Thinking Ahead

Moves and Changes

Good ___ internet! In case you didn't know, I've pulled up stakes and moved to Seattle, Washington. Thinkyhead is now left-coastal… and catching the electronics bug. But more on that later!

Wha'happen, Thinkyhead?

In 2011 I was living in Western Massachusetts and working as a Drupal freelancer when it suddenly struck me that I needed to move back to the city and catch onto this big wave that I've been paddling towards.

Seattle is a mecca for makers, computer geeks, programmers, indie developers, electronics enthusiasts, and creatives of all kinds. So I bought a car for the first time in 20 years, packed up my belongings, and drove across this flattest of nations with my trusty cat Fang along for the ride.

It must be serious. After 2 years I'm still here, still in love with the place, and looking forward to spending even more time exploring it.

How's it going?

Last Spring I bumped elbows with Reggie Watts at a coffee shop. Have you ever exchanged static electricity with a god? Props to Little Bits! I've also rubbed metaphorical elbows with Unity3D developers, creative coders who make rooms dance, game devs who code in coffee shops, small startups seeking wizards willling to work for Cheetos and beer, buskers and bands and all manner of miscreant. It has already had profound effects.

The Future of FretPet

The last decade has been a whirlwind of changes, and I feel constant regret that I can't spend all my time working on FretPet, TabletMagic, and my other projects that are even more interesting and ambitious. But unfortunately I am still quite poor, low rent subletting, working out of cafes, and carrying a lot of work obligations. (App development doesn't come anywhere near to paying the rent, tragically!)

FretPet 1.4 will be arriving any day now with some great new features. But the code-base of FretPet 1.4 is getting very old at this point and, while it still functions great, the app has started to exhibit idiosyncrasies on newer versions of OS X and isn't optimized for screens with lots of pixels.

FretPet 2 is in development and it's just been announced, but it still has some way to go before it will be completely ready. I'll be converting the code to the new Swift programming language that Apple introduced at WWDC 2014 in conjunction with iOS 8. Swift will make the codebase smaller and easier to manage, which means more new features and improvements at a faster pace than ever before. And more code that can be shared with ChordCalc.

I'd like to get into more technical details, but there just isn't the time right now, and so far this hasn't been the most active or technical blog. Time and space are always of the essence, and I'm a slowww writer. But I'll try to write less and say more next time.