If you can find an hour to watch/listen to the whole thing then do so - put it on in the background while you work if you need. However there was one question about 32 minutes in that really got me.

How do you keep inspired when people are denigrating your work?

After Adam left his mechanical giraffe podium - yes, that is what you imagine it is - to hug (presumably, it’s off-screen) the question askee, then returned, this was his response.

That is an amazing question and I really appreciate … and you’re brave as hell for asking it in front of everybody.

You find your communities. You find your sangha. You find your people.

That may only be one, and it may be your mom. That was mine for a while.

You find that one person that appreciates what you do and tells you that its good. And listen to them.

Anybody that tells you that your work is… that’s denigrating your work, or denigrating the effort you’re putting into it, is an asshole.

…

If you’re around people who don’t recognise that the effort and the passion are worth something, (then) stay away from those people.

One might be the loneliest number, but the appreciation/interest/support/encouragement of one person could be all it takes to make a bad day good, and keep you moving forward. Trust me.

The offers I’ve had have ranged from “Hi my name is Dean and I think you should give me this domain name” to “I’m thinking of changing my business name and thought you’re domain would be a good option” to “Would you sell me this domain for $300”.

Yeah, no.

They come via email, via twitter, and most recently via unsolicited Facebook messages.

Seriously though, $300? Sure, doesn’t sound like much, but it cost me more than that to get it in the first place.

Rewind.

Several years ago when top-level .co domains first became available I took the opportunity to try and secure a great short URL for this site. I ended up putting in two waiting list registrations (*not* cheap, and didn’t guarantee you anything), one for dean.co and one for djr.co in the hope I’d be lucky enough to score at least one of them.

I’d wanted a super short domain name ever since Matt Mullenweg had switched his site to ma.tt. Originally I had looked into what would be necessary to get de.an, but that was out of reach - super expensive and pretty sure I needed to be a resident of the Netherland Antilles… and then the Netherlands Antilles were dissolved and its .an domain country code discontinued.

But now there were these new .co domains available. Surely I’d have a chance…

The deal was if no-one else wanted the domain you wanted then you got it, all you had to do was pay the registration fee - which was not included in the original waiting list fee. If someone else also wanted the domain it would go to auction.

I’m sure the .co registrars must have made a ton of money during this process…

Turns out no-one else put in a request for djr.co, so it was mine, sweet. However there was one other request for dean.co so it went to auction.

I was convinced I’d miss out, either as a result of the other party putting in a massive bid and blowing me out of the water, or by it being a close auction and me missing out due to shitty timezone differences.

However, what actually happened was that whoever the other person was never placed a bid and I got it “cheap”.

Success, I was now the owns of a domain name that was just my name. I was pretty pleased with myself.

Ok, back to the present.

Telling me your name is also Dean and that you’d like this domain isn’t going to change my name. Newsflash *my* name is Dean too…

If this were a particular recent superhero movie we’d probably totally be friends right now with an earth-shattering revelation like that.

Offering me a couple of hundred bucks for it also isn’t going to change my mind. I now have a lot of things tied to this domain name in one way or another and the hassle of untangling and rerouting those things well exceeds such small monetary rewards.

So, unless your offer has enough zeros on it that I can buy happiness (ok, that one isn’t actually possible), a sweet house, retire, live of the interest, and still have a whole lot of zeros left over, then I don’t want to hear it.

Go find a different domain name like I had to a decade ago when I originally registered deanjrobinson.com because my first choices of dean.com and deanrobinson.com were unsurprisingly already taken.

Oh yeah, and today is May 1st and I’ve taken part in the #may1reboot, so if you’re looking at this outside of a feed reader, then it likely all looks different to the last time you were here. Hopefully it’s mostly functional.

The legalisation of same sex marriages would have no impact on my life. And that is exactly the point that I wish more people would understand. Before I continue, I present you a question, can you give me one good reason why same sex marriage should not be legal? Stop, think very, very carefully. Got your answer? Ok, good.

Right. If your answer had anything to do with fear, ‘wrong’, beliefs, religion etc. then I’m afraid we might have an issue. Your answer doesn’t make you a bad person, but it’s a decent enough indication that you need to get with the times. Yes, you are all entitled to your own views, and you may express them however you like (such as in blog form…). But just because someone else has a different view on life when compared to yourself that doesn’t mean they are wrong - or that you are - just that people have different views. Simple as that. Don’t mistreat people because their views are different to yours.

So, you came up with your reason that you believe is good, but how exactly would the legalisation of same sex marriages have a negative impact on your life? It wouldn’t, it would make absolutely no difference. Claiming same sex marriage is ‘wrong’ is just like saying that black people shouldn’t be allowed to get married, or that disabled people can’t get married, or that you can only get married if you’ve attended church every Sunday morning for your entire life. Yes, I believe it is that stupid. If this argument were over any of those three quick examples then there would be no argument at all (ok, there probably would be, but would it be as big?).

Bigotry disguised as religious/political/ethical/social beliefs is still bigotry.

I think the part that bugs me the most is that this issue is primary being fought over by politicians. Come on. Of all the people who should get to decide this sort of thing, the politicians are the last ones that should get any say - they aren’t exactly ‘in touch’ with the common world. Don’t believe me? Tony Abbott has said on national television that homosexuals ‘scare’ him. And for someone living in a “domestic relationship” with a hairdresser Gillard isn’t a particularly ‘understanding’ person. If anything Gillard should be supporting the issue just to spite Abbott (isn’t that the point of being opposing sides of Government?).

I guess Gillard is scared that if she supports it her popularity will drop. Julia, not sure you could be any less popular at this point, so maybe what you really need is the ‘gay vote’, perhaps supporting them rather than alienating them would be an intelligent move. Tony Abbott’s only problem is, well, Tony Abbott (ed: four years later, this is still his biggest problem, except now he’s running the fricken country).

There is a clip of Gillard standing up in parliament saying something along the lines of “marriage is defined as the union between a man and a woman” - in fact that’s most likely exactly what she is saying since that appears to the be exact wording used in the US constitution… but not (as far as I can find) in the Commonwealth Of Australia Constitution Act which in Chapter I, Part V, Point 51 xxi mentions it simply as “marriage”^{Commonwealth Of Australia Constitution Act, Chapter I - The Parliament, Part V - Powers of the Parliament}.

