Author: Rob Fahrni

Husband / Father / Developer

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Uncategorized

@BestBuy and @Verizon, a match made in Hell

You can’t make this crap up.

I have to be away from home tonight, it happens. I charged my Verizon JetPack and stuffed it into my bag, along with my Mac and all the charging cables I’d need (it’s amazing how many), and headed out.

Before leaving town I stopped by Best Buy because they have good deals on prepaid data cards, my JetPack is pay as you go. This was mistake number one. I asked the lady behind the counter if the card I picked up would work with a Verizon MiFi (JetPack), she replied “Yes” so I purchased the card and got on the road.

After settling in for the night I grabbed the JetPack and fired it up. This is a real hold your breath moment with this device. I’ve used it about a dozen times and something always goes sideways. Tonight was no exception. After the browser pops up and does its connecting thing I get a message that says it can’t update my account and I should dial an 800 number. Fine. I call the number and figure I need to give them the numbers off the prepaid card to get things going. The machine on the other end of the phone gives me the option so I type in the numbers on the back of the card, get confirmation it worked, and hang up.

It still doesn’t work. I dial the 800 number back and wait for 30-minutes before a tech support representative answers the line. I tell him what’s going on and he informs me that the card I purchased won’t work with my JetPack, it’s only for phones. Mental note, Best Buy employees are full of baloney. Great. I thought I got a great deal on 3GB of data, turns out my money can be applied to the JetPack, but it only buys me 128MB of data. Good grief.

The technician says he can apply my purchase to my account and get me going. After the shock of learning how little data my $20 will buy me I ask him to apply it to my account.

The tech says something like “Oh, um, it’s not going to let me do it. Our system won’t let me do it and I don’t want to mess up your account any further.” What the heck does that mean? How can you mess up my account? And further, what’s this further stuff? Is it already messed up?

So mistake number one: trusting Best Buy. Mistake number two: buying a Verizon JetPack. Maybe that was mistake number one and trusting Best Buy was mistake number two? Either way, here I sit, no data connection and plenty of work that needs doing (no, I don’t have tethering on my phone account.)

Maybe tomorrow morning I can get a connection down at the coffee shop.

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Uncategorized

Podcasting Hall of Fame

BlogWorld: “On April 14th 2015 we will induct the first class of honorees into The Podcasting Hall of Fame at the Podcast Awards Show.”

I have two people in mind for the first class of inductees: Dave Winer and Adam Curry. Both played early roles in making the distribution of podcasts easy.

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Life

Close to Home

NY Times: “PORTERVILLE, Calif. — After a nine-hour day working at a citrus packing plant, her body covered in a sheen of fruit wax and dust, there is nothing Angelica Gallegos wants more than a hot shower, with steam to help clear her throat and lungs.”

Porterville is not far from us. I’ve heard estimates of 60-days of water for Visalia residents.

It’s been a serious situation for a long time. It’s now escalated to dangerous.

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Development Objective-C Work Note

Work Note: That compiled?

I just ran across something that had me stumped for a while, I just couldn’t see it, and I would have thought the compiler would have choked on it. It didn’t, it built, and ran, and produced interesting results.

Confession time: I’m not using auto layout, yet. Why? I haven’t had the time to commit to it. Yes, I’m aware it would probably save me time in the long run. I will learn it, of course, just not today.

Anywho, back to the story.

I hade some code that looked like this, I must have been distracted mid-thought, and did a build. This code built.

self.thingView.frame = frame;
self.thingView.frame

AHHHHHH!Anyone see a problem there? No assignment, no closing “;”. The code built and ran! The outcome was my view moving into strange positions during rotation for no apparent reason. Wow.

I finally had to do a diff to find it, I just couldn’t see it.

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Business Development

Words to live by

Jared Sinclair: “Focus on a difficult problem that matters to a significant number of normal people. Don’t worry about being the prettiest or the most featured. Get your hands dirty and find out what the rest of the world is struggling with.”

Will write C/C++ for foodThese words apply to any software indie, not just someone developing an iOS Application. I’m convinced now, more that ever, that services are the way to go. Create something people are willing to pay for and give them access to it from the desktop and mobile (iOS and Android), and possibly other platforms. Guys like Rob Walling have been spreading the gospel of the micropreneur for years.

A perfect example of this in the iOS world is the work Justin Williams is doing with Glassboard. He’s following the micropreneur playbook, even if he doesn’t realize it. He’s found a nice niche market, he’s asking people to pay for the service (the nerve!) He also has a blog, where he runs ads, and has just recently changed his podcast from advertiser supported to listener supported. All very smart ways to earn a living. These ideas all run counter to the Silicon Valley idea of blowing large sums of money in hopes of an “exit.” These guys are actually running businesses, bravo.

If anyone thinks this is easy, they’d be wrong. It’s not easy. It requires long hours and sleepless nights to get things off the ground, then it requires constant supervision to make sure it doesn’t fall apart. Oh, and even if you do all of that, it can still fall apart. Hey, it’s a business. Some people have the midas touch when it comes to business and many of us do not. The majority of us will fail.

Something else in another of Jared’s posts that really struck accord: “My marriage and mental health suffered a lot because of that punchcard. I worked on Unread seven days a week, at almost any hour of the day. I think the quality and polish of Version 1.0 is due to all that extra effort, but it was physically and emotionally taxing. It’s not a sustainable way to live, and I don’t recommend it.”

