Life Audit (FREE) - v1.2 Coming Soon

Life Audit v1.2

The latest version of Life Audit has just been submitted to Apple for approval. It includes:

- 10 new questions

- Support for iOS 4.0 functionality

- Improved User Interface

- Fixed Category question misalignment

Stay tuned for the launch announcement in about a week.

Free App Number Converter

FREE iPhone App

Number Converter

v1.0

Available Now From iTunes.

Download now and don't forget those 5 star ratings ;-)

Latest Reefwing App - Coming Soon!

Number Converter

Version 1.0

My latest App has just been submitted to Apple for approval. It is something that will appeal to 1% of the population (if that) but it's something that I will find useful - and sometimes that's all the excuse you need.

I developed it primarily to try out the new iAd functionality released in iPhone iOS 4.0, so I wont be charging for the Application.

The theory is you get paid via the (*discrete*) Ad at the bottom of the screen. I'm not expecting to retire on the proceeds, to do that you probably need to develop an App that a lot of people want.

I will announce when it is approved and will post details on the Reefwing Software web site.

Bad Writing?

A thirsty gerbil's kiss takes out the best bad writing of 2010 competition

A romance book's opening line about a gerbil has won a bad writing award run by a US College / James Croucher Source: Supplied

AN unseemly sentence that compares a kiss to the union of a thirsty gerbil and a giant water bottle has won the top prize in an annual bad writing contest.

San Jose State University said today Molly Ringle of Seattle was the grand prize winner of the 2010 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, which the university has sponsored since 1982.

In her winning entry, Ms Ringle wrote: "For the first month of Ricardo and Felicity's affair, they greeted one another at every stolen rendezvous with a kiss - a lengthy, ravenous kiss, Ricardo lapping and sucking at Felicity's mouth as if she were a giant cage-mounted water bottle and he were the world's thirstiest gerbil."

The literary competition honours the memory of 19th English century writer Edward George Earl Bulwer-Lytton, who famously opened his 1830 novel Paul Clifford, with the much-quoted, "It was a dark and stormy night".

Steve Lynch of San Marcos, California, won the detective category: "She walked into my office wearing a body that would make a man write bad (cheques), but in this paperless age you would first have to obtain her ABA Routing Transit Number and Account Number and then disable your own Overdraft Protection in order to do so."

Linda Boatright of Omaha won the Western category: "He walked into the bar and bristled when all eyes fell upon him - perhaps because his build was so short and so wide, or maybe it was the odour that lingered about him from so many days and nights spent in the wilds, but it may just have been because no one had ever seen a porcupine in a bar before."

Read more: http://www.news.com.au/world/a-thirsty-gerbils-kiss-takes-out-the-best-bad-writing-of-2010-competition/story-e6frfkyi-1225886273210#ixzz0sJZ4QaIH

Dark Print Press

MEDIA RELEASE

Announcing the arrival of a new small press publisher!

DARK PRINTS PRESS

Shining a light on dark fiction

Dark Prints Press is a brand new Australian independent publisher who aims to publish works of dark fiction (encompassing crime, thriller, speculative fiction (horror, dark fantasy) and dark comedy). Its initial focus is on an adult market, with the desire to also venture into the young adult market in the future.

The small press is a partnership between West Australians Avril and Craig Bezant, who aim to provide another, much-needed avenue for a range of printed fiction, including short story collections, novellas, and novels. Their publications will range from lavish trade paperback editions to small, pulpy works, depending on the relevance to the story and its genre. Digital publications (e-books) of the publisher's list are forecasted in the future.

The first publication for Dark Prints Press will be an anthology of the best stories from the online magazine Eclecticism E-zine, an e-zine that has been shortlisted for 2 awards, is archived in the National Library of Australia, and has established a dedicated readership and subscription list over the past 3 years. The anthology is titled ‘An Eclectic Slice of Life', available for pre-order from 06/06/2010 via the website. Read more about this exciting new venture at:

www.darkprintspress.com.au

E: info@darkprintspress.com.au

---------------------------------------------------

‘AN ECLECTIC SLICE OF LIFE’

Featuring the best short fiction and poetry from the first 2 years of the award-nominated Eclecticism E-zine, plus exclusive new work by most authors, including:

Joseph D’Lacey, Jason Fischer, Myra King, Deborah Sheldon, Simon Petrie, Alice Godwin, Mark McAuliffe, Julia Brannigan, Keith Nunes, Jacqui Dent, Brian G Ross, Eril Riley, David Such & Simon James.

