41 posts tagged with "ai"

I like making things a lot more than I like promoting them. So this week I gave the promoting part to a Grok Bot. My Homol Works bot now helps market Barry, Backseat Games, Memento Mori and the open-source tools — and Homol Works finally has social accounts of its own.

The one rule: nothing gets posted without my OK.

What happened​

• Set up Homol Works on X, a Facebook Page and Instagram, all with the same bio: Staying curious and hopefully creating more than I consume. With AI, we're only limited by curiosity and creativity.
• The first posts went out on all three: the Backseat Games 1.5 Halloween launch
• Every Monday morning the bot drops a weekly content batch in chat — four or five ready-to-post ideas with captions, hashtags, and what screenshot or clip to pair with each — and I keep, cut or rewrite them
• This week's picks are scheduled: a Barry collage on Wednesday and a Memento Mori "one week at a time" post on Thursday, with a Happy Halloween from Barry and a Thanksgiving road-trip blitz coming up
• The same bot now curates this weekly blog, too: it combs through my commits, Cursor chats and bot activity, recommends stories, and drafts the post after I say keep or drop

The TikTok aside​

I also made a Homol Works TikTok. On my very first login, it told me I was banned. No posts, no followers, no crimes — just banned. The appeal is in. Until then, the dad jokes stay on the other three.

Last week the Feud board ran live at ThreeWill's corporate QAD. This week I pulled it out into its own product: threewill/feud is now a public, MIT-licensed repo that anyone can use to run a Family Feud–style show for their own team.

The big change is that the board isn't tied to one event anymore. Questions load from a pack — one JSON file — so the next show is just a new pack.

What happened​

• Productized Feud as pack-driven boards: title, family names, live and backup boards, win rules and optional lightning questions all live in one JSON file
• Added a Microsoft Forms importer that clusters similar survey answers into a pack, with a review file of the raw strings so you can tidy labels before showtime
• Let the host set the win score and turn the lightning round on or off, and split showdown X's from the family's three strikes
• Added an MIT license, a README that walks through gameplay, and host and audience screenshots
• Added Feud to Creations on homol.work

Try it​

Clone threewill/feud, run npx serve ., open the host page, then pop out the audience board and share that window. It's not official Family Feud — no licensed logos, and the ding and buzzer are synthesized stand-ins.

A week of showing up in public. homol.work got reframed around curiosity and Creations, Barry got a whimsical new splash page and the start of an AI-assisted character library, Memento Mori 1.1 is headed to the App Store with banner ads and a $3.99 Remove Ads option, ThreeWill Feud went open source, and Homol Works finally has social accounts (TikTok had other ideas).

Highlights​

• homol.work: The site is reframed around curiosity and creating, with Creations, product heroes, a credentials page and social links.
• Barry: It has a whimsical new splash page, it's now on Kindle, and an AI-assisted character library is underway.
• Memento Mori: Version 1.1 adds banner ads and a $3.99 Remove Ads option, and it's headed to the App Store.
• Backseat Games: The 1.5 holiday themes are live, with a skeleton, a pilgrim and a snowman in Hangman.
• ThreeWill Feud: It's now a public, MIT-licensed repo with configurable games.
• Automation: Homol Works has its own social accounts and a weekly content routine, and a couple of Grok Bots are helping run my work week.

Learn More​

• homol.work Makeover — Builds Became Creations — curiosity framing, three product heroes, a credentials page, social links
• Barry's New Splash Page — A Teaser, Not a Spoiler — text-free story crops, handwritten type, ages 2–6, Kindle
• Building a Barry Character Library with AI — turnaround, expressions, six outfits, Astronaut Barry, and the rules that keep him Barry
• Memento Mori 1.1 — Banner Ads and a $3.99 Remove Ads — RevenueCat, AdMob, app-ads.txt, headed to the App Store
• ThreeWill Feud Goes Open Source — pack-driven boards, a Forms importer, configurable endings, MIT
• Homol Works Goes Social with an AI Marketing Assistant — X, Facebook, Instagram, a weekly content batch, and a very short TikTok career
• Bots Running the Work Week — a roadmap bot that opens docs-only PRs, and a bot for timesheets and retention scoring

For ThreeWill’s corporate Feud at QAD I needed more than a slide deck: a live board the room can watch, scoring that feels like Family Feud, and a host surface I can drive without stealing the share. This week that board ran live — one tab shared with everyone in the meeting, another tab on my machine that updates the shared experience.

