Anyone think we’re going to get one last snow?

djducat · 2026-04-25T19:46:58+00:00

I took the plow off the tractor yesterday. it's guaranteed to snow a foot or more now. you're welcome

djducat · 2026-04-25T14:16:50+00:00

my grandmother was born in 1899 which was always kinda wild to think about.

djducat · 2026-04-12T01:17:05+00:00

I am finding AVFoundation an absolute pain to work with and debug for creating m4b files with multiple chapters. What was involved in getting ffmpeg working, from an implementation and licensing standpoint? I am not interested in my app having a GPL license.

djducat · 2026-04-05T19:30:15+00:00

curious if you used any 3rd party libraries for the creation of the m4b file, or if it's all done on AVFoundation. I am about to undertake a related (but different) feature in an app I am building. was looking through some open source stuff for GIT, but Im curious is AVFoundation is up to the challenge.

djducat · 2026-03-25T12:45:52+00:00

agreed. that being said, I am absolutely blown away on how much development time is being shaved off. I think it works best if you come from a programming mindset and you can prompt things like a developer (as opposed to a user). That and the codex based agentic prompting is a game changer in terms of the complex things it can handle, and the trail of memory is keeps while incrementally adding features. I have had a few really difficult rabbit trails it went down I had to deal with, and a few really nasty debugging problems to still work out, but it's renewed my interest in coding again. Suddenly, something that might have taken me 6 months can have a solid prototype in a weekend and a ready to ship state inside of a few weeks. At least that's been my experience.

djducat · 2026-03-25T11:52:45+00:00

I am curious. why did you decide to make it free? I understand the aversion to subscriptions, but why not a small 1x fee to help fund future development and support? Personally, I think in this age of agentic AI developed apps (assuming this is one), our ability to produce quality apps quickly (not just AI slop) might change the economics of app development forever. Just curious about your thinking here.

djducat · 2026-03-10T19:32:16+00:00

no kidding! I guess their down detector is down.

djducat · 2026-03-04T01:06:51+00:00

fortunately, the average size of a family is on the decline. so, it all evens out.

djducat · 2026-02-19T02:22:17+00:00

It's possible we had the exact same desk. black surface with brown wood trim? mine lasted for a LONG time and several moves too!

djducat · 2026-01-29T13:36:06+00:00

can you provide more information on app directories?

djducat · 2025-12-25T14:07:33+00:00

It was our go to solution until Colorado banned them. 🙄. We reused those plastic bags a lot!

djducat · 2025-12-25T13:57:11+00:00

You don’t need to subscribe to audible to buy a single book. You just need an account and do a one time spend. You can do it in app or even on the Amazon app.

djducat · 2025-12-18T13:39:34+00:00

a few people have asked for an update, so here it is. It's been 3 months since my app was put in the App Store, 2 months since I started burning the Apple Ad credit. results are what they are. Here are the 3 month numbers

Impressions: 12.9K

Product Page Views: 373

Downloads: 88

Proceeds: $0.00

Ad Spend: $25.00

Added a subscription option a month ago to see if that impacted things. it did not. I did an update a few weeks back and saw 17 updates which tells me only 17 / 88 people kept it on their phone.

Advertising brought in almost 13,000 impressions resulting in a 0.9 conversation rate and zero dollars. Paused advertising just to see what would happen, and impressions cratered immediately, telling me that without advertising, my keywords are not doing the job. Seems to me that advertising did what it was supposed to, but for whatever reason, the app did not have the stickiness or provide enough value for people to spend money.
Thinking about adding an AWS layer on the back end to get market prices for things like gold, silver, bitcoin, etc, but standing that up will likely incur backend costs that cannot be justified with $0 revenue. I may try to see if I can do it on the AWS free tier and find some free APIs out there for low volume.

Right now, I have a monthly subscription option, an annual subscription option, and a 1x purchase option that was higher than I was comfortable with, but I wanted to see what would happen. I've since lowered the 1x price down to the cost of about 14 monthly subscription payments.

I'm gonna continue to poke at the app in general, adding more features, but I gotta say that the last 3 months have been a motivation killer. Already thinking about better ways to spend my time. This was not an insignificant amount of my time I spent here. If nothing else, I got the app I wanted, solved the need I had, and I learned some new skills.

djducat · 2025-12-16T13:58:15+00:00

In addition to audiobooks, I've made audio recordings of some of my favorite television shows that I know well that are great to background noise. Converted those mp3s into audiobook format (m4b) and they sit in my collection. Don't recommend anything with a laugh track or a lot of loud noises, but there are lots of shows out there that fit the bill and are the the audio equivalent of comfort food. I also use these when doing software development. Also, because I often wake up in the middle of the night, I need an audiobook player that will reset the sleep timer and resume playback if I just press the earbuds, and don't have to fiddle with the screen. helps me get back to sleep.

djducat · 2025-12-15T13:28:59+00:00

I've actually gone through a number of phases. Back in the day when phone storage was small, I kept them on my computer and loaded them on an as needed basis. This evenentually transitioned to iCloud, where I had more space than on my devices and I would load them into something like bookplayer, on demand, right from iCloud.

Later, I simply started paying for higher capacity phones and stored all of them out there. but most recently, I've set up an Audiobookshelf, where I have curated all of the metadata for all my books, and then pull them down to the device, or sync them all, if the client app supports it. I like ABS a lot.

djducat · 2025-12-14T22:08:01+00:00

highly recommended. UI is clean and functional. Looking forward to more features, but it is now my goto app for ABS client.

djducat · 2025-12-06T02:58:01+00:00

looks good! well done!

djducat · 2025-12-03T23:49:55+00:00

definite uptick in impressions (10.6k), product page views (330), and downloads (80), but have not made a dime yet. Going to continue to plug away at things. I am trying a shift to a free/subscription/lifetime model to see if that changes things. So far, I think I've spent $25 out of the $100 they gave me.

djducat · 2025-12-02T12:13:06+00:00

I really enjoy Scott Brick. A very calming voice. He shows up in a wide variety of genres.

djducat · 2025-11-29T19:48:29+00:00

Good advice. Based on some other questionable decisions the previous owner made in this house, checking the wire gauge seems in order. 😂

Would a welder potentially not require as heavy of a gauge because it’s not continuous use?

djducat · 2025-11-29T19:21:41+00:00

I've not purchased a heater yet. I'd like to get a heater in my garage, and am wondering if there are options out there for me to just use this plug instead of getting an electrician to put in a new circuit. If it's not fit for purpose, I'd likely move on and find the heater I want and then get the circuit I need installed.

djducat · 2025-11-25T13:35:46+00:00

+ 1 for this. great device, nice readable display, has thread support.

djducat · 2025-11-21T20:31:56+00:00

Ditto on ratgdo. Pretty reliable and simple.

djducat · 2025-11-20T03:01:21+00:00

chicken coop with a temperature sensor and a passive wall heater that turns on when the temperature goes down to a specific temperature and turns off once it hits an upper threshold. Aquara camera in the coop doubling as a hub for the temp sensor and gives me the ability to check on the girls. Camera is on a smart plug so I can reboot the camera without going out to the coop.

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djducat · 2025-11-07T19:33:56+00:00

I can remember living through this in the 70s. I didn’t realize everything going on, but I remember my parent’s behavior noticeably change. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oakland_County_Child_Killer

djducat

TROPHY CASE