C Format Trade Paperback, 280 pages, AUD$29.95 ISBN: 978-0-646-53641-5

Pre-order from 06/06/2010 via the Dark Prints Press website: www.darkprintspress.com.au

or through Eclecticism E-zine: wwww.eclecticzine.com

Publication Date: 12/12/2010

Contact: orders@darkprintspress.com.au

WRITING QUOTES - From CS Weekly

Some more aggregated quotes:

"Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart."
- William Wordsworth

"Ink and paper are sometimes passionate lovers, oftentimes brother and sister, and occasionally mortal enemies."
- Terri Guillemets

"Drama, instead of telling us the whole of a man's life, must place him in such a situation, tie such a knot, that when it is untied, the whole man is visible."
- Leo Tolstoy

"I want to write books that unlock the traffic jam in everybody's head."
- John Updike

"You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club."
- Jack London

"Fantasy's hardly an escape from reality. It's a way of understanding it."
- Lloyd Alexander

"Remember: when people tell you something's wrong or doesn't work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong."
- Neil Gaiman

"Increase your word power. Words are the raw material of our craft. The greater your vocabulary the more effective your writing. We who write in English are fortunate to have the richest and most versatile language in the world. Respect it."
- PD James

"The test of literature is, I suppose, whether we ourselves live more intensely for the reading of it."
- Elizabeth Drew

"There was never a good biography of a good novelist. There couldn't be. He is too many people if he's any good."
- F. Scott Fitzgerald

"Writing and rewriting are a constant search for what it is one is saying."
- John Updike

"If a writer knows enough about what he is writing about, he may omit things that he knows. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one ninth of it being above water."
- Ernest Hemingway

"Measure your mind's height by the shadow it casts."
- Rex Stout

"It begins with a character, usually, and once he stands up on his feet and begins to move, all I can do is trot along behind him with a paper and pencil trying to keep up long enough to put down what he says and does."
- William Faulkner

"Finishing a book is just like you took a child out in the back yard and shot it."
- Truman Capote

"A writer needs three things, experience, observation, and imagination, any two of which, at times any one of which, can supply the lack of the others."
- William Faulkner

"When a man is in doubt about this or that in his writing, it will often guide him if he asks himself how it will tell a hundred years hence."
- Samuel Butler

"Ink on paper is as beautiful to me as flowers on the mountains; God composes, why shouldn't we?"
- Terri Guillemets

"Every writer creates his own precursors. His work modifies our conception of the past, as it will modify the future."
- Jorge Luis Borges

"There is no longer any such thing as fiction or nonfiction; there's only narrative."
- E.L. Doctorow

"The drudgery of being a professional writer comes in trying to make good days out of bad days and in squeezing out the words when they won't just flow."
- Benjamin Cavell

"No one is asking, let alone demanding, that you write. The world is not waiting with bated breath for your article or book. Whether or not you get a single word on paper, the sun will rise, the earth will spin, the universe will expand. Writing is forever and always a choice -- your choice."
- Beth Mende Conny

"To me the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it's about, but the music the words make."
- Truman Capote

"I love writing. I love the swirl and swing of words as they tangle with human emotions."
- James Michener

"It is necessary to write, if the days are not to slip emptily by. How else, indeed, to clap the net over the butterfly of the moment? For the moment passes, it is forgotten; the mood is gone; life itself is gone. That is where the writer scores over his fellows: he catches the changes of his mind on the hop."
- Vita Sackville-West

"The pages are still blank, but there is a miraculous feeling of the words being there, written in invisible ink and clamoring to become visible."
- Vladimir Nabakov

GeoDefense Swarm Strategy - Reactor - Chromasome

GeoDefense Swarm

Download Hard Levels - Reactor

Level 1 - Chromasome

The tip given when you first lose this level is the key - diversify!

Alternate blasters and thumper towers, working out from the entry/exit points. You want to create a winding path which all the creeps follow. Don't forget to connect your laser towers to the vortex.

I originally tried to create a straight path down the middle but this didn't work. Once you have completed the path start upgrading from the middle out.

I only upgraded the laser towers and vortex towers once as they are so expensive.

If there are any other particular levels that you are having difficulty with let me know and I will post my solution here.

Life Goals v1.3

This release continues the incremental feature updates, improves a number of facets of the user interface and fixes a bug which was introduced in version 1.1.

- The Goal description input screen is now multi-line and scrollable which facilitates the entry of long Goal names.

- New Category items will now be assigned a random colour instead of all new Categories being given grey as a default colour.

- 15 New Category icons have been added.

- The Task description input screen is now multi-line and scrollable which facilitates the entry of long Task names.

- The Task entry screen has been upgraded to make it more intuitive to enter the effort and impact for each task (see the screen shot).

- A bug was introduced in version 1.1 which could cause the App to crash if more than 10 categories were added and you selected the Graphs Tab. This has been fixed.

This version is backwardly compatible with data from earlier versions.

Life Goals cracks top 5 in Productivity Charts

Version 1.2 of Life Goals was released last week. With Apple's publicity from the "New & Noteworthy" section of iTunes it was great to see the App climb into a top 5 position on the charts. This increases sales by a factor of 10. If I could get the same in the US charts the factor would be more like 100.

Unfortunately a user in the UK has identified a bug which crashes the App if you add more than 10 categories and go to the Charts Tab. This problem was introduced in v1.1 when the ability to add/edit categories was added.

It has been fixed in v1.3 which has been submitted to Apple for Approval.

Life Goal reaches top 10 in Productivity Charts

Life Goals Enters Top Ten

And a new chart record - Life Goals is up to tenth spot with a bullet!

