Delay in App Update and Thoughts on Drones/Robots

Well, it seems that if you upgrade your development mac to a Beta version of OS X, the App Store won’t let you submit an update to your app. While I understand the limitations in the past, that if you used a beta version of the compiler the app could not be submitted, this one is a bit of a surprise.  I am not sure what Xcode is doing from a build perspective where the OS version would impact it.  Oh well, I guess I will wait until the GA of the latest OS X beta.

While I was contemplating the impact of the OS on the build process, I read an article about an IndieGoGo campaign for a Fire Fighting drone.  The article was more a cautionary tale about crowd funding, but my brain (as it is want to do sometimes) wondered to a totally different thought.  As we get more automation and innovation in the world, we look at those jobs that are dangerous or low skilled as easy pickings for new robotic solutions.  This removes the low end of the job market for many people.  We justify this by saying, this will bring new opportunity for high skilled and higher paying jobs.  While at one level, this logic makes sense, I find that we don’t address the other half of the problem.  That is, as we take away low skilled, low paying jobs, we reduce the ability for people to enter the job market at all.  Especially if we are driven by quarterly P & L statements, which reduce the incentive to take the profit and invest it into job training and education projects for displaced, low skill labor.

Drones that fight fires, would reduce loss of life and address the safety concerns of fight fires…but would we program a device to rescue a dog, in a high rise fire, if that would result in a 25% likelihood of losing the drone?  How about 50%?  75%?  What about a “priceless” piece of art?  What about an elderly relative who is on life support, and likely to die tomorrow?  What calculation would be made?

While a robot might perform skilled manufacturing for a complex piece of new technology, would the person who just got displaced by the robot be able to afford the new tech?  Do I need to continue to fund a pension plan for workers displaced by the robot?  

While robots may be a critical technology for those countries with negative population growth, they just don’t have enough workers to support their parents and grandparents … Enabling this technology (which I truly find to be cool and exciting) doesn’t mean that it will only be used in those countries where workers are hard to find.  Companies are global not local, and they will leverage the technology to improve their quarterly results globally.

Technology consistently moves faster than legislation and at times faster then morality… I believe we need to foster both at the same level.  We need to ensure that as we enable the next level of technology, we don’t leave behind our parents and grandparents or our kids and grandkids, and that we continue to innovate at the society level… Science fiction stories have two tropes, one where we no longer have to work and spend our time in leisure served by happy robots, and one where we are the servants of the robots.  I hope we find our path to the first and not the latter.  In order to find that path, we need to make sure that we don’t just focus on the P&L statement of corporations, but we focus on society as a whole.

IPhone Updates, Downloads, and Monday Mornings

Ok, I didn’t start this process on a Monday morning, but there was an “emergency” update by apple on Thursday that seemed to hose my iPhone.  The update was 9.3.1 and was to address a problem some people were having when they tried to click on links in emails.  To be honest, I rarely try to do this so I didn’t appear to be impacted by the people. However, as a developer, I tend to update my devices as soon as the updates are released.  

I recently turned off Apple Music and went back to just using iTunes Match.  With a library of about 18,000 songs, I was not getting much value out of Apple Music.  In order to allow me to have access to all my music when traveling, I had started to download one of my playlists (it’s called unplayed and unbanked – which allows me to listen to a ton of music I haven’t listened to in about 3 year or more).  This is when all my problems began.  My iPhone was having issues downloading the 8,000+ songs, and kept hanging.  After it hung, the phone would get very hot and burn thru the battery.  I tried canceling the downloads, and they would magically start back up!  It also was stopping me from being able to download new apps.  It seemed that no matter what I did (restart phone, hard restart of phone, you name it), the phone would just hang on downloads and burn thru the battery.

I decided yesterday that I had enough, and did a factory reset on the phone!  Then more troubles!  My latest backup was causing the same problems, so I went back in time and chose a backup from before the 9.3.1 update.  The restore ran over night, but sometime during the night, it stopped.  And this morning I’ve had to start reinstalling all my apps (one at a time).  At least now the phone seems to be installing apps again.  Wish me luck!

In the mean time, I found a bug in WastedTime 6.0 and submitted a fix to my App to version 6.1.  Hope Apple releases it soon!

Oh – and Happy Monday!

Minor Bugfix Update

I have just uploaded a new version of WastedTime to the iOS AppStore.  It should be posted by Apple in a few days.  I realized that my choice of hot keys for the iPad Pro edition didn’t work with all external keyboards.  So I had to change the keyboard short cuts.   Would love to hear your feedback!