From what I can find (and I’m no expert, and only spent about 15 minutes researching this, so I could’ve missed something) it appears that until 2004 “marriage” wasn’t even fully defined in the actual Marriage Act 1961^{Marriage Act 1961}. It wasn’t until The Marriage Amendment Act 2004^{Marriage Amendment Act 2004} that a full “definition” for what would be considered as “marriage” was added:

Marriage means the union of a man and a woman to the exclusion of all others, voluntarily entered into for life.

Certain unions are not marriages. A union solemnised in a foreign country between: (a) a man and another man; or (b) a woman and another woman; must not be recognised as a marriage in Australia.

What I find weird about that is, a) it wasn’t added until 2004, and b) it was added in 2004 with that definition. Maybe if it had been added 20 or 30 years ago it might have been barely reasonable, but in this day and age have we not progressed enough to have a more open mind about (and definition of) such things? I most certainly think it is all to do with those who get to make the decisions on the behalf of everyone else.

Keep in mind the generation of the people that were voting on the amendments, people like Philip Ruddock and others of similar ‘vintage’ - not exactly the kind of people you would say are ‘in touch’ with the current times. This particular amendment passed in the Senate by a vote of 38 to 6. I’d love to see the age and gender breakdown of that vote - if anyone can suggest where I can pilfer that info from (instead of looking for it myself) I’d love to know.

But just because you don’t believe in “gay marriage”, doesn’t mean it should be illegal.

So, yes, same sex marriage may go against the beliefs of a lot of people. But just because you don’t believe in “gay marriage”, doesn’t mean it should be illegal. A large percentage of the population doesn’t “believe” in praying 6 times a day, or attending church every Sunday, but that doesn’t make those activities illegal - that would be ridiculous, right?

I know numerous gay people, I’ve lived with gay people, I’ve worked with gay people and they are… just people, like everyone else. Shock. They deserve the same rights as everyone else, and yes, they are allowed to do many things. Things like learn to drive, which is more dangerous than marriage. They are allowed to vote, which is more important (to some) than marriage. They can even run as a candidate in an election for government - and for some that’s both more dangerous and more important than marriage. So why is marriage being treated as so damn ‘precious’?

The marriage of same sex couples isn’t going to “de-value marriage”, something I’ve heard numerous people say. No, what “de-values” marriage are the 40%+ of ‘normal’ marriages that end in divorce - particularly those that barely last past the honeymoon (no idea on the accuracy of that factoid, but its one you hear a lot). Basically the “straight population” fuck up marriage far too frequently, and I’m not saying same sex couples won’t, but at least give them the option.

If the government should be preventing anyone from marrying it should be the 17-year-olds who drop out of school and get hitched because someone got knocked-up at some weekend party just to get back at her strict parents who have kicked her out because of her drug habit, a habit she took up because her parents are currently getting divorced… Ok, so maybe that’s a super extreme example, but it makes the prospect of “gay marriage” seem pretty “normal” to me, and at least it would be for the right reasons.

And when common sense prevails and it does get legalised, can we stop referring to it as “gay marriage” and just call it “marriage”.

Stop making it a political issue.

Stop making it a religious/beliefs issue.

Stop making it an issue at all.

Just give them a go.

I didn’t want to simply use a cropped/resized version of the uploaded image (which would work fine for photos, but I’m not uploading photos), instead I wanted to apply the transparent PNG over a template. And while I’m at it, I figured I could use the colour info I was extracting from the uploaded image to further customise the template image itself.

Step 1: What sizes do I need?

This probably is the easiest part of the whole process, adding additional image sizes in WordPress is super simple, just specify them in your functions.php file and you’re good to go.

Each image size needs a unique name, width, height, and a crop directive. You can read more about the specifics in the WordPress codex.

For my purposes I needed four specific sizes to cater for four specific social networks: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Dribbble. I also settled, after numerous tests, on a default center/center position for any cropping - however I will be overriding this depending on the image aspect ratio.

Facebook - 1200 x 630

<?php add_image_size( 'facebook-image', 1200, 630, array('center','center') ); ?>

Dribbble - 800 x 600

<?php add_image_size( 'dribbble-image', 800, 600, array('center','center') ); ?>

Instagram - 640 x 640

<?php add_image_size( 'instagram-image', 640, 640, array('center','center') ); ?>

Twitter - 640 x 400

<?php add_image_size( 'twitter-image', 640, 400, array('center','center') ); ?>

Step 2: Altering image crop based on aspect ratio

The image that I will be uploading fall into three categories: tall portrait aspect, square (or close to it), width landscape aspect.

The filter I’ve used is based on the example given in the WordPress codex tweaked to apply the override based on specific conditions - in this case, aspect ratio, and “destination” dimensions (ie. the image variant being created).

The end goal for this filter are to have:

• the tall portrait aspect images cropped from the top left (ie. if it were person, you would get their head and shoulders rather than their waist)
• the square, and wide landscape aspect, image resized to fit the bounds of the 800x600 Dribbble image (still undecided if I also apply this rule to the other social variants)
• and for everything else to just continue on with whatever default setting that had applied.

<?php

add_filter( 'image_resize_dimensions', 'conditional_image_resize_dimensions', 10, 6 );

function conditional_image_resize_dimensions( $payload, $orig_w, $orig_h, $dest_w, $dest_h, $crop ){

    $orig_aspect = $orig_h/$orig_w;
    if($crop && $orig_aspect > 1.5) {

        $aspect_ratio = $orig_w / $orig_h;
        $new_w = min($dest_w, $orig_w);
        $new_h = min($dest_h, $orig_h);

        if ( !$new_w ) {
            $new_w = intval($new_h * $aspect_ratio);
        }

        if ( !$new_h ) {
            $new_h = intval($new_w / $aspect_ratio);
        }

        $size_ratio = max($new_w / $orig_w, $new_h / $orig_h);

        $crop_w = round($new_w / $size_ratio);
        $crop_h = round($new_h / $size_ratio);

        $s_x = 0;
        $s_y = 0;

        // the return array matches the parameters to imagecopyresampled()
        // int dst_x, int dst_y, int src_x, int src_y, int dst_w, int dst_h, int src_w, int src_h
        return array( 0, 0, (int) $s_x, (int) $s_y, (int) $new_w, (int) $new_h, (int) $crop_w, (int) $crop_h );

    } else if($crop && $dest_w === 800 && $dest_h === 600) { // Dribbble

        $crop_w = $orig_w;
        $crop_h = $orig_h;

        $s_x = 0;
        $s_y = 0;

        list( $new_w, $new_h ) = wp_constrain_dimensions( $orig_w, $orig_h, $dest_w, $dest_h );

        return array( 0, 0, (int) $s_x, (int) $s_y, (int) $new_w, (int) $new_h, (int) $crop_w, (int) $crop_h );

    } else {
        return $payload;
    }

}

?>

Step 3: Retrieve the most prominent colour from the uploaded image

The retrieval of the most prominent colour is something that I was already doing - as I’m using this colour for some basic custom per-post styles within my WordPress theme - so I thought I’d make further use of the retrieved colour by using it to customise the image template too.

