ダニエルの冒険

Right after the talk on the 8th I’ll be dashing off to Dublin to be at the embassy on the 9th. There will be an English test, Japanese test, and interview for the MEXT scholarship. Any time I’ve mentioned the English test to anyone I’ve had surprised responses—”But you’re a native speaker!” Looking at the past papers though, the English test actually seems pretty tricky. Some of it is in the form of proof-reading where you find the missing word (usually a preposition or an article) in a big paragraph of text… which is no problem to do but is a problem to do at a decent speed.

I’m quite looking forward to the Japanese exam, but I’ve always enjoyed those. Placement tests are always interesting to take because I feel pretty happy about my level of Japanese at the start as a blast through all the multiple choice questions, but that quickly goes away as the paper inevitably gets more difficult and I spend the latter half of the exam racking my brain trying to remember how to read/write a particular kanji or getting frustrated because I don’t understand one critical part of vocabulary.

Interviews are always fun though, and as my friends know all too well, I like talking about Japan more than anything else. (Sean’s the only friend who can stand this, and that’s because he can give as good as I can.)

Well, I’m off to pick up my shiny new MacBook Pro!

Update (30 Jun): I will be giving this talk as originally planned. Please disregard 26 Jun update Update (26 Jun): Patrick will be speaking at this event instead of me. I expect that he will choose a different topic to talk about, but it will be exciting whatever he chooses!

I will be giving a talk at it@cork‘s iPhone Applications Event on the 8th of July in—you guessed it!—Cork!

The title of the talk will be “Creating New Interaction with the iPhone”. Thanks to the ever-awesome Damien for hooking me up with it@cork!

Here’s the abstract:

This presentation will introduce the power of the iPhone and demonstrate how easy it is to use this power to create exciting and truly innovative applications. Examples of impressive use of interaction technology with the iPhone will be demonstrated, and yet untapped potential discussed. The iPhone is steadily gaining new interaction capability with every new version Apple releases. The iPhone 3G added Assisted-GPS and 3G internet connectivity. The iPhone 3G S is now bringing a magnetometer (digital compass), higher resolution digital camera, VGA video camera, faster hardware and more memory into the hands of consumers. Combine all this modern input technology with an equally impressive set of output technology, including video, audio (speaker, headphone jack, Bluetooth), force feedback and internet connectivity, and there is no other device on the market with such huge potential in such a small form factor. The iPhone SDK is free and allows anyone with a Mac to tap into this potential. There are plenty of apps waiting to be created, and this presentation aims to get people excited about app development and to get their ideas off the ground.

Plenty of exciting things to talk about. Looking forward to it!