Last week, my iTunes Artwork Finder script stopped working due to some changes by Apple with regards to rate limiting. In the past, searching for something on my site would cause my server to send a request to Apple and get the data back but with so many people using it my server would get blocked within a few seconds.

After a brief shutdown¹, I’m happy to say that my iTunes Artwork Finder is now back up and running again thanks to a few tweaks. Now, instead of sending all requests from my server, it works like this:

1. When you enter a search term (i.e. “Fall out boy” albums in United Kingdom), that is sent to my server where I’ll generate the correct URL that is needed for Apple’s servers
2. Your browser then takes that URL to make the request directly to Apple
3. When the data is returned from Apple, the browser then sends it to my server for processing
4. Results are then displayed!

This means that there are now 3 network requests instead of 1 but the crucial part is that all requests to Apple’s servers are now made from your own browser so the rate limiting shouldn’t be a problem².

Whilst not an ideal solution, it does work and means I can keep everything running for a bit longer. I’m hopeful that Apple will alter how their rate limiting works as at the moment it seems a bit broken, especially with it being required for several apps with the new Apple Music APIs.

The code for the artwork finder is available on GitHub although this uses the old PHP request system rather than my new version as that should be more than good enough for personal usage³.

If you run into any problems, please get in touch.

Update (9th Nov 2016): I’ve updated this article to reflect the new name for the app, Vortech. Whilst submitting a v1.0.1 update (adding support for some extra figures), Apple took issue with the name Dimensions so I had to change it…

I’m very happy to announce that my latest self-published app, Vortech, is now available on the App Store.

Vortech is a character and ability tracker for the videogame LEGO Dimensions. It allows you to easily see all 52 currently available characters (waves 1-6) and 73 abilities and track them in your own collection. Whilst there are other tracking apps available (namely the official LEGO Dimensions app), these tend not to be as easy to use and they don’t allow you to cross-reference the special abilities and powers of characters.

I built the app as I would occassionally come across something that required a special ability and the game might show me a character with that ability. However, as I have a fairly large collection already, it is likely I have a character with the ability and just need to look up which one has it. For example, I might find an area in a level which requires the Sonar Smash ability and the game might show me the character Benny (from The LEGO Movie) as someone with this ability; with my app, I can quickly see who else has that abilty and find I have Marty McFly (from Back To The Future) who will do just as well!

The entire app is built using Swift 3.0 and I use Realm as a mobile database containing all of the character information that I scraped from the official LEGO Dimensions website¹. I added a few nice touches such as Peek & Pop support for 3D Touch enabled devices and taptic feedback for the iPhone 7 models. The app is completely free and contains no in-app purchases, adverts, or analytics tracking – it doesn’t even require an internet connection!

You can download Vortech on the App Store and learn more about it on my Dodo Apps website.

If you find Vortech useful, I’m always grateful for a review on the App Store. If you run into any issues or have feature requests, you can contact me directly.

I have three main hobbies; coding, video games, and LEGO. With the first, I’m fortunate to have a flexible job that allows me to code on tons of different and varied projects every day. With the last, I’ve literally run out of space for the models I already have (most of which are over 2000 bricks in size). Video games, then, are really my main hobby. In the last year I’ve started a podcast on co-operative gaming, built a powerful gaming PC, and spent somewhere in the region of 900 hours playing games. Today I’m happy to announce a new website I’ve been working on dedicated to my gaming hobby; it’s called Kylo Ben:

Kylo Ben is divided into several different sections:

Articles

I’m currently varying between reviews, things I’m excited about, and general thought pieces on the industry. So far, I have published:

• A look ahead at the achievements in Titanfall 2 (compared to Titanfall)
• A review of minimalistic transport sim, Mini Metro
• A piece about my first refund on Steam in 11 years
• Some thoughts on the Nintendo Switch announcement
• A review of the Doctor Who LEGO Dimensions level pack
• A roundup of the games in the October Humble Bundle

I’m trying to write new pieces every couple of days and it has proven to be a good way to practice my writing and get some long form thoughts out that don’t fit neatly into a 140 character tweet. It also means I can keep these game centric pieces away from my more work-oriented blog here at bendodson.com.

