Week #741
This week we put the final touches on our two iOS Camera Apps. That’s a bigger write-up in itself, but we did all the boring plumbing of making keywords and screenshots for the App Store. One has been approved the other is in the process. They’ll be ready soon-ish for anyone to download for free, then we’ll add a price.
The local mastodon instance (lodfill.is) is closing down. It was too big of a project with too much cost for the owner. We’ve contemplated creating our own instance, but we’d probably fall into many of those same traps. Instead, we made the move over to mastodon.social. We figured that will probably remain online longer and if for some reason we need to move again, so be it. All of our followers SHOULD have been migrated over, but incase not, or you’re a new follower, you can join us: @briansuda@mastodon.social
A friend-of-a-friend who has fed us projects in the past has a new potential project on the horizon. The timing didn’t work out to have a face-to-face meeting last week, but hopefully we can schedule something virtually. Then see if this project has any legs and is worth working on.
For one project we’ve been doing a lot of tablet and VR development. One big issue everyone complains about is the setup process with the new Apple Vision Pro. The device is really designed for a single person. When you give it to someone else, it needs to be in guest mode, they need to do the eye and hand calibration, etc. It’s a pain every time! This week we were watching a YouTube video about creative storytelling and video production for the Vision Pro (for yet another potential project). One develop complained about the same issue: the constant setup. They he said, “To solve that we created our own app”. We froze and rewound the video! After going deep, we now know how to get the Apple Vision Pro into “Kiosk mode” which means only a single app runs and there is no setup between users! 🎉🥳
We started a new project at the beginning of April. For the first three-weeks of development (not man weeks) we setup all the “plumbing” needed to get to this point. We stubbed out a website, an app, create the models, setup all the connections, zing emails back and forth when things happen and more. Now that that’s all done, we’re focusing on the “meat and potatoes” and doing deep now on WebRTC.
Thursday was the First Day of Summer here in Iceland. That’s a public holiday here, so the day was a mix of wandering around town like everyone else and enjoying the weather, while still having a few international meetings. The old Icelandic calendar, misseristal, was split into two seasons: Winter and Summer. Each month had 30 days with a 364 days calendar. So every Thursday in late April is the first day of Harpa, the start of the summer season.
On Friday, we had an UnOffice Hours Meeting. It is always great to meet new people. We exchanged some book ideas, a good chat and more. If you want to book checkout: https://unofficehours.com
We also published an article called Muscle Flexes. WAY back in 02011, we were at an event and the late David Carr mentioned thinking about things like “going to the gym”. You’re always crap and don’t want to go back a second time, but if you do, you’ll only improve. He took that approach to video blogging and more with success. It’s always stuck with us, so it was finally time to publish something about it.
Week #742
We rebuilt the WebRTC clients this week. We previously ran a small spike to make sure what we wanted todo could be done. We confirmed that late last year. Now, it is time to rework the code into something that’s fit for our web app. This includes knowing who the person is based on their login and what group they are trying to communicate with. Our first attempt at porting the code over to using the authenticated users half-worked, but after going through line-by-line comparing it to the older working code, we got everything up-and-running in Safari, Chrome and Firefox. Now we can start to add all the extra quality-of-life features: Admin muting and booting, private groups, additional media for all participants, etc.
On Tuesday, we had a meeting about a big change to an existing product. Previously, we built a tablet and VR app for a customer to demo some of their products. There has always been a simple share feature using the built-in OS share sheets. They now want to take that a step further and send an email with a custom link to browse the ‘favorited’ projects online. This is the start of feeding the data into our customers’ CRM tool.
There are now two projects percolating in Australia for us to work on. Our contact is getting all the details and scope of the project before they bring it to us and we get down-and-dirty with estimates, timelines, technologies and more.
Thursday was the May 1st Bank Holiday here in Iceland. Of course the US doesn’t celebrate May Day, they have Labor Day in August, and the UK moved the holiday to Monday May 5th!
Friday our hope was to play some catch-up on tasks, but we got hit with 5+ meetings. Luckily, this post was already queued-up, because the electrician also decided today was a good day to finish all his tasks. Needless to say, we got lots done, but not the stuff that needed to be done. (Now Monday next week is looking pretty busy!)
🎂 On May 4th, (optional.is) ehf. will technically be 4 years old. In 02021, we converted the company from an SLF to an EHF – resetting the company id. The SLF was incorporated in 02011, but the domain has been active since 02009. Depending on how you look at it, the company is 4, 14, or 16 years old.