A new alpha

Refactoring an app and a database at the same time, can lead to some interesting bugs. So today, I restructured my app. The good news is that the flow is more in line where I think I want it. THe bad news is, while I have enabled swipe to delete, it crashes the Alpha (after it deletes). I also have a new Add and View Recipient screen. The Add Event screen, while there, has some issues with getting all the data, and right now, it still doesn’t save the event. (That will happen, I hope next weekend).

Given all the other things I have to do tomorrrow, I won’t have another TestFlight until next week, but I am posting this one. I hope my testers provide “some” feedback.

Rehearsal And Programming

I am currently rehearsing for my favorite Light Opera – Ruddigore by Gilbert & Sullivan. Rehearsing is a lot of hard work. You have to learn the “rules” (blocking, lyrics, dancing, notes, and dialog). You have to practice these rules over and over until you can do them without thinking. And then magic happens, and you start performing. Performing allows you to interpret the rules and put a piece of your heart and soul into the final product – the Show! The becomes the experience that others get to have, based on all your hard work.

At the same time, I am working on building a new iOS application. In order to do this one right, I am having to learn new things (core date, swift 4, dealing with new APIs like the camera, TestFlight for testing, etc.) Once I have this down, I will improve the design, making it much more engaging – even if now it is a very rudimentary experience. Magic happens once I can get it all working without thinking. I hope the outcome of this app, will be just as engaging as Ruddigore!

What are those things that you love doing, that take a lot of hard work, and that you can never truly master?

Alpha App to do list

For my testers.. thank you for your testing….

As of now, I don’t have a real name for the app, nor any real artwork.. but I do have a list of things to do:

Fixed delete bug

Fixed address display bug.

Note right now you can only “save” the contact information.

I am working on the next part which will do the following:

1) Save the pictures (front and back)

2) create a UITableView of the prior cards, which will include Date, Event, Pictures

3) allow for a delete function on the main view by doing a slide over to delete

4) on the detailed screeen (#2) will add two buttons – add new Card, and Edit Contact information

5) Ultimately will want to create a picker to allow you to pick the contact from your existing Apple Contacts

Alpha testing of New App underway

So, I have begun Alpha testing of my new app with a small group of friends.  I have setup TestFlight in order to do this, and while there are a lot of builds going on, sometimes multiple in one day, I am excited to be doing this.  Right now the app is NO WHERE feature complete… I know I want to provide the ability to pull things from Apple’s contact list – as one example.  It is great to be getting any feedback from people other than myself.  Let’s hope I can get this app to market by Summer.  I’ll try and provide more insights as I start designing the art work… but that’s a long way off.  If you are interested in getting the test builds.. let me know.  Thanks!

Productive Day Part Two

Well, it’s not perfect, but I added core data to my app that started yesterday.  I have a simple table behind a tracking app. Now, I want to add a sub-table underneath that tracking, so things will get more interesting as I move forward.  I have run into a bit of a snag, however, when I delete a record, it shows that it is deleted.  But when I go back into the app, the record is magically back!?!?!  Must be some kind of cacheing issue, so will have to wait for another productive weekend before I figure that one out.

The UI is still very very basic, and not yet a worth while view, but to test out all the concepts of what I am doing, it’s good enough.  More to come.  I hope that I can release this app sometime this summer.  We shall See!

Productive day

Today was pretty productive. I’ve been toying with a new app, and today I got an early alpha of it done, and posted on TestFlight for a few friends to test. It is no where near done, but learned how to submit to TestFlight for testing. Very productive.

Alright Apple.. This is ludicrous

So, last week I was traveling and using a brand new 13inch MacBook Pro, with Touch Bar, and 12.9inch iPad Pro (first gen), a iPhone 7 Plus, and an Apple watch.  When I upgraded to the MacBook Pro with Touch bar I replaced all my travel cables with Apple USB-C cables, this would allow me to minimize the amount of dongles, etc.  So this trip was overseas, and I felt very happy that I had done this cable replacement to minimize the amount of adapters I needed and country specific adapters.  I had replaced the adapter on my 61W USB-C MBP Charger so that it could plug directly into local wall adapters, and I brought one 12W Adapter to I could charge my Apple Watch each day.

Imagine my surprise when I plugged my iPad Pro into the USB-C plug on the MacBook Pro (turned on, plugged into, etc. to a 220V outlet) and it would not charge!  Here I am completely in the Apple ecosystem with the latest cables and devices (ok not the latest but only 1 get back) and my iPad won’t charge.

I ended up doing a twitter help with @applesupport and getting a Genius appointment when I got back to the States.  At the Genius bar I was informed that the iPad Pro was NOT supported to charge on USB-C with the latest MacBook Pro.

WHAT THE HELL??  This is ludicrous!

Squashing bugs!

yesterday I had an epiphany – I realized that a bug that had been hiding in Wasted Time for years was actually trivial to fix! So I sat down and within seconds I fixed it! (Boy that hasn’t happened in a very long time – probably because I don’t get to program much anymore.). So I fixed it, tested it, and submitted it to the App Store all in less than an hour. Now let’s see when Apple releases it …

Cheers!

Releasing new version of Wasted Time App

I started writing this app years ago, and I try to put out a new version each year, just to keep up with Apple’s API changes. The last two versions are the biggest changes I’ve had to make in a while.

First, Apple has removed their social sharing capabilities, requiring me to re-write the app to use both Twitter and Facebook’s own APIs. Both of these have ballooned the size of my app from only about 8MB to over 100MB! Crazy. {Well after I posted it, I see it is only 15MB, so I guess that is not too bad)

I also added a feature I am looking forward to, and that is tracking the total number of people in meetings over time. The app captures the # of people only twice, each run. Once when you press “Quorum”, meaning that we know how many people had to wait before the meeting started, and once when the meeting ends. While this will undercount the number if people leave early, it will give you a cool metric of how many people you meet with.

One key thing to know is that I don’t ever have access to this information. All data is stored on the persons own iPhone, so the only time any information is shared, is if you setup twitter to say how much time was wasted. And even this is based on time, number of people and the rate you provide. As such, it is pretty hard for anyone to back out any real data. So what do you think? I’d love to hear from you!