About

I’ve listed a few things about my current gaming setups on my about page. It details the components in my gaming PC, my current console and mobile gaming systems, and a look through the various consoles I’ve owned since I started gaming in 1991.

Games

I have a single page which lists all of the games I currently own on both Steam and my Xbox One. Each game has more details including purchase date, last played, total gaming time, and a short note about where I’m currently at with the game. I also list any articles related to that game for easy reference (and vice versa). For example, here is the entry for Mini Metro.

Gaming Time

This is perhaps my biggest achievement; a complete log of time spent on each game. The page updates daily and will list each game I’ve played over the last 2 months along with duration and a link through to more details. This is done through a combination of two custom scripts I wrote to scrape both my Steam library and Xbox Live / Windows 10 account periodically for changes. It’s been fascinating for me to see exactly how long I’ve spent on certain games (*cough* Peggle 2 *cough*) and will allow me to easily write a regular piece on games I’ve played over the previous month.

I’m really excited to be writing regularly about my biggest hobby and I’m looking forward to posting frequently for the foreseeable future. I have a few extra things to announce soon including some apps and game mods so follow me on Twitter for the latest updates. Alternatively, there is an RSS feed available for Kylo Ben which will keep you up to date on any new articles. If you have any thoughts or suggestions for improvements, please get in touch.

I was recently asked by Remote.co to take part in a new Q&A section about remote workers. You can read the full Q&A on their website but I’ve put some of their questions and my answers below:

What advice would you give someone considering going remote?

Discipline. It takes a lot of discipline to work remotely as you’ll find that it is very easy to put off a piece of work when you’re sitting at home. There are no firewalls stopping you from accessing Facebook and Twitter, the Xbox might be sat saying “just one more game”, and before you know it a month has passed and you’ve done nothing.

How do you avoid becoming distracted when working remotely?

I have a pair of noise-cancelling headphones that I bought for working in an open-plan office but they work at home for me as the act of putting them on puts me into “work mode”. The only problem was that if the doorbell went (sidenote: great advantage of working from home is you never miss an Amazon delivery) I wouldn’t hear it; I fixed that by hooking it up to a Philips Hue lightbulb on my desk so I get a visual alert.

Do you have a dedicated home office?

I do have a dedicated room for work. I have a small desk with a 5k iMac and an external 1080p monitor in portrait mode (I find this better for webpages and iPhone simulators). Apart from the computer, my desk only has space for my tea and water and a Blue Yeti microphone I use for podcasting and Skype. I have lots of bookshelves (mainly full of LEGO) and a small orchid by the window.

What’s the hardest part about working with a traditional team while you’re remote? How do you overcome it?

I find the hardest thing is that traditional teams will want to have meetings all the time. They also want you to pop into the office fairly frequently for reasons unknown to me. I’m pretty good at telling prospective clients that I only work remotely and that I don’t do daily catch up calls; I get a good handle for the project and then do a week or two of work before sending over a build for feedback.

I’ve been using MailRoute on and off for the past few years¹ in an effort to reduce the amount of spam in my inbox but there is one missing feature that always drives me nuts; there is no way to blacklist an email address or domain without going to their website. Whilst you can whitelist domains easily from the daily digest of caught spam, there is no feature that lets you forward spam to them in order to have it blacklisted (despite people, including me, requesting it since 2013). After having a look at the MailRoute API, I decided it was time to fix this myself.

There are several components in getting this working.

