10 posts tagged with "cursor"

Solo Mode was the reliability win from v1.1 — this week I made it free and moved the one-time purchase behind Play online, so families can try the app offline before deciding to host a multiplayer session.

What happened​

• Bumped to v1.2.0 on TestFlight with Solo Mode free and IAP gated behind Play online
• Confirmed App Store / support pricing copy matches that line: joining and Solo stay free; the one-time host unlock sits behind Play online
• Finished Travel Bingo per-item art across landmarks, businesses, scenery, vehicles, signs, and animals — generated icons and refreshed state plate art
• Travel Bingo tiles moved from small stock emojis to custom illustrated sprites (same board, much clearer at a glance in the car)
• Added plane propeller spin overlays and accessibility fixes; logged new game ideas in the backlog
• Published Backseat Games marketing, privacy, and support pages on Homol Works (App Store URL, hero, and game lineup)
• Refreshed the marketing hero and on-site game descriptions to match the current three-game lineup

After last week's widget readability pass, the focus shifted to submission readiness: a Skia life calendar, a consistent brand coin across widgets and loading states, deep-linked home widgets, and the marketing/privacy/support URLs App Store Connect expects.

What happened​

• Rebuilt the life calendar on Skia — better scroll and zoom for a 4,680-week grid, with the tradeoff of a heavier Skia dependency and canvas-style rendering to maintain instead of a pure View-based layout
• Enriched home-screen widgets (Dreams vs Time, Life Ring, Week Gauge) and replaced skull cutouts with a shared brand coin asset — extract script, CoinSpinner in-app, and widget snapshot wiring
• Dropped the clipped goals widget; home widgets now deep-link into the right in-app tabs and use the coin as the weekly goal completion marker
• Hardened Smart Record AI with clearer error messages, reflection editor improvements, and fallback merge tests
• Locked the iOS build to iPhone-only and added an App Store screenshot / preview prep workflow
• Finalized the App Store screenshot set on Homol Works and an App Preview video for Connect
• Published a Memento Mori app hub on Homol Works with marketing copy and those same screenshots

App Store prep week: Memento Mori got a Skia life calendar, brand-coin widgets, and Homol Works hub pages; Backseat Games shifted monetization for Solo Mode and finished Travel Bingo sprite art.

Highlights​

• Rebuilt Memento Mori's life calendar on Skia, unified the brand coin across widgets and in-app loading (including coin markers on weekly goals), deep-linked home widgets to tabs, and locked the build to iPhone-only for App Store submission — with screenshot prep, an App Preview video, and a new Homol Works app hub.
• Shipped Backseat Games v1.2 to TestFlight: Solo Mode is free, IAP sits behind Play online, Travel Bingo tiles moved from stock emojis to custom sprites, and marketing/privacy/support pages landed on Homol Works.
• Refreshed the ThreeWilly managed-services weekly canvas and hardened work-item autonumber / Teams draft signals.

Learn More​

• Memento Mori App Store Prep — Skia Calendar, Brand Coin Widgets, and the Homol Works Hub — Skia calendar, coin-marker widgets, App Preview video, and submission-ready hub pages
• Backseat Games v1.2 — Free Solo Mode and a Clearer Monetization Line — free Solo Mode, host unlock behind Play online, and Travel Bingo sprite art

Backseat Games got a v1.1 delight pass — and Solo Mode so play still works when the relay lobby cannot. Offline-first turned out to be a product feature, not a fallback.

What happened​

• Shipped jingle, SFX, icons, critter motion, and first-run teaching as one release theme
• Added Solo Mode for offline play without a relay lobby
• Useful for App Store demos and real car rides with spotty connectivity
• Update is live on the App Store — Solo Mode and delight assets look right on device
• Visual polish landed across the games (Travel Bingo board + License Plate Game cards)

After the SDK 55 revival, the next problem was not “do widgets render?” — it was “can you read them at a glance?” Trimming the set and using a consistent brand mark beat shipping every layout variant.

