Rhonabwy

Ah, the season.

I’d watched coworkers taking days off the past week or two, some of them coming back probably before they were really ready to. There’s been a head-cold, flu, or whatever floating about the office. Karen was even down with a cold a week ago.

I thought I’d managed to avoid it. Early this year was particularly hard on me - I caught 3 nasty “take you down for a week” things, and I’ve been working hard to keep up on proper vitamins, eating well, getting sleep, exercising. I thought I’d managed to kick this one and skip by. Ah, well - apparently not. Friday afternoon I started getting the sneezes.. they lasted well into Sunday. I definitely caught it.

I stayed home from work today as well. I slept most of the morning, but I’m feeling awake and pretty good now. Still a little stuffed up, but I’m not voraciously sneezing and my throat isn’t swollen anymore. Gettin’ better I guess.

Seattle Bus version 1.1 took 12 days to clear through the App Store review process. All that and I had a really, incredibly stupid bug in it that basically screws up your favorites when you upgrade.

Pretty much a one-liner typo “looks right” until you realize it isn’t bug. I’ve got it fixed in version 1.1.1 - in fact, that’s pretty much the only thing in version 1.1.1. I fixed the bug and uploaded it to the App Store to put it into review.

If you haven’t upgraded from 1.0.2 or earlier to version 1.1, then consider waiting for this update to clear. If the timing is the same, it’ll be available roughly October 8th. I’m afraid I don’t have any control over how fast it moves through the App Store approval process, so hopefully sooner and not later.

It’s one of the sides of the App Store/sales channel setup that I really wish I could change. If I was delivering this application myself, then that update would be out right now and damage limited to the few folks who upgraded in the past 8 or so hours that the broken update was available. At this point, I’ll have to guess a large number of folks will get the 1.1 update/upgrade before I can get out a properly fixed version. I’ve got a good sense of how many customers I have - so I’ll keep track. I hope it’s a low number, but I fear it won’t be.

Damnit!

I missed something in my testing, because when I upgraded my copy of Seattle Bus to version 1.1 (now available in the AppStore), my favorites were all switched around to stops I didn’t recognize. Damnit.

It’s easy enough to reset, but I’m very annoyed that I missed that bug. I expect a lot of you will be too.

I updated the description in the AppStore so that folks upgrading will at least have a chance of knowing about the breakage before it hits them. Since I don’t have any other means (aside from this blog) of contacting my customers directly, that’s all I could think of doing. Well, and writing this entry.

I think it’s still very worth updating for the other features. This update also happens to have an updated bus stop database associated with it, and it’s the code that “upgrades” your database with the new information that’s obviously flawed. I even explicitly tested that functionality, but clearly I missed something too.

My apologies to all of you for breaking your favorites!

Earlier this week, I joined Mac Developer Network for a round-table session on starting, running, and being involved with developer groups. That show is out and “on the air” tonight!

I’ve been a listener of Scotty’s podcasts since they’ve started, but I’d never considered being on one before. John Chaffee of Busy Mac Software has been on a few and suggested that I might be a good candidate for this one. Since it was about developer groups, and I’ve been running one for the past 3 years here in Seattle… yeah, ok - I’ll give it a go.

The whole process was fun, I got to meet a few folks I’d never run into previously, and chat with a few that I had met previously.

I just hope I don’t sound like a raving lunatic or mumbling fool.

Raven Zachery posted the following on twitter late this afternoon:

Steve Demeter just announced his Trism revenue at Mobilize during VC panel Q&A: $250,000 since July 11th.

I about fell of my chair when I read that. I know a lot of folks have nice sales with the iPhone applications, but that just completely blows through any sort of expectations I ever had. As far as I can tell, Trism is pretty much one person’s extremely intensive work on a very innovative game. Boy howdy, that shit sure paid off!

Part of me is instantly jealous and kicking myself for writing something as lame as a “bus application”, when I “could have” been writing something like Trism and then spending the next year traveling around Europe with Karen or something. (Ok, the reality is that I’d likely be far more conservative with the income than that…) Then I sit back, applaud this dude’s really effective work, and realize that I probably wouldn’t have done it at all. In fact, I clearly didn’t.

For me - well, I need a driver. Something to really motivate me for making the application. Seattle Bus was something that I wanted to have myself. That made all the difference to me in developing it. In truth, I never expected to see as many sales as I’ve received to date (sorry, not posting numbers on the blog…)

Even at dinner tonight with Vas I was surprised when Vas said, “You know, if you really put some more work into it…” and went on to describe the things he really wanted in Seattle Bus. I’ve gotten far more suggestions and ideas for things that people would like in the application that I ever originally conceived. Frankly, I think updates to Seattle Bus could keep me solidly busy for the rest of the year (if not more)!

Since I’ve just uploaded an update to Seattle Bus (pending approval now), I’m very curious as to how an update release will effect sales. In a desktop application, there’s usually a spike of increased sales that falls off (after some amount of time) back to a previous or potentially slightly elevated sales level. Seattle Bus is cruising along at a reasonably consistent sales level, so I’m curious if the same thing happens when your distribution outlet/platform is the iPhone App Store. Obviously, I rather hope so.