I’m using a php class that I found on GitHub to pull the colours  out of my uploaded image, you can find the colorsofimage.class.php here.

I’ve wrapped this class call up inside a simple WordPress filter that I’ve attached to the hooks tied to the generation and updating of attachment metadata - because that’s where I’m storing the retrieve colour.

<?php

function my_image_filter($metadata,$id) {

    $colors_of_image = new ColorsOfImage( site_url().'/wp-content/uploads/'.$metadata['file'] , 10 , 1 );
    $metadata['colours'] = $colors_of_image->getProminentColors();

    add_social_variant($metadata, $id, 'Facebook');
    add_social_variant($metadata, $id, 'instagram');
    add_social_variant($metadata, $id, 'twitter');
    add_social_variant($metadata, $id, 'dribbble');

    return $metadata;

}

add_filter( 'wp_generate_attachment_metadata', 'my_image_filter', 10, 2 );
add_filter( 'wp_update_attachment_metadata', 'my_image_filter', 10, 2 );

?>

Step 4: Generate the social image variants

This is the fun part.

WordPress has already created all the correctly cropped and/or resized versions of my images (steps 1 and 2), now I need to build the social image by combining the uploaded image, with a pre-uploaded template, and the prominent colour.

If you look back in step 3 you’ll see I’ve included the function calls for generating the social variants as part of the filter I’ve already applied. This is mostly because I needed to make sure that this step ran after the colour was retrieve. Bundling it into the existing filter was simplest.

My add_social_variant function accepts three basic parameters, the metadata ($meta) of the image that’s just been uploaded, the numerical id ($img) of the uploaded image, and the relevant social network ($type).

For the moment there is a simple check to see if the particular social variant already exists, and to only run the rest of the process if it doesn’t. I might go back and finesse this at some point, but for the moment I only need to worry about the initial generation of these images.

What this function achieves is creating a solid colour background (using the prominent image colour from the previous step), applying the template image (which has transparent section to allow the base colour to show through), and then adding the appropriately sized version of the uploaded image over the top.

All this is taken care of the by GD image functions available in PHP.

The generated image gets saved into a new ‘social-image’ directory that I’ve setup within the main WordPress uploads directory.

It was a conscious decision to not save these social images into the same year/month location as the rest of the image variants, I may change my mind on that in the future, but for now that’s what works for me.

<?php

function add_social_variant($meta=null, $img=null, $type=null) {

    if(!empty($meta) && !empty($img) && is_numeric($img) && !empty($type) && in_array($type,array('instagram','Facebook','twitter','dribbble'))) {

        $upload_dir = wp_upload_dir();

        $file_path = $upload_dir['basedir'].'/social-image/'.$type.'-'.$img.'.png';

        if(!file_exists($file_path)) {

            $p = explode('/',$meta['file'],-1);

            $social_image_url = $upload_dir['baseurl'].'/'.join('/',$p).'/'.$meta['sizes'][$type.'-image']['file'];

            if($type === 'dribbble') {
                $social_image_width = 800;
                $social_image_height = 600;
            } else {
                $social_image_width = $meta['sizes'][$type.'-image']['width'];
                $social_image_height = $meta['sizes'][$type.'-image']['height'];
            }

            $rgb = xHexToRGB($meta['colors'][0]);

            $base = imagecreatetruecolor($social_image_width,$social_image_height);
            $base_color = imagecolorallocate($base, $rgb[0], $rgb[1], $rgb[2]);
            imagefill($base, 0, 0, $base_color);
            $bg = imagecreatefrompng(get_stylesheet_directory_uri().'/resources/'.$type.'-bg-template.png');

            imagecopymerge_alpha($base, $bg, 0, 0, 0, 0, $social_image_width,$social_image_height,100);
            imagedestroy($bg);

            $img = imagecreatefrompng($social_image_url);

            if($type === 'dribbble') {
                $dx = floor(($social_image_width - $meta['sizes'][$type.'-image']['width'])/2);
                $dy = floor(($social_image_height - $meta['sizes'][$type.'-image']['height'])/2);
            } else {
                $dx = 0;
                $dy = 0;
            }

            imagecopymerge_alpha($base, $img, $dx, $dy, 0, 0, $meta['sizes'][$type.'-image']['width'],$meta['sizes'][$type.'-image']['height'],100);
            imagedestroy($img);

            imagepng($base, $file_path, 9);
            imagedestroy($base);

        }

    }

}

?>

Now, 95% of the above process was super simple. Aside from two small things.

The first hurdle I hit was that the standard imagecopymerge function doesn’t work with images containing alpha transparency (which, to be honest, is a bit weird), I found half a dozen different implementations of an imagecopymerge_alpha function online, they all seemed to work, but the one I went with was the simplest.

<?php

function imagecopymerge_alpha($dst_im, $src_im, $dst_x, $dst_y, $src_x, $src_y, $src_w, $src_h, $pct) {

    // creating a cut resource
    $cut = imagecreatetruecolor($src_w, $src_h);

    // copying relevant section from background to the cut resource
    imagecopy($cut, $dst_im, 0, 0, $dst_x, $dst_y, $src_w, $src_h);
    // copying relevant section from watermark to the cut resource
    imagecopy($cut, $src_im, 0, 0, $src_x, $src_y, $src_w, $src_h);
    // insert cut resource to destination image
    imagecopymerge($dst_im, $cut, $dst_x, $dst_y, 0, 0, $src_w, $src_h, $pct);
    
    imagedestroy($cut);

}

?>

The second issue only occurred when the image being added (in this case the transparent PNG uploaded into WordPress) was smaller than the image it was being merged with.

