Years ago I developed a watchOS app Slippery Weather (Liukkaat kadut in Finnish) displaying pedestrian slippery weather alerts to users. I sold it at the App Store, and later lowered the price to zero, offering it as a free app.
Apple Watch displaying an alert in a Slippery Weather app widget about slippery weather notification given two hours ago in the city of Oulu.
However, I didn’t have time to maintain it, so I took it off the App Store recently. That was a good decision, since I’ve now learned that the service providing the alerts API has ceased to operate.
The service got the slippery weather condition alerts from the participating cities (road maintenance folks) in Finland. It seems that the cities have switched to using Finnish Meteorological Institute (FMI) weather model based alerts instead.
I do have a prototype watchOS app using Apple Weather service local weather data. The prototype attempts to predict slippery weather for the next 12-24 hours, based on recent and forecasted temperature, precipitation and humidity. But haven’t had time to work on that either. Doesn’t work so reliably that I would want to publish the app.
Learned a lot while developing the app though. Everything lasts for their allotted time, nothing is permanent.
Apparently I am too busy to write anything here. Or … priorities… or workload… Work, life, etc.
During the Summer 2020 I decided that I want an app in the App Store. So I did it.
Slippery Cities (Liukkaat kadut in Finnish, Hala Gator in Swedish) warns pedestrians of slippery weather conditions in six Finnish cities. That photo above of my Apple Watch says that in Oulu there was a slippery alert two hours ago. So wear your spiked shoes. Or be careful out there.
I learned a lot about:
Swift programming
SwiftUI programming
WatchKit development with Xcode
Localisation for three languages
Accessibility programming in Apple platforms
AppStore: submitting apps for review (no issues by the way, app went through without any hassle)
Programming in watchOS, including watch faces, complications, background processing, networking,… with beta version of watchOS 7.
Buy it in the App Store, I want to get rich. Mind you, it may not work in the city you live, so consider that. Won’t refund you unless you twist my arm hard.
Then other things keeping me busy. Created a new course on Software Platforms and Ecosystems with two colleagues. That was hard. Luckily also behind us for a while, since the course ended in December.
I also took responsibility for a course on data structures and algorithms. Corona pandemic made that harder than usual, since the course material and arrangements were based on the assumption of face-to-face classroom teaching. Didn’t happen.
Now I am working on a course on server programming, which is a new course for me. I’ve been implementing a HTTPS chat server with Java and writing instructions for students to do the same. Topics include Java, HTTPS, certificates, authentication, JSON, sqlite database, password hashing and salting, UTF, encoding, decoding, HTTP headers,… Maven, Visual Studio Code, git — lots of work, since none of this existed in late December and course started in early January. ?
Then another course where I assist in exercises on advanced software testing and security issues started this week. Lots to learn for me there too.
So I’ve been very, very busy. Maybe in Spring 2021 I’ll be sharing more here.
Oh yes, and some nice things too — got myself a new Mac Mini M1, an Apple Silicon computer. So enjoying doing these things with the new device! My previous iMac 27″was already five years old, luckily in a good condition. I got a decent price for it when I sold it to fund the Mini.