That quote is still rattling around in my head, even hours later. It makes me think I also need to take some more time and spend a little bit of it diversifying and getting another application out there. My moleskine isn’t short of ideas - I’ve been chucking them in there with carefree abandon (had to buy more ink today, in fact).

What comes next is some consolidation of the ideas, and taking a good hard look at the ideas to see what gets me the most motivated. The iPhone applications are a side deal for me, so I’ve got to get my motivation from just making the app - not just betting on a handy bit of cash that it might generate.

I think “I’m ready to go!”, I’ve got it loaded and have been playing with it for the past week or so. Then the other night I happen to look at the application at 11:55pm. Ah yes, that was a mistake.

As it turns out, the date parsing for what I’m trying to do is a tricky little bugger, and looking at the timestamps that resulted at 11:55pm for 3rd & Union downtown showed me a few glaring flaws.

I’ve fixed most of them - the remaining pain point I’m hoping to verify later tonight. It seems that if a bus is scheduled to arrive at 11:55pm, and the current time is 12:01am - the system thinks you’re waiting for the bus that following night at that time, and you get a wait time of something like 1440 minutes.

It also appears that the web system from transit has a slight flaw with their own time display. They display 12 midnight at 12:00pm. I don’t know about you guys, but I always thought that was noon, not midnight. Ah well - another special case in an already messy bit of code, because parsing time from simple strings is frankly just rather fraught with difficult situations.

So with any luck I have this nailed down and ready to go… I’m going to check tonight, and then I’ll be getting it uploaded to the site. Even if I haven’t quite got the bugs all nailed down, I suspect I’ll get it uploaded to the site. I think this bug has been around since day one, so waiting a little more for the fix is better than holding up the other good stuff I want to get into your hands.

Update: As of 7pm PST, September 16th - version 1.1 has been uploaded to Apple and is pending review. There remains a known issue with date parsing and determining “wait times” when you’re looking them up just after midnight. I’m continuing to work on that, and will release an update - but I didn’t want to hold up the other features for that bug.

The role playing game Traveller looks like it’s got a new run on things. I found an updated copy at Barnes and Noble (on a lark) from a group called Mongoose Publishing, copyright 2008. And yeah, I bought it.

The original was published 31 years ago, and this looks like a slightly updated version of the original game. I haven’t even really played any RPG’s since we moved to Seattle (well, except for the ones on the computer, but that’s a bit different). Traveller was one of my favorites - I collected insane amounts of bits and pieces about it. I even built out an extensive website I called the Missouri Archive quite a while ago (it’s still there - I keep it “live” as an archive, but it’s not getting any updates).

Quite a blast from the past. I’m going to enjoy reading through the “updated” rules.

Tomorrow is a very special day. And no, this isn’t about to become a Rudy Giuliani moment…

Tomorrow is Karen and my 15th anniversary. It’s hard to believe it’s been 15 years - half of which have now been spent in Seattle. 15 years ago we were married on “homecoming weekend” (ill planned at that) at Calvary Episcopal Church in Columbia, MO.

We were married by Mother Tamsen, a then quite pregnant priest (of the Episcopal faith, seein’ how we were in an Episcopal church). The ceremony was awesome and based off the New Zealand Book of Prayer. I don’t know where Mother Tamsen is these days, but I hope she’s doing as well as Karen and I.

We didn’t get married in that church because we attended services there (although I’d been to some - along with a lot of other churches in that town), but because I love the look of the building. It’s a beautiful rough hewn white (probably indiana) limestone building. It’s really a small church, especially compared to the monster Methodist thing a block down the street ( I thought the Methodist church was kind of monster in a lot of ways, but mostly due to the parishioners there), but it’s beautiful. Dark carved hardwoods in a fairly spartan interior. It wasn’t a “modern episcopal” church in any sense. It was pretty old fashioned, and exactly what I wanted.

Mother Tamsen was actually the surprise gem of the whole deal. She was practical, sane, understanding, and very forth-right. All of which I can’t speak highly enough to. I’m not going to give her credit for getting Karen and I off on the right foot entirely though - there was a lot of work over the years on that road, but I do remember and appreciate some of her more sage advice tidbits.

We celebrated a touch early - tonight - with a great dinner at Atlas Foods, some drinks (I’m becoming quite fond of “malbec” wines from Argentina), and a very amusing romp through Barnes and Noble at U Village. Tomorrow we’ve plans in the morning for breakfast at the Crumpet Shop, and who knows from there.

And yes, for any of you local Mac geeks reading, I’ll still be coming to our Xcoder’s meeting tommorow night at Google/Fremont. Can’t wait to meet Amit Singh and hear what he has to say…

al3x’s rules for computing happiness.

Pretty damn much on the money.

My eyes blurred by the time I stopped playing the game. Once I hit space and started flying my new “spaceship” around I realized I should go to bed.

Ended up playing about 12 hours yesterday…