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Author Archives: tim
Silence is scary
With three small children, our house is the opposite of quiet. The screaming, yelling and “NO MY TURN”s vibrate the house from dawn until dusk. Occasionally, there is silence, which is followed by the realization that something really bad is going on or is about to happen.
For each kid, silence means something different.
Landon is 10 months and quiet means that he is eating something he shouldn’t. Like a roly-poly, paper, socks, crayons, shoes or any leftovers from the previous meal that survived the hospital-grade floor scrubbing that occurs after each meal. The silence is short lived and soon will be replaced with hacking and choking, then giggling.
Adalyn is just a couple months past her two year birthday and her quiet time is filled with coloring on things that she is not supposed to. Like couches, wood floors, walls, tables, windows, laundry, toilets, dishwashers and 10-month old brothers. She will act so sorry and apologetic when you catch her, then will go right back to her non-paper coloring canvas the second your back is turned.
Ben is four years old and isn’t nearly as sneaky as his siblings. When he’s doing something wrong, he puts forth no effort to hide it. During his potty training years, it was a different story and his silence was very predictable. We got into a habit of telling him to go poop any time he had been quiet for more than 30 seconds.
Politeness goes a long ways, just not that far.
Adalyn (2 years old) was reading a book on the couch when Landon (10 months) came up and started to paw the pages. She promptly pushed him down, which I responded to by putting her in time out.
After time out, we talked about how it is not nice to push people and that she needed to apologize to her baby brother, to which she obliged.
Five minutes later, she was back up on the couch reading her books when Landon came up and started pawing at the pages again. In the sweetest, pretty-please-with-a-cherry-on-top voice she looked up and asked “I push Landon down now please?”
Nice try sweetheart.
Version 1.5 of Christian Radio Locator released
Today, we released version 1.5 of Christian Radio Locator. I know I said I was pretty much done with version 1.2, but there were a couple of things I really wanted to see if I could accomplish. Namely, I wanted to move from Google Docs to Amazon SimpleDB – which has been a very interesting transition that deserves its own blog post. I also wanted to learn more about how the In-App purchase process works, so you can now buy a “Pro Version” for $0.99. All future “big” features will only be available to those that have purchased the Pro version. Based on app download numbers and update numbers, I have a pretty good idea of how many people use the app. I’m very curious how many of those people are willing to pay to support future development. I’m guessing about 1%, which would be enough to cover the cost of hosting the database. The first feature to be Pro only is Favorites.
Here are the highlights of the release:
Favorites
I’m very excited about this new feature. You can add a station as a favorite and it will always be displayed on the front screen, even if you are currently out of range of that station. This is useful for keeping up with your favorite home station when you are on the road, or to listen to a station that you have found in a different city. For me, I’ve discovered several great stations (Hot 95.9, Renegade Radio) that I now have quick access to directly from the home screen. This feature is only available to users that have made the in-app purchase to Pro.
Hide stations
Some stations just aren’t your cup of tea. No judgement here. Just swipe on the station to prevent it from showing up. To unhide a station, click “Settings”, then “Edit Hidden stations”.
Download station’s app
Many stations have their own iPhone or iPad app. We will display “Download station app” on the station detail screen. Click it to view it directly from our app. Sometimes it takes a second to show up. Be patient. Or don’t, sometimes clicking a bunch of times makes it load faster.
Smarter searches
Type just about anything in the search bar and we will be able to figure it out. Search by station name, call sign, frequency or city. Pull down slightly on home screen to see search bar.
Smarter launchers
Most of the stations have their own Facebook and Twitter pages. Rather than showing the Facebook page in Safari, we will open it directly in the Facebook app if you have it installed. For Twitter, we support the native Twitter app, Tweetbot and Echofon. As a bonus, Tweetbot supports callback urls, so you can visit a station’s twitter feed in Tweetbot and when you are done, it will relaunch Christian Radio Locator.
New tips
The help tips have been expanded and improved. Performing an action displayed in the help tip will advance you to the next tip. Click “Settings”, then “Hide tips” to prevent them from being shown. Click “Reset help tips” to start over from the beginning.
URL Schemes
Other developers can now launch Christian Radio Locator using our URL Schemes.
We support:
clrapp://search/q=<search string>
crlapp://search/id=<database id>
clrapp://map/city=<city name or lat/lng>
Perfect pre-Spring day
It’s a beautiful day to be outside with the kids while streaming Kansas basketball on the laptop. Hard to believe this was just a couple weeks ago.
Pirate smile – Jeff Withey sized snowman edition
The result of the epic 10″ snow storm was a wonderful playground of fresh snow to play in. After the driveway, sidewalk, deck and mailman path were shoveled (which Ben actually really helped with), it was playtime. We built a 7 foot tall snowman – complete with top hat, oxygen mask and tie – and snow steps using a recycling bin.
Here is the snowman – note the orange juice lid eyes, celery nose and Chick-fil-a nugget container mouth. Ben said it looked like a fireman’s mask.
The end result with the steps
Climbing the steps:
Almost there…
And of course, we ended with a pirate smile.
They are saying another 10 inches of snow are coming tomorrow, so there might be more snowman in our future!!
Snow day 2013
We got our first real snow today in several years. Right around 10″ with a little bit still more on the way. I’ve heard the roads are a mess. We stayed put all day. Adalyn celebrated by jumping off the couch.