Introduce yourself!

[Miguel Á. Friginal]

Hello again!

As Chris was proposing in another thread, and even through most of us
already know each other, introductions are in order :) So tell us a
bit about yourself if you have just joined. I will start:

I'm Miguel Ángel Friginal, a Spaniard living in the lovely evergreen
(everwet) Seattle area, and the one person running the show at Mystery
Coconut (http://mysterycoconut.com). Have been working for quite a few
years in the advertising industry as a graphic designer, then as a web
developer. Since I was a kid I have been (obsessively) interested in
coding, design, and games of any type, computer or otherwise, so it
was only natural I ended up as an indie game dev. Although the jump to
not having a stable paycheck every month was kind of scary, I must say
I should have gone for it sooner. In my first year as indie I created
Casey's Contraptions (http://caseyscontraptions.com) with Noel Llopis,
met tons of people in the iOS indie game community and the game
industry at large (you guys rock!), and, by being obnoxious on
Twitter, pushed a bunch of them to write about their awesome,
inspiring projects. That's how iDevBlogADay was created; not as my
personal project, but as a collaboration with all of you in the iOS
community (still the best thing to be a part of in 2011). Let's see
where it all goes next :)

—Miguel

[Christopher Waite]

That was fast :)

My name is Christopher Waite, I'm based in London, UK.

My day job is as the technical manager for a web development company.
Prior to that I was a developer at Yahoo! UK.

It's no secret that my passion lies with game development though. I
setup http://bytesizeadventures.com as a hub for my iOS game
development which I've been doing, in my spare time, since 2009. I've
release 3 games to date (non of which have been particularly
successful) and am currently waiting for Apple to approve my side
project (An iOS coffee App called Coffee Cellar).

The next challenge for me is to get aboard the Freemium train and see
if I can produce a compelling game with micro-transactions. We shall
see.

[Fábio Rodella]

Hello fellow iOS developers,

My name is Fábio Rodella, I'm from Brazil and exactly one-half of
Crocodella Software (http://www.crocodella.com.br). My business
partner accounts for the "Cro" in the company name, but he's more of a
silent partner, leaving me in charge of being the public face :) I
finished my Computer Science graduation in 2006 and since then I have
been working on corporate software development (Perl, PHP, C#, Java,
Ruby, I've seen it all), but that wasn't making me very happy. You
see, much like Miguel, ever since childhood the necessity to create
has chased me relentlessly, specially in relation to games. When my
father first introduced me to a computer (an IBM PC with 286
processor) and taught me the first commands of the BASIC language, I
was in awe and spent the following days learning all I could and
coding my first text adventure game.

Then college came and by the time I graduated the game industry in
Brazil was pretty much non-existent, so I had to find a job in the
corporate world, but never ceased to work on my own game projects on
the side. I went from BASIC to QBASIC, then Pascal, C with Allegro and
finally DirectX. When I bought my first iPhone (3G) I could not help
but be amazed by all the possibilities a developer for the platform
could take advantage of, and the low barrier of entry in the App Store
closed the deal. I delved deep into learning all I could about the
platform and started coding my first iOS game, which ended up as Litho
(http://www.crocodella.com.br/products/litho). I then got together
with an old friend who shared the same passion for games and we
decided to give it a serious shot. Thus, Crocodella Software was born
on May 2010. Recently, after learning much from the iDevBlogaDay, I
decided to contribute, and so joined the group.

Unfortunately I haven't been able to leave my day job to focus
exclusively on my passion, but I did find another job working in iOS
development. It's still not games, but it allows me to learn even more
about the platform in general. On our free time, me and my partner are
working as much as we can on our biggest project ever, which we
actually first talked about way back on my BASIC days. My next
iDevBlogaDay post will be about that project, so stay tuned if you are
interested :)

Again, I'd like to thank Miguel and all the amazing developers that
are a part of this wonderful community, and let's keep pushing even
further :)

-Fábio

[Patrick Hogan]

Hello!

I'm Patrick Hogan (a.k.a. Pat, Paddy, Packet and even occasionally,
Paul), @pbhogan on the twitters.

I was born in South Africa and moved to the Unites States around 7
years ago. I currently reside in Oklahoma, work as a web developer,
designer and Informations Systems manager and do some iOS game
development on the side under the banner of Gallant Games. I have one
game in the App Store (Swivel) which has been well received.

In South Africa, I worked for a few years developing educational games
teaching basic literacy skills to kids.

I've mostly been a lurking community member on Twitter and done one
round of blogging on iDevBlogADay, but I'm really excited about
meeting folks at 360iDev this year where I'm giving a talk on Git and
totally doing the Game Jam.

Like everyone here, I love game development. I've been doing it as a
hobby since I was eight on a ZX Spectrum my dad gave me. I'm 31, so
that has been a little while. :)

What's next? I don't know, but I'm looking forward to it!


On Jul 26, 9:49 am, Miguel Á. Friginal <miguel.frigi...@gmail.com>
wrote:

[Raimon Zamora]

Hello everyone!

I'm Raimon Zamora and I joined iDevBlogADay... well, a few minutes
ago :)

I'm a 32 year old spaniard living in Valencia, Spain, with his wife, a
wonderful 2,5 year old son and a daughter to come soon. As most people
I know since following the dev community, I started coding very young,
at 8 with an MSX in BASIC. You know, it was fun to play games, but
making them was awesome! BASIC was not that great for the job, so I
started coding in Z80 assembler (and I still enjoy some Z80 or 6502
coding sometimes!).

From then on, I kept developing games for myself. At college I had a
great fun creating games with my friends. But, living in Valencia, I
had never a chance to work in the game industry, so most of my career
is related to web and enterprise programming. Although my work was
kind of interesting and my coworkers were such nice and talented
people, I felt more and more frustrated about my always vanishing
dream of doing games for a living. I think the tipping point was when
my son was born. I wanted to be with my family in my spare time, so I
had no longer time for games.

So, after a year of planning it, I decided to do a leap of faith and
become a full time independent developer. It could go right or wrong,
but if I didn't try I will repent all my life. Now, 1.5 years after, I
released my first game, Qvoid, a few days ago. I hope it to be the
first of a bunch! I suppose it's the most natural to talk about my
experiences creating the game in my first posts so that's what I'm
going to do.

Thanks to Miguel for iDevBlogADay and everyone for your blog post that
are always inspiring and plenty of things to learn!

Raimon Zamora

[Josh Jones]

Hello!

My name is Josh Jones and am new to the iDevBlogADay (first blog post
coming soon!), and I'm based in San Diego, CA.

I've just started my freelancing business of making iOS apps called Apps
By Night: http://www.appsbynight.com

My business is targeted towards individuals and small business looking
for an app of any kind. My blog focuses on bringing people/clients who
are curious about app development and want to know more. I try to walk
the line of technical and non-technical, and occasionally go over that line.

I haven't made the leap to full-time yet, which might take a year or 2,
but I'm hoping to get there as soon as I can! I work on ASP.NET stuff
for my day job so it pays the bills, but eventually I'll take the plunge.

Check out my website http://www.appsbynight.com and follow my personal
account on Twitter: @twonjosh

You can also follow my company's Twitter at @appsbynight

[Sjoquist Douglas]

My name is Doug Sjoquist, I live in southwest Ohio in the US. I work from my home in the country where it is difficult to get a good internet connection, but otherwise is very nice.

I have been doing software development since college in the late 70s (I had never even see a computer in person before, let alone used one, until my freshman year).

My first programming was done on a teletype ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Teletype_with_papertape_punch_and_reader.jpg ) connected to a larger university's time-share system using a version of BASIC. I was a chemistry major and we had a one credit class where we had to learn enough BASIC to write a program related to our major, as I recall, my project was a question and answer program that took you through chemical identification (I was taking Qualitative Analysis at the time). It only took a couple of sessions before I was completely hooked!

My earliest computer game experience was typing in the game 'Hunt the Wumpus' from a copy of Creative Computing, and saving it to paper tape (at a lightning speed of 10 characters per second.) I did my first custom programming for a client about a year later on a TRS-80, a medical insurance management program. I ended up working the computer center at the college for fourteen years after graduation, back when commercial use of the internet was still kinda-sorta forbidden.

I left the college and went independent in the mid-90's, doing R&D projects for the US Air Force and DARPA, and eventually enterprise-y stuff (mostly Java) in the private sector. When the iPhone SDK was introduced, I was very interested, but pretty committed to some existing client work. By late 2009 I started getting deeper into it, and attended 360iDev where I met all kinds of great iPhone developers, including Miguel at the game jam.

Currently, I split my time between a long-term client that I do Java development for, and various iOS projects -- my only problem is carving out time for my own projects, but I'm getting there! My oldest son just graduated from college and will be working with me over the next few months to develop his iOS skills. His goal is to develop apps and games (mostly games!) for the AppStore.

I don't have strong feelings about where iDevBlogADay should go, but I'm willing to help figure out what works for most of us. I know that iDevBlogADay has helped me write far more often than I would have otherwise, and I really appreciate @mysterycoconut's work!

Thanks again Miguel!

[Christopher Waite]

Really interesting how many people grew up on Basic.

