Solipsism Gradient

Back from our 2-month trip – Valparaíso to Sydney. There’s a 13-hour jet lag to get rid of, so for now, here’s just our updated world map:

A full status update will be posted soon.

Herewith a much-delayed status update.

Our cruise has been quite interesting, there still are two weeks to go. To make a long story very short, we’ve visited Robinson Crusoe Island, Rapa Nui (a.k.a. Easter Island), stopped off Pitcairn (but were unable to go ashore), then Raivavae, Papeete on Tahiti, Moorea, Bora Bora (all in French Polynesia), Rarotonga and Aiutaki (Cook Islands), then Nuku’alofa on Tonga, Levuka and Suka on Fiji, and finally Norfolk Island (which belongs to Australia).

After that, the ship stopped at a variety of ports on New Zealand: the Bay of Islands, Auckland, Tauranga, Napier, Wellington, Picton, Lyttelton (the port for Christchurch), Dunedin, and (today) the Stewart Islands. Soon we’ll be on our way to Tasmania, visiting Port Arthur, Hobart and Devonport, finishing off with two days each in Melbourne and Sydney, both of course in Australia. From then on it’s a long flight back, with a two-day layover in Buenos Aires. We should be safely home by the end of January.

Whew.

On the app development front, much progress has been made. The generic app framework is mostly ready for prime time – it works well with two of the three application types that I plan to release, and I’ll start testing the third type tomorrow. The architecture looks very plug-in like. However, the current incarnation of the Mac App Store doesn’t allow selling plug-ins, so the generic app is a static library linked to what would otherwise be the plug-in; there are some standard nib and graphics files, and specific files for each application. I’m quite satisfied that this will make it easy to implement new apps down the road.

Details on the apps themselves are still not ready for release, as I first plan to do a short but intense private beta program as soon as I get back home – the on-ship Internet has download speeds very like in the old 28800-baud modem days, and the upload speed is almost zero. If you’re an interested fellow developer, feel free to email me and I’ll be in touch.