This reminds me of something I read on a CompuServ (I believe?) forum circa 1988-89, back before the internet. My manager would check the forums on occasion for tips and tricks for Clipper developers (wow, what an awesome dBase compiler.) If memory serves it was in one of those forums we found a quote that sticks with me to this day. An indie developer of C extensions to Clipper said something like:

“Being a self-employed software developer is great. I can work any hours I want to work. Any 80 hours in the week I want to work.“

Food for thought if you’re thinking of going indie. I don’t mean that to discourage you. I only say that because it’s going to take a lot of work. Be prepared to do more than have a great idea. Be prepared to put in the time to make it work. Oh, yes, one more thing. After you develop this great application you have to market it. I think that’s where most of us will fail. Marketing. I’d imagine that is more important than actually developing a great service, or application.

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Development iOS Work Note

Work Note: When to share?

I do freelance work. As a freelance developer I’ve had times where I need to write code I know others could use. I use plenty of open source software, so I figure I should try to contribute something back.

That said, I’m working on a project right now that needs to parse RSS feeds. I know there are some existing RSS parsers available for Objective-C, but I’m going to write my own for a few simple reasons.

  1. I need it for this project
  2. I can reuse it later
  3. I’d like to give back
  4. I wanted to do something block based
  5. I wanted to publish it using CocoaPods

This exercise is primarily about two things; Sharing and self learning.Duct Tape, fixer of all things!

If I’m the only person that ever uses it, at least I’ve learned something new (packaging with CocoaPods) and I have something I can use again.

Update (6PM): I’ve published what I’ve completed. Some warnings. This code is very much as is. I’ve only tried it with well behaving RSS 2.0 feeds. The code definitely stands on the backs of giants. It depends on TouchXML to do all the hard work, all this code does is create RSS objects. Do not expect much.

I still need to add CocoaPods support and it could use a bunch of unit tests. I’ve done a few, but I can go a whole lot deeper.

Anywho, lots to do.

Categories
Life

California, times six?

89.3 KPCC: “The latest initiative to split up California is not the first. Or the 10th. Or even the 100th. There have been at least 220 efforts to hack California up into smaller states, with at least five just since 2000.”

I happened across this article on the Six Californias effort and appreciated the history lesson. The article goes on to outline a few of the prior efforts complete with maps representing the new states. I had no idea this has been attempted over 200 times. Wild.

Some articles on the subject are serious, others pretty funny.

“It just doesn’t seem fair,” San Anselmo’s Johnny Colla, a member of Huey Lewis and the News, emails from a tour stop on the East Coast. “When Draper got the map and the magic marker out and started carving up the state like a second-grader, why didn’t he include our county in the little empire he wants to call ‘Silicon Valley’? I mean, we’re affluent, opinionated and self-centered just like the ‘young Turks’ down there in the South Bay. And, shoot, I want to be a part of what would be the state with the highest per capita income in the nation, don’t you?”

On the serious side of the fence. I live in what is known as the Central Valley. It would become Central California in this scheme and would instantly become one of the poorest states in the union.

The gaps are underscored in California’s non-partisan Legislative Analyst’s analysis of the proposal. According to the report, the new state of Silicon Valley, which would encompass most of the Bay Area, Santa Clara County and parts of the Central Coast, would have the highest per capita income in the nation, out-ranking Connecticut (funny coincidence that Draper happens to reside here). Meanwhile, the neighboring state of Central California, encompassing mostly poor agricultural counties in the Central Valley, would be at the very bottom in per capita income, behind Mississippi.

The arguments for it claim it will make Government more accessible and more efficient. I doubt it, and I doubt we’ll see this effort succeed. It is, after all, the 220th attempt. Guess we’ll find out in 2016.

Categories
Indie Mobile

App Store Economics

TechCrunch: “Meanwhile, 22% are “poverty stricken” developers whose apps make $100 to $1,000 per app per month.”

I don’t know what to say about this. It’s depressing.

Categories
Life

D&D

20140720-212226-76946260.jpgThe New Yorker: “For much of its existence, D. & D. has attracted ridicule, fear, and threats of censorship from those who don’t play or understand the game. It is surrounded by a fog of negative connotations.”

As teens my brothers and I played a metric ton of D&D with our friends. It wasn’t uncommon for our Mom to find us crashed on the floor in the morning after a long nigh of campaigning.

It’s been years and years since we’ve played but it’s something I will never forget, not to mention something that shaped my early teenage years.

Every once in a while I think about the game and the great times we had as teenagers and wish we could experience it again.

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Life Uncategorized

Day One, by Bloom Built

Day One App IconI’ve been using Day One, from Bloom Built, for a few weeks now. It is quite possibly the best pure writing tool I’ve used to date.

The UI is the thing I find most compelling. They’ve kept it simple. In both apps you add a new post by tapping, or clicking, a plus button, write what you are thinking, and hit Done. It’s that simple.

Another nice thing: your writing is kept in sync between the Mac and iOS clients using iCloud or DropBox. I’m using iCloud and it’s been flawless.

If you are a Mac user and would like a place to write, that isn’t public, and you like the experience of a nicely designed native client, consider Day One.

Bloom is one of those companies, on a very short list, I’d work for (not that I’m good enough to work there.) I know that probably doesn’t mean much, but I tend to really love or hate software. When I love it, I want to work for the company. When I hate it? Well… I could care less. The list of companies I’d love to work for is very short. Bloom Built just joined that list.