The QAD rounds came from survey results we imported for that event. The board itself is not tied to those questions: any answer bank can be loaded, so the same host + audience split is reusable for the next Feud (or anything that wants a two-window live board).

What happened​

• Built a live Feud host + audience board (HTML/JS/CSS) with ding/buzzer sounds and board state for multi-select answers
• Ran it live at October QAD: share the audience tab with the meeting; keep the host tab private so reveals, strikes, and scoring stay on the operator
• Rescaled multi-select boards to a 100-point pie and added an audience clock so pacing stays visible
• Kept the audience window painting correctly in Edge and made hopping between host and board reliable
• Documented the Feud End game host button and a clustered QAD runbook so setup is repeatable

Backseat Games 1.4 hit the App Store mid-week, then 1.5 shipped with Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas theme packs plus a doodled Hangman. On the ThreeWill side I ran a live Feud board at QAD and pushed ThreeWill Operational Dashboard Data Sync + store packaging forward — with a small Azure Maps follow-on on a client SPA.

Highlights​

• Backseat Games: 1.4.0 went live with Hangman, Color Catch, and the five-sign hero; Barry’s Kindle editions got a blog home too. Then 1.5 landed on the App Store — Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas as separate IAPs, Classic still free, and Hangman rebuilt as themed doodle sprites.
• ThreeWill Feud: ran a live host + audience board at corporate QAD — share one tab with the room, drive it from another; survey-imported rounds for that event, any answer bank for the next one.
• ThreeWill Operational Dashboard: Store package must-fix (dashboard naming / site-scoped listing), Data Sync product docs + CareLogic POC connector, and a demo-seed path for a human-services customer demo; AGENTS.md + knowledge/roadmap docs landed so the repo is cloud-agent ready.
• Client SPA follow-on: fixed Azure Maps uniqueId query and geocode URI on the facility geo path from last week (teammates kept reference-data admin, Functions jobs host, and notes SQL moving).

Learn More​

• Backseat Games 1.5 Is Live — Holiday Themes and a Doodled Hangman — seasonal packs on the App Store, separate IAPs, sprite Hangman
• ThreeWill Feud — Live Board for QAD — two-tab live architecture, survey-loaded rounds, reusable board

Hangman and Color Catch already landed on the board last week. This pass was about making Hangman Solo feel like the rest of Backseat Games: road chrome, a difficulty you pick once from a local word list, and a hitchhiker drawing that grows as you miss — so the car game reads like a roadside stop, not a generic puzzle screen.

1.4.0 with this polish is on TestFlight now (not live on the App Store yet — expecting that later this week).

What happened​

• Painted Hangman and Color Catch onto the host hero so all five games read as real roadside signs
• Gave Hangman Solo an Easy / Medium / Hard choice backed by a local phrase list
• Cream road-dash tiles for letter slots, a wooden hitchhiker drawing as you miss, and host setup that makes solo difficulty an explicit pick
• Tightened the Solo difficulty sheet so Easy / Medium / Hard are clear before the trip starts

On a client SPA this week I shipped facility address + pinpoint radius search: geocode through a swappable Azure Maps service, filter with SQL geography, and persist coordinates on writes without failing the request when Maps is down. Product names and tenants stay off this page — the reusable pattern is the point.