1. I created a new email address with Gmail which will catch my forwarded spam².
2. I set up an account with Context.io and connected it to the gmail account³.
3. I put the following code available on GitHub on a 15 minute CRON job

<?php

require_once 'OAuth.php';

define('CONTEXT_KEY', 'your-contextio-consumer-key');
define('CONTEXT_SECRET', 'your-contextio-consumer-secret');
define('CONTEXT_USER_ID', 'your-contextio-user-id');
define('CONTEXT_TRASH_NAME', '[Gmail]/Trash'); // change if not using Gmail

define('MAILROUTE_USER', 'your-mailroute-username'); // should be your email address
define('MAILROUTE_API_KEY', 'your-mailroute-api-key');
define('MAILROUTE_EMAIL_ACCOUNT_ID', 'your-mailroute-email-id'); // numeric - can be found in admin.mailroute.net network traffic

$whitelist = ['sending@example.com']; // add the email address you are forwarding from or you'll blacklist yourself...

$inbox = performOAuthRequest('GET', 'https://api.context.io/lite/users/'.CONTEXT_USER_ID.'/email_accounts/0/folders/inbox/messages');
foreach ($inbox as $message) {
    $id = $message->{'message_id'};
    $body = performOAuthRequest('GET', 'https://api.context.io/lite/users/'.CONTEXT_USER_ID.'/email_accounts/0/folders/inbox/messages/'.$id.'/body');
    $content = str_replace('<', '', str_replace('>', '', $body->bodies[0]->content));
    $emails = extractEmailAddresses($content);
    foreach ($emails as $email) {
        if (!in_array($email, $whitelist)) {
            performRequest('POST', 'https://admin.mailroute.net/api/v1/wblist/', ['email_account' => '/api/v1/email_account/'.MAILROUTE_EMAIL_ACCOUNT_ID.'/', 'email' => $email, 'wb' => 'b'], ['Authorization: ApiKey '.MAILROUTE_USER.':'.MAILROUTE_API_KEY]);
        }
    }
    performOAuthRequest('PUT', 'https://api.context.io/lite/users/'.CONTEXT_USER_ID.'/email_accounts/0/folders/inbox/messages/'.$id, ['new_folder_id' => CONTEXT_TRASH_NAME]);
}

echo 'DONE!';



// CURL

function performOAuthRequest($httpMethod, $url, $params=[], $headers=[]) {
    $signatureMethod = new OAuthSignatureMethod_HMAC_SHA1();
    $oauthConsumer = new OAuthConsumer(CONTEXT_KEY, CONTEXT_SECRET, NULL);
    $oauthRequest = OAuthRequest::from_consumer_and_token($oauthConsumer, NULL, $httpMethod, $url, $params);
    $oauthRequest->sign_request($signatureMethod, $oauthConsumer, NULL);
    return performRequest($httpMethod, $oauthRequest, $params);
}

function performRequest($httpMethod, $url, $params=[], $headers=[]) {
    $ch = curl_init();
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT, 20);

    $headers[] = 'Content-Type: application/json';
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, $headers);

    if (!in_array($httpMethod, ['GET', 'POST'])) {
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST, $httpMethod);
    }
    if ($httpMethod != 'GET') {
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, json_encode($params));
    }
    $output = curl_exec($ch);
    $httpcode = curl_getinfo($ch, CURLINFO_HTTP_CODE);
    curl_close($ch);
    return json_decode($output);
}



// Email parsing

function extractEmailAddresses($string) {
   $emails = array();
   $string = str_replace("\r\n",' ',$string);
   $string = str_replace("\n",' ',$string);

   foreach(preg_split('/ /', $string) as $token) {
        $email = filter_var($token, FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL);
        if ($email !== false) { 
            $emails[] = $email;
        }
    }
    return array_unique($emails);
}

Now all you need to do is forward any spam you receive to the Gmail account you set up. Every 15 minutes, the CRON job will run and check the inbox for any emails. When it finds some, it will parse them for email addresses and blacklist them with MailRoute before deleting them.

In an ideal world, MailRoute would implement a custom email address for blacklisting but this seems to be working for now.

