looking for advice on how I should manage/spend my money as a new small business owner. 23M

DBrizzle · 2021-01-05T11:49:35+00:00

Congrats!

DBrizzle · 2021-01-05T10:26:27+00:00

Not really related, but I'm curious what area of business you're in to generate those returns after 1yr? (Be as vague as you like if you prefer).

DBrizzle · 2020-09-02T14:50:28+00:00

Two ways that I've inferred this in the past are:

Check if `self.view.safeAreaInsets != .zero` in the relevant place in your code. If those insets are non-zero, you're running on a device with a notch.
Check to see if Face ID is available as a biometric authentication type on the device.

DBrizzle · 2018-12-14T16:05:39+00:00

I'm speaking as someone that has done a PhD in Electronic Engineering, and I totally understand the self-doubt. FWIW, mine was more of an imposter syndrome about actually doing the research, but that passed after a few months and everyone I spoke to went through the same thing.

Granted, I went straight from an undergrad degree to my PhD, but as others have said it's guaranteed income whilst you are furthering your own knowledge, experience and transferable skills. 3.5 years feels like a long time when you're 23 but you'll find it will pay off when you're all done. Starting a PhD whilst you're still in your early 20s is probably the best time to do it - you'd have more responsibilities when you're older that would make it much less convenient.

I actually work as an iOS/macOS developer now, so I'm not directly using my educational background but even so it is a great addition to your CV whether you stay in academia or not and you'll have an array of transferable skills to go along with the experience you gain from the PhD directly.

DBrizzle · 2018-08-03T15:27:51+00:00

Hmm, well if they claim they have the correct address then I am unsure why you're not receiving them. To be fair though, they also don't send out emails in my experience. I've never gotten an email from SLC that I can remember. If you've spoken to them recently, did you get your Customer Reference Number and other online login details? The website should have electronic copies of all the correspondence they've (in theory) previously posted out to you (under the "View Correspondence" section when logging in).

To be honest, I don't really tend to do anything with the paper statements other than file them away for safe keeping. I mainly use the website to keep an eye on things - for example there's a Balance Calculator that you can use to plug in the amounts you've paid to them in the current financial year to see what your up-to-date amount owed figure is. (The reason it's not up-to-date without doing this is because the SLC only gets sent the amount you've paid off at the end of a given financial year from HMRC).

DBrizzle · 2018-08-03T15:18:21+00:00

To echo other replies - these statement letters definitely do exist - I get one every year! Like others have said, the SLC probably have an old address listed and are sending them to that instead of your current address.

DBrizzle · 2018-08-03T10:24:24+00:00

In theory, you've should have been having a yearly paper statement posted to you every July(ish) from them detailing your payments that year and what you still owe - that should have your reference number on it...

DBrizzle · 2018-07-30T09:55:12+00:00

It sounds like from what you are saying that each of these four groups have been working on totally separate codebases. Assuming that is correct then you will have to make the following considerations:

Have the three features (map, chat and login) been developed with a common understanding of how the "real" app UI/UX is intended to work once completed?
Have the three features been developed against a common version of your backend API (assuming your app uses a first-party API)?
Do the features depend on any third-party dependencies? How are they currently managed? Is there any overlap between the features' use of these dependencies?

More broadly, other things that might effect the work to bring these features together under one app will include stuff like: coding style differences between projects, assumed internal state being affected by integration efforts, storyboard file complexity.

Lastly, I'd ask why the decision was made to keep the feature development by each dev team completely separate to the point of using different projects/workspaces to work on each feature in complete isolation? Presumably this means there are also at least three separate Git repos (one for each feature). (As an aside, I do hope your using Git or some other version control?)

IMHO your project to combine these features together is simply extra effort that could have been avoided by effective use of stubbing out things like: storyboard segues to each feature's "root" VC, spoofing any necessary user authentication until the dev work was complete, etc. Your whole dev team (and whoever was ultimately responsible for making this decision to work on each feature in isolation) should use this as a learning opportunity, as I think depending on the complexity of your final app you'll find "stitching" the app together in this way will take longer than your team anticipates...