No doubt related to being listed in the New and Noteworthy section of iTunes (see previous post).

Very nice!

Life Goals in iTunes New & Noteworthy!

What a blast! Apple have listed Life Goals in the New and Noteworthy section of iTunes.

I am really chuffed by this. With over 150,000 or so Apps it is pretty hard to get noticed.

It is only a fluke that I saw this as Apple don't tell you if you have been added.

The next version (1.2) has been submitted for approval. Hopefully this should be released later this week.

New Life Audit Video Tutorial

I have just posted a video tutorial for Life Audit.

Click on the link above to see it.

Some folks couldn't work out what to do once the splash screen had loaded. Poor usability design on my part!

Life Audit for iPhone - FREE

Life Audit v1.0 Available now - FREE!

Download it now from iTunes at http://itunes.com/app/LifeAudit or http://itunes.apple.com/au/app/life-audit/id365471153?mt=8

If the links don't work (because it is so new) then just Search for "Life Audit" in iTunes.

Feedback most appreciated - Don't forget to rate it in iTunes.

Life Audit - v1.0 Coming Soon!

Free iPhone App - Life Audit

Coming Soon!

Life Audit is currently being reviewed by Apple for inclusion in the iTunes App store.

By answering just a few questions, our free App Life Audit will give you a graphical representation of your Life Balance. As the pace of life increases at an exponential rate we sometimes forget to focus on what is important as opposed to what is urgent. Using Life Audit you will quickly be able to see the areas of your life that are getting the most focus and more importantly, the areas that you are neglecting.

Check out the Life Audit web page for more details.

Life Goals v1.1 - What's New?

Life Goals v1.1

What is new in this version?

• Category names, icons and colours can now be edited and added.
• 15 new Category Icons added.
• You can assign custom colours to a category.
• Pop up category legend added to charts.
• Category colour is now part of the category picker.
• Extensive update to the Help Tab. Help files from the web site are now included with the App. A goal setting tip section has also been included.

Life Goals Sets High Bar in Goal Management

The iPhone App Review Site & Life Goals v1.0

Anna Papachristos from the iPhone App Review site has recently reviewed Life Goals. Here is an extract from the review:

"What is great about Life Goals, as opposed to other goal management applications, is the way it provides its users with a pre-designed set up featuring different categories. Many similar apps make it easy for users to enter their goals and set due dates, but Life Goals helps you break things down into categories that some may even overlook as being an area of their life they could improve upon. Life Goals uses a simple interface that makes recording goals and tasks easy, while also monitoring their importance and your progress instead of leaving such tasks up to the users themselves."

You can read the complete review at:

Life Goals Sets High Bar in Goal Management http://bit.ly/axyYTp

Life Goals - Review

Life Goals v1.0 - Reviewed

I have long been a fan of Alex Curylo's blog. One of the great things about the iPhone / Mac development community is the way that people share resources and knowledge. Alex is a living embodiment of this. So guessing that Alex was a pretty giving bloke and since I respect his opinion I asked him to review my iPhone App "Life Goals."

While perhaps unconvinced on the philosophical need for such an App he does say, "Yep, it’s very pretty. That goes for the rest of the application too — very nicely designed and intuitively laid out and apparently well programmed..."

You can read the complete story at this link: Life Goals Review.

Kintarla - 2010 Shiraz RIP

Sultana's anyone?

We spent all Saturday dropping the shrivelled remains of our Shiraz crop. After a years work, it is pretty heart breaking to have to cut the grapes and leave them to rot on the ground.

You need to do this to stop fungal spores building up in the sticky mass of decaying grapes and to stop the vine wasting resources on trying to ripen the doomed crop. These resources are better spent on building carbohydrate reserves for next year.

So not only do you lose the crop but you have to waste time harvesting it anyway. The only good thing about being a farmer is that it gives you a good excuse to moan.

Bottling is still scheduled for late March, so it will be exciting to taste our first vintage (last years Shiraz and this years Verdelho). We plan on selling this via the new and improved Kintarla Web Site.

Life Goals iPhone App cracks top 20

Life Goals reaches 13th spot on the Aussie Charts.

My iPhone App Life Goals reached 13th spot on Sunday. It is now starting to tail off but I'm pretty stoked that it got that high with no real marketing.

I have just started on v1.1 which will add in some of the features that users have requested. The proposed development pipeline is shown on my blog at www.reefwing.com.au.

GeoDefense Swarm Strategy - Fusion - Crossed Wires

New Downloadable Content for GeoDefense Swarm

There was an upgrade published last night (in Australia) for additional downloadable levels for GeoDefense Swarm. The first level, "Crossed Wires" is free and you can buy another 10 levels (5 medium and 5 hard) for about $1.

The free level is fairly straight forward. If you get stuck a solution is shown in the attached picture. There is probably also a solution using just thumpers. Start by building towers straight up and down from the exit points and then gradually build the path as you get more cash. Eventually you will run out of spots for additional towers, so start upgrading.