Floss Checklist now on Amazon Appstore!

I finally caved and listed it.  :)

Floss Checklist

I'll be working on getting my other apps listed shortly.  Enjoy!

Finally!

Google Play Devs can now respond to reviews.

Liebster Award!

Amanda Vanlandingham (best. name. ever.) got involved with the OpeWare suite of apps around October of last year I think.  She was a very shrewd app consumer in that she grilled me about what the apps did before purchasing.  :)  I like that in a user.  Better to have a user know what they're getting beforehand instead of them being disappointed in what they assumed they'd be getting afterwards.  Turns out what she was asking about wasn't in the apps, but they were great ideas.  Most of the well thought-out features of the apps come from user suggestions, hers were no exception and they got implemented.  To show her appreciation and support she bought all the apps.  :)

So at this point, Amanda is a friend more than a user.  To top it all off, she's given my blog (what little there is of it) an award!

I very much appreciate the recognition!

To explain what the Liebster Award is, I'll quote from Amanda's blog:

Liebster is a German word meaning favorite, dearest or beloved.  The Liebster Awards are awarded by bloggers to other, newer bloggers who have fewer than 200 followers to spread the word and help newer bloggers gain wider recognition.

The award comes with four conditions that each recipient must satisfy when accepting.

1.  Choose 5 up and coming blogs (with less then 200 followers) to award the Liebster to.

2.  Show thanks to the blogger who awarded the Liebster to you by linking back to them.

3.  Post the award on your blog.  List the bloggers you are giving awards to with links to their sites.  Comment on their blog to let them know you gave them the award.

4.  Share 5 random facts about yourself that people don't know.

Well, I don't really follow many blogs, so sadly I don't really know of anything that falls into condition 1...  But, I can definitely do condition 4.

1. I met my wife via World of Warcraft.  Before moving in with me, we "dated" in real life 4 times.  We've been very happily married for 5 years in this May (2012).
2. I really want to write a video game, preferrably on the phone.  My major challenge in this regard is that I'm terrible with graphics.  This kind of puts a damper on game writing...  But, I may have a design in mind that offers good gameplay without a heavy reliance on graphics.
3. I was held prisoner of war for 5 years at Georgia Tech.  My release was in the spring of 2003 when I graduated with a Computer Science degree.  Go Dawgs!
4. I love classical and romantic era opera.  My favorite composer is a toss-up between Richard Wagner and Anton Bruckner.  Or Verdi.  When I do my woodworking or coding I'm generally listening to opera or symphony classics.
5. I speak a little Italian and German.  I've traveled to each place several times.  Ich liebe Deutschland und Italien!
6. BONUS FACT: I've had the same 3 best friends since 2nd grade.  We still live within an hour of each other and keep in contact daily.

I still don't do windows...

But I dabble in woodworking from time to time.  :)

It's that time of the year again where the mother-in-law is visiting for 6 weeks and this time my wife insisted I build a headboard for the spare bed.  Happy to!

Floss Checklist 1.9.10 released!

Changelog:
- Aurifil Mako fixed.
- Added Dinky Dyes
- Added Glissen Gloss

Almost caught up!

Well, with the backlog of requested floss lists that is...  Here's what I've gotten done over the last few weeks:

So, just NPI Silks left.  I would've finished that one today but I didn't feel like going through that PDF and typing everything in today.  Everything else on this list fell into place pretty well with judicious use of copy, paste, and regular expressions (programmer thing).

Next stop: Yarn Inventory! Next week probably. :)

Signing issues resolved!

Whew.  That was scary.  The worst part was not having a reliable way to test.  I'd update the app then have to wait 30 minutes for the market to update and test on my wife's phone.

Floss Checklist signing problems!

Sorry! If you purchase or update Floss Checklist and it says it's not properly signed let me know! I have reuploaded another update (1.9.02) but I don't know if it's signed correctly either!

Show of good faith!

Had a few problems getting my new PC setup for app development, but that's all behind me now.  As a show of good faith for all the stuff I need to do, I've added the Isacord flosses to Floss Checklist and uploaded it.  This is also a bit of a test to make sure my PC signs the updated apps correctly.  :)

Also, let me outline what I have on the horizon for the apps (in no particular order):

Floss Checklist 

• Valdani
• Rainbow Gallery
• Caron Collection snow
• DMC Perle 8, 12
• Anchor Ritorto Fiorentino 8, 12
• DMC Retors d'Alsace 5, 8, 12

Yarn Inventory

• Email printable list to yourself.

Stitcher's Helper

• Project/shopping list money totals.
• A way to measure how long a project took.
• Backup SH to SD Card (duh...  why didn't I think of this before).

