Yet again, I’m getting to a point where I think the number of projects that I have active, is getting too high. I had similar thoughts last year, when I wrote an article titled “My App Store Clear-out”. I explained how some projects weren’t getting any time, some we’re hard to maintain, and others were just stale.

Back then, I reduced my number of projects to 5:

• Hydrate – A work in progress iOS app to track water intake.
• Qwiki – A small Mac menu bar utility for searching and browsing Wikipedia.
• Pretty Regular Expressions – An app to test regular expressions in a simple UI, for iOS and macOS.
• Tap Gap – A very simple arcade game for iOS, that was made free, as no further work is going to be done on it. But there were still people downloading it.
• Pixels Sticker Pack – An iMessage sticker pack that features a small amount of pixel art.

In the year since I wrote that, I’ve given up on Hydrate, and developed two new applications – Text Case, and SOLID. Text Case being the iOS utility to format text, and SOLID being another utility to create single colour wallpapers on iOS.

That leaves me with this:

• Qwiki
• Pretty Regular Expressions
• Tap Gap
• Pixels Sticker Pack
• Text Case
• SOLID

I’d very much like to get that down 4 or 5, with 5 being an ideal maximum. However, I would like to start a new project next year, so I should restrict myself to 4.

Of course, I will keep on the latest apps, which fills out one half. But there’s tough decisions to be made on the rest. Tap Gap is certain to be pulled, that’s already decided. But the future of Qwiki and Pretty Regular Expressions are currently unknown to me. I like both of them, and I think they’re good apps. But I just need to work out if they are realistically going to get any updates in the future.

So this is where I am right now:

1. Text Case
2. SOLID
3. ?
4. ?
5. 2019 Project

I don’t want to annoy users by making a product unavailable, or officially cancelling all future updates, but most of them have been growing stale anyway. And I think I’d rather sell a limited amount of products that get regular attention, rather than a whole bunch of them that are near-to-never updated.

Slate

iOS App

A client for the Micro.blog platform.

Development Log

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Hydrate (On-hold)

iOS App

A water intake app.

Website

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Keep Track

iOS App

A university project app to keep track of your items.

Website GitHub

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TitleCase

Command Line App

Brett Terpstra’s TitleCase API in the Command Line.

GitHub

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hacker

Command Line App

Hacker News in the Command Line.

GitHub

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slink

Command Line App

URL shortener for the command line, using Goo.gl.

GitHub

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cwiki

Command Line App

Command line Wikipedia searching!

GitHub

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TodoApp

iOS App

A basic todo app built with Realm as the local database.

GitHub

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H News

iOS App

iOS app for Hacker News

GitHub

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Choosing a Blogging Platform

iBook

An iBook which describes the various blogging platforms available, and the pros and cons with each of them. It also goes deeper in finding what style of blogging is for you, and if there are specific needs that would require a certain platform.

iBooks Store

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CH Uploads

Website

A small project in PHP/MySQL to manage/store my images and videos that I share. This way I don’t need third-party services, or have to put up with compression.

GitHub

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WeatherByEmoji

Website

Easily check the weather and view it as a simple Emoji. You can either let it get the weather for your current location, or enter a location yourself.

GitHub

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Serpentine

macOS Game

Just another Snake clone! It started as an entry for Ludum Dare #34, but I’ve since added a few features!

Website

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Kitten Killer

Flash Game

Kitten Killer is a game where you have to kill kittens before the time runs out.

Website

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Biovolve

Flash Game

Biovolve is a simple game where you have to evolve your character to overcome certain obstacles.

Website

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Tinius Worldifica

Game

In this game you travel around the multiple worlds (that are tiny!), collecting coins, and eventually finding keys which lead you to the next world. Remember to take things slowly, as they are only easy at the beginning!

Website

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I’m Where

Game

A game set in the World of Mysria, where you will explore and solve puzzles to find out why you are there.

Website

Apple have announced some changes to the Artists Pages in Apple Music for iOS:

Apple Music in iOS 12 makes it easier to browse an artist’s catalog and discover new music to play. You’ll find the following changes in the new Artist Pages:

• Improved Organization: Artist Pages are now better organized to make it easier to find the music you’re looking for, including Essential Albums and a featured release at the top of each artist’s page.
• Personalized Artist Radio: Every Apple Music artist now has their own radio station. Press ▶︎ at the top of any Artist Page to start listening to music from across an artist’s catalog.

Connect posts from artists are no longer supported.

So Apple Music Connect is no more. Not exactly a big loss in my opinion though.

My opinions are similar to Nick Heer of Pixel Envy:

Aside from Connect, I think Apple Music’s social features have been fairly successful. I check out what the users I follow have been listening to all the time in the For You section, and I like the new Friends Mix added a few months ago. I’ve even noticed a better selection of user-created playlists. I would love to see continued investment and promotion of these more passive social features, rather than another attempt to create a Twitter-but-for-music social network.

I can’t say I regularly check what my friends are listening to, but I too have been finding a lot more user-created playlists. And I’ve noticed that playlists that I have created have been getting more attention from others.

Receiving updates from artists in Apple Music always seemed a bit odd to me, as I never really thought any artists would spend much time creating content for a limited outlet such as Apple Music. Especially as they surely knew it wouldn’t be that popular.