I feel I should add that I too was taught Basic, by my father, when I
was a wee lad (GWBasic in fact). That's actually where I got my first
taste of games programming, writing test adventures in Basic :)

I have a BSc in Computer Science (graduated in 2004) and much of my
professional career has been spent with Java and only more recently
PHP, JS, Perl, and the likes.

Also, I have no idea how Doug has managed to make his post take up the
full width of the screen. Everyone else's post is about 200px wide :)

p.s Sorry for butting in part the way through introductions.

-Chris

[Miguel Á. Friginal]

Agreed! How the heck did you do that Doug??? BTW, ZX Spectrum BASIC
was also my first, then Z80 assembly, then somehow I did Pascal… Ah,
the joys of micros :)

[Sjoquist Douglas]

I have applied for a patent for my super-secret method, I will be happy to license it at a reasonable cost per message. Note that by reading this message, you agree to all terms now and in perpetuity :-p

Big secret: I replied via email.

[Miguel Á. Friginal]

BTW, you should totally encourage your son to write about his learning
experience in iDev. He will meet more people willing to lend him a
hand, and it will hopefully help him in the future. Also I always
though students learn as much as they teach others in the process :)

[Shane Crawford]

Hello everyone. My name is Shane Crawford. I'm the founder and chief floor sweeper at Blue Lightning Labs. I've been a full-time Indie since late 2007 and was lucky enough to have an app in both the iPhone and Mac AppStores on their respective day ones. My primary app is currently an education app called Mathemagics which has been pretty popular amongst the math inclined.

I have a pretty varied history but like many here learned BASIC when I was in junior high from a TI-99/4A manual that I had borrowed from a friend (does that give you a clue as to my age :) For the most part I lost touch with programming during college as I focused on a physics degree. But a few years after graduating I took a Java course on a whim and rediscovered my passion for it. Before I knew it I was coding Java and C at a small startup here in Austin Texas. That little startup was bought out by BMC Software and ten years later I woke up with a head full of experience as a lead developer and a body to match. After getting fed up with corporate life I split from them and fell back into my entrepreneurial ways and started Blue Lightning Labs. Best decision I ever made.

Well, that's the short story. If you ever find yourself in Austin give me a ping and I'll buy you a beer. BTW: See you at 360iDev in Colorado this September.

@shanezilla

[DonCarlitos]

Hi everybody. I'm Charlie McHenry, @DonCarlitos, one of three co-
founders of Trilobyte Games. My partners Rob Landeros, John Fricker &
I re-organized the company in early 2010 and re-released "The 7th
Guest" in Dec. 2010. That was a port from the original code (386/VGA
Groovie Engine) to iOS. In May, we released "The 7th Guest:
Infection," a follow-up puzzle game with provenance back to the
original Atari & Amiga days. We're working on a port of our second 90s
blockbuster title: the "11th Hour," and have a number of other
projects in our queue...including "The 7th Guest III: The Collector,"
a prequel to our original that will be released in 13, diabolical
episodes. We're all veterans (I still have my original IBM model 5150
w/64k soldered on the motherboard and an original Osborne One), and
are quite content to be the old-farts on the block. My partner Rob
Landeros is often credited with being one of the first to bring FMV to
the gaming world. He also produced the industry's first interactive
movie (with David Wheeler & Aftermath Media), Tender Loving Care
starring John Hurt.

Find us at http://www.trilobytegames.com, at http://www.facebook.com/trilobytegames;
at http://www.youtube.com/trilobytegames; or, look for me on
AngelList; CrowdStar; or The Startup Guild's site. Props to
@mysterycoconut (whom I follow on Twitter) for putting this together.
Love Casey's Contraptions.

@DonCarlitos

[Fabio Rodella]

Wow, amazing, 11th Hour was the first "multimedia" (read, CD-ROM) game I ever played, fond memories :)

[Mike Acton]

Hi!

My name is Mike Acton (@mike_acton) - I'm the engine director at Insomniac games. I also run #AltDevBlogADay, the "sister site" to this one. It's a bit different, but I like to think that both sites add something unique to the mix. And have a slightly different mix of authors.

I just lurking around here to (1) steal all of your great ideas for site improvements and (2) offer any suggestions I might have based on what we've done with #AltDev so far.

Also, if you have any thoughts, feedback or suggestions specific to #AltDevBlogADay, I'd love to hear those. Miguel has been on our equivalent list collecting up the same so that inspired me to copy him. It's a pattern, I know. :)

Mike.

[Miguel Á. Friginal]

Come on guys, don't be timid :)

[Volker Schoenefeld]

Hey guys,

I'm Volker from Cologne, Germany. I'm one of the Limbic Software co-founders, and this is what I do:

- Technical Director (develop the engines, network code, integrate technologies/apis, etc)
- Lots of game design for TowerMadness, Nuts! and Zombie gunship
- Lead Game Programmer (structuring the game code, implementing mechanics, etc)
- Writing all of our web and server code (not the design)
- Administrator of all of our servers
- Producer of Nuts! and Zombie Gunship
- Whatever else needs to be done

I went to RWTH Aachen University and UC San Diego for my Computer Science master, focused on 3D Graphics/Rendering/Global Illumination.

Blog: http://volcore.limbicsoft.com (I usually write about 3d graphics or networking stuff)
Twitter: @volcore

Cheers,
Volker

[Tom Ortega]

Hello,

I'm Tom Ortega. I helped start http://360idev.com (an iOS dev conference) but got tired of planning conferences that I wanted to attend and preferred to go back to development and attend conferences. :)

I do Adobe Flex programming by day and iOS development by night.  Area 161 (http://area-161.com) is the company that I started with my best friend from high school.

My story is the same as most (i.e. starting with BASIC in junior high), but with a twist. A few years before meeting the computer, in 6th grade, I woke up after having a vision. I went to the schoolyard, walked up to my friends and said, "When I grow up, I'm gonna be a very successful businessman. I'm not sure in what field yet, but I know it'll happen." Suffice to say, I got some strange looks from friends. "Uh...you're in sixth grade." I realized then that eventually I'd be where I am now, 35 years old with a lot of years behind me. Two years later, I realized it was going to be in game dev. I figured, "Hmm...well, there's a lot of things involved in game dev, I better get cracking." So in the 25 years since, I learned to program numerous languages, draw (life drawing was my favorite), animate (traditional and computer), write (fiction, stories, plays, dialogue, non-fiction, tech articles, etc), direct and edit movies (on the computer), study the lives of Rockefeller and Carnegie and other biz giants, read upwards of a few hundred business books, analyzed over 20 companies I've worked with/for to see what was good about their businesses that I could steal and what was bad that I should avoid, started a conference business pretty much by accident (which I sold out to my partner) and have tried to remain a nice guy the whole time to prove someday that nice guys can indeed finish first. LOL

I've always played games, but have only completed 2 and both pretty much straight through with no stopping except potty breaks: Myst and 7th Guest (hat tip, Charlie and friends @ Trilobyte). They were the only two that I enjoyed for the sake of playing, every other game (including the sequels to those two) get a few minutes to a few hours of enjoyment then my analytical mind kicks in to figure out what's fun, what's good, what sucks, what are they doing here, etc that pretty much makes me tire and bore of the game after a few days of playing. Kind of a bummer, but it is what it is.

So why did it take 25 years? To be honest, two reasons:

1. The tech wasn't there. I never really liked joysticks or keyboards as primary input models.

2. Distribution and low-cost to enter platform. I wanted an easy way to get paid and didn't want to pay gobs of money for a devkit.

The iOS platform was the first to satisfy both. Now, it's time to stop planning and start executing.

Mike Acton, I'll hit you up off-list too, in case you don't see this. PLEASE add support for shared control on the Ratchet serious. Realistically, Sony should add this feature at the iOS level, but in the meantime you can make it a patch. By shared control, I mean this: My 4 yr and 7 yr olds love the Ratchet series but have a hard time moving AND shooting. Allow me to use one master controller that works as normal with a secondary controller so he can act as "weapons man". He really only cares about killing and destroying.  LOL Seriously, this would help move so many more units as a normally one player game then becomes a family activity! I was gonna create my own bluetooth controllers, so my boys still ask, "Dad, have you made that cool controller yet?" Really though, it's better if you guys make it.

Thanks,
Tom Ortega
cell: 951.212.9686 | twitter/skype: lordbron
lordbron.wordpress.com area-161.com OneMinuteBite.com

[Miguel Á. Friginal]

Congrats on the success of Zombie Gunship, Volker!

On Jul 27, 9:28 am, Tom Ortega <tom.ort...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello,
>

> I'm Tom Ortega. I helped starthttp://360idev.com(an iOS dev conference)

> *Mike Acton*, I'll hit you up off-list too, in case you don't see this.

> PLEASE add support for shared control on the Ratchet serious. Realistically,
> Sony should add this feature at the iOS level, but in the meantime you can
> make it a patch. By shared control, I mean this: My 4 yr and 7 yr olds love
> the Ratchet series but have a hard time moving AND shooting. Allow me to use
> one master controller that works as normal with a secondary controller so he
> can act as "weapons man". He really only cares about killing and destroying.
>  LOL Seriously, this would help move so many more units as a normally one
> player game then becomes a family activity! I was gonna create my own
> bluetooth controllers, so my boys still ask, "Dad, have you made that cool
> controller yet?" Really though, it's better if you guys make it.
>
> Thanks,
> Tom Ortega
> cell: 951.212.9686 | twitter/skype: lordbron

> lordbron.wordpress.com area-161.com OneMinuteBite.com<http://oneminutebite.com>

[Volker Schoenefeld]

Thanks, took us a little bit by surprise ;-)

Personally, I'm more excited about Nuts! reaching the top 5 free, though, because every day, we're getting hundreds of thousand of people to download and play our game.

