Pyrofer’s Projects

I recently got an email asking me to renew my developer account, and noticed that it implied that not only did I require the subscription to submit apps and test on real hardware, but to continue sales of existing apps.

That means, when a developer subscription expires, their apps will be removed from sale.

Anybody not making money, or just bored will not renew, and as a result thousands of (cr)Apps will disapear from the Appstore.

This hasn’t shown much yet as the store is still <1 year old, and only a few thousand select developers got accounts approved before the store opened. However, in the months following the opening a gold rush started and every man and his dog started making whatever they could to push out in hopes of a lucky strike.
After July, I expect mostsy in August/September a large number of these accounts will be up for renewel. I cant wait.

I imagine the novelty of paying $99 a year in order to distribute free apps will have worn off. Also, anyone who has seen their sales drop so low they dont receive a payment will also wonder if they should renew. People who did it because it was new, for fun, during a gap year etc will all expire.
I hear people saying, but wont it just fill up with new Apps from new accounts?
I dont think so. The gold rush is over, the quality level has raised substantialy, and in order to sell an app you need to make a good one. There will no doubt be a constant influx of new developers, but I think it will decrease from the initial gold rush at the start. I also hope the new developers will be better, more experienced in coding and the quality level will continue to rise.

In short, I see good things for the Appstore. Less chaff, more wheat.

Good for Apple, good for developers, and good for customers.

Ok, I managed to get all my 3D pic stuff including the new LCD and a nunchuck controller inside the tomytronic case!
Ive got the joystick poking out the top along with the buttons to almost mimick the original control method as well as the accelerometer still wired up inside for tilt sensing. Its all working off the original AA battery compartment too. 3AAs via a dc2dc to give me 3.3v which then feeds the PIC and LCD as well as a bluetooth serial transceiver for linking to another game, or to a pc for multiplayer action.
Check it out on the full page at
Modded TomyTronic

I decided to do something everybody else has done, and bypass the need to fiddle with input devices.
The nunchuk provides a nice joystick, accelerometer and 2 buttons all packaged up with an i2c interface. My new PIC24 board had the i2c pins free so I hooked it up, bodged together some quick i2c code and viola!
My 3D spaceship is now under the control of the wii Nunchuk. My next step is to dump the wired nunchuk I de-plugged and to use the wireless variety cheaply available. It was quite simply to get working with the Microchip C compiler for PIC24.

Apple seem to have expired my certificates.
I should have about 3 months left.

So they told me to suck their balls, and apparently meant it. I can no longer re-submit my app because I dont have a valid developer certificate, despite only being 9 months or so into my ONE YEAR membership.
Apple so far have not even bothered to reply to my emails regarding their insults, personal rejections and now stealing 3 months of my developer time.
Im getting angry.

Ok, I updated my work on the PIC with 3D graphics. Amazingly, a giant step forward moves me back because the LCD has no 8bit colour mode, making it half the speed to render too. If it wasnt for that it would be quicker than the old one. Instead its slower.
Nevermind eh.
Video on TomyTronic Page

I found a decent box!
I also integrated the synaptics touchpad with the widget, the plan is to fit the touch pad on the back of the widget box, allowing decent control and interaction with the firmware other than the three front panel buttons.

Check out the widget page for a full size image.

Tech Adventure
What do you get when you mix lots of techies and Uni Students? Something like this, involving Robot spiders being hunted by automatic robot sentry bb guns.
I was very impressed by everything I saw, but the robots really took my attention. This hex walker was so cool. Seing it in photos and videos doesnt do it justice, watching it move in front of you is amazing. Click the Image for a youtube experience of the Spider moving about. Its called ‘Heximotional and comes from UWE (university of West of England).
Anyway, Thanks to all those that turned up! Check out my
Flickr Stream for all the photos.