Blog

Apple deprecated the old way of turning a coordinate into a place name over a year ago. Its replacement isn’t ready to take over yet.

Some of your data deserves to sync; some of it belongs to one device. Here’s how I keep one front for the two sets of data: a single managed object context over two Core Data stores.

After three quiet years, PowerTimer returns with Version 2026 — a refreshed design, ten languages, iCloud sync, and a friendlier one-time purchase.

Apple’s rotation coordinator silently reports nothing inside a locked capture extension. Here’s a workaround that reads the motion sensors instead.

I built an app with Apple’s Workout Kit. Here’s what I liked, what I learned, and what I wish could change.

Kodist has found its niche, so it’s graduating from open beta: the tip jar is out, and a one-time purchase unlocks everything — free for everyone who has ever tipped.

AI didn’t replace the craft of building PlantPal’s plant library — it just virtually removed the limit on what I could ship alone.

Someday is joining my fleet of free apps. I’m excited to have it updated for iOS 26, and localized for more audience in 10+ languages.

Some updates on how I plan to take PlantPal to the next level — starting with a much better to-do list for gardening.

Ship an app you’re allowed to break. It’s how distractions become learning and creative survival.

My first lesson about LLM–based app localization — it’s nothing to do with LLM at all. You should design your apps and delegate as much as possible. It’s the boring but important part of the work.

I tried a few apps to localize my apps. Here’s what I found that works for Xcode Strings Catalog files (i.e. XCStrings)

Meet my new app: a free, serverless tracker for your gift cards and account balances. May they never expire!

Produce and save edited photos in Adaptive HDR so that they look good on all SDR and HDR displays

A brief discussion on Liquid Glass, and why its criticism in the 1st week is unjustified.

Experiments with the undocumented way to read and write HealthKit workout effort

Learnings from building my first Apple Watch app for Liiift, using HealthKit’s mirrored workout sessions to keep iPhone and Watch in sync.

Tips on view labels, group labels, and group item labels in Looker, so reports read naturally and the sidebar stays tidy.

A Jekyll plug-in that suggests related posts at build time by scoring text similarity — no server required, and it works with my Chinese posts too.

How I built a multi-line tag list for PlantPal’s info cards in UIKit, without Auto Layout or third-party frameworks.

A walkthrough for running InfluxDB and Telegraf in Docker, with configs and database files persisted outside the containers.

Finding the active window in Split Screen on iPad: the deprecated way still works best, and two popular alternatives don’t.

Design your own enumerated error classes in R to show helpful, structured error messages in complex Shiny apps.

SwiftUI views stop updating when published variables live on Core Data objects. What’s broken, why, and the workaround.

Draw maps of Canada in R with freely available map data — all provinces and territories, zoomed-in regions, and your own data points on top.

How HRZN gained ultra wide and telephoto support by letting the iPhone’s cameras work together — and a reminder to actually read the documentation.