That's just insane and a game developers dream :-D

[Matt Rix]

Hi everybody, 

My name is Matt Rix (@MattRix on Twitter), I'm from Mississauga, Ontario (a massive suburb of Toronto), and my company is Magicule. 

The first programming language I learned was QBasic on a Tandy XT, and my love of games started when I played Centipede on my dad's TI-99/4A. 

When I was 15 years old I created a few games with The Games Factory (aka Klik+Play 2). You can't find them on the net anymore, but I still have them around somewhere. The most popular one was called Metabounce 2. 

Later on, I taught myself Flash, and started making stuff with that. After high school I went to a 2 year community college program for "multimedia design and production", and then after I graduated I started working as a Flash developer at a small company in Toronto called Indusblue. I worked at Indusblue for 5 years, creating dozens of Flash apps+widgets+sites, and while working there I created Trainyard in my spare time using Cocos2D. There's a long story about making Trainyard on my blog: http://struct.ca/2010/the-story-so-far/ - the short version is that it did really well, and in January I started working on games full-time. 

Oh and if we're gonna talk about games we love: Commander Keen, Return to Zork, Myst+Riven, Mario 64, Pilotwings 64, Starcraft, pretty much everything Valve makes, and Minecraft. 

Cheers!

2011/7/27 Miguel Á. Friginal <miguel....@gmail.com>

[Volker Schoenefeld]

Oh, I forgot my "games we love":

I'm a Starcraft 2 Master league player :-)

[Jerrod Putman]

Hi everyone,

I'm Jerrod Putman, and I run a little company called Tiny Tim Games,
which is run solely by myself and my wife Shannon (and I suppose you
could say, also by our four-month-old daughter Guinevere).

I started in the gaming industry way back in 2002 working on an X-
Files game for the PS2. Then from 2004 to 2006, I worked at Insomniac
Games, where I was a gameplay programmer on two Ratchet & Clank titles
plus a short stint on Resistance. After that, I worked at inXile
entertainment for two years and have absolutely nothing to show for it
because the project was cancelled after being in development for
roughly five years. I was at a small studio called Point of View
before the recession finally hit the video game industry at the
beginning of 2009, and became a victim of industry-wide layoffs.

It was after getting laid off that I decided it would be a good time
to dip into iPhone development. So I grabbed myself a Unity iPhone
license, and three weeks later, we had released our first game
Sheepstacker. Unfortunately, our games haven't been super successful,
so I've had to take on a lot of contract work (and right now, I'm
working full-time as a contractor). But hopefully we can get another
game out this year (maybe more).

I feel that iDevBlogADay is most important to keep us all inspired to
keep going, especially for those of us who haven't quite had the "gold
rush" success that we've all read about. We're all doing it because we
love it, and it's great to see that passion being shared.

--
Jerrod Putman


On Jul 26, 7:49 am, Miguel Á. Friginal <miguel.frigi...@gmail.com>
wrote:

[JLP]

Hi everyone,

I will try not to write a book...I am 1/2 of a husband/wife team,
Creative Algorithms, based in Chicagoland, but am a Michigan native. I
no longer code, so my husband does all the development & IT, but I do
everything else. I started programming when I was in Jr. high(?), we
had "Super Saturday" programs thru our community. However, we just
wrote BASIC on paper--too expensive to get computers. In High School
I had "Computer Math" (computer science hadn't been coined yet), then
Applied Programming my senior year: BASIC, FORTRAN, & Cobol, on
Apple2e & Commodore64's. My undergrad is in Mechanical Engineering
(grad 1990), because it was a job, but I always wanted to be a
Commercial Artist, but didn't see a career path (no computer design
yet). I met my husband at Michigan Tech, while he was pursuing an
Electrical Engineering degree, with computer option (no Computer
Engineering yet). I wrote more FORTRAN and used it to solve
engineering and math problems, did some Assembly, too (8088) as well
as PLC for Robotics... I also worked as an Ad Production Mgr with our
school paper, so squeezed in some art and learned a lot about layout
and white space.

After graduating, I worked in Automotive, first as a design & test
engineer for airbags, then moved onto what I love--Program Management--
for seatbelts. I managed worldwide multi-million dollar projects (ever
hear of the Ford Ranger/Explorer? ;)) and loved the whole business
mgmt aspect, mixed with tech. So I got my MBA & then we moved to
Chicago so I could get plant experience. Doesn't sound much like
developing apps, tho, huh? Well, my husband fell in love with making
apps for the Palm, but the only money you could get was by asking
people to mail you some cash (really!), but when the internet took
off, he pushed me to do our own company, his dream. I am not a risk
taker, so I added an Entrepreneurship elective, just so I could get a
basic understanding how things work.

Then our kids came, and I took some time off, but in 2003, when my
husband left 3Com, we started up Creative Algorithms. We did Palm OS
apps, until Palm decided to make a lot of bad business decisions. We
were faced with our own mobile decisions--where to go? and ended up on
iOS. We do productivity apps (Trip Boss travel manager, Date Wheel
date calculator, and Serving Sizer recipe apps). I've added UI design
and graphic design to my resume (full circle to commercial artist!),
plus I do the web dev, accounting, marketing, social networking,
conference attending (can't wait for 360 this fall!), customer
service, childcare (3 kids: 4, 9, 10). I love idevblogaday because it
gets me writing and I've had my hand in so many areas, I love to share
what I've figured out. I'm not a patient person, so if things are not
working the way I want, I do what I can to learn and figure them out.
I never got back into actual coding because OOP would take a long
period of quiet, uninterrupted time to pick up, plus I've got plenty
on my plate... Whew.

Love being part of this community...

Justine Pratt
@justinepratt

[Wiley Wimberly]

Hi!

I'm Wiley. I have been dabbling in iOS development for about a year. I have one released app, RipDeck, which is a fitness workout app based on a deck of cards. I have a few others in various states of completion that have yet to see the light of day.

My day job is working for a telecommunications company doing application planning (whatever that is), but unfortunately I don't get to spend as much time programming as I used to. I started learning objective-c and iOS development as a way to scratch the coding itch.

I was extremely motivated while working on RipDeck but lost focus after it was released. I have been looking for ways to motivate myself again and I feel that blogging is a great way to help stay on track. I plan to make app development my full time gig at some point in the near future but the wife and kids like to eat so I'm not quite ready to take the plunge yet.

I have been reading iDevBlogADay for a while now and greatly enjoy the variety of posts and being able to see glimpses into the thoughts of other indie developers. Thank you to everyone involved. Sharing your experiences has been very helpful to me and has inspired me more than you know.

-Wiley

[Ryan Dillon]

Hi,

I'm Ryan Dillon. First of all, I can't say enough how much I
appreciate the iOS dev community including, and especially, this
iDevBlogADay group. I've been following for a while and have been
contemplating signing up for the waiting list. Just when I was working
up the nerve to sign up - expecting to wait for a good long while to
actually make it through the waiting period - there's a new format
with no waiting list! No worries though, I'm excited to jump in and
hopefully someone out there can learn something from my experience,
limited though it is. Unlike many people who've already introduced
themselves, I did not grow up programming BASIC. In fact, up until
about two years ago, the only programming I had done was a tiny bit of
tinkering with my graphing calculator in pre-calculus class. Inspired
by the iPhone, the success of that initial "gold rush," of course, and
armed with an app idea I was passionate about and that was
surprisingly NOT already on the store, I decided to dive in and learn
iOS programming. It was certainly slow going at first, working when I
had time between classes and jobs, after 7 months, I went from 0 to
App Store. Needless to say, I'm still quite new and have a LOT to
learn. I'm always amazed by how much knowledge people have, but then
again, when I look back at what I've been able to learn in two years,
I can see how it would almost be possible to learn so much in a few
decades :-) I could never have done it without all the blogs, forums,
and tutorials that have been made available by this great iOS dev
community. So, even if I won't have much to offer the experienced
person in my blog, perhaps something I write will end up being just
the thing that somebody starting out was looking for. As for my app,
I've actually had some decent success, receiving a few major features
and selling quite a few apps over a year and a half. Not enough to
live off of yet, but not too shabby either. Who knows, if this one
continues to sell, and I get a few more on the store, could be a
genuine business. My one app - and all my ideas for the near future -
are not games, but music related apps. theDrumDictionary is the name
of my app, and it's a reference and practice tool for drummers. I've
written a little bit about the sales, and my thoughts about mass
market vs. more niche apps here on my blog:
https://rdsquared.wordpress.com/2011/02/03/thedrumdictionary-the-numbers-post/

Next project is well under way, so now I'm dealing with how to go
about unifying my apps under a company name/website/twitter/etc. as I
expand, rather than having one for each app. It's all a bit stressful
and difficult, but exciting too of course! If you're interested in
music or music apps, or even just the process of interface design,
maybe you'll find something useful on my blog. There's hardly anything
there now, but I'll be changing that soon! Thanks for reading.

