Goodbye Board Games
2022 was Sofa's best year by every metric and the product has reached an important milestone in terms of usefulness.
Where did September go?
Time is moving a little too quickly. Overall, the past month was a busy one for me, but I feel like Iām starting to find my grove with my new work schedule. Iām also starting to find a better balance between work and downtime.
That being said, I am excited for some fall weather š.
I just released an update to Sofa (v3.4.14) that brings a new design for the pricing page, a URL scheme for searching, and some helpful bug fixes. You can read more via this blog post.
š² Board Games Being Removed from Sofa
September came with a big unexpected surprise. The vendor I use for board game data in Sofa went out of business. This lead to some hustling on my end to get a few fixes out as quickly as possible.
I was able to get in touch with the data provider for board games and get an extension to Oct 1, 2023. This means after Oct 1, you wonāt be able to pull any new board games data into Sofa. I pushed out an update on Sep 14, 2023 (v3.4.12) that migrates and stores all board game data locally so people donāt lose any information.
The board games news forced me to reprioritize some infrastructure work I had already been planning. Most of that work is now done, so Iāll be refocusing back on some big new features.
You can read the full details on the Sofa blog
š¬ A Social Media Experiment
I did a little experiment for a week to post a Reel, TikTok, and YouTube Short every day. I wanted to see if I could manage and keep up with a daily posting schedule. The results?
I hated it.
It tanked my focus and added a lot more stress to my week. For me, itās not worth the trade-offs of my time, energy, and focus to post that often. Iāll be sticking with my weekly YouTube video and once-ish per week on other socials. That gives me the time I need to be heads-down working.
Also, this was the first time I really used Reels and TikTok. I understand why people love it, but personally it gave me a headache. Everything is so fast and chaotic. I prefer a much calmer experience when Iām trying to relax lol.
I have to think about how much I want/need to contribute to that chaos.
This triggers a bunch of questions in my head around having to be on every social network. Do I need to be there? Sofa is only on iOS. Maybe I only need to be on certain socials too?
šļø What Iāve been working on
Why I built a real-time announcement system for my app
A few weeks ago I really needed to communicate with people who were using Sofaā¦but I couldnāt. There was a big issue related to board game data and it was important to let people know as quickly as possible. The best option I had was social media, a blog post, and App Store release notes. So yea, not many good options.
ā¤ļø Thingās Iāve enjoyed
- I finally got around to watching season 1 ofĀ The Last of Us. The Last of Us game series is one of my all-time favorites and they did an incredible job adapting it for a tv series.
- The Righteous GemstonesĀ has been on my list for a while and itās been recommended by enough people that I finally started watching. Iām only a few episodes in, but it is hilarious so far.
- Iāve discovered the incredible talent of drummerĀ Domino Santantonio. Enjoy.
- Iām still slowly enjoying Zelda Tears of the Kingdom. This game is just so deep and wonderful.
šø Favorite recent photo Iāve taken
Cats or batman?