The Bowling Buddy 2.0

August 22nd, 2012

I submitted version 2.0 of The Bowling Buddy to the App Store today.  Added multiple bowler support and multiple league support.

Screen Shot from version 2.0.0

It usually takes Apple about a week to accept my submissions so hopefully in a week the new version will start landing on people’s iDevices. 🙂  Since the first version came out June 1st, there have been a little over 100 sales.  Been averaging about 40 per month.  It’s not huge but I didn’t really expect huge.

Anyway, I made a Facebook page for “The Bowling Buddy”   https://www.facebook.com/TheBowlingBuddy go give it a visit or even a like. Thanks.

Introducing … The Bowling Buddy!

June 8th, 2012

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So after months of 4 hours a week I finally have completed my first iPhone App!

Its been up in the App Store since June 1st.  🙂  Click on the picture above to go to my webpage.

Another long Gap

June 8th, 2012

As is my habit, I’ve gone a long time without posting.  Since I last posted,  I’ve changed companies again, we had our baby girl, Meredith, and sent our oldest to High School.

I’m now working for Harmonic, on digital video servers, using Linux.  So now I’m really becoming operating system agnostic.  I started working for them in March 2011.

Meredith was born May 15th 2011 and we love her tons.  Its been tough having a toddler and a teenager at the same time.

It took about 6-8 months after Meredith was born before I got back to working on an app.  I carved out 4 hours a week were I could work on it.  I had hoped to complete my first app before I turned 40 in mid-March but didn’t quite make that deadline.  but more about that in my next post.

January 21st, 2011

I finally have a basic app working.  Yeah me.  Every time you click the button it increments the number after the Hello in the text box.  You know… Hello 1, Hello 2, Hello 3…screen-shot-2011-01-21-at-82148-am.png

And waiting…

January 20th, 2011

It is almost 9:00pm and it looks like I will be waiting a while more before I can do any coding.screen-shot-2011-01-20-at-84536-pm.png

Waiting…..

January 20th, 2011

Tonight I attempted to install the massive 3.5 GB iOS SDK.  It turns out my brand new Mac Mini doesn’t have the correct version of OSX to run it.   I quickly started the Software Update tool, and after about 40 minutes this is where I’m at.WaitingHow’s that for Joy and Happiness?  So… I’m just playing around on the Mac to learn how to use it a little better.  In fact I’m doing this post from then Mini.

Hi, I’m a PC… and a Mac

January 20th, 2011

Yesterday I did the un-thinkable. 

I bought a Mac.  For a while, I’ve toyed with the idea of writing mobile phone applications but I’ve never done more than think about it.  So now I’m about to embark on a second un-thinkable thing.  I’m going to attempt to write an iPhone app.  On my own. In my “spare” time. 

This is CRAZY. 

Anyway back to my new Mac.  I’ve looked repeatedly into developing iPhone apps on Windows, because Windows is what I know.  But, the more I look into it the more it seems that trying to circumvent Apple’s way of doing things is just going to cause me no end of problems.  I could have tried to turn one of my spare computers into a Hackintosh.  However, that could consume weeks and is probably illegal.  I decided that if I’m going to be serious about building and selling an iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch app I needed to invest in the tools to do it.  I scanned EBay and CraigsList looking for a decent used Intel based Mac.  To get a decent machine I’m looking at $400-$600.  A brand new Mac Mini is $699.  The more I thought about it the more it seemed that going the used route was likely to have some unexpected hick-ups as well.  So, I bit the bullet!  On my lunch break yesterday, I dropped by BestBuy and bought the Mac Mini.  When I got home last night, I scrounged up a USB keyboard and mouse, and grabbed an unused HDMI cable and hooked up the Mac.  Now I have a lovely Mac Mini attached to a 21 inch Dell monitor using a Dell keyboard and mouse.  Hopefully, the fabric of time and space will not be torn by my blasphemy.  I fired up Safari to start looking through online tutorials about writing iPhone Apps.  Immediately, I was getting very frustrated with the Safari browser.  I had found the tutorial I wanted, and I wanted to open another Tab to look up something else (that’s how I use a browser).  Try as I might but I could not figure out how to bring up a new “blank” tab.  I got incredibly frustrated with the annoyance of not being able to do such a simple thing.  I gave up and downloaded Google’s Chrome browser.  Once I had it downloaded, the Mac popped up some window with a Chrome icon and a folder icon.  Since I know “nothing” about using a Mac this was meaningless to me.  I just wanted to install what I had downloaded.  Eventually I figured out that if I drag the Chrome Icon to the Folder icon then that installs Chrome.  With Chrome finally installed, I was able to browse in a more comfortable environment.  I pointed a tab at the tutorial and in another tab I loaded Apple’s developer website.  I registered as an Apple developer and found the SDK (Software Developement Kit) I needed to start writing code.  I started the download; it told me it would take 12 hours.  Sigh!  So much for getting anything else done on my project!  I left the Mini to its own devices and headed to bed.   

I’ll post an update later detailing how far I make it thru the tutorial tonight, presuming I get a chance to work on it.

The roof comes off

May 22nd, 2008

This morning they started tearing the roof off of our house.

Here are some pictures Christy sent me.

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What happened!

March 26th, 2008

I haven’t bothered posting much.  We here is what has happened since a long time ago…

Seth was born April 2, 2007 so next week he’ll be a year old.

July 2007 – We put our house on the market.  Elizabeth had her first sinus surgery to remove polyps.

Oct 2007 –Tektronix was bought out by Danaher.  We yanked the house off the market till we could figure out what was happening with Danaher. 

Dec 2007 – Elizabeth had her second sinus surgery.

Jan 2008 – Had our usual yurt trip.

Feb 2008 – Decided we should build on to our house.  We decided to use Hoffard Home Improvement for our second story addition.

March 2008 – Applied for and got a new job at Cognex, working on machine vision systems.

House for sale during a housing slump.

September 10th, 2007

We’ve had our house for sale for nearly 2 months and nothing is happening.  Nobody comes to look at the house.  Just nothing.  It is extremely frustrating.   Probably just having expectations that are too high.  I don’t know where all the buyers went.   Hope that people start coming around soon.