-Ryan Dillon

[Brandon Alexander]

Hello fellow iOS devs,

I'm Brandon Alexander. By day, I'm a Senior iOS Developer for Sapient and by night I'm a budding author and wannabe indie developer.

My story starts with a Commodore 64 when I was a kid. I figured out BASIC from some books my parents let me have and the rest followed as I naturally gravitated towards Computer Science in high school and college. I dabbled in a few technologies and upon graduation, I was a Coldfusion developer for a small vacation packages company based out of Springfield, Mo. After that ship sailed, I became a Java and Flex developer for a rather large insurance company headquartered in Atlanta. After working there about 9 months, I was transferred to their Atlanta office where I became involved in the Flex community in Atlanta. I then moved on to work for an interactive agency doing Flex development when the iPhone got the App Store. I stayed with Flex about a year and half more before I jumped full time into iOS development.

My Cocoa/Cocoa touch experience actually started in college. My roommate at the time was learning Cocoa and I borrowed his copy of "Cocoa Programming for OS X" by Aaron Hillegass. I received my first Mac, an iBook, in 2004 and continued my study of Objective-C and Cocoa until I started getting more into web technologies. It wasn't until the App Store's arrival that I picked back up on my "hobby". I have been doing iOS development full time for about a year now and haven't looked back since.

I have learned so much from the community. I want to give back (and become a better writer/teacher) to the same community that has helped me get to where I am.

Currently, I am working on a major overhaul of Bugztopia (http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/bugztopia/id401535224?mt=8) a Fogbugz client for iPhone. I'm also lead author for "Pro iOS Tools", a book on using Xcode 4 and the full suite of tools (and some open source tools) to improve your application's performance and workflow. While not doing either of those things, I can be found at home playing with my 3 week old daughter, practicing the art of magic or taking pictures.

I'll be speaking on the Objective-C runtime at 360|iDev in September as well.

You can find me on twitter as @whilethis and my sporadic ramblings/rants at http://www.whilethis.com/

Brandon Alexander

[Patrick Chukwura]

Hello All,

My name is Patrick Chukwura, and I'm based in sunny, hot, and humid Atlanta, Ga, USA

I've been developing for about 14 years, and more recently iOS development for the past 3 years. My latest and most favoriate project is 'Goop', Which is my first foray into the world of indie games! I started a company called Fine & Dandy Games which will release Goop as its first title on August 2nd 2011.

The whole 7.5 months spent developing Goop has been a fantastic experience, and now I want to tackle the daunting game(pun intended :) ) of marketing on the App Store lol. I also hope to partner up with some folks here and share experiences and knowledge that can help us all in our current and future projects.

Company: Fine & Dandy Games, Inc.

Website: http://www.fine-dandy.com

Blog: http://blog.fine-dandy.com

Twitter: @dandygames

Thanks

[Ken Carpenter]

Hi everyone,

Here is my brief bio in bullet form:

• Army brat who moved every year for the first 13 years of his life
• Computers: Intellivision, Atari 600XL, Atari 800XL, TI 99/4A, Amiga 500, 386, 486, Pentium, ... iMac, MacBook Pro
• High School in Mission Viejo California
  
• University of British Columbia (Canada) with Bachelor's degree in Computer Science
• Job 1: 1993 - Programmer for a home and building automation company doing embedded software
• Job 2: 1999 - Audio programmer working with Windows to encode, decode, transcode, display and edit audio files
• Job 3: 2000 - Lead programmer and technical design for a MMO space strategy game called Cosm (company ran out of money and closed)
• Job 4: 2003 - Industrial automation programmer for embedded touch-screen hardware
• Job 5: 2006 - Online software engineer at Electronic Arts in Burnaby, BC, Canada
• Job 6: 2008 - Back to the Industrial automation job started iOS development
• Started iOS dev in fall of 2008 and I have several apps on the store (see my other recent post to this list)
  
• Programming Languages: C, C++, Java, Python, Lua and just learning Ruby, HTML5, CSS, Javascript

I have not yet gone full-time indie, but I am working on it!


Ken Carpenter

[AzamSharp]

Hello All,

My name is Mohammad Azam. I have been doing .NET development for the
past 5-7 years. Recently, 1 year ago I was introduced to iOS
development and then after that I was hooked. I have never had so much
fun in programming before iOS development.

I am also the founder of HighOnCoding website (http://
www.highoncoding.com) where I host .NET, SQL, C# and also iOS
articles. I have also started a video series for learning Cocos2d
which is hosted on YouTube. You can subscribe to my channel on YouTube
here (http://www.youtube.com/user/azamsharp?feature=mhee).

I am also cohost of Cocos2d podcast which is also available on iTunes.
You can subscribe using the following link: http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/id433503418.
I have created 4 apps for the iPhone which are available on
http://www.azamsharp.com.

You can follow me on twitter @azamsharp

[Gabor Furedi]

Hi Everyone,

My name is Gabor Furedi, 29 years old from Budapest, Hungary. I am the
co-founder of Bitongo Ltd. (http://www.bitongo.com). We started the
company in August 2010 with Ferenc Vehmann (hopefully he's going to
just this discussion group soon as well) but we have been developing
apps since 2008 for the App Store - previously under the Mac & White
name. We focused on creating games previously but recently we have
released other apps as well. I am going to list our apps in its proper
Discussion.

How I got into programming:

As long as I can remember I was fond of computers. I actually learned
reading / writing on a C-64, before going to primary school :) I
wanted to write my first program before I turned 10 but I had no idea
on how to do it. I imagined you have to tell the computer what to do
as you would tell a story to another person. So I ended up writing
comments into the C-64 terminal, but much to my dismay they never
worked as I intended! (Now that I think about it, creating a speech-to-
source-code app would be interesting ;) Then around the age of 13-14
my father gave me a book by Thomas Plum: Learning C (or something like
that). It was my bible and read it several times, immediately plunging
into writing simple programs. Then I quickly lost interest as teenage
years truly kicked in. Although I picked up some C++ knowledge in my
spare time I was never seriously working on any program, however as I
loved playing great games I was often thinking about what kind of
games I would want to create. I took IT Engineering major in the
university with Telecommunications specialization and I did OpenGL
programming for fun in my spare time (really useful skill nowadays as
well) - I read and learned all about OpenGL on the great NeHe's
website, and when I managed to implement my first real-time dynamic
shadows program I was extremely pleased with myself!

Prof. experience:

During the university I tried working as a part-time developer in two
different companies but I did not enjoy it at all. Working on products
totally indifferent for me, following dumb designs and outdated
practices just wasn't what I was looking for. As I did not want to
become a corporate developer, after graduating I joined the telecom
industry. I worked as a Solution Integrator, then as a Solution
Architect. One of the great added benefits of this job was that I have
worked in 30 countries! Besides giving me unforgettable fun
experience, it was great from a personal and professional development
perspective as well. I specialized in Location Based Services (one of
the crazy new trendy things of early 21st century) and I was the
technical responsible for complex projects for mobile operators in
this field.

The iOS world:

In 2008 a graphic designer friend convinced me that we should try and
develop for the iPhone as the rumor was that Apple was going create an
official SDK! Shocking news. I have never had a Mac, I thought about
it as an epidemic in certain designer circles. I have convinced
another friend (Ferenc, the co-founder of Bitongo) to give this iPhone-
dev thing a try. After wasting a month! on trying to build a reliable
Hackintosh suitable for development, we decided to buy our very first
Apple HW. Never turned back as you can guess :) We started in August
2008 and on 23rd October, our very first app, SlideIt was in the App
Store! Ever since, I am trying to find the proper way to describe the
feeling I have during product release - can't really compare it to
anything! I was hooked.

I have been following iDevBlogADay since its inception and I have
found it inspiring / entertaining / educational and I wanted to
participate in it as well. Now that the changes are happening I
decided it's as good a time as any to join and start sharing our
experiences with the fellow iOS devs out there.

I love technical challenges but I am also interested in the business
side of the entrepeneur life. As we were developing for more than 2
years for the iOS while having a day-job, we saw there's no way we can
do both properly. We decided to give the indie life a try and we quit
our day jobs in 2011 to pursue this great opportunity of building our
own company from scratch!

I have recently created my Twitter account (GaborFuredi) as I intend
to become an active member of this great community.

[Boon Chew]

Hi everyone,

Really happy to be here. Also found out some friends are on this list
as well. :)

Tom (Ortega) gave me this template below when I b1tch3d about not
knowing how to introduce myself.
"Start with your name, then how you learned to program, then why you
chose the iOS platform and then end with your goal."

Here we go:

My name is Boon, currently based in NYC and Shanghai.

I started learning programming (Pascal) after having played Leisure
Suit Larry and a few other games - I can't recall if playing LSL was
what got me into programming or I just happened to be doing them at
the same time. Anyway, I was not much of a nerd compared to most of
you in that I spent more time drawing than I did with coding.

