-
Gibberish Has Made It to the App Store
So, Gibberish has finally been approved in the App Store. I've added an In-app purchase, but it's a bit more expensive than subscribing on the web. So, it might be better to avoid subscribing through the app if you can. When I submitted the original…
-
Good Ramen in Singapore
After a disappointing experience with Takagi Ramen via Grabfood, my wife and I thought it was time to go outside and find some proper ramen. So we began our quest of finding the best ramen in Singapore. We didn't trust Google results for this kind of…
-
Every time I come up with a new idea for a Safari extension, I will think about the 1-star reviews I got because of iOS bugs or YouTube's code changes.
-
Random Quotes
Just writing down some quotes that I came across recently, or that randomly popped into my brain. They made me think, but for some reason, I cannot turn those thoughts into blog posts. So here they are, in their original form. Joan Westenberg: I was no…
-
Being Bad with Money
Usually, when people say they're 'bad with money,' it means that they're not great at saving or budgeting, like they might blow their whole paycheck in a week. Well, I've got a different problem. I'm bad at charging money. Like I think 'business' is a…
-
Launch: Vinegar 3
Today, I'm launching Vinegar 3, a small update to Vinegar. This update introduces a new extension, Vinegar Extract. Vinegar Extract does what the original Vinegar does---it replaces the YouTube video player with a <video> tag. But it doesn't block ads.…
-
Don’t Quit Your Job
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons is entirely coincidental. Why do you want to become an indie developer? If your answer is "to make money," then boy, do I have some bad news for you. Look, I'm…
-
On Writing Poorly, Still
Three years ago, I decided to turn my portfolio website into a blog. I wrote an embarrassing post about how bad I was at writing. Now, I'm happy to report that I'm still terrible, but at least I can churn out terrible posts at a faster rate now.…
-
The Devolution of UI Design
Back when I got my first Mac, I was really into UI customization. I'd spend hours on websites like MacThemes and DeviantArt, looking for the next cool theme or icon for my Mac. My favorite theme was Milk by Max Rudberg. There were all sorts of people…
-
How to Make Money from Apps
Disclaimer: I'm the creator of a subscription-based web service, so I might be a bit biased. And I'm not even following my own advice here. So, please take my words with a grain of salt. You know how sometimes you see someone launch an app and then people…
-
Why Did You Choose Such a Stupid App Name?
Gibberish was originally named 'Hottakes'. When it got to a point where it wasn't totally embarrassing, I showed it to a friend who is more business-savvy than I am. He gave me lots of advice. He said that I should make the app free and add social…
-
Designing the onboarding process means making some screens that highlight your app's features, just so your users can press 'Next', 'Next', 'Skip', 'No Thanks' to start using the app.
-
How to Comment on Social Media
Rebecca Solnit (via Kottke): 1) Do not read the whole original post or what it links to, which will dilute the purity of your response and reduce your chances of rebuking the poster for not mentioning anything they might’ve mentioned/written a book…
-
Watching People Use a Computer
When I was 17, I took the driving license test. The test has two parts: a theory test and a road test. The theory test had 50 multiple-choice questions that were selected from a list of 500 questions. The questions were in Malay, and my Malay was poor.…
-
冷門老歌
I'm writing this post to test Unicode support in Gibberish and to practice my rusty Chinese. Feel free to skip this if you're not…
-
Online Communities That Are Not for Me
I've come to realize why I've never been able to fit into the Reddit community. Because Reddit is basically a bunch of reply guys replying to each other. You find reply guys on all social media, but Reddit seems to be specifically designed for them. On…
-
My Computers
My first time using a computer was at a tuition centre during my primary school years. It was a generic beige box, probably running Windows 95, but set to boot in DOS mode. I remember having to go to C:\WINDOWS and type win to start Windows. The first…
-
Singapore Ruby Brigade
In 2007, I joined the Singapore Ruby Brigade, a Ruby user group in Singapore. I wasn't one of the founding members, but when I joined, most of them were still active. We used to have a small meetup every month, with around 20 people attending. Usually,…
-
Stormgate and ZeroSpace
Real-Time Strategy (RTS) games have become less popular in recent years. Many developers have left Blizzard, which was then bought by Microsoft. After that, even more people were laid off. So, it seems less likely that we'll see a new RTS game like…
-
Are Indie Developers not Rich?
Sean Heber, on Mastodon: [...] I'm a software engineer who's not making those big bucks everyone else seems to be making. I work for a small company that's barely hanging on. I used to easily afford eating out and buying toys and still have a bit of cash…