Bead Checklist

• Add more Miyuki bead types. 

So, over the next coming days/weeks I hope to have all of this done.  My weekends coming up are rather full sadly, so dev time may be a bit sparse.

Also, despite 20 or so purchases I still haven't gotten any feedback for Communication Helper.  I was really hoping folks would get in touch with me with feedback.  Anyway, if you're out there, email me!  I want to know how your experience has been so far!

Last bit of trivia, my plan is to make a game app before 2012 is over.

Coming Soon...

Hello! Pretty much the entire month of December I took off from my app dev. It seemed prudent with the holidays and my real job time off. In addition I've bought a new dev PC! You'll be happy to know I'm currently in the process of setting it up to start implementing all the great suggestions I received during my sabbatical.

Lots of new updates coming soon! Stay tuned!

Communication Helper v1.00.00 released!

Woo, finally!  I've been working on this for the last month and finally got it published.  I've opined several times on this blog already about my daughter's autism and the lack of good mobile software for Android to help us communication with her.  That said, I'm very excited about this release.  What it does is allow her to quickly navigate through a very large list of words to tell us what she wants or needs or to just strike up a conversation!  The app is here on the Android Market.  I'm really hoping to help those on the autism spectrum, with Aspergers syndrome or verbal aphasia.

This is the main screen.  At the top is the current phrase that's being built.  The heart of the screen are the nodes that can be used to communicate.  Each node can lead to other nodes and also have a speech component.

Here the user has selected "Feelings" from the main screen and chosen "Happy."  Because the "Happy" node has a speech component it adds itself to the current phrase being built at the top of the screen.

Starting back from the main screen, the user has selected "Me" then "I am."  The "I am" node holds other nodes but it also has a speech component so it too adds itself to the phrase creator.  Then the user hits "Happy" and has now built a complete phrase!

Now the user has selected "Save Phrase" from the options menu on most any screen.  A dialog box pops up prefilled with the name of the phrase built from the current nodes ("I am Happy") and then allows you to save.  On the main screen you can hit the "Phrases" node and be brought to here.  Now you can much more easily reuse the same phrase!

This is a look at the "Other Words" screen, where most of the miscellaneous words live.

Add Node screen.  Here you can add your own nodes with custom pictures.  Please note:  If the user deletes the picture from his phone it will not show up in the node anymore!

Node Maintenance screen.  Here you can delete/hide nodes in the system on any screen.  Please note: Users cannot delete the nodes prefilled in the system, but you can hide them.  You can only delete nodes added by the user.

This is the settings screen.  Its sparse for now, but I have added one neat feature.  In order to add or maintain nodes, or delete phrases, one has to turn on "Edit Mode."  By default edit mode is on.  The reason this is there is to try to help prevent the user from accidently deleting, hiding, or adding nodes when they shouldn't.  For instance, my daughter is an evil genius and given time would fill the entire app full of nonsense nodes.  :)  A warning displays on every screen when edit mode is on to help remind you to turn it off if necessary.  However, the warning can be ignored also.

I want to also stress the flexibility I have with my apps.  If a feature is missing (or if there's a bug) please email me and we can discuss it!  I take great pride in my apps so the fewer bugs the better.  It's also very disappointing when someone purchases an app, sees a feature they expected missing, rates the app 1 star, and then cancels the purchase.  I've written whole apps on user suggestions so please just let me know how I can help!

Exciting new app nearing completion!

I haven't done an October wrapup post yet, but to sum up October: Awesome. OpeWare hit 5 sales per day for a total of 156!  Thanks everyone!

But, even bigger news is a project of mine that is nearing completion that is very special.  More news when it's released!

Couple small updates

Changed the "Percent Complete" input in Stitcher's Helper to accept and save decimal values.

The matron of Yarn Inventory mentioned a feature her friend would like to have:  A length/weight calculator.  Input the original weight/length of a ball of yarn, then input the current weight and it approximates the current length.

This works exceptionally well with the templates, as I can pre-fill the original weight and length.
Update: If you have an eagle eye you may have spotted the bug in the above screenshots. I fixed it! :)

I don't do windows, though

My wife has a giant sewing table made by her Dad.  The surface of the table is a solid door with trim around that sits on custom cabinets on each side.  As you can see the sewing machine sits in a slot cut out of the center.  The machine is surrounded by a sort of apron thing which is also custom built and trimmed.  Her old machine was much smaller, so when she got this shiny, new machine the apron no longer fit.

I took a piece of cardboard and traced the new footprint of the larger machine.  My friend let me borrow his jigsaw for some reason, so I was then able to take the original apron and trim it larger so the new machine fit.  Sitting on a 3/4" piece of plywood and a 1/2" cookbook it sits flush with the table surface.