What happened​

• Added facility radius / pinpoint search against geocoded addresses (not just text match)
• Wired a swappable geocoding service (Azure Maps in environments that have it; fake / no-op for local and Maps-down paths)
• Persisted coordinates on facility writes and filtered nearby results in SQL geography
• Extended OpenAPI + tests so the contract and happy/failure paths stay honest

Hangman got a real roadside solo loop on TestFlight, a client SPA picked up facility address + radius search with Azure Maps, and I started leaning hard on GrokBot to talk to my Cursor workspaces — while Homol High kept the week-of-10/12 packs moving and teammates kept audit, contacts, and document uploads moving.

Highlights​

• Backseat Games: painted Hangman and Color Catch onto the host hero as real signs, then gave Hangman Solo a local Easy/Medium/Hard word list, cream road-dash tiles, and a wooden hitchhiker drawing — 1.4.0 is on TestFlight (App Store live expected later this week).
• Started heavily adopting GrokBot: bots that chat with my Cursor workspaces and help orchestrate work inside them (Homol Works marketing, Homol High, ops dashboards, and more).
• Homol High: shipped week-of-10/12 Day Pack v3 (Mon–Fri) — Jacobs Geometry Chapter 2 Week 2 with the Homol test Friday 10/16, atomic-theory / periodic Chem, classical WH start, and ELA launching 1984.
• Memento Mori: stopped tinting ornate tab PNGs into solid circles and loaded chrome sooner after the post-launch restore pass.
• On a client SPA engagement: facility address + pinpoint radius search with scripted Azure Maps geocoding landed (my slice); teammates continued audit logging, contact management, resumable large-file uploads, document download/zip, and API input validation (details stay internal).

Learn More​

• Backseat Games — Hangman Gets a Roadside Solo Loop — local difficulty lists, hitchhiker drawing, five-sign hero
• Facility Radius Search with Azure Maps — geocode, SQL geography filter, Maps-down resilience

Memento Mori actually went live, Backseat Games grew two new road-trip games (and had to bump versions again because Apple closed another train), and Homol High switched Geometry onto Jacobs while shipping the week-of-10/5 packs.

Highlights​

• Announced Memento Mori as live on the App Store (launch post), then bumped marketing version to 1.0.1 so post-release TestFlight uploads can continue, and restored ornate chrome PNGs after the deferred-preload / SF Symbols-first pass.
• Added Hangman and Color Catch to Backseat Games, then bumped the App Store marketing version to 1.4.0 after Apple closed the approved 1.3.0 train — same recovery pattern as last week, this time with the new games on the next number.
• Homol High: switched Geometry to Jacobs (chapter-test Fridays only for Homol Geometry worksheets), moved ELA onto a daily 3-part novel log with Tuesday/Thursday Home Ec hours, and shipped week-of-10/5 packs (Jacobs Chapter 2 Week 1 plus the atomic-theory start).
• On a client SPA engagement: standardized REST conventions, URL-based API versioning so v1 and a sample v2 can coexist, reference-data endpoints, and authorized document download / multi-select zip landed across several merges (details stay internal).
• For a property-management SharePoint engagement: branded property listing web part plus list customizer, property import, Entra-driven leadership stamps, and grouped list views (details stay internal).

Learn More​

• (no deep-dives kept this week)

The polish build was ready for TestFlight — then Apple closed the approved 1.2.1 marketing train. This week’s story is less “new features” and more “ship the hardening under the next version Apple will accept,” while Android stays parked for the long haul. 1.3.0 is live on the App Store now; the next release is where new games show up.

What happened​

• Hardened the three launch games: invalid Sign Game feedback, plate collection, scenery rotation, review prompts, and host-gone recovery (mostly polish, not screenshot-bait)
• Pinned expo-store-review to 56.0.3 so the iOS archive compiles cleanly against Expo 56.0.9
• Bumped the App Store marketing version to 1.3.0 after Apple closed the approved 1.2.1 train — and that build is live in the App Store
• Left Android parked for quite some time (Play listing assets recorded; no public Android push and no “coming soon” tease)
• Lined up the next version around new games, not more 1.3.0 polish