MRR Software

I’ve been working away on the latest version of Syrinx, and I’ve added some valuable content.  Humorously I’ve given this next version (1.3) the codename: “Conversations with Friends”.  That should give everyone an idea what’s coming up.  I’ve been running this version for the past few days and it seems pretty solid.  Unfortunately I am holding back the release as I’m on vacation this coming week and I don’t want to have a new release going out without me here to make sure all goes well for the users.

Along with the new version of Syrinx, I’ve been updating the website.  It will now have feature overviews to help people get the most out of what Syrinx is capable of.  This is especially important as I build up the feature set, new users will be able to spin up more quickly.  And I’m building an FAQ section to address the questions I’ve been receiving through email.

Lastly, it appears Twitter has been having issues with their APIs lately, from missing tweets to just not responding at all.  Hopefully they will continue to get these issues ironed out in a timely manner.

That latest beta of Syrinx (v1.0b4) has been good and stable over the last day.  I think this will be the one to make it out as a full 1.0.  I am away this weekend to do some maintenance on the Saab, so I think Monday or Tuesday when I get back will be a good time to push it out.

I’m excited to see how the website works under a little more strenuous load.  As an added bonus, for the first time I’ll have file-level tracking, so I’ll be able to get a much better estimation of how many times Syrinx is downloaded.  Previously, being hosted off .Mac(Mobile Me), I could only tell how many page hits I received, but I never knew how many of those hits turned into downloads.  No longer will I have to estimate from MacUpdate and VersionTracker results as I have with NameChanger.

I think overall Syrinx will be well received.  Is it as feature rich as I would like?  Of course not, but at some point you have to release.  ”Release early and often” has become difficult for this 1.0, but I hope once I get it out, the dot releases will flow earlier and more often.

I would also like to update NameChanger in the coming weeks, to further generate some traffic to the site, and maybe those folks will stop by and see the new site and notice Syrinx.  One downside, perhaps one of the only ones, of Sparkle updates is that folks no longer have to come by the website, so they/I/we miss out on the opportunity to share new products.  Even so, the ability to get updates, especially for bug fixes, into user’s hands quickly and easily far outweighs any other concerns.  After all, the usability of a single app needs to take priority over the possibility of pimping out your other applications and your website.

Finally got the website up.  NameChanger and Curb have been moved over, the MacUpdate and VersionTracker link updates have been submitted.  Soon Syrinx will be out there as well.

I still have to close out the old site and throw up some redirects to the place, but I’ll wait for MU and VT to finish moving the links.  I’m also fairly new to the website/domain management, so I’ll be playing with Webalyzer and learning my way about as I go.

My website development has been put on hold as I work through bugs popping up in the latest Syrinx betas.  I pushed out 1.0b1 on Monday.  Today I have cranked out both b2 and b3, as two separate deadlock bugs appeared.  The first was my fault as I had failed to properly initialize an array.  The second was the fact that creating an NSAttributedString with HTML goes out to the run loop.  While there it is entirely possible for Syrinx to accept more events, and then try to reacquire a lock that is already being held on that thread that was waiting for the string.  While I thought I had cleaned all of that up during my refactor, I had overlooked one cause.  I moved a line of code, added an if check and there we have b3.  1.0b3 is also the first release to be hosted on the new web server here at mrrsoftware.com.

Now I just need to finish up the website, which is very close to done.  By then hopefully I can get Syrinx out as a full 1.0 and let the masses have at it.  I already have a surprisingly long list of future features, plus lots of feedback from betas I have given out.

I’ve been hard at work today, building a website worthy of my having finally acquired mrrsoftware.com.  It started by thinking about different tools I could use to build the site.  As a coder, it’s always tempting to learn a couple new languages, grab an editor and just write it all by hand.  Luckily I came to my senses and realized I just don’t have that kinda time right now.

I have been using iWeb, which is fantastic at what it does.  But unfortunately that fantasticness comes at the price of not being able to tweak things to be just the way you want.  Don’t get me wrong, I think I’ve designed a very nice website so far, but there are things I would like to do that iWeb just won’t allow.

Combining these first two paragraphs brings me to the conclusion that perhaps I can design and build in iWeb, and then tweak that code by hand.  I realize all the detriments this leads to, but I think I can pull it off, at least until I’m ready to dig deeper into the web.

While I was poking around web site builders, I very briefly tried out RapidWeaver.  RapidWeaver has some amazing themes built in.  There were at least five that I would love build a website with.  But once you get past the themes, you’re right back to paragraph number one, and learning a couple languages to build the contents of those themes.  If I ever get to a place where I can dedicate the time to building a website by hand, I think I’ll be stopping by RapidWeaver.

Also during my construction phase, I thought a lot about an icon that could represent MRR Software.  I wanted something simple, but meaningful. Since I do all my own graphic design(I do all my own stunts as well), I came up with a simple plan.  I took the picture of my dog Callie that has adorned my .Mac website for so long, and made a simple silhouette.  Then I outlined it to help give some depth and then on a last minute whim I added her red bandana which she is rarely without.  I think the red bandana really stuck the final chord that said “Yes, this is what I wanted.”  The end result is pictured on the right.

“End result” may be wishful thinking on my part as I’m likely as not to tinker and tweak it as ideas come to me, but for now, the raw nature of a three-color silhouette, the almost unfinished quality, well that’s MRR Software is right now.  It’s an unfinished idea of what I’d like to do.  But it’s a start, and that’s usually the hardest part.