100 Different Directions

Everyday we are bombarded by having to move in different directions. That does not change when you work for yourself. Every action becomes an evaluation in what you are doing next. Last week for me was mostly occupied with speeding up the networking code for Maze Pseudo. While that does not mean much to many, it is a direction that I choose to follow. It is and was such an engaging task that I decided to not write a blog last week. So that covers the direction not taken. I have a little more to do on network and then it will be on to a help view. There are other tasks left, but that is probably enough for me to want to do a release.

Choosing what to blog about recently has become more challenging. Not that I do not have things to blog about, but choosing which one. Even spending the few minutes to do this gets interrupted with E3 housing contemplation. Sometimes these distractions are useful in that they give our brains more time to workout in the background other tasks. This is why I find myself particularly productive on Mondays. Other people are too busy on Monday to bother me and I have had a two-day break.

I want to talk about politics. I really do. But probably not in the way you think. In past years, it felt like there were a couple bad choices and it ultimately comes down to choosing the lesser of two evils or throwing chance to the wind since my vote rarely counts: I don't think I've voted for the winner in many years. But this year, I really want a good candidate to vote for. The top runners scare me. Good people do not run for office. Or perhaps they are only good because nobody has put them under a microscope. How do you find someone in politics to believe in?

Perhaps I do not want to talk about politics. Distractions. Back to working on things I have more control over: Squirrels!

Difficult and Self-confidence

Many years ago when speaking to a professional colleague, I said if it is difficult to do, you probably should not be doing it that way. It was in reference to doing Java coding for a piece of User Interface. That one statement has come back to haunt me many times, as well as being repeated back to me. But perhaps it needs a better explanation, as the sentiment applies in more situations than just programming. Back to that thought in a moment.

I have for some time noticed that people do not seem as self-confident as they once were. This seems to be particularly true of the younger generations and of females. If you are young and female, then you seem to get a double dose. I am not sure where this came from or how we got here. When I was in high school, I had many self-confident peers and role models. I am not sure they would have identified as themselves such then or now. But I still see, read, or hear of those people today and my impression of them has not changed. This is especially true of the females from that time of my younger life. Today they are still people to look up to.

So where did things go so wrong? I have my own self-confidence issues, but I usually recognize them and have my own method for dealing with them.  I do have a couple suspects: school testing and social pressure.

Tests promoted as a means of measuring your worth as an individual. Wrong: You can only be successful if you pass the tests. Right: Knowing how you failed a test makes you a better person. So perhaps the thought is you cannot fail if you do not take the test. I was in a chat room recently where a younger college aged female shared one of her New Year’s resolutions. She wanted to show more of her creative self this year, as in sharing artwork and videos she had made. Another female chimed in that she had you tube videos she had not published. The sentiment being these works were "not good enough" to share. I was floored. I did not know what to say.

Social pressure also causes angst. In order to be found worth in the current social world, you have to be perfect and never make a mistake. If you are not perfect, anything you create is not worthy of being seen. This is where females seem to get an extra dose. The expectation is that females have to smile and look their best in order to be taken seriously. Where did that come from? Nothing could be farther from the truth. I have done artwork. Some of that artwork has received praise. I am not an artist. I am not perfect. I do not want to be perfect. I do art when I must and it is some of the most time consuming work I ever do.

So what does self-confidence have to do with difficult? Something that a person finds difficult may cause them to loose confidence in themselves. Something being difficult means either you have not learned an easier way to do it or that there is a better way to do it. Just because I find artwork difficult, does not mean it is difficult for everyone. Some people are just better at artwork than me. There are things that I find easy that others find difficult. You should not let it being difficult diminish your self-confidence. Programmers are notoriously lazy, but this is with good reason. Lazy programmers make things that are easy to use.

Homework: If someone you know has a creative hobby, encourage them. Get them sharing. A lot of creative endeavors are easily shared in today's connected world. Yes, they will probably get the "it sucks" comments. But hopefully at least one person sees and appreciates what they are doing. If you are that creative person, are you sharing pictures or the work itself? You do not need to share 100 a day, 1 a week is enough. Share a picture of a work in progress of that sock you are knitting or wall mural you are painting. Post a character description from that story. Post that epic clip of you majorly messing up your lines for a play. Or share your latest completed awesome work.

Extra Credit: Find someone not famous who is sharing their creative endeavors that you do not personally know or know that well and complement them on their work. If you can't find a complement find someone else. There are plenty of people out there looking for validation and encouragement that you should be able to find something you like.