As fate would have it, I ended up working at Sierra Online (or Vivendi
Universal) a few years later and spent some time there making PC/XBox
games. I enjoyed learning a lot about C/C++/the process of game making
on this job but realized I didn't really enjoy the long dev cycle that
much. After a few years there, I went on to work for companies like
Microsoft and Amazon (back then, size matters - we think) and then
started doing consulting on my own after having enough fun working 10
- 8 (remove the word "fun"). I was forced to use Flash on one project
and found it to be really great for impatient people (cross platform?
awesome!) who like to code + draw. Since then I have been dev'ing
heavily in Flash.

Anyway (my short attention span is starting to kick in) I switched
from PC to Apple computer in 2005 (sorry Bill, it's sexier) and later
on iPod in a phone came along (or so I thought). For a year or so I
was still mostly a consumer more than a producer, and in 2009 I
finally couldn't stand ignoring news that people making ka-ching
creating apps for it and plunged into it. Developed Idea Organizer as
my first project in one month. One morning in 2009 (also happened to
be my bday), I discovered the app got featured and I was given a lot
of LOVE (in the form of $$). Didn't make millions but it was enough to
pull me into the abyss further.

(Fastforward) Nowadays I manage a team that's focused on developing
interactive products for ourselves and others. I find myself
developing iOS products not so much for the dough but for the love of
it -- it sounds cliché but true when you realize how painful it's to
make a good app (most of you probably realize this and feel the same
way). Some days I would rather spend time playing Zombie Gunship than
making apps. Thanks Miguel for mentioning it and Volker for making
it...you guys owe me a few days of my life (and a few bucks from the
IAP). Recently I started building another team in Shanghai so we can
continue to make good products at a faster rate.

I look forward to learning from you'all and meeting you in person and
collaborating in some fashion one of these days.

- boon

On Jul 26, 10:49 pm, Miguel Á. Friginal <miguel.frigi...@gmail.com>

[Steffen Itterheim]

Hi everyone! Hi Boon!

I live in lovely Ingelheim, Germany (in the larger area of Frankfurt/
Main). I'm the main author of the book "Learn iPhone and iPad Cocos2D
Game Development" published by Apress (Boon Chew is the technical
reviewer). I'm hosting the http://www.learn-cocos2d.com website and
currently developing the next-generation 2D game engine based on
Cocos2D called Kobold2D (http://www.kobold2d.com once it goes live,
until then: http://www.kobold2d.org). Kobold2D is a project that
evolved out of my needs for better gameplay code and more
convenience.

I'm an autodidact, never went through any formal training after school
- but I did read lots of tech and popular science books. I've worked
in the game industry from '99 to '09, just over 10 years and more if
you count the 2 years of voluntary beta-testing and support I did for
Apogee/3D Realms - at that time I was already eagerly awaiting the
release of Duke Nukem Forever! Nowadays I rather play the Bethesda
RPGs or FIFA.

My first paid job in the game industry was scripting gameplay for
Gameboy games at NEON Studios (now: keen games). In 2002 I joined EA
Phenomic and contributed more gameplay scripting with Lua and .NET
tools to the development of the Spellforce series and Battleforge. The
entire time my overarching job was to build technology and tools that
others would use - which meant documenting became second nature.
Consequently, I've administered and jumpstarted our internal
Confluence wiki. From then on I was spoiled and couldn't believe how
anyone could work with the archaic, open source wikis.

In 2009 - you know it - the industry-wide layoffs forced our studio to
seriously cut its headcount, but also to shift focus from 3D mid- to
high-end games for PC to social webgames (ouch!). While I wasn't
affected by the layoffs, there was no way I was going to work on
webgames (aka non-games). I saw an opportunity to start an iPhone
startup with colleagues, so I decided to leave.

This startup was short-lived, about 6 months. Since I've already had
experience with cocos2d from the startup and knew there was demand for
iPhone developers, I started taking contract jobs for iPhone games
despite my true love for the .NET / XNA environment that I initially
wanted to get back to. However, I never looked back and my (back then)
high-end Windows PC has been settling dust for two years now.

Recently I've stopped taking new jobs to be able to focus on
supporting the cocos2d community and game developers in general. I
actually find helping other game developers more enjoyable and
satisfying than creating my own games. Game developers are a target
audience I understand and respect - gamers instead, I mean who really
knows what they want? :)

Cheers,
Steffen

[Ray Merkler]

Hello, iDevBlogADay!

I'm Ray Merkler, Founder and Only Guy Who Works Here of Hindrances to
Progress (http://www.hindrances.com). My history in iOS development is
longer than it is thick. I've been working on several iOS game
projects over the last three or four years, and my first one that I'll
actually release will be a strategy card game called Fortress in Q2 or
Q3 2012.

Prior to working for myself, I was gainfully but harmfully employed at
a defense contractor in the United States. My six-and-a-half years
there did terrific damage to my mental health, and I finally left in
May to start repairing my brain and making my own way in the world.

I'm based in southern New Jersey, but I count myself amongst the
Philadelphia game dev community, in which I try to be as active as
possible. I'm a member of IGDA Philly, and I also co-organize GameLoop
Philly (http://gameloopphilly.com/), an annual unconference held in
Center City in the Spring and a franchised offshoot of GameLoop Boston
(http://www.bostongameloop.com/). I'm also planning to run for the
IGDA Philly board later this fall, assuming the cocktail of pills and
therapy I'm on do the trick. :)

Related to that, I am extremely (read: 100%) open about my mental
health issues, and I go out of my way to encourage others to open up
about their own, in the interests of helping them treat their
illnesses. I had great results with this philosophy at GameLoop
Boston, where I presented a talk on mental health in the game
industry, prompting an enthusiastic dialogue (http://
www.hindrances.com/2011/08/16/on-the-nude-beach-hypothesis/) and rave
reviews after the conference (http://tinysubversions.com/2011/08/
gameloop-2011-notes/)!

To that effect, let me share with you all: I've suffered from
depression in one form or another my entire life. It manifested mostly
as rage in early adulthood, costing me a couple of relationships
during that time. I eventually sought treatment, was put on Prozac,
and then had a seizure.

Fast-forward ten years to when I quit my job a few months ago. I began
seeing a doctor about my depression again, and was put on Celexa and
eventually switched to Lexapro. This helped the depression somewhat,
in that it quickly became apparent that I was actually suffering from
Bipolar Disorder. I'm now taking Depakote in addition to the Lexapro,
and undergoing behavioral therapy with the help of a therapist and my
EXTREMELY supportive wife, all while taking a sabbatical from
development work but staying active in the community.

I flubbed my last turn on the pre-revamp iDevBlogADay, and I look
forward to redeeming myself. :)

Ray Merkler

[alexbrie]

Hello guys,

I guess it's about time that I introduced myself to the group. My name
is Alexandru Brie, I'm from Romania, 30 years old.
I studied Computer Science in college and for my MSc(along with some
jobs in C & C++) and I lived, studied and worked for a while in Paris,
France(financial software, C language). I was young and wrestless and
eventually got too frustrated by the corporate life that I decided to
come back to my homeland and try to make it as an internet
entrepreneur. Turned out that I wasn't motivated enough or inspired to
turn my small several minor projects into actual businesses, so
instead I followed with several years of Ruby on Rails development for
a US startup, working from home with a very flexible schedule(didn't
help much with my social life but allowed me to spend lots of quality
time with my then girlfriend now wife).

I didn't quit on the dream of working for myself though, so briefly
after the AppStore came out I was up there submitting smaller or
bigger apps, one after the other. It eventually started to pay off
(those were the good old days) and became profitable just enough to
allow me to quit my existing job(right about when the startup funding
ran out), so I started working full time on my own apps. I spent the
past two years improving and updating on some of my more popular apps
such Self Help Classics or Vault Breaker and developing some new ones:
Business Inspiration Classics, Clean Writer for iPad, Clean Writer for
Mac and several incredibly unsuccessful small games.

I am currently trying to upgrade from self-employed status towards
entrepreneurship and created a small LLC Cognitive Bits Software srl
(http://www.cognitivebits.com). I've been quite an active blogger 6-7
years ago but got less and less into it in the more recent past,
although I still write occasionaly on my developer blog (http://
www.alexbrie.com).

I hope that being involved in #IDevBlogADay and the community pressure
it brings will help release myself from whatever inner constraints are
keeping me from being productive, creative and involved (aka
lazyness). So thank you,

Alex

[Kyle Yamamoto]

Hi. I'm Kyle Yamamoto. Half of MochiBits with my friend Howard Go.

I have been doing vfx since 2002, and also worked for SOE and Nullsoft
back in the day doing serverside java and html stuff.

I've been in the Philippines the past 2 years helping a VFX startup,
but I've managed to dedicate a lot of my time to being an indie iOS
developer.  So I guess now I consider myself full-time until I can't
pay the bills or blow up. =)  I'm planning to make my return to the US
in a few months.

Last year when I was trying to figure out what to do, I must have had
a list of like 50 ideas, but most of them were pretty lame.  When I
met my friend and fellow game enthusiast Howard, we were able to
finally come up with an idea we thought would be worth implementing.
That was our gesture game, SwipeTapTap.

Very excited to be part of idevblogaday!

Cheers.

-Kyle

[funkyvisions]

Hi, it's Doug Davies from Funky Visions. Glad to be back on the list. Still plugging away at my 5th game/app. I think Posting again will help me get moving on the project again.

[Erick V. Garayblas]

Hi Everyone!

