Today at work was very much a continuation of what I was doing yesterday. I was monitoring the latest app release, while also doing a bit of work on UI testing something else!

Apart from work, my day hasn’t exactly been that much more interesting. I got home, ate dinner, did the usual mindless activities on my phone (Twitter, Instagram), caught up with my RSS reader, and then watched a film with my girlfriend!

Maybe the film should be classed as interesting. But it was something I’ve seen before. The problem was, I was enjoying the beginning as I forgot most of the storyline, but after about a quarter of the way though, my mind had already remembered the rest. So I couldn’t exactly stay focussed.

I had a very exciting day at work. As I released an app! Okay, well it was an update. But it was a complete rebuild of a very stable app, and only myself worked on it. So it was a big deal for me at least.

So, because of that, I spent the majority of my day staring at the app analytics, and monitoring how the app was going. It was getting some interaction within the first few hours, and it’s looking positive, but I’m sure I’ll know more after the app is updated on people’s phones.

At home, I also did a tiny bit of development on Text Case. I added a Rot13 format, which is something that was requested a while ago, but I wanted to postpone it as one of the extra features in the 2.0 release.

Regarding Text Case 2.0, here’s basically what’s new/changed:

• It’s been completely rebuilt from scratch (Not exactly appealing to users)
• Complete redesign, which adds some further structure to the app using sections, and also changes the approach from a simple functional utility, to what I think is a great and rich app.
• Three new formats: Base 64 Encode, Decode, and Rot13.
• One-tap copy. Previously this required a long press to open a contextual menu, and a copy button would appear..
• Much better “dialogs” in the app. For example a small bubble appears from the bottom temporarily after you’ve copied a text. It shows the format used, and the result of the format.
• Themes! There’s now a light and dark mode, so if iOS 13 adds a dark mode it’s ready.

It still feels a bit bare to me. As it’s a 2.0, I want it to actually feel like it. I haven’t got many other things on my mind at the moment, but I do know that I want to add custom app icons. That’s something I think people will enjoy. I’ve had the idea of a “text to emoji” format in my task manager for a while, that I may add as well, but I’m not 100% sure yet.

After a pretty relaxing weekend, it was back to normal at work. I was working on some basic UI interaction in an app, and that meant getting to grips with Cucumberish a bit more, as that’s what we’re using for UI testing. It took a while for me to fully grasp how it works, and how to tie in all the different actions/tests, but I’ve got the hang of most of it right now.

Apart from work, I’ve mainly just been watching videos about aquariums. Mainly ones about aquascaping, keeping minimal/nano tanks, and just loads of setup videos. I used to keep fish before I moved out, but it was just things like Goldfish, and Shubunkin. While they’re pretty common, they make a ton of mess and the tanks took a lot of effort to keep up with.

What I’m looking into doing soon, is getting a very small tank, probably around 30x30x30cm. And then taking my time to slowly grow a minimal planted aquarium. Ideally it would have a high number of plants, low number of fish/shrimp, and therefore a much lower level of maintenance. Of course I’ll be posting any updates here, but I’m not sure when it’s actually going to happen.

Another relaxing Sunday!

I started the day with a bit of World of Warcraft and some New York bagels.

Then we had some of both mine and my girlfriends family round for coffee in the afternoon.

After they went home, I cooked a chilli con carne and jacket potatoes for dinner!

Then in the evening there was a birthday in my girlfriends family, so her whole family celebrated that.

After all the relaxing, I’m now ready to go back to work!

It was a big day for football today! Time for a North London Derby, with Arsenal playing Tottenham at “their ground”. I was watching it in a pub with friends. It was a game full of referring mistakes, and although for most of the game Arsenal were winning, Tottenham were given an incorrect penalty and it ended in a draw. There were positivities to take from it though, and we still didn’t lose, so that’s not as bad.

After getting back from the pub, I was greeted with a delivery. It was a bonsai tree that I ordered a few days ago. It’s a Zelkova (Japanese Elm) and it’s going to be sat on my desk in my home office.

In the evening, I’ve been playing some more World of Warcraft either side of dinner. I think I’m getting hooked on it again.

It was a very interesting day at work. We spent the second half of it doing listening to some internal tech talks that people made, and a few cool workshops, with my favourite being one about thinking of an idea about your first talk. I may end up doing one myself!