IPhone Updates, Downloads, and Monday Mornings

Ok, I didn’t start this process on a Monday morning, but there was an “emergency” update by apple on Thursday that seemed to hose my iPhone.  The update was 9.3.1 and was to address a problem some people were having when they tried to click on links in emails.  To be honest, I rarely try to do this so I didn’t appear to be impacted by the people. However, as a developer, I tend to update my devices as soon as the updates are released.  

I recently turned off Apple Music and went back to just using iTunes Match.  With a library of about 18,000 songs, I was not getting much value out of Apple Music.  In order to allow me to have access to all my music when traveling, I had started to download one of my playlists (it’s called unplayed and unbanked – which allows me to listen to a ton of music I haven’t listened to in about 3 year or more).  This is when all my problems began.  My iPhone was having issues downloading the 8,000+ songs, and kept hanging.  After it hung, the phone would get very hot and burn thru the battery.  I tried canceling the downloads, and they would magically start back up!  It also was stopping me from being able to download new apps.  It seemed that no matter what I did (restart phone, hard restart of phone, you name it), the phone would just hang on downloads and burn thru the battery.

I decided yesterday that I had enough, and did a factory reset on the phone!  Then more troubles!  My latest backup was causing the same problems, so I went back in time and chose a backup from before the 9.3.1 update.  The restore ran over night, but sometime during the night, it stopped.  And this morning I’ve had to start reinstalling all my apps (one at a time).  At least now the phone seems to be installing apps again.  Wish me luck!

In the mean time, I found a bug in WastedTime 6.0 and submitted a fix to my App to version 6.1.  Hope Apple releases it soon!

Oh – and Happy Monday!

Wasted Time 6.0 finally released yesterday 

Just a quick post to say that my App – Wasted Time, was finally updated yesterday on the App Store.  After an abortive attempt at a Watch OS2 extension, I have completely re-written the app in Swift, made it fully compatible with the iPad Pro and made it so that it can run side by side with other iOS9+ apps.  As always, it requries the latest version of iOS to run, at this time version 9.3.   

  
Please update and let me know what you think.  As always the app is free and so are all the updates! 

Recovery and Scars

 

Elbow Scar
Elbow Scar
 
In the past Scars were considered a badge of honor. People got most scars in battles, fights, and while pursuing survival (hunting, farming, building shelter, etc.).  My I scar has been generated due to a surgery to improve the use of my hand.  I have two scare, one is small and will disappear into the folds of the skin on my wrist, the other is pretty large (2-3 inches) and is on my elbow. 

The small scar has quickly healed and is almost completely back to normal.d. The larger scar has sensitivity, is bumpy (due to how the skin was brought back together after the surgery), and will take much longer to heal.  

Am I glad to have had the surgery, absolutely… Did I get these scars while pursuing survival?  I would say yes.  My job requires that I type a lot.  Before the surgery, I had been losing feeling in my right hand, and had increasing levels of pain on a daily basis.  Now most of the pain is completely gone in my hands, and three of the fingers are completely back to normal from a feeling perspective.  The other two should become normal within a year.  

Comments and Spam

One thing I have done for my blogs is automatically turn off comments after a short period of time.  This may cut down interaction a lot, but I feel that it is necessary.  Let me explain why.

Years ago I had a podcast called DogearNation.  We based this podcast on the very popular DiggNation podcast… Meaning we found cool links people posted on social media, and talked about them.  The cool thing about this model was that we had tons of content, which caused a ton of interaction with our site.  This content had a long shelf life, and people would find both the podcast and website for a very long time.  The problem was, since the content was long lived, comments were used by spammers to post links for phishing and other problems.

I have since changed all my blogs so that comments are enabled only for a few weeks. So my question is, does this give you enough time to comment on a post?  Should I extend it?  Does it matter?

Deal with post-surgical blues

Two weeks ago, I had surgery for a combined Carpel Tunnel and Cupital Tunnel injury.  This is pretty much an occupational hazard in our industry.  The Carpel Tunnel surgery addresses the nerve that runs under your wrist, into the palm of your hand and controls three of your digits – the Thumb, pointer, and middle fingers.  The Cupital Tunnel surgery addresses a never that runs over your elbow (I believe it is the nerve that you hit when you “hit your funny bone”).  This nerve impacts your ring finger and pinky.  For me, both of these nerves have been getting progressively worse over years and years of typing (coding, blogging, and dealing with way way too many emails).
I had asked the surgeon if I could get videos of the surgery and he acted like no one has ever asked for this.  What a big disappointment… Years ago I made a video of my LASIK surgery based on a video camera in the laser.  I was really hoping to get video of both of these surgeries.. But no luck.  I was able to find the following two videos online of the procedures though.

Carpel Tunnel Endoscopy surgery – Video.

Cupital Tunnel surgery – Animation and actual Video.