With each of the imagecopymerge_alpha function that I found the same issue was present, I’d get a big, black, unwanted bar in the final image.

After a little research I found that the reason was simple enough, the image resource that gets created by imagecreattruecolor has a black background. A black background I didn’t want.

I googled, and then I googled some more. I found “solutions” that had works for some, but they didn’t work for me. All I wanted was for that initial image resource to be created with a transparent background.

I got close at one point where I was able to set black as the image’s transparent colour. However this only worked if the image I’d uploaded didn’t contain any black. Not really ideal.

So I started breaking down the both my add_social_variant function and the imagecopymerge_alpha function bit by bit to find where I might be able to jump in a prevent the black bar from appearing.

In the end the issue was that I was passing the width and height of the template image into the final imagecopymerge_alpha call instead of the width and height of the image being merged on top (the transparent PNG variant generated by WordPress).

Step 5: Making use of the newly created social images

The Facebook and Twitter variants that I’ve created are specifically for use with Open Graph and Twitter Cards.

So, in the <head> of my single posts, I first grab the id of the post thumbnail/feature image (ie. the transparent PNG that I’ve uploaded), then use that to build the URL for the relevant social image created earlier, and output that with the rest of the Open Graph and Twitter Card meta tags.

<?php $post_thumbnail_id = get_post_thumbnail_id($post->ID); ?>

<meta property="og:image" content="<?php echo content_url('/uploads/social-image/facebook-'.$post_thumbnail_id.'.png'); ?>" />

<meta name="twitter:image" content="<?php echo content_url('/uploads/social-image/twitter-'.$post_thumbnail_id.'.png'); ?>" />

Step 6: More?

I’m not currently making automatic use of the Instagram and Dribbble variants, was hoping to auto-post to Instagram but their API doesn’t currently allow such a thing, and while I could auto-post to Dribbble, I don’t want to share every uploaded image there. I may also go back and refine this process further if the need arises, or if I find more efficient ways of doing things.

I’ll still be posting the images to an Instagram account, but it will have to be handled manually for the time being (also, why have Instagram added account-switching yet?).

At least I don’t have to manually create half a dozen different versions/layouts for every image I uploaded.

I’ll post a couple of real-world examples once the site I’m using this on is live.

One image. One upload. Multiple options.

Magic.

How small is small? I’ve settled on 150 words, I was originally going to aim for only 100, but that wasn’t working, so 150 it is. I don’t have the time, talent, patience or ideas to write 5,000 words for a proper short story, or 50,000 for a novel, but 150 I can manage. Maybe.

Some will be self contained, some will be beginnings, some middles, and some ends. Some will be connected, others won’t, but I’m not going to tell you which ones are/aren’t.

Some will make sense, some won’t. None of them will have specific titles, I’ll just be labeling them with incrementing Roman numerals. Why? Because I can.

I won’t guarantee the quality, or the frequency, but will say that some will be less crap than others, and that I already have half a dozen written or in progress. Also remember, I’m a web designer/developer, not a prize winning author. So, low expectations and all that.

I might write 10 in the next 6 months, I might write 60… or I might forget I was even doing this to begin with.

The pieces that are connected won’t be written or published in order. Some will get published as soon as they’re written, but most will be scheduled for a random date and time some time in the three months after they’ve been written. I’ll try not to edit stories once they’ve been scheduled, unless of course I have some super genius idea. Unlikely.

It’s possible that I’ll throw in a couple of of no-text pieces at some point, ie. pictures. They might be connected too, or they might be just there to confuse you. That’s exciting, right?

Ok, why am I’d doing this? Well I often “write” these stories in my head, or at least have ideas for them, when I’m trying to get to sleep. They never get written down, so why not start? So, maybe if I write them down I’ll stop thinking about them and actually get a solid nights sleep.

Read them or don’t, I won’t hold it against you either way. Links will be posted on my Twitter account as each one is published, and you can view the site here, maybe bookmark it or subscribe to the feed if that’s your thing, or don’t. Whatever.

The first one is there now, it’s actually based on a dream I had, rather than a story idea, but, you know, whatever works.

There are also a bunch of neat technical bits and pieces in the WordPress theme I’ve built to present the stories. I might write about them here at some point, or I might not. There’s also an outside chance that I end up tweaking the design and functionality of the site more often that I post stories. I guess you’ll just have to visit often to find out.

So, how are things looking now?

Since the end of June, my three apps have been downloaded a combined total of ‘approximately’ 2273 times — 1380 for Criclive (7.54 per day), 683 for Watched (3.73 per day), and 210 for NextGame (1.14 per day) — for a combined average of 12.4 downloads per day.

Quick side note, I say ‘approximately’ because annoyingly iTunes Connect abbreviates anything over a thousand, so the Criclive numbers aren’t 100% accurate, eg. 1,267 would be shown as 1.26k. There is no apparent easy way to get the exact number for a long time period without chunking it up in smaller pieces and adding it up manually. But, you know, screw that.

Compare that with the combined total of 1496 prior to going free — 1270 for Criclive (across two major versions, 1.37 per day since December 2011), 184 for Watched (0.32 per day since December 2012), and 42 for NextGame (0.27 per day since January 2014) — fair to say people prefer free. But we already knew that.

Averaged out over the entire 1105 days prior to the end of June it comes to a whopping, 1.35 downloads/purchases per day

In terms of money, I raked in 84c per app sale, or $1.14 per day. I won’t rerun those numbers adding in the free downloads, they’re already depressing enough.

Watched never caught on, partly because I never really promoted it, partly because people were already using competing, more fully featured, services that I somehow didn’t find myself when originally planning Watched. Whatever, shit happens.

You might look at the numbers above and see that downloads of Watched have jumped from 0.32 per day to 3.73 per day.

Whoop-dee-doo.

Fact is, in the 758 days since release, just 862 people have downloaded it, in total. I only made money from the first 184 of those, or about $130. Yay, that pays for, maybe, one of the hundreds of hours that went into it.

But it gets better.

Of those 862 downloads, only 527 signed up. Yep, 325 people downloaded it and that was it. Are there app-downloading bots? If so, could they not have downloaded it a few more times?

The sign-up rates also dropped significantly once the app was free. When it was paid the sign-up rate was 96%, since it became free that rate has dropped to 51%.

