but if I were to read everything I wanted to, it would be almost a full years worth of extra courses.

So, here is the plan I hope to follow. I think it’s going to be an interesting year.

Studyplan

Hello everyone!

When the iPad 2 was announced I decided I wanted one. People all around me said that it was so awesome and they used it for everything.

I still remain somewhat hesitant towards it’s use cases but I do believe it has some value.

I was going to buy the iPad on the release day here in Tokyo but because of the earthquake the release was postponed. Until today. This how I watched an episode of Community just a while ago..

However I don’t intend to use it as an extra screen for my laptop like that. I mainly had two use cases in mind when I bought it, the first was to browse the web in bed in the mornings and the second was to use it to watch video without having to have a 50 degrees warm computer in my lap when I’m not at the table.

I’ve already found two perfect apps for both those uses. You can’t surf efficiently with mobile safari so I’ve installed a browser called Mercury which does tabbed browsing and that whole thing very nicely. I’ve also installed BUZZ Player that takes any video format and handles subtitle files and embedded subtitles awesomely. I just move any video file very easily from the computer to the iPad via iTunes and I can sort the videos and play them via BUZZ!

I have yet to become fully accustomed to the keyboard, I’ve written this whole thing on the iPad now and it’s certainly faster than writing in an iPhone but also a lot slower than on a computer so far. I am getting faster by the minute though and if I can make a little less mistakes than it should be almost comparable to a computer with enough practice. We’ll see about that though..

I bought the iPad mostly as an experiment and so far it’s been fun. Lets see if It can live up to it’s name and if I actually find a real use for it!

JLPT Test Application

The time has come for another application to the JLPT, Japanese-Language Proficiency Test. Since I took the test the last time I have had my eyes set on the N2 test. But now as I’ve come closer to the end and (by tomorrow) have to decide which level to take. It seems very, very unlikely that I would be able to pass the N2 level test.

It bugs me extremely much that I have to say that I will not succeed in something I’ve tried to succeed in. A particular thing that bugs me is that a lot of people come to Japan to study Japanese to “find themselves” or just escape from real life for a year. This is absolutely not the case for me. I’ve “found myself” (if such a thing is even possible) long, long ago and I certainly do not see this trip as a vacation.

The thing is, that with only an N3 to show for it after a year, it could very well have been a vacation. According to Wikipedia it should take around 500-750 hours of study to be able to pass level 3. I have until today studied almost exactly 550 hours in class and maybe a maximum of 100 hours (almost all of that in the beginning months) outside of class during the past year. I have two months left so around another 150 hours or so will be studied in school. That means I will have around 800 hours when I take the test. 900 hours if I get my shit together and start studying now. 800 (or even 900) hours in a year means not only that I am even slightly below average if I am at level 3, it also means I’ve worked at about 40% of full-time.

I can’t change the fact that I’ve only worked slightly below half-time for a year, there are many excuses but really, what relevant excuse can exist other than laziness? However I used to feel that even if I’ve been terribly unproductive, if I managed to get the N2 then I have the equivalent knowledge of working full-time for a year as that usually takes 1400-2000 hours of study (again, according to Wikipedia). And somehow that would make up for the laziness.

Well, it’s time to face reality. If you don’t put in the work, you don’t get the results. I have to admit defeat in my quest for over-achieving and accept that most people will think I did this for the vacation.

The passing grade for the JLPT tests are usually between 50 and 60 percent correct answers. That means that even if I only know about 75% of what I should know (accounting for randomness), I could pass the test. That’s what I’ve been aiming for. Right now I doubt I will even be able to get up to 75% though and passing seems so improbable that I just see taking it as a waste of time and money.

I will finish this blog post on a positive note though. When I have the N3 and come back to Sweden, getting the N2 will act as an excellent motivator and goal for the coming 6 months of Japanese study parallell to my real studies. I have searched for a tangible goal and study plan for my self-studies and going from N3 to N2 is (I think) an excellent choice.

Update: I found a flaw in my calculations right after I posted this yesterday and thought I wouldn’t correct it because it’s not really that relevant to my point. But for the sake of correctness and my own self-asteem I will.

JLPT Levels

This is a quick little graph of the data I took from Wikipedia. For every test JLPT does a short survey of test-takes (all of them, on the application form) of how many hours you’ve studied and where you’re from. So that’s where the average study hours come from. But the results for the new tests have not been published yet as it’s not really very well established either. Though they have said some general things like the N1 is slightly more difficult and what you can see in the graph above.

This means that when I took N4 about 6 months ago, I actually took the old number 3 which requires the amount of hours I’ve studied right now. So for N4 I actually was over-achieving a little bit. And no-one knows for sure but the N3 is in the middle of old 2 and 3 so the amount of study hours should be pretty much exactly the amount I will have done in 2 months. So in other words, if I take the N3 at least I wont be below average in study speed. It doesn’t change the fact that I’ve only worked half-time this year, but it makes that half-time work a bit more fruitful.

We kind of ran out of things to do here in Osaka now as well so we decided that the aquarium was better than nothing. I liked it, and Emma wasn’t exactly complaining either. Here are some pictures. More on Flickr. Jellyfish has to be one of the best animals in the world to photograph. You can’t possibly take a bad picture of a jellyfish…

After a few days here now we’ve seen the most common tourist spots of Osaka. They have good food and are plentiful in good restaurants. It really is a very nice place! It’s no Tokyo in terms of liveliness but it’s surely a place I could consider spending a larger amount of time. Here are some pictures. There are many, many more pictures on flickr this time.