Erick here from Kuyi Mobile and I just rejoined the iDevBlogADay group. I've been developing iOS games for the past 3 years and have been in the mobile game industry for more than a decade now. As always, I'm glad to share everything I can about indie development, the mobile game industry and other stuff. :)

Best regards,

Erick
http://www.kuyimobile.com/

[bryan]

Hello all!

My name is Bryan Sawler, I'm a founder and current CEO/President/
Slimey Business Guy of Muteki Corporation http://mtki.co/
Been in the game industry for 11 years now (and they said playing all
those games would never pay off, HAH!) and running my own company for
the past 5.

Day job is...well we generally do work for hire type stuff for the
standard players in the iOS world (Disney Mobile, Tapulous, ngmoco,
etc. etc.) from our comfy offices here in lovely Emeryville (across
the Bay Bridge from San Francisco).

In our non-contract hours we try to throw together some internal
projects. Of current note is Dragon Fantasy, which is coming out
tomorrow!
Other internal projects we've done include Battle of Pirate Bay and
Super Jetpack Dragon IV.

[Toni Sala]

Hello,

My name is Toni Sala and was born in Spain in 1982. I got the Computer
Science degree at UPF university, Barcelona, Spain in 2005. After
that, I have been working as a professor (teaching about games design
and development and graphics programming) and researcher in UPF
university and in 2008 moved to UPC university to continue my
research.

In August 2009 I decided that I needed a change and try something out
the university. Then, teamed with a university friend, started an iOS
project called paintingWalls. And this is how the iOS journey started
for me.

Currently, I’m an independent developer focused on design and
development of iOS games and apps. In general, but specially on Apple
devices, design and user experience is essential. So, I don’t develop
apps and games, I design good experiences and create apps and games
that carries them to the people.

So, for me, the human factor is very important. When I design apps and
games I always try to imagine and visualise people playing it. My aim
is to make them have a pleasing experience.

I believe that if you put your best when designing and developing apps
and games, users receive the message somehow. Maybe, they don’t
realise about it, but for some reason they enjoy the game or app and
the experience it offers to them.

Thanks!!

[Iman Mostafavi]

Greetings!

My name is Iman and I'm currently 29 and living in northern California. I'm one of the co-founders of the iOS game studio Limbic Software (www.limbic.com) and have been a member of the design and development teams for Zombie Gunship, Nuts!, TowerMadness, and Grinchmas!

I started studying Computer Science at UC Davis and then went to U.C. San Diego for grad school where I was lucky enough to meet my co-founders.

At the time of this writing being an iOS developer in my opinion is one of the most fun jobs in the world, and it's a pleasure to be a part of a community of other talented individuals who are riding this wave too!

P.S. I'm @imost on Twitter.

Best,
-Iman

[Pat Zearfoss]

Hello Everyone!

My name is Pat Zearfoss, and I'm one of the technical leads for
Mindgrub Technologies in Baltimore, MD, USA. Most of my work has been
on work-for-hire applications. Some are big, some are small. Some
are high profile clients, some, well . . . not so much. All told I've
probably worked on about a dozen or so applications during my iOS
career. I'm excited to have the opportunity to give back to the iOS
dev community by contributing to iDevBlogADay and I'm already planning
my first post!

Cheers!
--pz--

BTW I'm @pzearfoss on twitter.

[MrGando]

Hey Everyone!,

My name is Nicolas Goles, I was born in Chile and I'm 25 years old
( will be 26 next week ). I'm finishing my Software Engineering degree
in Chile, takes 6 years. Right now I'm doing a 6 months internship in
the French Riviera ( Nice, Ville ). I am the founder of Gando Games,
I've been slowly working on this project with some friends in parallel
to my student duties, sadly I don't have a lot of time but when I'm
not studying, I'm developing or Outdoors. With Gando Games, we have
done a little game some years ago, and after that we've worked mainly
on games for clients. Right now we are developing internal tools to
ease our development process and to have fun of course :)

I was at WWDC 2010 because I won a contest held in Chile which awarded
me plane tickets + Hotel fees etc (incredible opportunity!!), and
since then I'm really hooked, I think that sole experience changed my
life. I've been an "Apple" guy since I was born, and just being with
all this great people in 2010 convinced me to push forward.

I hope to read all your great posts in the list :)

Cheers!

_NG

[Carl Brown]

Well, I just posted my first #iDevBlogADay post (at http://www.escortmissions.com/blog/2011/9/3/steal-this-code-and-protect-their-data-simplifying-keychain.html ) and while looking over the rules, I realized I never introduced myself on this thread like I was supposed to. Sorry about that Miguel, et. al.

My name is Carl Brown, I write iOS Apps in Austin, TX, and my company is PDAgent, LLC (http://www.PDAgent.com). I started the company back in 2005 to do work on Palm and Windows CE devices, after I had a customer ask me to do some work for his PalmVII (the first one that had a cellular data connection). Computers that fit in your pocket were all called PDAs (Personal Digital Assistant) back then. No one calls them that anymore, but the company name has stuck.

I'm not a game programmer (although I took a stab at one for the 360iDev GameJam last year and might again this year). I mainly do apps that connect to existing websites and APIs (I have a network programming background). I was half of the team that wrote the Calorie Tracker for Livestrong.com back in 2008. I finally quit my day job and went Indie at the end of June.

In between contracts, I'm currently working on a Mac App that will be targeted at iOS developers. It's an App that you can leave running on your Mac at home or the office which lets you build and run your iOS code from your iPhone or iPad via Dropbox. I build it first as an Open-Source project ( https://github.com/carlbrown/XCAB ) and blogged about it ( http://www.escortmissions.com/code_w/iOS ) and got enough interest that I decided it was worth trying to turn into a product. It's been challenging moving from Cocoa Touch to Cocoa, but I'm enjoying it. I'll be looking for Beta Testers soon, so drop me an email if you're interested.

One more thing, I'm going to be at 360iDev in Denver next week. I really enjoyed it last year, and I'm looking forward to it again. It's a great conference, and I'd encourage you all to go if it wasn't already sold out. Hopefully I'll see some of you there.

—Carl

--
Carl Brown
Ca...@PDAgent.com
Office Phone: (888) 897-3243
President and Lead Programmer, PDAgent, LLC.
Company: http://www.pdagent.com/
Blog: http://www.escortmissions.com/
LinkedIn: http://linkd.in/CarlBrown
Twitter: @CarlAllenBrown

[WillCulpepper]

Hi everybody,

My name is Will Culpepper and I write iOS apps in Torrance, CA. My
company is eliolhan (ell-LEE-oh-lan). I'm rejoining the iDevBlogADay
rotation with my latest iDev post "The Game Deadline Problem, part 1"
http://eliolhan.com/wordpress1/2011/09/03/710/.

I started programming on the Atari 400, TRS-80 and Apple II when I was
a teenager in the early 80s. I loved making games and utilities as a
hobbyist. When desktop publishing got big in the late 80s I became a
graphic designer then a Photoshop artist in the 90s. After leaving
Mattel Toys after 11 years, I found myself with time and a chance to
learn something new. This is the hardest, riskiest thing I've ever
done. Also the most fun. I intend to blog what I learn along the way.
The iDevBlogADay group has been very helpful to me and I'd like to pay
it forward.

I'm developing my first commercial game and have 4 small apps in the
store. They are:
How old am I? - An age reminder
Tipidy - Calculate tips without typing
DisCalc - Discount and tax calculator
Workaday - Timepiece for knowledge workers with odd schedules


Will Culpepper
Twitter: @WillCulpepper
Blog: http://eliolhan.com/wordpress1/
App store company page: http://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/eliolhan/id321933096
stackoverflow profile: http://stackoverflow.com/users/23973/willc2

[Angry Chicken]

My name is Colin Phillips, I'm Canadian (and British) and currently
live in Connecticut. I'm married and have 4 small children. I formed
Angry Chicken Inc. in 2008 to develop apps for the iPhone. I'm not a
game developer (yet) and I don't have the luxury of developing apps
full time (yet). I do most of my coding on the train to and from my
day job where I manage a development team for a (very) large bank. I
don't write code at work anymore, and I missed it, so I decided to get
into app development as a hobby. Ideally I'll be successful enough to
quit the day job one day and write mobile apps full time - that's a
pretty tall order since I have a mortgage and a family to support.
I've been in the Object Oriented world since the early 1990s, first in
Smalltalk and later in Java. Objective C is conceptually a nice blend
of the two, so I feel right at home. I have a couple of apps on the
store with free (ad supported) and paid versions of both. My
"flagship" app, Photo Notes (Free and Pro), is photo captioning app.
I've been through several revisions of my apps and I'm preparing for a
major update to Photo Notes. So far I have absolutely neglected the
marketing side of this business and I'm probably pretty lucky to have
done as well as I have. Yes, I too am an iPhone app thousandaire.
I'm planning to do some actual marketing for the next release.
I've learned some lessons along the way and I plan to share those in
my first post. Generally I plan to post about the iPhone app business
as well as selected technical topics. Thanks for the opportunity to
be part of this community. I have really enjoyed reading the
consistently high quality posts on the site.

I just noticed that my first turn on the calendar already came and
went. Apologies - I'll definitely post next time around!