Ok, so I’ve got 527 users? No, not really.

Only 358 of those that signed up have ever used it to rate/like/track a show. Yep, 32% of users who signed up never used the app again. Was it too hard to use? Was it confusing? Was it not what they expected? Whatever it was, they didn’t come back.

Right, so 358 users then? No, keep trying.

Of that 358 that did use it, 128 only ever used it once. Just once. That was apparently enough for them, that’s ok I’ve stopped using an app after using it once as well, I’m sure we all have. 36% of my ‘active’ users decided never to return. Sweet.

Well, 230 users? Yea… nope.

For the 230 that used the app more than once, 180 used it less than 10 times, and just 13 have used it more than 100 times in the past two years. For those playing at home, that’s just 1.5% of downloaders have used the app more than 100 times. Fun.

But what about the past month?

So there have been 30 active users in the last month, most of them being one-and-done users. In total 38 signed up over the last month, only 24 of them have been active since signing up - 63%. However, Watched has been downloaded 64 times in the past month, meaning a sign-up rate of about 59%, which - looking for positives - is 8% up on the six-month average. Woot.

Ok, what now?

Well, I will be taking both NextGame and Watched out of the App Store in the coming days. Neither of them are being discontinued, if you’ve got them they will still continue to work.

Repeat, they are NOT being discontinued, just removed from the store.

It just doesn’t seem right to have people downloading apps that haven’t been updated for a year, and that I have no immediate plans to update.

Watched will continue just as it has for the past couple of years, nothing is changing, there just won’t be any new users. I still use it every day (which is why I built it to begin with), but hardly anyone else does. For the sake of repetition, for the dozen or so, semi-frequent users, there will be no change, you can continue using the app just as you have (or haven’t) been since you downloaded it.

NextGame will also continue to work, if you’re among the handful of folk who downloaded it, but it probably won’t get any more content updates, unless I get super bored one weekend and can’t find anything else to do.

Neither of them are dead, and I could magically rediscover the desire to make them better at some point, but right now the only thing that will drive an update - at least for Watched - is if iOS 9 breaks it in some way.

Criclive, far and away still my most popular app, will remain in the store. There might be an update in its future, or there might not be. I’m not committing to anything.

When iOS 8 came out, I did fire up the new version of Xcode and start work on updating Criclive to make use of the bigger iPhone 6 screens.

After an hour I had about 30% of one of the simpler screens updated. There are about 15 or so screens in the app, most of which are more complex than the one I started with.

I quickly decided it wasn’t worth my time, and went back to watching TV.

iPhone 6

Size
Two sizes, as was spoiled- expected. Still think 5.5-inches is likely too large, but it’s also the one I ended up buying when the Apple store magically started working after all the stock was sold out. My main concern is whether or not it will fit in the pockets in any of my pants. Would have preferred they split the difference and just released a 5-inch phone.

Antenna gaps
Glad they don’t look as hideous as they did on the early leaks, or at least that’s the case for the silver and space grey models. White antenna gaps on the gold phone are pretty awful.

Where art thou Sapphire?
Ion-strengthened glass? Only glass, but what about the sapphire. I though it was all about the sapphire.

Seamless design
Or as a normal person might call it, round edges. I’m sure it’ll feel nice in the hand, but honestly I’ll miss being able to stand my phone up on it’s own without a stand. Note to self: find a nice stand.

White iPhone face
Is still ugly.

Gold iPhone body
Is uglier than ever thanks to the horrid white antenna gaps.

Reachability
The “actually, maybe we did make the screen too large, what should we do?” feature. They say you trigger it with a double tap of the home button, but isn’t that how you trigger the app-switcher? How do I now open the app-switcher? Anyone? Apparently a double-tap is different to a double-click/press?

Retina HD
Both the 6 and 6+ get bigger screens and more pixels (guys, guys, everything is bigger, bigger I tell you). The screen on the 6+ is apparently @3x, but then scaled back to fit into the 1920x1080 res … which seems really odd.

401 ppi
Just as well, I was starting to notice the pixels on my iPhone 5.

Improver polarizer
I’m hoping this means my screen looks better through my polarized sunglasses. My current iPhone 5 screen loses about half it brightness when view through my sunglasses if I turn it landscape. My original iPhone 5 was the reverse, in portrait the brightness sucked, but landscape was fine.

Wider-angle viewing
Sure, great, I guess. Except, you know, for privacy, like when you’ve got some random international student sitting next to you on the bus who keeps looking at your phone every 2 minutes.

Sixth row of home screen icons
Good, I’ve had to keep shuffling things off the first screen lately. No, seriously, I’d rather not do that. But I’d also like the app arrangement interface in iTunes to not suck ass, I don’t want much.

Display Zoom
Is this an accessibility setting? Or is it another “actually, maybe we did make the screen too large, what should we do?” feature?

Landscape home screen (and other apps)
I mocked this up in September 2009. Five years ago. I genuinely don’t know why Apple hasn’t added the landscape home screen until now. Other people liked my mockup, they even stole it and used it on a suspicious banner ad on pirate bay for several months.

Battery life
The extra battery life of the 6+ is close to be a selling point all on it’s own. I’m also looking forward to the new energy use stats in iOS that can tell me just how much juice Instagram is ripping out of my battery. Seriously, Instagram can drain my iPhone 5 batter from 50% to dead in about 15 minutes.

New M8 bits
I’ve had a fitbit for about 18 months, stopped wearing it in April once I’d racked up 12 months. Maybe if my phone is just tracking all that stuff without me having to remember an additional device I’ll get interested in it again.

Slo-mo camera
I never upgraded to the 5S so the slo-mo feature will be all-new to me. The addition of 240fps looks neat, will just need to find something interesting to shoot.

Time-lapse
Well Hyperlapse, it was a fun couple of weeks, but I suspect you’ve just been replaced by the functionality of the core camera, and the new Cinema Video Stabilisation stuff.

FaceTime camera
Still only 1.2MP? Really? But my selfless would be much better with more pixels. Selfies, guys. Selfies. Improved Face Detection on the front-facing camera seems a little pointless though, because isn’t that all people use it for anyway. Well, that and naked duck-face shots, I guess.

Faster LTE. Faster WiFi.
I’m sure that’s probably great, but I live in Australia. Our internet is powered by asthmatic treadmill-running mice.