What I do want to see more of though, are social features designed for the listeners. With things like user-curated playlists, and smarter recommendations that take into consideration your interests, your friends, what’s trending in a certain area, etc. I’ve always found Spotify to be much better at this, and discoverability in general. And I’d much prefer Apple to compete on that front, instead of trying to attract Artists to be social on a music platform.

James Iles:

Recently, Jamie Zoch (@Yofie) questioned whether search engine DuckDuckGo had acquired the Duck.com domain name from Google.

Search giant Google acquired the Duck.com domain name in 2010 with the acquisition of On2, a video codec company.

Today, DuckDuckGo CEO Gabriel Weinberg confirmed to me that the Duck.com domain name had been transferred to DuckDuckGo’s possession.

Maybe they paid them for the domain, or maybe this was Google doing something nice? Who knows.

Via Hacker News.

I’m currently on holiday in Lanzarote, which is one of the Canary Islands. It’s technically part of Spain, but it’s closer to the western coast of Africa.

We spent all of today travelling around the south side of the island, and ended in a place called El Golfo, which has some very rocky beaches. It resulted in some interesting photos that I thought would look good as mobile wallpapers, so I spent some extra time seeing what else would look good, and I came up with 12 different options!

Download the original.

Download the original.

Download the original.

Download the original.

Download the original.

Download the original.

Download the original.

Download the original.

Download the original.

Download the original.

Download the original.

Download the original.

If you want all 12, then you can download this one zip archive. Just a warning, it’s 34 MB. If you want to unzip this on iOS, you can use my Shortcut that can extract any downloaded archives.

Pretty Regular Expressions, the iOS app, has never and currently does not collect, use, or interact with at all, any personal and private information stored on the device.

There is absolutely no need for Pretty Regular Expressions to ever interact with anything, apart from the direct text that it is performing regular expressions upon, and for that reason alone, there has never been any intention to use personal or private information.

Date Effective: 29th November 2018

Ellen Scott, writing for Metro:

Over in Australia lives a very large cow.

Or, if we’re being technically accurate, a very large steer, which is a neutered male.

His name is Knickers.

He is 6 ft 4in tall standing and weighs 1,400kg. That’s actually a tiny bit shorter than the steer that holds the world record for size, Bellino, who lives in Italy, but it is still very, very large.

So large, in fact, that he’s too big to be killed and sold as meat. Meat processors say they just can’t take him as he’s too large for them to deal with.

Holy Cow.

A very funny article on OneFootball:

An Irish football club has apologised after falsely reporting a player had died, which prompted the postponement of their own match and a minute’s silence to be held at others.

Ballybrack claimed Fernando Nuno La Fuente had been killed in a road traffic accident and their Leinster Senior League (LSL) clash with Arklow Town on Saturday was suspended as a result.

But it later transpired that the Spanish player was, in fact, still alive and had returned to his homeland.

What an absolute screw up.

I’ve literally just finished watching the second film of the Fantastic Beasts series, and I thought I’d try and get out what I thought of it while it’s still fresh. Just for additional information, I watched it in IMAX 2D.

It was incredible in so many ways, but maybe the best part was seeing the wizarding world from a whole new perspective. Everyone remembers Newt Scamander from the original Harry Potter series, but he was only an author of a textbook then. And in the first Fantastic Beasts film we did start to get to know him as a person, but you learn quite a bit more in this film.

I can’t fault anything with the film, but I will have to now go and do some research on everything, because I need a few things cleared up!

The revelations in the film will truly shock you. However, I cannot reveal anything. I already can’t wait for the next instalment.

#ProtectTheSecrets

Over a year ago, Niantic (the developers behind Pokémon GO) announced a game called Wizards Unite. In their announcement, they celebrated the state of their AR technology, including how successful Pokémon GO already was at that point (November 2017). It meant that they had the ability to expand on that and create an experience for the Harry Potter franchise:

We’re incredibly excited to announce this next step in the evolution of AR mobile entertainment. With Harry Potter: Wizards Unite, players that have been dreaming of becoming real life Wizards will finally get the chance to experience J.K. Rowling’s Wizarding World. Players will learn spells, explore their real world neighborhoods and cities to discover & fight legendary beasts and team up with others to take down powerful enemies. We’re thrilled to partner with Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, and WB Games San Francisco’s development team to bring this magical and beloved series to life in a brand new way. Harry Potter: Wizards Unite will leverage the full stack of the Niantic Platform while also providing an opportunity to pioneer all new technology and gameplay mechanics.

It sounded really impressive, but I didn’t expect it to take this long. Because we’ve only just been treated to a trailer, and it wont be released until 2019.

The story sounds reasonably interesting:

The Ministry is looking for witches and wizards willing to roll up their sleeves and volunteer to save the wizarding world from the Calamity. As a member of the Statute of Secrecy Task Force (a new task force formed in partnership between the Ministry of Magic and the International Confederation of Wizards) you will hone lightning fast wand reflexes, an ability to sniff out the faintest whiff of magical disorder from afar, and proficiency in advanced casting of multiple spells.

But it will all depend on the implementation of the real world scaling, the AR features, and just how it will be played. The idea of Pokémon works very well in this scenario, and Pokémon GO has only proved that. But I’m not sure how you could get a game based around the Harry Potter franchise, that is constantly pulling you in to do more, without it being a fixed storyline.

I’m a big Harry Potter fan, so I’m going to play it no matter what. But I hope it’s something long lasting.

You can find out more information, and also sign up for updates on the Harry Potter: Wizards Unite website.