Well, finally getting round to making some changes! I know it seems like forever since I last made any updates on this site, but I’m alive and kicking.
I’ve actually been very, VERY occupied recently (all good stuff) and very busy with work. IVe changed jobs twice now, and working with a fun studio giving me a lot more responsibility as well as workload.
Having said that, there’s not been that much time for personal projects and arting just for the fun if it until recently.
A couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to get some sculpting done again,and I’ve got to say I’m really enjoying it again. I’d forgotten just how therapeutic it can be. I’ll post a few samples soon enough.. Just getting on top of things again now and seeing if I can post from my beloved iPad

Well, finally the new site is up and running, even though just in fledgeling form. I’ve got the first few posts uploading, and the gallery will be filling up by the day – all the behind-the-scenes work is done and it’s just a matter of uploading content from the various parts of my drive.  The last site was entirely manually managed, and had become a bit of a beast to manage, let alone maintain.

It’s been something I’ve been meaning to do for a long time, though I was hampered recently due to a debacle with DomainPeople.com.I was very much in danger of losing my domain name registration, as they emailed me to say my registration was due for expiry, but then subsequently refused to acknowledge the email adress as viable (not the same as the one they had on record).

Having moved country twice, and house 4 times since I first registered (in 2002!) The chances of me having the same ISP, let alone ISP based email address was small to NONE.  Silly buggers. They then asked me to post Photo ID, which is utterly ridiculous, as I could have posted one of my brother or, frankly, anyone.  There’s NO way they would be able to tell whether that was me or not if I wasn’t physically stood in front of them.

VERY long story short (2 months of chasing). I finally got my domain registered again with them a couple of days short of the expiry.  I have since transferred everything to my other provider and registrar YOUR-SITE.com.  Your-Site have always been fantastic, and incredibly service minded.

Happy Rico now!

While TimeDock has been a huge success (number one in so many countries when released) I decided to release it as free when its sales curve had dropped right off and a few months had gone by.  For the last half a year it was on the AppStore for free, but with Apple requiring a membership fee to keep it listed on the store I decided to let it rest. There are (since then) vast amounts of clock Apps being released, so it’s now a “collectors item” for those that purchased it.

While it’s still listed on the Appstore, it’s actually no longer available for download, but it will remain available forever for those that have it now.  The website is still maintained for now (mainly because I like it ! )

Test post to see if mobile post entry is really viable

Here is where I will post information about the web page main, and see if it sticks to the place it’s supposed to

Good lord it’s been a busy week.. and really enjoying it!

I’ve been doing some foundation work for a freelance contract which looks like it could be an awful lot of fun.. but not twiddling my thumbs in the meantime, I promise.  

I’ve been tinkering with a new Dragon (of course) but also messing around with a few other things that I’ve been meaning to finish up.  Oh, and I’ve added some new goodies to the site: a set of icons, and a couple of desktop backgrounds.  No stunning imagery there, but I’m really pleased with the dark leather background.  It doesn’t look like much as an image, but works lovely as a tiled backdrop. Just subtle enough not to be annoying    (can be found in the Other/Downloads section)

Oh and jesus wept, how TimeDock has climbed the charts!   I’ve been positively dancing every day as it’s at number one (!) in the top sellers list for utilities in Sweden.  It’s number two in the UK ( so close, SO close!   c’mon England!!, you can do it !)  and yet it went completely unnoticed in the U.S.    Stumps me how that happened, but hey it’s got noticed in both my home countries, and that makes me beam with joy

 Looking forward to a trip to Malmö tomorrow for the Nordic Game Conference there – especially looking forward to catching up with Martyn “Spadge” Brown-  a great old friend, uberlord of everything Team17, and a man that can thrash me in any drinking contest.         Not something I’d admit to too often! 

Well what can I say ?  This was just phenominal news, and has left me beaming with joy.  TimeDock has hit number one in numerous territories, but this is the one I really wanted to crack – Great Britain.

It’s pretty interesting how the US market was pretty much impenetrable to developers outside the US unless you get extraordinarily lucky (and I mean lucky).  There’s such a large amount more Apps being released to the US market that the rest of the world doesn’t have access to, that being noticed on the first week of release is do-or-die time.  Essentially, if you’re not in the top 50 by day 3,  your app is dead in the water.

Sweden, Denmark, France, Germany, Great Britain, Holland and Japan…  I love you all !

And the gallery is getting a little more love now too

I’ve decided to use javascript to deliver the images in the gallery section now, as pretty much every machine is capable using javascript properly now. It may seem an odd thing to say, but when I first started this site all those years ago, I was determined to keep to basic HTML as there were so many incompatibilty problems with the various explorers, scripting methods, and flash etc.   It’s all standardised and lovely now though   (apart from the bloody iphone safari browser

The main reason for the java delivery on the gallery section is that it’s now sreen resolution independant, so it all centers properly and scales to suit.  That also allows anyone to zoom into the images finally if they’re too large for the original screen size.  From now on I’ll be able to post larger images!

More artwork will be added fairly regularly now

Oh and I’ve been forever trouble by the embarrasing state I’d left the green dragon in.  Every time I see that image I’ve wanted to paint over it, so today i did..

(before and after)

I’m still not happy with it of course, but maybe I’ll come back to it again at some later date.. god only knows there are other images I need to update!  At least it’s not quite so monochromatic and his head looks properly scaled and gnarled now

Ahh, been suffering a very well deserved hangover today, but I regret nothing !

It’s now been three days since the approval and release of my two apps on the apple iPhone and I’m absolutely over the moon to see them actually climbing the charts !    I caught a japanese article about TimeDock earlier today (here)  and am completely stoked!  I love seeing their custom background too.. I was really hoping some people would enjoy that part of it.

9aPandora is doing very well also, which is a relief and I’ve got to be honest; no small suprise!  There’s a phenominal amount of games out there (in the thousands) so I assumed it would just get lost in the mass.    Happy Rico today then, despite the thumping headache

So it’s 3 in the morning and I’m positively buzzing.  My very first apple iPhone App has just been approved for sale on the appstore !

It’ll probably go live in a couple of hours, and I can hardly keep my eyes open.

http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=313246459&mt=8

should be the link direct to the appStore if anyone’s interested.   Going to wake up like it’s Xmas in a few hours I think !

Oh good god I hope it sells.