Short note on where I am: Still working with controllers for Maze Pseudo along with other enhancements. Current target is to be done with that in a week or two. Then it is on to Maze Pseudo for Apple TV for two to four weeks. After that is not determined, but there are several candidates. Lastly, I plan on doing this type work for the rest of the year. At the end of the year is my first decision point to determine if things are going in the right direction. Till then, I already have a job and have plenty to keep me busy.

#beawesomebeyou or #beyoubeawesome

Words Have Power

Words can shape our world. They can make us happy or sad. This week has been a curvy mountain road. Earlier this week, I was reading someone’s postings and got blindsided by how cruel they were. I felt insulted. So much so that I had to stop reading them. Just walk away. Did the person realize how much hate they were spewing? Probably not. I would rather my words be of the positive and not the negative. If problems are given, offer solutions. There is enough wrong in this world that pointing fingers does not help.

Blogging on Monday was derailed by those negative words. Tuesday was a day of happy. I couldn’t darken that day with a rant. Wednesday became a weird day where everything took twice as long as it felt like it was taking. So here we are to Thursday.

I want my words to pull you to the positive. To see that I am going in the right direction for me. To make you happy, not sad. So what have I been doing that is positive?

This week has been about controllers for Maze Pseudo.  By controllers, I mean game controllers like you would have on a PlayStation, Xbox, or Nintendo console. Maze Pseudo is a game I have been playing in one form or another for 30 years. I have rewritten it at least 5 times for different platforms in that. But this week was the first time I had ever been able to play it with a joystick. It was always meant to be played with two joysticks, but until now, most of the platforms I developed it for didn’t have popular support for controllers. It is a different experience with a controller. I love playing it with a controller. So it is okay even if I am the only one that plays it with a controller. The work has been worth it just for that.

I have also been asked several times recently “What do you do?” Meaning the thought is that I sit at home, do nothing, watch TV, or play games. I actually am programming. I work at it 8 hours a day 5 days a week. Some of my hours are occupied by taxes, accounting, or dealing with adjusting office/work space. I have a PO box that I should visit at least once a week. I have a job. The only difference is that I am the one responsible for making sure I have something to work on and that the work gets done.

As for what I program, it depends. Last month it was a couple of weeks for a Facebook game (Sudoku Pseudo). The past couple weeks have been devoted to making updates to an iPhone game (Maze Pseudo). So technically, that makes me a game developer at the moment. But it is not just games that I work on. Several of my future projects are not games. One of them is one I already spent a significant amount of time one and abandoned a couple years ago. It is not a game. Technology has become available that makes that project viable again. I have plans for other projects on Mac, Windows, Android, and game consoles, both games and not games.

So you can call me a Game Developer, a Facebook Developer, or an iPhone Developer. You could simply call me a Software Developer.

#BEYOUBEAWESOME or #BEAWESOMEBEYOU

You Can Help Me

I have an iOS game: MazePseudo  (view in iTunes:MazePseudo). It has been out there for a while, but I have not had the time to promote it at all. What I could use help with depends on how willing you are to help. Easiest help is to just buy a copy. It is only a dollar after all. If you do not have a dollar or cannot afford a dollar, then please do not buy a copy. It is not the money that I need, but the sales. You do not have to install the app or play it.

Slightly more helpful would be for you to buy it and play it once with a GameCenter account and get a score. It is not hard. Use the left circle to move and right circle to fire. Move around until you find something to hit. Once you have a couple points, you can quit (red X in upper left). Or keep playing. The game works on any iPhone, iPad, or Apple Touch that supports iOS 7.1 or higher.

If you want to be very helpful, then providing constructive feedback would be appreciated. I do not need to hear "it stinks" or "it is bad" as I know the concept is good. I want to hear what you do not like about it. Be specific. Or what you would change or add to it.

I already have a list of things that I want to change or fix in the near term, but it would be helpful to get feedback in case there is something I am not seeing.  Right now I am targeting to do a new release in a couple weeks. Things that I am looking at including are:
-Increase speed of movement. This is actually a networking issue for multiplayer. The fix for this is iffy at this point.
-Bug when moving and round ends. The next round starts you moving in the direction you were last moving.
-Make the buttons on the main screen and the round over screen larger.
-Add support for 3rd party controllers and other control configurations, i.e. tilt to move with a single circle to fire.
-Add a pop-down banner when someone is disrupted. Particularly important for multiplayer in knowing when a friend has been gotten.
-Add AppleTV integration/support.