Pretty productive day for me.  Made dear wife super happy to have her sewing table functional again.

Update Omnibus!

Big changes! Let me show you them!

Stitcher's Helper 1.3.00

1. Added a percent complete field to the project.  If the user changes the state to "Completed" this will automatically be set to "100."  If the percent entered is greater than zero, it shows on the project list screen.
2. Added the ability to import data exported from Bead Checklist, Floss Checklist, and Yarn Inventory!  Hit the menu button on your phone on a project screen, then select import.  This will show you a list of files to import from.  The file names correspond to the apps that exported them (All Yarns, Miyuki Beads, etc).  After selecting a file, another dialog will appear displaying every item in the file. Here you can select which items to include in your project.  This is a pretty exciting feature!  Please let me know if you have any problems/suggestions!
3. Made the project item edit screen look a bit nicer by removing the clunky input labels.
4. Minor change: on the project item edit screen, no longer display "0.0" by default for quantity and price.

Floss Checklist 1.9.00

1. Export your floss into Stitcher's Helper!  Hit the menu button on the vendor or checklist screen to export then follow the steps above to import.

Bead Checklist 1.1.00

1. Export your beads into Stitcher's Helper!  Hit the menu button on the vendor or checklist screen to export then follow the steps above to import.

Yarn Inventory 1.2.00

1. Export your yarns into Stitcher's Helper!  Hit the menu button on the main screen and bring up the "Import/Export" screen.  From here you can import/export your yarn.  This also acts as a backup system.

As always, let me know if anything is broken!  Also never hesitate to email me a suggestion or feature request!  This entire import/export was a feature request from a user (Thanks Amanda!)

Floss Checklist 1.8.20 Released!

I finally got around to adding some of the Au ver a soie flosses:

• Soie d' Alger
• Soie de Paris
• Soie Gobelins (goblin floss?!)
• Soie Ovale
• Soie Surfine

Despite finding several more lists, that's all I could find that had color names, and even some of the color names are missing there.  Enjoy!

Out of town on business

No app work till Friday or Saturday as I'm away on business. But the plan when I return is:
1. Finally add the Au ver a soie floss to Floss Checklist. This has been a user suggestion for a long time and I've really dropped the ball.
2. Finish up the Stitcher's Helper import from FC, BC, and YI. I think this will be a hugely popular feature.

See ya Friday!

To Do

1. CostCo
2. Treadmill
3. Add Carons Collection threads to Floss Checklist
4. Fix Yarn Inventory crash issues
5. Continue import/export into Stitcher's Helper enhancement

Treadmill...  Not liking the sound of that.

Update: Progress!
Update 2: Treadmill hahahaha

120 app sales in September!

So, wow guys.  I was very excited that in August OpeWare hit a little over 3 sales per day.  I never anticipated actually selling that much.  This was just a hobby/learning experience/wife helper thing originally.  Actually deploying and selling the apps was just a side benefit.  So when we hit 3 apps per day that was very exciting.

September however brought the release of Yarn Inventory based on a user suggestion (thanks again Molly!)  In addition...  somehow...  someway...  OpeWare has sold 4 apps per day in September!  Four!  120 may not be that astounding of a number but it just feels great.  I'm very thankful for every one of my users!  I especially love hearing your suggestions and success stories.  :)

So, what's coming in October?  Well, dunno really.  :)  I've been in touch with a user over the last few days and we've been discussing some serious ways for all of my apps to talk to each other.  For instance, exporting ones Floss Checklist floss lists into a Stitcher's Helper project or shopping list.  Same goes for Bead Checklist and Yarn Inventory.  Let's see, what else?  I'm meeting with an administrator for my counties special education system to see what the current setups look like for special ed. software.  I have an idea for what I'd like to do, certainly, but I don't want to write the wrong thing (sort of a big problem for programmers who don't know anything about the field they're writing for).  The phrase for this is, "The inmates running the asylum."  Also, making very baby steps in my droid game.  Still polishing out a few design issues but overall I think I've got a great idea for what I want to do.  Execution of the design in the simplest manner is the next step.  Did I mention my game is an RPG/simulation in a fantasy setting?  :)

So, again, thanks for another great month for OpeWare.  Hopefully October is as exciting as September!

Update: 121!

Thanks to Garin of Monstrum Games

Spent a few emails back and forth over the last few days with Garin of Monstrum Games giving me some guidance about the structure of game design and such.  Very appreciative of a successful game designer/programmer spending time to help a first-timer out.  Hopefully once I get mine done and deployed then I can do the same for others!