Robert.Hodgen.me

My latest project is a weekly video with my friend Jason, each week with 5 O’Clock Coffee Break we mix booze and coffee–college favorites–to create coffee-inspired alcohol infused drinks.

Both Jason and I are huge coffee drinkers and enjoy a stiff drink as well. Mixing these together in a video series should prove to be hilarious and hopefully profitable.

The name comes from the saying “it’s 5  o’clock somewhere” and the need for a coffee break. Mix those two together and you’ve got a 5 o’clock coffee break–a booze infused pick-me-up at the end of a long day.

Visit the project website at http://5oclockcoffeebreak.com
Project YouTube Channel at http://youtube.com/5OClockCoffeeBreak
Follow the project on twitter @5OClockCoffeeBk

I’ve finally got around to putting the finishing touches on Mussedo 1.1.0 and building it for release. It’s currently in Apple’s update approval queue and shouldn’t take too long to be approved.

Now I’ve gotta race Apple to get new screenshots ready for the upcoming release.

See all upcoming changes to Mussedo in the change log at Sysios: http://sysios.com/mussedo/changelog/

So I drove over to Titusville to see the last Shuttle launch STS-135 and shot some video. Overall 16 hours of driving and waiting around to shoot 25 seconds of video. I used a 1250mm telescope with an adapter to hookup my Nikon D300s. Shooting at ƒ13.8 on a bridge with a lot of people jumping added a ton of vibration. I thought it turned out well considering the distance from the launchpad.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dSY3OZv6xk

I’ve been working on a quick update to add a gradient background to all event cells and a “events in this list” count to the top of each list. The gradient background keeps the light is current and the dark is archived style. However the update adds a little visual interest to the app. This can be enabled or disabled from the Settings for better performance on older devices. The “events in this list” is exactly what it says, a count of events at the top of each list. Scroll to the top of any event list and you’ll see a “Events in this list: 4″ signaling that there are 4 events in the list. This becomes helpful when you’ve got a ton of events. This count updates live and shows the same value as the Directory item’s count. (more…)

So it has just come to my attention that Mussedo 1.0.0 has a bug which shows the wrong date. This stems from a last minute change I made the day I submitted the release version to the App store. It’s amazing what a single line of code can do…

Expect an update in the App Store soon.

Mussedo has been finished for more or less two months now. However I haven’t had much time to do the finishing touches and get a separate iTunes Connect account for Sysios. Since Mussedo has been “completed” for about two months now I just needed to submit the binary to Apple. In a week or so it should be accepted and go on sale for $6.99.

Previously I mentioned I was working on a iPad version of Mussedo (Mussedo HD) but it doesn’t look like I’ll release it at the same time I launch Mussedo for iPhone. The reason for this is syncing between the two. I’d much rather have a way built into the App to sync between multiple devices. This is where I’m stopping for now. At some point I may build a sync mechanism into Mussedo but at the moment I’m sticking with the (single) iPhone version.

Before I mentioned Mussedo when I announced the launch of Sysios. I’ve done a little work and I’m considering launching an iPad version of Mussedo along with the iPhone and iPod touch version.

I wanted to see how long it would take to convert Mussedo for iPhone over to iPad. Initially I thought it would take weeks, but after an hour I had something that was 50% or more complete. After about 5-hours (or an evening of coding) it’s about 80-90% complete.

Because the iPad and iPhone use more or less the same APIs it’s an easy conversion.

From now on all my future mobile applications will be launched and sold under Sysios, a new company I’m starting.

The main goal is to distribute my applications under one name and through one channel, I will slowly move my existing Apps over to Sysios as I find time and as I create and launch new Apps.

The launch product for Sysios Systems is Mussedo, a todo manager I’ve been wanting to write for the last two years and something I’ve been working on for the last six months. Mussedo is my take on todo management for iOS devices and should be in the App Store soon.

After upgrading the hardware on my OS X Server I decided to do a fresh install in an effort to speed things up and just clear any junk that might have accumulated over time. I made backups of everything I needed. As it turns out my iCal server didn’t get properly backed up… I followed Apple’s suggestions for backing up the iCal server data store but it ended up not copying everything it needed so now I’m without calendar data. Everything else is fine though, so that’s good.