Some of the above may get pulled out into a second release farther out. I have even more things I want to add to MazePseudo. Plans need to be kept achievable and balanced with other projects. SudokoPseudo got out of hand, more because I did not spend enough on-going time with it. I do not want MazePseudo to get into the same situation.

So the best way for you to help is buy a copy of MazePseudo. Play it if you want. Give feedback if you can. Thanks!

Double Feature: Sudoku Pseudo Updates and Facebook App Security

Two separate but slightly related thoughts today.

Updates to Sudoku Pseudo have been completed. Updated to the latest Facebook PHP API and Graph API. Does not mean Facebook won’t change things next Tuesday. If you did not know, Facebook typically deploys changes on Tuesdays. To accommodate the latest changes, had to upgrade hosting plan and upgrade to latest PHP version. As far as I can tell, I have caught everything that changed. I even found some bugs along the way. Of course, anyone that has worked with me professionally knows that I find bugs whenever I use any piece of software.

I also added a very brief tutorial on solving Sudoku Pseudo puzzles. I am not exactly pleased with the result, but it is something and can be a starting point for future refinements. Suggestions are welcome.

Bugs that were fixed include: Practice 2x2 puzzles showed invalid puzzles; time clock was non-functional and/or updated too frequently; undo/redo did not always work properly when reloading the puzzle or going to a second puzzle.

A while ago Facebook changed policies for apps getting a list of your friends. They currently restrict applications to only get friends who have also authorized the app. This means that the pool of friends’ pictures is made up only those friends that have also authorized Sudoku Pseudo. I made a change so that is has a preference for using your friends’ pictures over the stand-in pictures, i.e. yellow smiley, red square.

Facebook App Center submission guidelines apparently have changed. There used to be a requirement for a certain number of daily users. New requirements are for additional graphics to be developed - another future project.

It would be helpful though if you authorized Sudoku Pseudo. At least one person has commented to me that they did not even know it existed. You do not actually have to do the puzzles unless you want to. Authorizing the app increases the number of authorizations that Facebook sees and the number of pictures I see when I am doing puzzles. See below for further thoughts on authorizing unknown Facebook apps.

*** Second Feature: Facebook App Security ***

Every so often I post recommending that people check their currently authorized Facebook Applications and to remove any that you no longer have a use for or are unfamiliar with. For some games it is beneficial to your friends that play to still have you authorized as a user. Farmtown, Farmville, and Mafia Wars come to mind. So even though I don’t use those anymore, leaving the apps authorized benefits my friends that do actively play them.

This comes to the forefront because of the recent “This is…be like...” meme. I have seen reports that this is click bait and is collecting information about you for who knows what actual purpose. This is why I always suspect links that ask to be authorized to access my Facebook profile. I am sure many of them are benign. But some of them could be quite dangerous.  I personally tend to be more security phobic than most. I do know people that are worse than I am. But think of this: You should not make it so easy to steal from you that you actually encourage those that normally would not to actually do so. Simple example: Would you leave large sums of cash sitting in the backseat of your car fully visible to the casual passerby? This will get your car window broken. So at least do the simple things to protect yourself.

You can check your authorized Facebook apps by: 1) Logging in to Facebook. 2) Click the down arrow on the top blue bar on the far right. 3) Select settings from the menu that shows. 4) Click on "apps" on the menu on the left. 5) Click show more/all in the center portion. If you hover your mouse over apps, you can click the X to remove or the pencil to edit what permissions you give the app.

So if you do not want to authorize Sudoku Pseudo, I understand. But if you are willing to authorize every other Facebook app that comes along, I would hope that authorizing Sudoku Pseudo wouldn’t put you out. I promise that Mad Elf Software won’t intentionally abuse the access.

*exit rant soapbox*

You, Risk Management, and the Power of Two

Risk management is not a term heard by many. But it is important to most people and most people practice it in some form every day. Driving a car is risk management. Walking across a street is risk management. You have something to do or somewhere to go and there are potential problems in completing those tasks.

The power of two is guidance for when you should evaluate your past estimates. If something takes less than twice as long as you expect, this is probably acceptable. Think of your daily commute: If it normally takes 30 minutes and one day it takes 50 minutes, probably nothing to be concerned about as it was just a bad traffic day. your normal 30 minute commute took 20 minutes, then perhaps the lights were in your favor. The concern points should be around twice your estimate or half your estimate. This is the power of two: Both 1/2 and 2 are powers of 2.