[pabloruiz55]

Hi Fellow devs!

My name is Pablo Ruiz from Argentina and I run PlaySnack and
InfinixSoft. Both companies dedicated to mobile development.
We started InfinixSoft a couple years ago and we have been working
doing apps and games for our clients since then.
I love playing games, as a matter of fact, when i was 6 years old i
asked my parents to take me to English lessons (my native language is
Spanish) since i couldn't understand what was said in my NES games!

In 2009 I was working as a Php developer for the local City Hall, but
i'd always wanted to make games, that is when i learned about XNA and
i gave it a try. After making a simple Asteroids game i found out XNA
games could not be published in my country so i shifted to iPhone. I
put the money to buy a Macbook and iPhone and began working on my
first game. After it was published i started working on some freelance
work and began earning more money doing that, that what i was earning
in my day job, so i quit!
After doing a few jobs, i partnered up with one of my University's
friends, Ivan, and we have been working together since then. At this
momment we have 10 people working for us at InfinixSoft and we have
worked on more than 30 iPhone/Android apps and games.

Last year i wrote Cocos2d For Beginners published by Packt Publishing.
This was the first book i ever wrote and i am quite satisfied with its
results.

I am now working on PlaySnack's first game, Turtle World, since this
is our first game, i am doing everything by myself except for the art.

I wanted to join iDevBlogADay to post some tutorials about Cocos2d
development. Small helpfull things to begin with, since i am a little
rusty on Tutorial writing!

-Pablo

[Tony]

Hi everyone!

My name is Tony Ngo. Like many of those who have introduced
themselves, I'm a gamer, a hardcore one. Yet, unlike them, I learned C+
+ first. In fact, I did not take programming seriously until college,
when it became my passion.

During my college years, I spent most of my free time developing
social networks and dating sites, in hope of becoming the next 20
years old millionaire. Obviously, I did not make it ;) I also sold my
soul to the devil and wasted much of my life playing Final Fantasy 11
and World of Warcraft.

After graduation, I worked as a web developer for two years for the
school's IT department, and then as a Flex developer for three years
for a small startup in Santa Monica, CA.

Currently, I'm developing mobile apps for my co-founded company
(trisora.com).

I joined iDevBlogADay to learn. "A fool learns from his own mistakes,
A wise man learns from the mistakes of others." There's much to learn
from everyone here.

My blog may be found at tonyngo.net . My interest in programming
includes design patterns, algorithms, artificial intelligence and data
mining. Most of my tutorials will be about either these topics or game
development, from a Flash developer's perspective. I won't be too
focused on objective-c. I feel that web apps and Flash/Flex apps
compiled with Adobe's Packager for iPhone are suitable cross-platform
solutions, and hence are also relevant.

Lastly, thank you, Miguel, for iDevBlogADay. This is an enormous
contribution to our community.

-Tony

[rocket5]

Hi!

I'm Tim Miller, my wife and I started Rocket 5 Studios (http://
www.rocket5studios) 2 years ago when we moved from San Francisco to
Toronto. Before starting Rocket 5, we were both working
professionally in the games industry for about 13 years (I'm a level
designer and she's an animator).

I started my professional career in 1996 when I landed a job as a
tester at LucasArts which was right about the same time that Quake
came out. I started building Quake levels with the Worldcraft level
editor (which eventually became the Hammer editor) and quickly fell in
love with level design. After about a year of testing, I moved up
into a level designer position at LucasArts and eventually became a
lead level designer. From there I went to Secret Level (which was
bought by Sega) where I was a lead mission designer for a couple of
years. Then I moved on to Nihilistic Software where I was lead level
designer on a couple of games and then lead designer on Zombie
Apocalypse (xbla, psn).

When we moved to Toronto I wasn't able to work here right away since
I'm not a citizen (my wife is a Toronto native) so I figured this
would be a great time to start our own studio. We currently have 3
games and 4 apps on iOS and we're working hard on 2 more games right
now (I'll post my app links in the other thread).

I'm a big fan of iDevBlogADay, I check it out pretty much every day to
see what you're all up to and I managed to submit a few articles
earlier this year before a missed deadline pulled me out of
circulation (I'm so glad it's a little more relaxed now!).

Favorite games... anything Mario, everything by Double Fine, Quake
(the original Team Fortress!!!), Duke Nukem 3D, Half Life, pinball
machines and most racing games.

-Tim

[rocket5]

Oops! I was so excited to hit the send button that I totally messed up
my url!
http://www.rocket5studios.com
(sorry for the extra post)

[Scott Ruttencutter]

Hello everybody!

First off I would like to say a thank you to the iDevBlogADay community for the opportunity to collaborate with all of you here, and also for being a source of information and inspiration for my projects.

My name is Scott Ruttencutter, and I am based out of the lovely Madison, WI here in the midwest of the US.  My early days had me traveling with my family between both sides of the US, and almost everywhere in between.  I was lucky enough as a child of the 80's to grow up with games on 5 1/4 floppy disks and a constantly evolving array of new PC based hardware to experiment with.  That, combined with the debut of the NES in the late 80's, I certainly enjoyed my days of playing 8-bit adventure and puzzle games.

In high school I spent a few years learning to program in Basic and then Pascal.  I also spent a great deal of my time in those days tearing apart the Doom and Quake game engines to develop mods, program new weapon and player AI, as well as building levels with vertex based 2-d design tools.  My senior year I spent many, many, late nights hanging out with the developers at Raven Software here in Madison and learning about their development processes.

In college, I focused on Art and Computer Science, mainly developing in Java, but there I also developed an interest for web and web based application development in PHP and MySQL.  From there I spent a lot of time working in marketing and advertising organizations, learning how to avoid making applications that looked like they were architected and designed by a developer--and that is what drove me to build my current company--IQ Foundry.

At IQ Foundry I lead a team of creatives and developers on a mission of creating the most interesting interactive design and development work I've had the opportunity to work on during my career so far.  We have worked with a lot of great companies, like Trek Bicycle, Intel, Pfizer, American Family Insurance and the like, and I am very proud of the work that my team has done.  

Over the last two years I have been working with my team on game projects between client work, and in the last 6-9 months that game development focus has turned to the iOS platform as our platform of choice.  We re-released Germz, which was a Flash based title, for iPhone and iPad as a universal app in late May 2010 which has done pretty well for us in terms of downloads. It was a great experiment in learning about the platform, developing in a new language and environment, and what it takes to polish a good game into existence within the App Store.  If you want to check out Germz, visit http://bit.ly/jp3z4G 

Over the next year here at IQ I will be working hard on our new apps coming out later this year in 2011, and talking with a lot of independent developers as we look at growing our team with folks who share our vision of creativity and collaboration.  I am hopeful that contributing to iDevBlogADay will give me an outlet to talk about some of the challenges we face in our work, and that those solutions will contribute in a positive way towards helping other developers solve interesting problems in their own work.

If you would like to keep tabs on what I am doing on a more granular level, feel free to follow me on twitter at http://www.twitter.com/ruttencutter/ Or, if you are interested in my interactive work, you can check out our portfolio at http://www.iqfoundry.com

Thanks for letting me contribute.

Best,

-

Scott Ruttencutter

Interactive Director | Founder

IQ Foundry

608.237.1541Ext. 200

www.iqfoundry.com

sc...@iqfoundry.com

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Time IQ - Web Based Time Tracking Made Easy!

http://www.timeiq.com

[Greg Holsclaw]

Hello all,

It appears I am the newest (for now) member of iDevBlogADay.com.
Thanks again for opening up the doors. I look forward to my first post
next week.

My name is Greg Holsclaw. Until recently I was the lead engineer of a
small Silicon Valley startup. We made websites and iOS apps for our
own business ideas including Airport Parking, RV Parking, Vacation
rentals and other such location/directory type sites. The company did
well, sold some of the online assets for a good chuck of cash, and the
equity earn out from that (an my wife gaining her PhD in Statistics)
allowed me the flexibility to resign my position on my terms and
launch Skejo Studies (very new site, www.skejo.com).

I have been working on the side on my own projects, so I own and
operate www.DogGoes.com can the accompanying iPhone app, Dog Park
Finder, and the Plus version which is an iPad app. I will continue to
pursue these projects as needed, in between the new projects and games
I am planning to craft.

Mostly my history shows that I just need to pick up something grand
and new every two years. Now it is game development. Last time iOS
general development. Before that was Drupal CMS website coding, with
straight PHP and ASP websites before that. That gets me to about 8
years ago when I graduated with a BS in Computation Mathematics. I
should have done the straight up Computer Science degree, but I just
like math more. Oh well, that is what books are for.

I will post my apps in the app thread. Thank you again.

Greg Holsclaw
gr...@tech-wanderings.com
www.tech-wanderings.com
Skype: greg.holsclaw
Twitter: @gholsclaw

On Jul 26, 7:49 am, Miguel Á. Friginal <miguel.frigi...@gmail.com>

[Adam Ashwal]

Hey all,

My name is Adam Ashwal, I'm 15 and I live in a suburb of NYC in
Connecticut. I'm pretty nervous to be posting here with all of you
brilliant people so I'll try not embarrass my self to bad ;) My
website is www.interwoundsoft.com and I currently have one app up. It
seems unlike everyone else here I have no real work history to talk
about, except for maybe mowing the lawn a couple of times. I look
forward to learning a lot in the coming time from this great community

- Adam

Twitter: @interwound

[Tod]

Hi everyone,

I'm Tod Cunningham living a little north and east of Ann Arbor
Michigan in the little town of New Hudson. I've been writing software
for many many years and just love it. My first computer was a vic-20
and I have been hooked ever since. That was a long long time ago, and
now I have been working in the software business for about 19 years.

