I mentioned the other day that we hoped to be moving soon and, thanks to incarcerated runaway cats, that it couldn’t come quickly enough.

Well, it looks like we’ll get the keys later today. Unlike the last time when we moved, this won’t need to be done in a whirlwind mad couple of days, where everything was up in the air for weeks afterwards. Lots of things probably will be awry for a while but at least I’ll be able to make a smoother transition with my internet connection (when we moved into this flat it had no phone line at all, no cable, etc – cue weeks of waiting to get that installed and broadband activated).

I haven’t got an exact plan together yet, but provided we get the keys later we can set everything in action. The seller of the house we’re buying has been somewhat temperamental, so it’s a wait and see thing. Really, there is very little left to go wrong. Ha ha!

Feeder Update
On the Feeder updates I mentioned the other day, it’s virtually ready. The only thing holding it up is the AppleScript support, which has taken much longer than I expected. Mostly this is because Feeder has so much data and so many settings, it’s taken all week just to test that all out and sort out any problems.

Because this 1.2.2 release has a few other small fixes (and some new, cool things) and everything else is ready to go, I’m very keen to get it released. As soon as I find out when we’re actually moving house and when I can get the broadband installed, I’ll know when it’s safe to release it. The AppleScript support released will be the best I can manage at the time and I’ll continue to improve it as we go along.

I’ve got a trip planned to California later this year and booked the flights last week. I’ve made quite a few trips to the US in the past and usually fly with British Airways (for [not so] frequent flyer miles and all that) but with the recent wildcat strikes at Heathrow where BA’s baggage handlers walked out to support the 600 employees sacked at the former BA catering arm, Gate Gourmet, I’ve felt less than sure, particularly as the issues still seem to be rumbling on.

I’ve actually been in the US during one of these wildcat strikes a previous year – they usually happen at the peak of every summer season – wondering if I would be able to get home. While I had the luxury of staying with people I knew back then, I still had a job to go back to and the car in a long-stay car park. It’s not about the money (got insurance for that sort of thing) but the hassle of sorting it all out. I also don’t think I’ve really forgiven BA for retiring Concorde – why is the world slowing down?

So this time, I’m flying with Virgin Atlantic for the very first time. I’ve heard good things about them, so we’ll see how they compare to their arch-rival. Virgin were also £5 cheaper (wow!).

To anyone who, like me, reads and enjoys sometime Reinvented Software helper Hans Kim’s blog, Post Hog, Ergo Propter Hoc, it has moved to http://nsobject.blogspot.com. I eagerly await the repost of “Das Hans Idyll”.

Apologies if anyone has tried to post comments on this blog recently and found them vanishing into thin air. I think I added a word to my comments blacklist that caused comments to get nuked. I didn’t realise it could work on a partial word match, not the whole thing.

Also, I’ve had a few occasions where emails sent to info [at] this domain alias don’t seem to have reached me – I only know about these because people write in again and it works. I usually answer all emails ASAP, usually immediately and almost always within 24 hours, so if you’ve sent an email to that address expecting a reply and not received one, please write in again to steve [at] this domain.

I don’t know why this is happening, but I suspect it’s something to do with the alias. Most the time, it seems to work well.

Today marks the first birthday of Reinvented Software, I released KIT 1.0 on August 3rd 2004. This is entirely consistent with Wil Shipley’s belief that every programmer’s first project is some kind of media database. It was a good launch with more sales than I’d expected in the first month – but it didn’t last long.

The business only really got going when Feeder was released some six months later. There were some extremely bleak days in the meantime and I nearly packed it all in. I applied for a number of jobs and almost got some of them too, but something would always go wrong at the last minute. This would leave me partly relieved and simultaneously filled with dread, because I knew I’d have to go through the whole cycle again. I only ever wanted to do this.

By the time Feeder was released in February, I somehow knew it was going to do well and that was my last hope. I came up with the idea in late October but didn’t get it started for another two months due to those job interviews and other distractions. My thinking was that with RSS due to go mainstream on the Mac thanks to Safari 2.0 in Tiger, people without blogs or content management systems would want RSS feeds on their sites.

In the meantime podcasting was gaining momentum, but I had no idea if podcasters would want to use Feeder. I built in some convenience features for them anyway. My research indicates that around 50% of Feeder users are podcasters and this seems to be rising quickly since iTunes 4.9 was released. I don’t think anyone imagined podcasting would get this big in such a short space of time but that is testament to how compelling it is.

One year on, things are going well and I’ve only just begun. I have big plans for my applications and a ton of other ideas. My biggest problem is time and juggling all the various aspects of the business – I do it all. Being an independent software developer is thrilling and exhausting all at the same time, but it would mean nothing without the people who buy my software, plug it on their web sites and in their podcasts and use it to do some amazing things. Thank you!