For no good reason whatsoever, this site, and everything else I host on this vps, now supports SSL/TLS via LetsEncrypt. We’ll see if I remember to update the cert every 90 days until they start granting longer expiration dates.

When using CoreData, it is possible to create a NSManagedObject that lives outside of a NSManagedObjectContext by passing nil as the context arguement to -[NSManagedObject initWithEntity:insertIntoManagedObjectContext:]. If you later decide you want to store the object, just use -[NSManagedObjectContext insertObject:]. This works great, unless you have parent/child contexts. If you use this method and insert into a child context then the new object attributes do not get propagated up to the parent context when saving. The resulting data loss is bad news.

You can get more details and run my sample project on GitHub.

After three and a half years of mediocre sales, I have decided to remove GuestBook from the iTunes App Store.

I briefly touched on the origins of the GuestBook app when I open sourced the app 2 years ago. The diminishing motivation caused by having a kid and the lack of a personal use case have caused me to re-evaluate even selling the product. Why not just make it free? Because there are now 18 other GuestBook- type applications in the app store search results. Some are free, some charge good money (at least for the app store), and all of them are more likely to receive an update than the original (mine).

I did eventually ship another update in July of 2014 to fit the flat aesthetics of iOS 7, and to allow users to export their data. I think that final point was the key to allowing me to finally emotionally let go of this project. I was beset with guilt over selling a product to hold people’s touching personal moments, only to potentially trap those moments forever if a future OS upgrade were to break the app. Everyone who has the app now can export those events as a web page and save them elsewhere.

I have other side projects in mind and I have started work on one that looks promising. Hopefully it won’t take me years to find the free time to finish and publish it.