Touch ID
Again, I never upgraded to the 5S, so this will be new to me too.

NFC
Already heard several Android lovers spouting that they’ve “had NFC for years”. Yeah, but you’ve had to use an Android phone, so there’s that. Also it’s US only for the moment.

Apple Pay
Don’t really care. I still prefer notes and coins over card anyway. Maybe that will change once it’s available here in Australia. Maybe it won’t.

Leather case
The opening at the bottom of the case looks like it might actually be big enough for the plug on my headphones to fit. I couldn’t get a leather case for my iPhone 5 because the plug on my headphones was too big to fit through the circular cut out in the case. Maybe I just need different head phones. Either way, sign me up for a Product (red) leather case to match my iPad mini.

No 32 GB?
I don’t really care, but a few people I follow on Twitter seem too. Also, why would you get the 16 GB, when 64 GB is only $100 (or $130 if you’re in Australia) more?

128 GB
Take my money. I’ve run out of space a dozen times in the last couple of months as my collection of music that I don’t listen to, and apps I don’t need, has grown. 128 GB is very welcome.

Apple Watch

“Finally”.
To take leaf out of the “tech jernl’sm” handbook, Apple “finally” revealed their watch offering. In reality though, it’s more a case of the tech writers “finally” predicting there would be a watch and there actually being one. Still waiting for the mystical TV they’ve been banging on about for 5 years.

Three styles
The three styles make sense, ‘regular’ stainless steel for regular folk, ‘sport’ aluminium for sporty folk and ‘edition’ gold for pimps and rich assholes.

Two sizes
38mm and 42mm. 4mm difference doesn’t seem like it would actually be significant enough to justify. Going to have to seen them in person to make final judgment on that.

More bands than an alcohol fueled music festival
You can pick from a traditional link bracket with butterfly clasp (it bugs me that the band has a brushed finished by the stainless steel watch bodies are polished), a rubber fluoroelastomer sport band (the image assets used on Apple’s website actually just call it ‘rubber’), a leather loop, a ‘classic’ leather band and buckle, a ‘modern’ leather band and buckle, a chain-mail or a Milanese loop. Most with numerous colour variants - though no Product (red) leather bands. Surely one of them would fit my pencil thing wrists.

Choice of watch faces
Hardly a selling point itself, but if Apple let developers design their own watch faces, then that could be interesting. The ability to customise the various faces with additional info is kind of neat. I guess.

Dedicated contacts button
A whole button seemingly devoted to a single function seems a little odd, at least to me. Maybe it’s because I don’t know enough people who’d want regular contact with me, and who would own an Apple Watch, to have it ever be of any use to me, ever.

Animated emoticons
No. This is not a device for 12 year-olds.

Ability to use the watch to make calls
Making phone calls by talking into your wrist is going to look super weird unless you’re either Inspector Gadget or in the CIA.

Ability to get email on your watch
Dammit, no. Leave me alone email. I’ll get to you when I get to you.

Digital Touch
Drawing simple pictures with you’re finger to send to someone? Because we’re all finger-painting 5 year-olds at heart. Super cynical me with no-one I’d actually use it to communicate with says this is a gimmick, not a feature.

Fitness tracking
One of the bigger features for the Apple Watch, but will probably be an even bigger feature in future versions when it (hopefully) gets more sensors built right into the watch.

Activity and Workout apps
Like ‘fitness’ these words aren’t common in my life. They probably should be, but they’re not. If I were going to get a Watch (and I’m currently leaning towards not getting one), then it would replace the Fitbit that ha been sitting uncharged and unused on my desk for the past 6 months.

Apple Pay
See iPhone section above.

Apps
Ability to control music on the iPhone or remote control the camera seem like the most useful of the non-watch-like apps (eg. timer, stop-watch, alarm). Weather also maybe useful. Not useful? Well, that would be Stocks and Photos. What other developers bring to the Watch with their own apps, like it is with the iPhone and iPad, will be more interesting.

UI Font
Different font to iOS and OS X, but that’s ok because if they’d gone with Helvetica again most of the last 4 days would just have been spent listening to whiny designers complaining about how Helvetica is shit now that Apple are using it. Guys, that record broke long ago. Move on.

Round icons
Interesting that they chose to make the device, and its screen square, but made the icons and home interface based entirely on circles. Could it be because the circle-based interface would work fine on either square or round watch faces, but square icons would be a bit shit on a round screen? OMG guys, the Apple Watch 2 is going to be round.

Digital crown
It’s physical skeuomorphism. Isn’t it? A few of the videos I’ve seen showing it off seemed a bit jittery. I wouldn’t really be worried about it though, they’ve got several more months to sort any issues out.

Force touch
Use the force Luke. Like the digital crown, this has looked a little hanky in videos I’ve seen thus far.

Shortage of stats
They say it has a retina display, but didn’t reveal the resolution. Or how much internal storage it has (it must have some, they’ve said you can listen to music on it even when you leave your phone behind and go for a runs etc). Or how long the battery lasts. Or what the full price range will be. Or what size wrists the various bands will fit, how adjustable they are etc. Really, they didn’t tell us a lot, just that it’s pretty and it’ll be out next year. Still, it’s more than Samsung would’ve told us.

Siri
Nope. I’m not talking to my watch in public. Also Siri doesn’t understand a word I say.

Taptic Engine
Sounds like it could be interesting. Also sounds like it could be distracting and annoying.

Left/right handed
The internet was freaking out because everyone in Apple’s promo video was wearing it on their left wrist. “But what about left-handed people” they were crying. Well turns out you can flip it around and it’ll work just fine. That said, I’m left-handed, but it’s a decade since I’ve worn a watch and I honestly couldn’t tell you which arm I wore it on.

Pricing
The $349 starting you’d assume is for the ‘lighter’ sports model with aluminium case and only Ion-X glass. The regular, stainless steel and sapphire crystal, variants might be $100 more. The pimp models will be easily north of $1000 I would imagine.

Do I want one?
Eh. Given that I’ve just dropped close to $1,300 on a new iPhone, probably not. Given that I don’t need most of the things it provides, probably not. Given that I still have serious doubts that it will fit my diminutive wrists, probably not. Given that Apple refresh their products yearly, and that the Apple Watch 2 will likely be a whole lot better, I’m probably more likely to wait for that.