If your commute took 2 hours, it probably wasn’t just a bad traffic day. Perhaps there is something more you need to do, i.e. investigate a new route, leave earlier, leave later. If your commute took 15 minutes, it probably wasn’t the lights in your favor, but that something else is amiss. Perhaps you are going to work on a holiday. Or perhaps you found a better route or worse everyone else found a better route. These are the points where you should think about what might be going wrong. It still may be nothing is actually wrong and nothing needs to change.

This applies to any task that you estimate for yourself: knitting that scarf, reading that book, completing homework. So if you find yourself done in half the time, spend a couple minutes thinking about why it was so quick. Could just be you overestimated. But it could be that you missed something important. If you find yourself done in twice or more time, you should also spend a few minutes thinking about what went wrong.  Perhaps it was outside forces that you had no control over, i.e. it rained. Or there could have been something that you should have accounted for but didn’t.

Two tasks on my recent list were catching up on business accounting stuff and giving some TLC to Sudoku Pseudo. I had estimated the accounting stuff to take me a day or so. It ended up taking me a day and a half. No reason for concern as the reasons for the delay were obvious and it was still under the twice the estimate mark. Sudoku Pseudo has turned from what I expected to be a day project to be something that might take as much as a week. This is more than twice. So what went wrong? Facebook changed the API significantly. I stopped receiving updates from Facebook about those changes. The changes require changes to my web host. It is not Facebook’s fault. I know they change things constantly. Since I did not spend the time to keep track of what changes were being made and making changes to keep up or even notice that I wasn’t receiving updates anymore, I am forced to make a whole bunch of destabilizing changes at once and taking more time to do it.

New Beginnings

Today marks the beginning of a new chapter of my life. Friday was my last day as an employee of Everyday Health. You did not even know I was employed there and now I’m gone? You are not alone.

More than 5 years ago, I started what would become a long-term contract with TechSafari. After working on various projects with them, I started on consistently work on the Tea Leaves Health contract for them. In August, Everyday Health acquired Tea Leaves Health. Acquiring companies generally want acquired workers to be employees instead of contractors. They feel that this somehow gives them more control over the domain knowledge. So I became an employee.

Also during the past couple of years, I have been working on my own projects. Being an employee instead of a contract curtailed a lot that effort. Now is the time for me to go back to putting my passion into those projects. I hope that something becomes of them. Devoting full time to them will help them progress.

Didn’t I do this before? Yes and no. I stopped being a full time employee twice before. Once there was a plan, but the finances and time just didn’t work. The second didn’t have a plan, but I ended up being Mr. Mom, good son-in-law, and parent caregiver. This time around, there are no kids at home, parents are healthy and not moving, and finances are in line.

I will miss those that I left behind. Our paths will probably cross in the future, as the IT world may be big, but it is not that big.

There is a general plan with goals. There are time limits. This is the time for me to be focused and passionate on what I want. The plan is not set in stone. First task is to get organized. Accounting, bill paying, setting up work environment, blogging (this), and further refining the plans for projects that I can work on. I plan on blogging to keep myself in line. I probably do not do this every day, but goal is to at least do one a week.

The first project was going to be an integration project, but that has already been derailed. I usually do not like talking specifics about projects I am working on. This is for two good reasons: Generally the ideas are so vague or hard to communicate that I just end up waving hands when describing them. The second is that plans change and it seems that whenever I try to give details, those projects tend to fail. But I’ll do a whole blog post on that project as I think it is important to understand why it failed.

The second project is doing some TLC on Sudoku Pseudo. Nothing really big: updating the Facebook integration code and perhaps finally writing the tutorial.

The third project is trying to get some exposure and feedback for Maze Pseudo. Yes, I have a iOS game released. It happened right before WWDC and E3 and I haven’t really had time to focus on following that up more than getting everything setup for it: web site, forums, Facebook page. This won’t be to involved and is setup for future changes to this project.

The fourth project is what most would consider the first big project. I have an Apple TV for development purposes. Plan is to integrate Maze Pseudo with it. This will require supporting controllers for tvOS and iOS. I also plan on looking at the networking code, as this is the current bottle next for making the game play faster.

Beyond that there are projects for a cross platform tablet game, a multi-console game, another Apple TV app, two iOS productivity apps, and even a couple non-IT projects. I am not planning on doing all of this at once. I don’t really expect that these will all be done this year. It is possible that they never get done. The order has not been determined either. I have also been asked about doing a couple of other projects for/with others.

Right now the focus is to do enough on general planning, Sudoku Pseudo, and Maze Pseudo, so that I can get to working on the Apple TV Maze Pseudo project. The other projects are just what could be next.