Thoughts

Added recent searches to the Search screen for Gluon. Also added some friendly icons too. Will ship an update on Monday I guess, including some bug fixes for account switching.

I could get used to this…

I didn’t think it would be easily possible… but I can see a future here, now that I can re-use all of the logic layer at least. The UI would have to go… One for 2020 for sure!

😱

Guess I’ll have a small break 😃

Just pushed out an update, for Gluon, for all iOS users (build 69). You can read about it here. 😍 More to come soon!

Went to bed at 03:00 AM. I’ve been working on re-writing a major, underlying, component for Gluon. I’ll blog about it when I ship the update. It’s been totally worth it!

My Office. Looks out into the living room.

Would be interesting, theoretically, to see Tesla/SpaceX get into the general & commercial aviation sector. I’d love to see that kind of innovation and push of technology.

Pushed out an update to Gluon for both Android and iOS.

It mainly sorts auto-theme switching issues, on iOS, and also tweaks a few other areas here - for example when the app has been suspended by the OS.

There is a small tweak to the UI here too, which removes some of the borders from the top and bottom bar. It looks a bit cleaner in my eyes and is less visually distracting. Also gave the screen titles a heavier font on iOS.

Here it is with pure white:

I'll sleep on it I guess.

The Discover More section also got a bit of attention and there is more to come here. I mainly fixed an issue with the previously selected emoji category being shown when you navigate to a different one. And to finish it off, I added the new emoji categories (🧶🎨🖌🏕⛺️🍺🍻🍷).

Then I decided to add a more prominent “Micro Monday” header with the Micro Monday podcast artwork. Although, again, I’ll sleep on it.

I’d love to add a few more community specific items to Gluon, which should round it off nicely, and make it a bit more personal with the platform.

Anyway, that’s it for now. Thank you to everyone testing and sending feedback. Keeps me going!

Lately I’m more comfortable to spin up a Ruby on Rails project than trying to work with my website’s CMS… maybe it’s a sign.

Couldn’t fall asleep last night. My head exploded with ideas. Had to get up and write it all down. Sleep soon followed.

I just pushed out a bigger update to Gluon. I re-wrote the theme logic which also enables auto theme switching (iOS only for the short moment) depending on the OS. Still has a few minor issues, but really happy with the result so far.

Happy I took the time today to work on that as it opens up a few doors for future expansion, without the headache.

Out for iOS TestFlight and Android Internal Test Track.

Slowly catching up on emails. Been out for most of the week because of my daughter (age 5) being at home, recovering. Funny how much productivity goes out the window… especially when you work from home. At least she’s better and she had fun with us.

One of the bigger jobs for Gluon is to re-implement the theming system. Feeling brave today so will make a start on that. With that done, that will leave two posting related items on the to-do list.

I happily replaced my 60GB Windows virtual machine with a 50GB X-Plane installation. Certainly more fun! 🛩

Turned out great and can actually be eaten 🥳

Cookies are currently being painted. Considering we can’t eat them… they can go on the Christmas tree 🎄

I’ve been looking at the Ghost CMS and oh boy am I in love with the interface and typing experience. Does anyone have any experience with self hosting with auto deploy from a git repo? This is my usual, and preferred, flow.

I attempted some cookies with my daughter today. Look great at least and are sweet. Just hard to eat, literally. Christmas holiday is coming up so I will go ahead and practice a bit. 🎄

Now to come up with, and create, the User table… pen and paper are not doing the trick so far. Gonna head for the shower and drink some herbal tea instead.

Here is my super simple take on the registration page for Picard. It has a bit of extra text when you’re coming in from an invite. I want to keep it simple without headaches. Password can be created later, if so desired.

Added the ability to send a registration invite for Picard, which you’ll need in order to register before the public launch. Seems to work nicely. Also have an ENV variable to toggle if it’s open for public.

When I push the button in the admin it will create a token and trigger an email with a special link. Trying to register without the correct details will boot you back to the homepage:

With that, I’m starting the registration screen:

I kinda dig the stars, so I’ll leave them for now. Not sure how to tackle the logged in area yet from a design point… we’ll see.

I worked on a super simple admin area for Picard last night. Just so I can handle any requests coming in, like deletion or Marketing preference changes. Also added the ability to re-send all pending/non-confirmed invites on a one time basis.

The screenshot is my local instance and you can see a few things, for example if they confirmed their email. When they pre-register it sends out an automatic email so they can verify it. If they didn’t I have the ability to send “All pending invites” again, however I can only do it once per email - I want to avoid spam - and also added some extra text to the email template stating exactly that. I could automate this on a weekly basis perhaps, but this will do for now and will come in handy when I’m ready to open it up. Other options include marketing preference toggle - easy enough - and the delete button.

The data in the database is encrypted so I had to find a way to do something quickly, as the database won’t tell me much except encrypted garbage.

Anyway, this was a bit of fun for me and probably not really necessary… However I can build on top of this and add new features as I go.

Next up for today I will work on Login and Register. Will post an update when I can.

Happiness is more than have.

Just released a small Gluon update for posting. Now includes a title bar, if you want to set a title. Also added the toolbar that you can find when replying (will add more options this week). Update out on Android and iOS. More to come very soon!