During the day, I am the Director of Development for TechSmith's
desktop products group building Camtasia, Snagit, and Morae. I'm so
lucky that I get to work for such a great company with great people.

At night, I am co-founder of Five Lakes Studio. Ken and I started
Five Lakes Studio last year to build iOS apps. Of course, we quickly
got sucked into building games, and then decided to focus on casual
family friendly games. It's been a great year learning about iOS and
how to build and market mobile apps. We love it. We still have lots
to learn.

I love iDevBlogADay and thought it would be great to give back to the
community and share our adventure with you. Now the hard part, we are
actually going to have to keep our blog updated.... :)

Feel free to contact us on twitter @fivelakesstudio or our website
www.fivelakesstudio.com.

- Tod and Ken

[Bartek Wilczyński]

Hello everyone,

My name is Bartek and I am based in Warsaw, Poland. I am a full
time .NET developer / team leader with more than 8 years of
professional experience mostly in LOB (line of business) .NET
applications. Currently leading a team of few developers working on
a .NET 4.0 project that is using MS Workflow Foundation and App Fabric
as a hosting platform.

I started my iOS journey in the beginning of 2010 (if I am not
mistaken) mostly as my spare time hobby, I was bored of all that
"problems" related with LOB applications and I decided to try
something new. Later on I realized it's kind of fun to create iOS
applications and I decided to start my blog and build my first iPhone
game (which finally ended on my iOS projects' graveyard). I was very
passionate about my first development, I started to learn cocos2d
platform but quickly I realized I am missing some standard patterns
for game development in cocos2d so I started to implement my project
using MVC platform which is well known for everyone doing web
development. I wrote some post about it on my blog:
1. http://xperienced.com.pl/blog/how-to-implement-mvc-pattern-in-cocos2d-game
2. http://xperienced.com.pl/blog/how-to-implement-mvc-pattern-in-cocos2d-gamepart-2
which are the most popular so far on my blog.

Recently I managed to roll out my first application (EarPlay
Guitarist) for aural training which aims to help guitarist (I would
say beginners) learn how the chords sound. You can find it on the App
Store in both paid and free (lite) version. I plan to start a new
project and improve the frequency of my blog posting that's why I am
here :)

You can follow me on twitter: @bwilczyn or you can contact me directly
using a contact form on my website: http://xperienced.com.pl/blog/contact

Best regards,
Bartek

[Mark Granoff]

Hello all,

It's an honor to join this community as a contributor. I have been
reading your contributions for some time. The diversity of topics,
perspectives, and inspirations are fantastic. I have long wanted to
start a development blog and I am pleased now to have a venue for what
I write actually to be read!

I am a professional software engineer, by training. I've been at it 25
years, and then some. Most of my experience, until a few years ago,
was around developing highly scalable server software. In 2009 I
"picked up" iPhone development, and today I am gainfully employed
writing apps (and some other stuff), as well as writing apps for
private clients, and of course writing my own apps. More of my
background can be see on LinkedIn if you are curious:
http://www.linkedin.com/in/markgranoff. I am planning for my first
iDevBlogADay post to have more detail about my entry into iPhone
development, how I ramped up, and ultimately what lessons I took from
that initial experience.

My company website is http://www.hawkimedia.com. I have 5 apps of my
own on the App Store, and I have written a handful of other apps for
clients and for my employer. You can follow me on twitter @granoff and
occasionally @hawkimedia.

I look forward to reading everyone's future posts and learning new
things about this awesome platform.

Regards,
-Mark

[fattjake]

Hello,

I'm Jake Gundersen.

I took a circuitous route to becoming a programmer. I am a life long
geek, but was never able to learn to write code. In my teens I tried
many times, but always kind of gave up. I couldn't quite get past
that point where everything is difficult and you aren't sure why
things aren't working. So I had a little exposure to C and BASIC, but
no proficiency. But, it was something I always wanted to do.

I went to school, got a JD/MBA (thinking I would be a tech startup
kind of guy). While there I had my first successful programming
experience when I took a VBA class. We wrote a little excel reporting
application. This was the first time I was able to pursue a program
to a successful completion and it was awesome.

I graduated, needed a job, so I started working at a hospital as an
analyst. I hoped that it was a job that would give me time to
moonlight on the side, which it did. I got my first iPhone as a
graduation present in 2008. I knew what it was and what it meant, and
I knew that I had to learn how to write apps. I started writing a web
app, until the first SDK was released, when I switched to learning
objective-C.

Moving from VBA to objective-C was a task, so it took me a little
while to figure it out. (The delegate pattern was really confusing
for a while, now I'm not sure why).

I still have a lot to learn, but I left my analyst job about a month
ago to be a full time indie. I'm a full time stay at home dad and
code monkey. I take care of my twin boys that I take care of, while
trying to write awesome games.

I co-founded an educational game company a little over a year ago,
Third Rail Games. We have a couple of apps on the store. I have a
few others that I've done, and a I've done few contract gigs that have
been posted to the store.

The thing I'm most proud of so far is being part of Ray Wenderlich's
latest project, iOS5 by Tutorials. I wrote a few chapters in there
(Turn Based Gaming and Core Image).

I use Corona and Cocos2D for the majority of the stuff I build.

I'm pretty excited to be a part of iDevBlogADay. I'm a long time
reader and hope that my contributions can measure up to the great
content that I've seen.

Jake Gundersen

<a href="http://indieambitions.com">Blog</a>
<a href="http://thirdrailgames.com">Third Rail Games</a>
<a href="http://bit.ly/nj1kgE">iOS5 By Tutorials</a>

[fattjake]

Sorry about that last link, bitty doesn't like click bank links (I
guess), so it will tell you scary malicious things may be going on.
They aren't, if you're interested, just go to raywenderlich.com and
it's the first post today.

Jake

[38leinaD]

Hi all,
My name is Daniel Platz, 28 years young, and I live in Paderborn,
Germany. I am a computer science graduate from the University of
Paderborn. My interest in computers started with the Amiga and has
kept me interested since then to understand as many aspects of it as
possible (software and hardware).

I have started as an independent developer at the age of 18 developing
web/server-based solutions. During this time I have mainly been
working with PHP which also was my first language that got me into
programming. I like to think that it hopefully had no negative impact
on me ;-)

After graduation, I started at a local IT-company where I am mainly
working with our international customers (mainly banks) to develop
JavaEE-based server-solutions for driving ATMs and all the financial
processing related to that. Because of this, I am currently working
from Sydney, Australia and loving every minute of it.

I am a fan of the Apple Mac platform since my first iBook I got myself
about 8 years ago. Since then, I have been a hobbyist developer on the
Mac platform and right from the beginning also the iOS platform.
Because it always was just a hobby and my love to just procrastinate,
up until now I never actually published an App in the appstore. My
intention in joining you guys here is mainly to give myself some more
drag to actually get one of my ideas out there; And in the course of
that, write some hopefully useful blog-posts what I have learned along
the way.

Except from the nerd stuff written above, I am a passionate runner and
like to build nice projects with the help of micro-controllers... ups,
that last thing is actually nerdy again... sorry

Ok, no procrastinating anymore. I have to get started so I have
something to write about in 2 weeks.

Cheers,
Daniel

[scottb1978]

Hi Everyone,

I'm Scott Bradley from the Sunshine Coast Australia. I've been living
here with my wife and 2 1/2 year old girl now for a few years.
Previously I lived in London for 5 years working at an online dating /
swingers website, fun times!

Currently I'm working full time at http://youi.com.au as the software
development manager. I've got a team of about 14 that I manage through
the dev lifecycle. When I started I was employee number 25, 3 years
later there are over 500 staff and still growing strong. It's a great
experience with awesome people.

Which brings me to my current adventure. Around this time last year I
got my first iPhone and realised there was a revolution going on. I
bought a Mac and wrote a few simple apps and have been making modest
returns. That's hopefully about to change though as I have two major
projects on the go which I hope to have released by early next year.

The focus of my blog and iDevBlog posts will mainly be on the
business / marketing side of starting and building a mobile app
business.

Looking forward to getting to know you all better.

Regards,
Scott.

[Marin Todorov]

Hey all,

my name is Marin Todorov, I'm doing iPhone/iPad stuff for just about 2 years now.

I have created more than 10 apps - latest one is "Fun Photo Booth"
http://itunes.apple.com/app/fun-photo-booth/id476091621?mt=8

I'm RW Tutorial Team member and I co-authored the "iOS5 by Tutorials" book
http://www.touch-code-magazine.com/the-most-extensive-book-on-ios5-yet-ios5-by-tutorials/

I'm happy to join the #iDev group - I see many names who I really already respect
and hopefuly I get to know the others too.

My blog is : http://www.touch-code-magazine.com,
(even) more about me: http://www.linkedin.com/in/marintodorov

cheers, Marin