To coincide with the release of iOS 10, I’m happy to announce a free update is available for my app Pocket Rocket which includes several new features:

First of all, I’ve added an optional tile-based interface which uses an image from the article or a random colour if one isn’t available. You can long press a tile to get options for sharing, archiving, and deleting the article and tapping will open the article up in Safari or the in-app browser as per your settings. Next, I added the ability to share articles directly from Pocket Rocket; whether you are using the old list view or the new tile-based one, just long press on an article and you’ll be given a share option which uses the standard iOS share sheet so you can transfer the URL to any compatible app.

Finally, I added an iOS 10 iMessage app so you can share articles directly within iMessage:

This was a really interesting feature for me as it let me get to grips with the new APIs that allow apps to hook into iMessage. There are a few interesting niggles for developers when writing these apps¹ but on the whole it is fairly simple and includes a lot more power than I thought they would². With Pocket Rocket, you get a list of all of your articles; you can then tap to include them in your message and send them. Once received, you can tap to have the article open up in a webview directly within iMessage.

I think iMessage apps are going to be a huge deal so I’m excited that Pocket Rocket is one of the first apps available on the iMessage store.

You can get Pocket Rocket for free on the App Store. If you have any feature requests or feedback, please get in touch.

I’ve been working on some iOS 10 updates to Pocket Rocket¹ which led me to trying to solve an interesting problem; how do you generate a random colour, with a seed, in Swift? The reason for this dilemma is that I’m going to start showing a grid view of Pocket articles and many of them do not have images associated with them. In order to break things up, I decided I’d like a random colour for the background of each article:

As each article is UICollectionViewCell, setting a random background colour is not suitable as when you scroll and the cells are re-used the backgrounds will change. Whilst that could be fixed fairly easily, I also want the colours to persist with the article between app launches and also be the same in the iPad app and the iMessage extension. This means I need to generate a random colour with a seed so that colours generated with the same seed will always be the same.

Thankfully this is fairly easy if we use the srand48 and drand48 functions:

func randomColor(seed: String) -> UIColor {
    
    var total: Int = 0
    for u in seed.unicodeScalars {
        total += Int(UInt32(u))
    }
    
    srand48(total * 200)
    let r = CGFloat(drand48())
    
    srand48(total)
    let g = CGFloat(drand48())
    
    srand48(total / 200)
    let b = CGFloat(drand48())
    
    return UIColor(red: r, green: g, blue: b, alpha: 1)
}

We start by taking a string (in my case an article title) and turning it into an integer by getting the sum of the unicode scalar values of each character. Next, we seed the drand48 function by using srand48 with our Int along with a multiplier or division so that the red, green, and blue values are all different. Finally, we compile the UIColor together.

I’ve put together a Swift Playground demonstrating this using the last few headlines from Daring Fireball:

As you can see, each article title results in a different colour; the same string will always result in the same colour being generated. Be aware that this is not collision free as it is just a basic addition of scalar values – a string such as “ben” and “neb” will result in the same colours. This isn’t an issue for my usage and still serves as an interesting way of seeding random colours.

I was recently asked by Inc.com to contribute to a feature asking several successful remote workers to share their favourite tips and tools to sustain productivity when working remotely. You can read the full article on their website but I’ve also put their questions and my answers below:

How long have you worked remotely?

Around 6 years

What does a typical day look like for you?

I’ll wake up and go and deal with my dogs first thing around 6.30am whilst getting breakfast ready for my wife. Once she has left, I’ll read and deal with any overnight emails before doing a concentrated burst of work until around 1pm. After lunch, I’ll typically go for a walk and do a bit more work before playing some video games on my PC before my wife gets home. We’ll then walk the dogs, cook some dinner, and generally watch TV. Once she falls asleep, I’ll either do some more work or play some video games depending on how busy my schedule is.