Christmas Tree is going up today 🎄I’ve been told I’m gonna be in charge of… cleaning the windows so we can put Christmas stickers on. We also managed to do all the present shopping in the past 3 weeks. Ah the joys. Can’t wait for Santa now! 🎅

So I’ve deployed the Picard pre-registration page to the server yesterday. Tested it. Happy with it. Made a few tweaks today and deployed those. Now I just need to write the blog post to announce it.

I’ve slowly been working on Picard. Worked on the sign up process styling and also encryption of data.

Here is the UI after you put in your email address:

And once you verify:

Not too pretty, but it will do.

Blog post soon with announcement 🖖

I’d love to see Apple take their auto-fill (for passwords) to a new level next year. With a dedicated app and support for One-Time codes with a certain layer of magic. I think it’s time.

Let’s see if my past self knew that I would hate myself if I ever had to work on this section again.

Thank you so very much to everyone that emailed me about Gluon on Android. I’ll be replying to everyone, that had feedback and found bugs, over the coming days.

I’m using TailwindCSS with Picard. It’s really great… although it takes a bit to get used to. I have written zero CSS at this stage though and I love it!

And here is the result so far!

For anyone interested what my next code challenge will be about, Picard… it’s aimed at developers running their own [to be revealed 😱]. It’s something I have a need for, for my own day to day, and nothing like it really exists (it does, but not the way I want… or anything that is affordable).

It's underway and I’m working on a “pre-register” page and will announce more soon once that's ready.

It’ll be another series of blogging and maybe also a podcast or a video series - still to decide.

Here is a sneak peek at the top left of the holding page:

I totally dig the image my sister came up with (after my clear and precise specification of “Picard"). THANK YOU SO VERY MUCH ❤️🖖

I was just thinking when there will be a new update out for iOS again. And sure enough, 13.2.3 is ready to be installed 😂

Interesting to see this in the Photos App on the Mac.

Good to see that they’re surfacing information like this.

First commit for Picard.

Our daughter, 5, is getting pretty good with controlling the HomePod. “Hey Siri, play Devil’s Dance Floor”. Controlling volume is no problem either. Seems to be very natural for her to use voice command (🤔). “Hey Siri, play Christmas music” 🎄🎶

I had to create a new Google Play Store version for Gluon. That means Google will review the app before I can update everyone with a new link for testing. Excited though! This means it’s on par with the iOS version.

Xcode and Handbrake currently fighting for CPU time.

Going to be uploading a new Gluon build for Android. Going to try and see if I can get around version numbering, if not I’ll be creating a totally new build/app - which might take a few days as Google will have to approve it.

Tweaking styles on Android. Using bold colours to see where each “view” is. Something I always do when I lay things out and makes it much easier.

Android looks different, but it works a treat and grows as you type. Just one of those differences!

Worked on getting a simple toolbar into the reply screen on Gluon. Works nicely and is easy to expand in future. Slowly making headway on the posting and replying in general. More to come soon.

Going to be talking to myself in the name of testing Gluon. Enjoy.

Does anyone have any recommendations on getting into game development? Specific to iOS and Mac ecosystem. Is Unity the go to place? I know C# so that’s ok with me. Or should I concentrate on native dev (via Xcode)?

Bought a domain name. It’s slowly getting serious.

I’ve been doing a bit of product research for my next project and it turns out that not many show off the user interface on any marketing page. You have to create an account and see what awaits... urghhh.

To be revealed in the coming days.

The new 16-inch MacBook Pro looks good on paper. Shame about their website once again. Funny to see that the keyboard is a “feature”, but I’ll give them that. Missing my old 17-inch now which no longer works. I loved that screen.

Apple is making bad calls lately... which also includes showing a trailer of a total different show and confusing you when you want to watch one of the Apple TV+ series. Such a massive shame. For All Mankind = See trailer = wtf??? Come on!!!

After all day of going back to previous working builds of Gluon… I finally found the issue. However, I don’t understand why it happened… there must have been some weird character or some spacing issue in the code that I, and the code editor, didn’t see.

So, that’s two weeks of pondering, two evenings this week and 7 hours today to fix the issue. Sometimes development is weird and comes down to probably just one little character. The worst part was that the changes worked initially, but then didn’t the next day. Maybe something was cached.

Happy to report that it’s working on both platforms now nicely. I pushed out an update to the iOS version that includes under the hood changes. Android can now progress, finally, and I’m happy that I managed to update the core project nicely.

I’m planning to launch Android from scratch, which means a new link and also a new store version. The reason for that is simple… I made a typo in version numbers but I can’t un-see it and I can’t correct it either, because Google Play Store will complain.

For a proof of concept I started up a new iOS SwiftUI project on Xcode last night. The simulator/preview worked once and then it never worked again. So frustrating. Scrap that idea then.

The domain for Simple Schedule renewed a few days ago. Happy I managed to ship that and work through it. I have some things planned to take it to the next level next year.

It’s getting close to December, which means I will attempt another one of my code challenges. I’m totally aware that I have many things going on already, but that’s how I work best. The code challenge will have to do with servers. More soon.