Jessica has upgraded our Rogo website. You can see it at www.rogopuzzle.co.nz. It still needs a bit of work, but it is much more modern looking.
We had planned to bike to the Fireworks at the Pier on 5th November (Guy Fawkes day), but it was postponed through rain and Mark was sick so we didn’t. Maybe next year. Mind you we did see the Disneyland ones last year, which are pretty amazing, so it isn’t as if Jonathan has missed out totally. He is getting better at embracing new experiences. He’s pretty excited about his party, which will be on 25th February.
The aftershocks are thinning out. I was woken by a 4.3 early in the month, but otherwise there haven’t been too many over 3.5. It seems we will continue to get increased seismic activity for quite some time. They do a little bit of damage – there are cracks opening up in places around the house. Just little ones – like between the window-frames and the window sill.
Nick came over for a Saturday morning to be an actor/model being filmed for the “How to play Rogo” video. I bought him a lime green T-shirt to wear and I have a cobalt blue one. I keep thinking that William would do a much better job than we are, but we will just need to make do in the meantime. My skills are developing, but I can’t help thinking it would have been better to do it on a simpler package. Leaping straight into CS5 Premiere Pro was courageous!
We had a ward activity at South New Brighton Domain. We started with a very pleasant walk, with Jonathan as well. He is much better at walking now that he goes to the gym. His legs seem a lot straighter. We also had a game of tennis, which neither Mark nor I have done since we were married. To both our surprises we didn’t totally suck at it. It was fun too. There was a barbecue, and I took a tropical fruit salad, which went down well.
Jonathan had his end of the year concert/ gig at the Harbourlight in Lyttelton. Linda and Des and Gran came too and we all had a very nice evening. He is really doing very well at his improv now. Miss Sato was very impressed and proud of him.
We had Stake Conference at the Town Hall, as the stake centre is still broken. We will probably be there for the next one too. The Family History Centre is opening up again though, which I am excited about as I have been enjoying my Family History work.
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| Dr Rogo and Rod Phillips |
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| Neil Phillips and Dr Rogo |
Other duties included helping at registration and at the start and finish. I also met Rod and Neil who are the RO and NE of Rogaine. They are both really nice guys, and interested in our puzzles. We wore our Rogo T-shirts all weekend as well and got quite a lot of good feedback about the game. The people there were great to work with and it was very well organised. We stayed an extra night in the caravan at the Staging Post, which was as enjoyable as ever.
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| The hose wasn't quite long enough! |
We also realised that I would need to complete the video and post it on Youtube before we submitted the app, as we needed the URL to go in the code. The title is How to play Rogo. You can tell people to watch that. It stars me as Dr Rogo and Nick as Nick. Jonathan’s playing is in the background. William taught me all I know as an editor. I spend Monday evening and most of Tuesday working on it. I felt I was on the knife-edge of competency – any minute I could fall off and everything would go wrong. But I managed to hang in there, and the end result, though less humorous that what William would do, was acceptable – even to Bruce.
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| Rogoman at the WRC2010 |
The highlight of the month was getting the app submitted. It is far from easy to get through all the processes that Apple has in place, but fortunately I could leave that to Shane and Bruce. We submitted it on the Tuesday 23rd November and hoped/expected it to take about a week or less, as that is the usual time. We had neglected to remember Thanksgiving, though, which would have slowed the process down.
I spent Monday and Tuesday in Auckland at an ORSNZ conference, which tested my ability to stay awake to the extreme. I gave a paper on aspects of the Rogo puzzle and what makes it difficult, and we gave away puzzle books with a picture of the app in the inside cover. I left home at 5am on Monday and got home late on Tuesday evening. I was a bit tired after that. The banquet was great though. Auckland is such a lovely city.
Wednesday was full of horrible work meetings, but the pleasant thought was that I have two months before I have to go to any more of them. I was totally worn out in the evening, but then had to go and get some meat from Sharon, and helped her to sort it all out. I felt better after helping, though. On Thursday I was also tired but had a nice time in the evening looking for dead people (as I affectionately call family history).
Then on Friday morning 3rd December I was feeling a bit under the weather as it had been 10 days since we submitted the app to iTunes. I didn’t even feel like going to work. The iTunes Connect interface kept saying “Waiting for Review”. Then about midday it changed to “Under Review” so I biked off to work, and by the time I got there it had been reviewed and was being made ready for the app store. We decided to put it on sale immediately so we had to make it for sale on the 2nd December, as that was the date in the US. We wanted Jessica to be able to get to it. Which she has, and she likes it. It took an hour or two for it to appear in the lists of apps, but when it did it was at the top of the Educational Games. It has worked its way up to 8th in the Puzzle Games too. Doing well in the NZ store isn’t that amazing, but it will help us to get “Featured” there, and from there maybe in the other stores. It was more than a little stressful waiting for the app to be approved, and now that it is approved it is stressful watching the sales figures and hoping that it will suddenly get very exciting.
Our first days sales were: Thursday 2nd Dec: 4 (Jessica, Matt Rix, Mike Cammock and one other!)
Friday 3rd December: 33 (mostly friends and family I suspect). We will give you an update at the end of the year.
And then Saturday and Sunday I was at an iDev conference – for people who are developing in iOS. I was shameless in my promotion of Rogo, and I many of the people there downloaded it and think it is really good. The conference itself was great. There were lots of like-minded people, most of whom were younger than I, and male, but it didn’t seem to matter. It was really fun and inspiring. And the food was great. They are planning to have another one next year.
The iDev Conference was actually in the beginning of December, but I will have forgotten all about it if I have to wait for January.
The Wedding
It sounds as if nearly all the Petty clan will be at William’s wedding. Great. We can have a reunion while we are there. Everyone is invited.
Much love to all
Nicola, Mark and Jonathan
PS William is just fine and enjoying Wairoa. With luck he will stay there until the end of his mission. When I have dreams where he has come home they are no longer nightmares. It was so nice he and Dylan could see each other.
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