What’s the one tip or tool you’d give to anyone looking to get started remote working to keep productive?

Develop a schedule and stick to it. The hardest thing in the world is finding the motivation to start on a new project but once you’ve done 10 minutes of work you’ll be raring to go on the next 10 minutes and the next. To work remotely, you need the self-control to work when you don’t want to, the passion in your work to keep going, and the common sense to know when a 30 minute break is going to actually help rather than hinder you.

With regards to tools, I can strongly recommend Cushion as an incredible way of managing your schedule, invoices, and expenses; it’ll make sure you don’t get overbooked (a big no-no) and also help you manage your finances better.

Over the summer, I’ve continued working with Brapp on 3 big releases which added several new features and UI updates.

v2.1

Released in July, Brapp 2.1 added the ability to trim recorded videos and change vibrancy of video filters along with adding a load of speed and stability improvements. However, the big new feature allowed users to export their beats as a video complete with an animating waveform:

This was a really interesting feature for me to build as I wasn’t sure initially how it would work. It turns out that it is actually fairly easy by adding your animations directly to the various CALayers and then using an AVVideoCompositionCoreAnimationTool as your AVMutableVideoComposition animation tool. Fun stuff!

v2.1.1

Released just a few days later, Brapp 2.1.1 included the ability to pin your favourite beat or post to the top of your profile feed¹ and added a “Now Playing” bar along the bottom of the app with a similar style to Apple Music. It also introduced synchornicity between the website and app for notifications which is an interesting problem to solve; basically, if someone reads the notifications on the website, a silent push needs to be sent to the app in order to remove the badge icon so you don’t think you have new notifications. There were also some pretty meaty performance upgrades behind the scenes.

v2.2

Brapp 2.2 was released today with the headline feature of location support. One of my main interests with iOS apps has always been in geo-location so it was really fun for me to add these new features including the ability to tag specific locations to beats and videos, add a city or town to your profile, view beats and videos on a profile map, and search for beats and videos either near you or at a specific location.

Once again, Brapp has been a really fun project to work on. I can’t say enough good things about the people behind it and am looking forward to working with them again in the future. If you haven’t checked it out yet, you can get Brapp for free on the App Store. You can also read about the initial build and release, the v1.1 update last November, and the v2 update earlier this year.

A few nights ago I was attempting to finish playing Day of the Tentacle on my PC via a Steam Link in my bedroom. For some reason, whilst it all loaded correctly, it was really jerky to play with a severe delay between controller input and response on the screen. As I’d been playing it successfully using GameStream on my Nvidia Shield, I assumed correctly that the issue was with the Steam Link.

Not content to have to either a) go downstairs and use the Nvidia Shield or b) go to my office and play in front of my PC, I instead turned to my Apple TV as I knew there was an open source project called Moonlight that basically lets you run the GameStream technology on non-Nvidia devices like iPhone or iPad. I assumed there would be a version for Apple TV but unfortunately it turns out that the AVFoundation frameworks have a __TVOS_PROHIBITED flag on some key components that prevent it from working. That’s when I found a fork by kevsmithpublic that enabled tvOS support with some code changes and requiring you to remove the __TVOS_PROHIBITED flags from the AVFoundation framework¹. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get it to pair to my PC and after a lot of searching it turns out that the fork was fairly old and hadn’t been updated to the latest specifications for GeForce Experience 3.0 and above.

Determined not to be beaten, I forked the project and then set about updating the code to support the latest Moonlight connections. This ended up being similar to the point and click adventure I was trying to play as I needed to constantly fetch the Apple TV from my bedroom, connect it to my mac, build the project, unplug the Apple TV, reconnect it in my bedroom, and then test if it actually worked (all because I didn’t have a spare monitor in my office as I use an iMac). After several hours (and a few beers) I had the project working and can now stream my games at 1080p from my PC to my Apple TV 4 and play them using an MFI controller.

You can download the project from my GitHub account.