I didn’t announce the “freeness” of the apps until July 1st, but they’d actually been free since June 29th - I’d set the change to happen on June 30th, but timezones meant that it actually happened a little earlier than that depending where you were.

Why is this important? Well, because 56% of the downloads I’ve had since going free occurred in the three days directly following the change - and about 75% of those before I’d even posted the announcement article.

I can only assume that the change caused my apps to appear near the top of the “new free apps” list for a brief period of time prompting the initial spurt of downloads, and then the gradual decline as it dropped down the list.

Then vs. Now

The above graph shows downloads in the first six months of the year, the three days after going free, and the days after that up until now. Of course comparing three time periods of different lengths could be a little misleading, but I’ll get to that later.

Criclive

Across the first six months of the year Criclive had been purchased 140 times (both versions combined, v1 priced at 99c, v2 at $1.99), in the two weeks since going free (and discontinuing v1) it has been downloaded 188 times.

In part this is due to the England v India test series starting, Criclive downloads have always shown spikes whenever there is an active cricket series or tournament in progress somewhere around the world. The difference now is that rather than that “big” spike being 10 or 12 downloads, it is 35 or 40.

NextGame

Across the first six months of the year NextGame had been purchased 31 times (priced at 99c), in the two weeks since going free it has been downloaded 50 times, not as great as Criclive but better than it had been.

There is no apparent trigger for the increase other than the price drop.

Watched

Across the first six months of the year Watched had been purchased a miserable 8 times (priced at 99c). Eight. In six whole months.

In the three days after it became free it was downloaded 124 times, and all up has been downloaded 172 times in the past two weeks.

Like with NextGame there is no apparent reason - it’s not TV season - for the spike other than that the app is now free.

That spike is good, right? Not so much.

The above graph shows downloads (in red) compared to actual signups (in blue). What.

I may have only sold 8 copies in the first 6 months of the year, but they all signed up after downloading it. That signup rate has dropped below 24% for the 172 sales since going free.

The 124 figure for the first three days of downloads looks nice, then stick it next to the number of people who actually signed up (13) and it is almost as depressing as the 8 sales in the first six months of the year.

One last graph

Ok, so that first graph compared three time periods of different length, and as such doesn’t tell the whole story…

If I reformat the graph, still keeping the same three time periods, to show an average number of downloads, the picture is a little clearer.

Free apps get downloaded more, a lot more. And if you combine it with the Watched signups graph above, they get downloaded a lot more even if the user seemingly doesn’t even want the app.

During that time I’ve released three apps, a small handful of updates to each (although probably fewer than I would have liked), and have a fourth app partially developed. All up, the several hundred hours spent on those three released apps have netted me about $1,200.

That’s not the problem. I didn’t start developing apps with the goal of making money. You can read all the get-rich-quick articles you like, but the reality of app development is not that. I’ve got a full-time job as a web developer. That’s where I make my money. That is what pays my bills. That is what buys my food.

Most of all I was using the apps as a learning platform to extend my knowledge beyond the world of general web development. And while that alone has been enough for a long time, it’s not anymore. If I’m going to work on things outside of work hours I have to be enjoying it. That enjoyment isn’t (currently) there.

So it is now close to five months since I last opened Xcode. That is the problem.

From today my existing iOS apps are free, and will likely remain that way at least until I next update them - something that I hope to do just as soon as I rediscover the drive and motivation to do so. It could be next month, it could be November. I don’t know.

I’ve also removed the old Criclive 1.5 from the store, something I’d originally planned to do months ago, just never got around to it. Despite the large warning messages stating that it was discontinued, never going to receive any updates, and that there was a new, better version that they should be buying instead… yet, people were still buying it.

I didn’t see any parallel sales of Criclive 2 so I doubt they were clicking on the in-app messages either. Perhaps an example of iOS users taking the path of least money (Criclive 1.5 was 99c, Criclive 2 was $1.99).

So why make the apps free?

The minimal returns don’t justify the time and effort put into each app. I’m not ungrateful of the sales I’ve made, but the hours poured into each app are not offset by the 70c I get for the occasional sale.

Honestly, I’d rather see 500 people using my app and be making nothing, as opposed to have 50 using it and to have only made $35.

I don’t need the couple of bucks it makes me each week, sales don’t even cover the cost of my morning orange juice (I’m not a coffee drinker). I make more from the interest on my savings account - and interest rates on savings accounts suck.

Would proper advertising have brought more sales? Probably. Would those extra sales have offset the cost of advertising the apps in order to make those sales? Unlikely. There are just too many competing, cheaper (or free), products to think that mine were ever going to challenge. And I knew that going in.

Sure, that’s a negative way to look at it. I’m feeling negative.

The average iOS user tends to be cheap, they’ll pick the free alternative over the paid one, even if the free one looks like it was designed by blind man with no hands. Just look at a reasonably large percentage of the ‘top charts’ in the app store.

Of course that’s an unfair generalisation, not all paid apps look better, some are far worse than their free ripoffs. Likewise some of the best apps are free, paid doesn’t always mean better.

I know I’m guilty of avoiding paid apps because they’re paid, you probably are too, but it is a decision usually driven by the lack of actual information they provide about the app, or a lack of proper screenshots, or poor design, or an ugly icon, or bad reviews rather than the actual price itself.

My apps are not unique, and I knew this when I started, there are literally dozens of competing apps that quite literally do the exact same thing, or more, or better. 99% of these apps are free, in the case of Criclive and NextGame most of these competing - free - apps are provided by either the sporting organisations themselves or by TV networks such as Fox or ESPN. In other words, they have actual marketing budgets to promote their apps, or more to the point they have budgets in general, or they can provide free apps without concern because they make their money elsewhere.

…they can provide free apps without concern because they make their money elsewhere…

For example, although NextGame doesn’t currently cover these sports, the NBA and MLB can offer a free app for the basic things like scores and news headlines, because they then charge additional subscription fees for access to their streaming services. In Australia the NRL, AFL and Cricket Australia all do the same thing.

So, why pay a couple of bucks for the little app from a guy working away in his apartment late at night when you can get the official app directly from the relevant league for free. If I wasn’t a developer building a ‘competing’ app I know which one I’d be downloading…

Could I have splattered advertising throughout my app in search of an extra buck, of course I could have. Did I ever consider it? No. Intrusive advertising also stops me buying/downloading apps. On the limited screen real-estate of a phone, any level of advertising is intrusive. You can keep telling yourself that the 80 pixels of gaudy flashing banner at the bottom of your app isn’t annoying, but it is.

