Matt Warren

Author: Matt

  • Exercise for Programmers

    Staying on top of your game is best accomplished by continuously learning and by ensuring you are mentally and physically at your best.  As a desk jokey it can be difficult to get enough exercise in a day so you have to be pro-active about staying in shape outside the office. For several years I…

  • Cockiness of Programmers

    There’s no doubt that programmers are lazy people.  Anything that can be automated is, copy/paste code – you got it! There is another trait of programmers that they assume because they can program in one language well, and have touched a few other languages over the years they can quickly learn a new language on…

  • Bitcoin

    Bitcoin has been in the news a lot lately and I’ve finally got into the game with a small investment to play with. Bitcoin is a new form of currency  which is technically quite ingenius but from an economic standpoint is quite unstable.  It’s basically a digital, anonymous, peer supported replacement of cash.  Each transaction…

  • Andromeda’s Savior v1.1

    A late night of coding produced the first update to Andromeda’s Savior submitted to iTunes. This new version brings a health bar, a bunch of new enemies to shoot, and much improved Game Center integration.  It also includes a check to prevent people from cracking the game and getting free upgrades.  To date there are…

  • Produce as Much as You Can

    It took a long time to really  fully appreciate the feeling you get from producing something new in this world and letting it go for sale or for free. There’s a lot of apprehension that comes with those first few products you release.  You worry about the bugs that are still there, the features you…

  • 6 Tips For a Successful Project Plan

    The difference between a successful project and one that is a dismal failure can often come down to the project plan.  There are different approaches to planning from ad hoc planning to full on gantt charts in MS Project.  I think there are some universals for developing a plan that results in a project that…

  • How to SOA an existing project

    SOA or service oriented architecture is a way of building a complex project so that each individual unit can stand alone with a documented API.  There are many benefits to taking an SOA approach to designing a complex software system. To those familiar with programming, SOA provides the same sorts of benefits as OOP but…

  • Another Game in the Queue

    On Monday this week we submitted another game to Apple for review.  This one is called Andromeda’s Savior and it should be available sometime next week in iTunes. The plan is still to push out a bunch of games very quickly. After an intense strategy meeting on Tuesday we decided to focus on a few…

  • Successful Game Launch

    Colum’s and my work on the release of Air Barons has found tremendous success!  This is a re-skin of UFO Invader with rendered 3d model graphics of WWII era planes done by the talented Colum Furey. The initial response to the game has surpassed all expectations and it has been earning a very respectable income…

  • Finding a good A/V receiver

    My 12 year old A/V receiver bit the dust last week.  It seems to have overheated and burned out some components judging by the smell. So now I’m looking for a replacement.  The first thing I learned is that the Canadian stores all price the products at about 2x what they go for on eBay…