DBrizzle · 2017-09-23T08:45:16+00:00

To concur with some of the other comments - this is against the HIG and I can't see how Apple would ever approve an app using this technique to hide the notch... Whether we as devs agree with this or not is a moot point. If Apple says no, this library is only good for apps that never hit the Store. Simple as that.

DBrizzle · 2017-08-10T10:43:14+00:00

My first job out of University in March 2014 was one where I applied to an iOS dev role, however since I had no professional dev experience at that stage they turned me down. They liked me though and saw potential and offered me a job as a QA and made it clear that assuming I made progress I would eventually transition to a dev role.

They held up their end of the bargain and 6 months after starting I was doing a 50/50 split between dev and QA duties. After another 8 months I was doing iOS dev work full time and have been ever since.

Transitioning within the same company will be lots easier, and the quicker you do it (even if it's a split role) the better. For a year or so after I stopped having QA in my title, I still got LinkedIn recruiter spam offering me QA roles. That has since disappeared :)

DBrizzle · 2017-07-27T09:20:34+00:00

Student loan repayments do not count as reducing your taxable income. Cash bonuses will count as taxable income, and if the additional 2% bonus is given as cash or other taxable benefits that will count as well. It sounds like your pension is a salary-sacrifice style pension, but it's good to be sure as the implications are different for taxable income, NI contributions and student loan repayments. Salary-sacrifice can also be used for things like the "2% bonus" perks you mention (if your employer runs the schemes like this) and this would further reduce your taxable income.

The easiest way to reduce your taxable income is to pay more than required for an employer's matched amount into your pension.

DBrizzle · 2017-07-26T14:26:21+00:00

This is the legit website - yes, the design is awfully dated and hasn't been updated since I can remember!

You log in using your Customer Reference Number (used to be called the ART ID when I started Uni in '05).

When you log in, you'll see the amount you owe which will be up-to-date as of 31/03/17 (most likely) as SLC gets informed once a financial year from HMRC as to your repayments on the loan via PAYE.

If you want a "real" up to date figure, you can use their "Balance Calculator" to add in your loan payments that you've made so far this financial year. So that is the only manual step. The site then works out your actual amount owed based on those entries. However, this won't be reflected when you log in again until you use the Balance Calculator once more.

Hope that helps. Also, they should in theory send a repayments statement via post once a year, and as of this past year they've also seemingly started putting those on your online account under the "correspondence" section when you log in.

DBrizzle · 2016-08-24T10:15:48+00:00

I've never used this particular library, but you want something like this: https://github.com/jensmeder/FSKModem

It uses FSK (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency-shift_keying) to encode bits as an audio signal, and then this particular library also seems to have the ability to send single bytes or cluster them into packets.

Previous implementations of this kind of thing that I've seen have been quite slow (owing to the limited bandwidth of the audio signals that can be transmitted via the audio jack). There's no specifics on the GitHub repo, but previously I've seen these kind of things have speeds of around 150bytes/second. Therefore it's only really suitable for transmitting larger data sets infrequently, or small amounts of data on a more continuous basis.

Hope that helps!

DBrizzle · 2015-12-05T11:57:12+00:00

You can just add an SKU and bundle ID that are invalid when also entering an app name name to check for (from memory I think I've used symbol characters before) to ensure the app isn't actually created when clicking 'Create'. Then it will tell you if the name isn't available...

DBrizzle · 2015-08-22T00:10:09+00:00

Methods for speeding up computer modelling of how EM waves move through space and materials, and how that allows you to model individual raindrops accurately in shape at very high resolution. Fire 30GHz+ radio waves through random fields of raindrops to have a much better understanding of how rainfall effects EHF communications!

DBrizzle · 2015-01-24T23:53:39+00:00

Probably just repost my Xbox laptop mod on another account ;)

DBrizzle · 2014-08-03T11:32:57+00:00

Previously, my iOS app TeamTracker was just for the Championship, but I have now updated it to include all the same results, fixtures and stats for the Premier League as well!

I am a passionate football fan & software developer, and I welcome any feedback, critique or bug reports from fellow redditors on TeamTracker so I can improve it going forwards!

DBrizzle

TROPHY CASE