On the train home, I wrote a piece about a cool menu bar app I found called RunCat. It’s basically a running cat animation that syncs to your CPU speed.

When I got home I just watched YouTube for an hour, and ate dinner. But then I got invited to the pub, so I’ve been there for a few hours with friends.

Now I’m back at home again, so I’m watching the latest episode of The Instance, and I’ll probably end up playing World of Warcraft in a minute! I keep thinking to myself about the time, but then I remember it’s Friday!

There are loads of apps that track your Macs CPU usage. But only one of them uses a running cat to visualise it.

RunCat is a free Mac menu bar app that features a running cat that adapts to your CPU speed. If it’s running relatively slow, then the cat will just be running at a leisurely pace, but if it’s running really high (try building a huge Xcode project), then the cat will go crazy!

It’s really fun!

Runners

It’s not just a cat either, you get to choose from 21 different “runners” for free – Cat α, Cat β, Cat γ, Cat Tail, Mock Nyan Cat, Parrot, Human, Push-Up, Sit-Up, Rubber Duck, City, Sausage, Dots, Dinosaur, Terrier, Hedgehog, Horse, Penguin 2, Hamster Wheel, Octopus, and Steam Train.

There’s also another 21 runners if you want to pay for them – Cheetah, Dog, Puppy, Rabbit, Frog, Bird, Penguin, Dolphin, Dragon, Owl, Cogwheel, Bonfire, Drop, Rocket, Pendulum, Newtons Cradle, Sine Curve, Pulse, Coffee, Reindeer & Sleigh, and Snowman.

And if you really want to personalise RunCat, there’s a paid option to unlock the “Self-Made Runner”, which will let you create your own animation to track your CPU usage.

Options

There are a few options in RunCat to change the way it works:

• Show CPU Usage – This puts the CPU usage percentage as text next to the runner.
• Invert Speed – This means the runner will be running fast when your CPU speed is low, and vice versa. Sounds weird to me.
• Flipped Horizontally – This flips your runner, so it will run in the opposite direction.
• Launch at Login – I shouldn’t need to explain this.

Download

Check out the RunCat website, and download RunCat for free from the Mac App Store.

I finished something at work today, which was pretty cool, and now allows me to clear my plate ready for the next task! It was the networking layer of an app I mentioned in yesterdays entry. It’s as good as it can be at the moment, but I’m aware it may need slightly tweaking when adding in any requests later, as the api is being built at the same time.

One thing that did disappoint me was the fact that my code coverage is no longer officially 100%. Our aim is 80%, so it was going pretty well! But I was working on core logic, so it was all pretty easy to cover. However, as much as I can split up, and mock parts of the networking functionality, there’s some code that will only be used when making real HTTP requests. And that’s just something I haven’t best worked out how to test reliably.

I did finally get around to doing a bit of work on Text Case on the commute home. Nothing big, but I added support for encoding and decoding Base64! It’s not exactly something that is hard to find somewhere else at the moment, but it was very easy to add, and it means that Text Case now has two more formats, bringing it up to 18! (If you count the four variations of Title Case as one) You can sign up for the beta on TestFlight!

After I got home, I had my dinner while watching yet another episode of Lost. One thing led to another, and I ended up watching about 3 episodes. But luckily there’s literally over a hundred episodes to watch, so I’ll be fine for a while.

When I finally decided that was enough Lost (well I’ll watch a bit more before bed), I put my Switch in the dock, and started to play Pokémon on the big screen! And that’s what I’m doing right now as I write this entry!

A very good day today!

I don’t need up working from home, so that’s a bonus. I was working on the networking layer of an app, and at the same time trying to make everything flexible enough so it can be properly tested.

And after work I headed into London to watch the Arsenal game! It was a complete domination, and we beat Bournemouth 5-1! One of the beat games I’ve been to at The Emirates.

Hopefully I’ll get to go to a few more games before the end of the season.

I had possibly the most unentertaining day today. It wasn’t bad in anyway. But, there’s only so many ways you can write “I went to work and did the same thing I did yesterday, and the day before that…”.

As you may have already guessed, I went to work today. I did work stuff, and when I finished the stuff, I left.

Apart from work, I went back to my parents house for dinner, went out for a coffee with friends, and I’ve been playing World of Warcraft since.

Maybe tomorrow will be a bit more interesting. Maybe not.