I built Criclive because I knew my first app should be something that I wanted to use. There are a ton of other apps that provide live cricket scores, most of them look like the punch line to an article titled “visually inept developer discovers bevel effect in Photoshop, you won’t believe what happens next”.

…”visually inept developer discovers bevel effect in Photoshop, you won’t believe what happens next”…

All I wanted was live scores, and the desire to not feel like throwing up every time I checked them. So I built Criclive and, at least relative to my other apps, it has been reasonably successful.

Across two versions I’ve sold around 1,200 copies. I originally released it at $1.99 and sales were slow next to the free competitors. Sales picked up a bit once I dropped the price to 99c.

With the release of the new universal version - with full iPad compatibility - late last year, I put the price back up to $1.99. Because, seriously two bucks for an app that looks great on both iPhone and iPad is a steal.

Sales have been ok, they still haven’t matched the first version, and they only come in drips and drops depending on what cricket is on around the world. Despite that, one or two sales every couple of days was enough for it to land, and stay, in the top 100 paid sports apps (in Australia) for several weeks after it’s release.

One sale, yes just one, in India landed it in 9th spot on the top paid sports apps in India - I haven’t sold a copy in India for three months, and it’s still somehow ranked in the top 600 sports apps.

The market for sports apps appears to be a narrow one, confined largely to the free ‘official’ apps. You’d think selling a cricket app to Indians should be like shooting fish in a barrel, apparently not.

When I started work on Watched in early 2012, I’d already spent well over a month simply searching the web and the App Store looking for something similar, I found a couple that kind of did what I was looking for, but they weren’t quite right. They either did too much, or not enough, or just looked like shit. I’ll say it again, your app might be great but if the app - or its icon - look like crap then I’ll pass, quickly.

Anyway I was about 6 months in, and the app was maybe 80% feature complete, when I started to notice other apps almost identical to what I was building. How I hadn’t found them 6 months earlier I’m not entirely sure, they definitely existed, but I hadn’t found them. That hurt motivation a lot, after a break of about a month I pressed on. I was still determined to finish and release the app.

Not necessarily because I wanted everyone to use it, but because I wanted the challenge and I wanted to use it. I still use it, every day.

I wanted, or perhaps needed, that challenge of building something I didn’t know how to build. Watched was my biggest side-project since Hahlo half a dozen years earlier, it was a project that covered all bases. I was designing the app. Developing the app, and the API behind it. I wasn’t using some pre-baked framework, it was all mine. I designed the database schema, and wrote the countless SQL queries that powered it. I designed the icons, I wrote the functions to access the various APIs that I sourced data from. I built the website to promote. And so on. It was all me. I was proud of that.

While I am still proud of that. I’m just not, right at this point in time, as motivated as I was two years ago.

The first version of Criclive took about 3 months to build, not bad for a first serious attempt at building an iOS app from scratch. Watched took almost a year to get the first version completed, and another 9 or so for the first major update (which was a near complete rewrite).

By contrast I sped through the development of NextGame in about two and half weeks, submitted it to the App Store (expecting it to get rejected, as you do), and a couple of hours later it was approved and on sale.

Since the release I’ve sold 33 copies of NextGame, for the grand earnings of $22.17. Or about $1.20 for every day that I spent working on it…

I knew the chances of NextGame making anything were slim due to my own poor timing and other competing products, but even still the lack of sales still hurt the confidence and motivation to continue pursuing it. Anyone who says that their app not selling well doesn’t hurt them is lying.

I’m still working around the mental burnout which was partly capped off by the rushed development process of NextGame. I’ll write more about that at another time, once I can find the right words. As it is, it has taken me a month just to piece this post together, which is also why it is a little all over the place.

So, I’ll go from making a little from my iOS apps to making nothing. Perhaps this nothing brings in more users, and the arrival of more users may trigger the return of the interest, drive and motivation that I had when I built them. Maybe then I’ll get back to improving these existing apps and developing new ones. I’m not done with the world of app development, not yet.

Until then, the apps are free.

The previous logo was ok, I wouldn’t call it great, but it’s kind of clever and did the job. The new logo has a similar problem, it too is just “ok”. With a full re-brand of the club, the opportunity was there to make the logo and brand the best it could be.

The new Melbourne City FC logo is clearly based on the NYC FC logo that itself was only revealed in March - for those who don’t already know NYC FC is a new MLS expansion team in the US co-owned by Manchester City and the New York Yankees - but it looks like a rushed copy or cheap knock off.

That said, I do like that there is a visual connection between the new sister clubs - perhaps makes up for the lack of connection, beyond sky blue, between them and their Manchester City parent. However, in the process of adapting the NYC logo for Melbourne’s use, they seem to have made it cluttered and generally less pleasant to look at. Sure, I’m no sports branding expert, but - as they say - I know what I like.

The adaptation sees the silhouette of the old Heart logo used in place of the (tiny) pentagons seen on the NYC logo, I like the idea, just not the not-particularly-heart-shaped hearts. The NYC monogram gets replaced with an interpretation of the actual city of Melbourne flag. Again nice idea, but it’s too complicated, all that detail is great when the logo is large, but relatively pointless at smaller sizes. Sure, represent the flag, but there’s no need to actually be the flag.

I also wouldn’t have minded a similar monogram in place of the plain “MC FC” text and little crown.  But I think it’s the the changes to the circular rings that encompass the logo that are bugging me the most. Why are they gold? Why aren’t they following the simpler, more even, pattern/arrangement of the NYC logo.

So. With that in mind, here’s my edit alongside the NYC FC logo.

Different/clearer hearts, red ring instead of gold, no little pictures cluttering things up, simpler cross, MC monogram - the ‘Melbourne City Football Club’ needs to me shrunk a little, but aside from that it gives a stronger overall visual link between the two clubs.

Maybe Manchester City FC should change their logo to a modernised version of the following logo that they last used in the early 1970’s - would bring them in line with their new Melbourne and NYC offshoots…

Update, June 6: Whipped up a Manchester City FC logo (above right) to match the Melbourne and NYC ones. Mind you, it would be kind of daft for the parent club to change it’s logo to something mimicking a club that it owns.