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
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.
Day 3 – CES 2016
Wow, Amazing day, got a full 4 hours on the show floor, and was able to see a ton of really cool tech. Unfortunately I will miss Day 4, due to flights, but what did I get from CES this year.
1) The IOT is main stream. Many companies are still showing their own platforms. Tons of devices are sending data to the cloud.
2) Health and wearables are where the growth is. While automotive and connect home, are still showing new and cool things, the real buzz is around wearables, health and fitness.
3) I did not see many connected appliances, but I didn’t get to every hall.
4) Vinyl records are back! I saw multiple companies selling new turn tables. I took a picture off this one for my dad. 
Is this a reaction to the DRM of digital music? We’ll find out soon.
5) One thing that I did not see, again I didn’t walk every hall, was anything on block chain. I guess this is not yet down to the level of consumers yet.
The follow gallery is all the cool pics I took today. Drop me a question via comments for any thing you see.
Day 2 – CES 2016
Sometimes the best laid plans….
This year, my goal was to spend 90%+ of my time on the show floor doing market research. I was then asked to help setup and give a quick demo, train a few people, and then be able to go back to my plan. Well, day one I got to spend a few hours on the top floor of the Sands Convention center talking to some cool companies:
FitBit blaze currently only has one light sensor for pulse it is a green sensor replaceable bands different it’s a square device and currently only they make replacement bands.
Tell Wellness is a isometric device that unifies exercise by making you press and hold the device at various levels in the areas of the suppression
Levl – Created a device that looks for acetone in your breath to figure out fat burning. They are currently in alpha with a slow launch and go to market activities in the second quarter. They are looking at GA and consumer approach in the summer. The device scores the amount of fat that is being burned in your body on a day today basis and then allows for you to change behavior in order to improve fat burning activities
Temp track is a patch that does continuous temperature monitoring for between 24 and hours in real-time temperature. It attaches underneath the arm use a Bluetooth to transmit the data.
Solos it’s a heads up display for biking integrated into set of glasses integrates with me different sensors that you could normally have on a bike for training.
United technologies does custom ear scanning. They will be starting a kickstarter in a couple of months. Really cool tech for building highly custom fitted earbuds for musicians, podcasters, and industrial environments.
These were all on day 1. So I thought I would get much more time to look at the main floor, see the AR/VR demos, look at all the new cool automotive technology, etc. I ended up getting very little of this. Our CEO gave a keynote on Wednesday evening, and this morning we had do demos of the press. Before I could get out of the booth I had many customers I who wanted to see demos. (I am not complaining at all, it’s always great to talk with customers, get their feedback and insights, and learn). This meant it was after lunch when I finally was able to head to the main convention center.
I caught the shuttle bus and went into the north hall. This is where all the car companies show their new technology to the “public”. I did my usually quick run thru to decide where I wanted to spend time. By the time I finished this (about 20 minutes), I got a call and had to come back for more demos. I spent the rest of the day in our booth talking with customers and giving demos.
I will add a quick dump of pictures for things I saw but didn’t get to look at in detail: