Update...

Not much happening on the writing front at the moment (actually nothing). Heaps on at work and I'm doing quite a bit of travelling which doesn't help. Adelaide was absolutely horrible last week - wet, cold and vertical rain.

Winter pruning at the vineyard is in full swing so that eats up one day each weekend. The actual pruning is quite relaxing in a zen like way but is sucks time like a gravitational singularity.

I whipped up a PDF stripping application for a friend last weekend and I'm having a shot at building an iPhone application. I bought the iPhone for my wife but her SIM card wouldn't work in it so I had to keep it myself ("more cunning than a cunning fox who took his A levels in cunningness!"). What a top bit of kit. I have been resisting the siren like call of Apple locking me into iTunes but I have finally surrendered. They now own my soul (not to mention all my music).

Of course being Apple you can't use any of the programming languages that I already know, so I have to learn Objective C. I'm currently most proficient in C# (Microsoft's proprietary C variant) so it shouldn't be too painful but as I'm having a go at coding a game, I will also need to learn OpenGL to do the graphics. My plan is to build it in C# and then port it to Objective C. That way I can get the logic right and it gives me time to save up for a MAC (which you need to program iPhone Apps).

Apparently some dude made US$250K in his first 2 months of App sales. I'm assuming this is at the high end of the bell curve of sales but if I can cover the cost of the MAC then I'll be happy. No doubt this is like writing where you hear about the Dan Brown's who make it big but not all the other poor bastards slaving away and trying to break in.