While the surgeries went well, I did have an issue with the steri-strips they used to cover the elbow scar.  I had a major allergic reaction and the elbow is still very inflamed.  I was unable to use the computer and/or lift anything, etc. for two weeks.  Of course, I couldn’t really do this, I was successful for the first week – even though I did one work day long workshop via the phone, big mistake!  Between that meeting and actually starting some emails on the following Monday, I ended up in massive pain for two additional days. 

Due to the surgery I was unable to do my podcast for the last few weeks, over at GamesAtWork dot Biz. I am hoping to get those going again soon.

I am now back to being able to do things, however, I am still dealing with major swelling and pain on the elbow, after watching the above Cupital Tunnel surgery it now makes tons of sense. The Carpel tunnel surgery has caused almost immediate relief but the Cupital tunnel can take up to a year.  We shall see!

Rabbits and Dice

This past weekend, I went to the Durham Public Library for an event called – Dice & Decisions: Role Playing Game Demonstration.  The organizers have been hosting a series of events about gaming with a local game development called BullyPulpitGames. Our host for the day as Jason Morningstar – one of the owners of the company.    The way the day was designed to allow people to play one of three games: Fiasco, The Warren, and World of Dungeons.  There were about 20 participants who came to learn about games, and spend some time playing.

Everyone got to choose what game they wanted to play… I choose The Warren, which puts you in the role of a rabbit within a Warren (hence the name).  Think of this as playing a character in the book (and movie) Watership Down.  The really cool thing about this game was it changes the dynamics of how you think of your character.  Rabbits have a short and dangerous life, players will probably die during the game, and can come back as another rabbit.  You start thinking in a generational way, because rabbits reproduce quickly (well like Rabbits!)

Jason was our game manager, and we each had to pick a rabbit.  You choose various characteristics to give your rabbit personality, and get one card which provides a skill.  My Rabbit was a mangy, runt, with an ear tag – meaning I had been captured by humans at one time.  The card I had was called “Dead Eyes”, which allowed me to reset my panic score by taking a scar.  Panic is a key attribute that you have to manage, since it will cause you to do things that you may not want.  I had put my skill bonus into Shrewedness, thinking that my bunny had been experimented on to increase intelligence. This lead to my low strength score and high panic likelihood.

The rest of our little band included Barley (who was hard of hearing but had incredible eyesight), Meadow (how had no fear of foxes and knew the secret of at least one fox), Basil (who was marked for death), and Ash (another runt who could ge  in and out of tight spaces).  We belonged to a very large warrant which was behind the library.  Chestnut was the rabbit in charge (and Barley’s father).  Our Warren was starving and we were sent out to find celery.  Meadow knew that a fox named silver was in the area, and we were stuck in a area with a possum.  Fox is blocking our path home, so we cut a deal with the possum to allow us to escape.  meadow would try and lead the fox on a goose chase, while we made a break for it.  Meadow barely made his escape, and we ended up digging under a near by house, only to be confronted by a big nest of rats!!

Well none us had trained to fight, so I negotiated with the rats to help us find the food. We got the information, but they tried to surround us.  We got away, but one of use was injured (I had who in my draft blog post, but lost the whole thing!  So sorry about not naming names).  When we got to the plentiful garden with the food, it had a terrier guarding it.  We snuck in and started eating a bit of food, only to be seen and barely escape.  During our escape Barley saved us all, but we made it back to the Warren with no food.  

Chestnut was very upset since the the needs of the Warren are more important than any individual rabbit. But since Barely had been brave to save us all, he demoted the captain of the guards (a paramilitary bunny named Jeffrey) and sent us back out to get the food with a little help.  Jeffrey’s was upset by this and left the Warren.  On our trip back to get the food, we lost our help, they got hit by cars! (The life of a rabbit).  

Each of us gained new skills that night and I picked up the ability to fight.  The only rabbit who could.  This would soon come in handy.

We made it back to the garden (late at night) and saw that the dog had been put back in the house.  Our nice hole to get under the fence had been blocked by a board, so I tried a new feet, I climbed the chicken wire fence.  Success!!!! So all bunnies now knew how to do this.  Ash tried to grab some food and immediately got hit with a trap and died!  Trying to free him the dog started going nuts in the house, and the owners let him out.  We had tons of food by now, and escaped back to the warren.

The game took two hours, used dice infrequently, and was totally captivating.  What a blast!  I hope to get more time to play with this group… And perhaps I can get Jason on my podcast over at GamesAtWork.Biz

Site rebranding complete

I’ve been trying to rebrand the site to a personal blog, since that is what it has become, since midsummer… But between day job activities, travel and technical difficulties, that just didn’t want to happen… So now it is complete. I will be moving over my iPhone Development blog over here too, soon.

Thinking about simplifying the theme a bit too.. We shall see.