What happened​

• Wired shared skull PNGs through the widget snapshot builder for completed goals
• Clarified week/dreams layouts and trimmed the overall widget set
• Fixed TestFlight margin gates for fewer widgets
• Confirmed on device / TestFlight (not simulator-only) — readable at a glance
• App Store v1 docs will cover all layouts in the polished set (not deferring variants out of the write-up)

Widgets got clearer, Backseat Games got a delight pass and Solo Mode, and Managed Services tooling kept moving — with public-safe notes on a client Dataverse hygiene win.

Highlights​

• Polished Memento Mori widgets (brand skulls, trimmed set) verified on device / TestFlight; App Store v1 docs will cover the full polished layout set.
• Shipped Backseat Games v1.1 delight + Solo Mode — update is live on the App Store with the new Travel Bingo and License Plate visuals.
• Hardened prospect phone matching and duplicate-merge reporting on a client Power Platform / Dataverse engagement (kept generic).
• Scorecard trend overlays and related web parts continue a strong shelf story — more posts ahead, including a public release.

Learn More​

• Making Expo Home Screen Widgets Readable — polish pass: skull branding and a smaller, clearer widget set
• Solo Mode: Offline Play Without a Lobby — delight pack + offline reliability for family road trips
• Metric Trend Overlays for SharePoint Scorecards — opening chapter toward a public Scorecard release

Home-screen widgets for Memento Mori came back to life on Expo SDK 55 — but not before a stretch of black squares that looked like a React layout bug and were actually an extension packaging problem.

What happened​

• Rebuilt widgets against Expo SDK 55 with expo-widgets patches and EAS multi-target signing
• Black widgets traced to JS bundle copy into ExpoWidgetsTarget.appex, postinstall idempotency, and extension runtime symbols
• Hardened TestFlight / IPA CI gates so widget regressions fail earlier
• Current home-screen set is readable again — life % ring, weekly check-ins, and Dreams vs time — after the black-widget era
• Smart Record is active again (not gated off for release): speak stream-of-consciousness reflections and get a bulleted summary; in final testing ahead of app go-live

Ruddr MCP Server left the internal toolbox and landed as a public ThreeWill release — a self-hosted stdio MCP that puts PSA data into Cursor and Claude Desktop.

What happened​

• Prepared and tagged public release v0.3.0 — confirmed against the Homol Works Builds page listing
• README, changelog, and security policy updates for an external audience
• Public write-up direction: install-first — help people who want a test drive get the release zip wired into Cursor (not just a tool-surface tour)
• Showing up in Cursor as an enabled Home MCP server (ruddr, 20 tools) once configured

A packed week across personal apps, Homol Works comeback work, and open-source releases — including the first public cuts of Ruddr MCP and Advanced Page Properties.

Highlights​

• Revived Memento Mori home-screen widgets on Expo SDK 55; Smart Record is active again and in final testing before app go-live.
• Brought Homol Works back online with a terminal theme, gopher logo, Builds page, and weekly AI-build drafts.
• Cleared an App Store blocker for Backseat Games, open-sourced Advanced Page Properties (SPFx 1.23) with a demo spotlight shot, and tagged Ruddr MCP v0.3.0 with an install-first public write-up plan.
• Advanced Managed Services shelf work: Scorecard metrics UX, MS Pulse packaging, and a DDS Referrals demo-reset pipeline.

Learn More​

• Reviving iOS Widgets on Expo SDK 55 — why widgets went black and what fixed them
• Open-Sourcing Advanced Page Properties — SPFx 1.23 / Heft migration to a public repo
• Ruddr MCP v0.3.0 — install-first guide for a public test drive

STATUS: SIGNAL REACQUIRED · HOMOL WORKS ONLINE · OPERATOR: MIKE HOMOL

If you have been here before, the gap is obvious.

My last post on this site was Consult the Oracle in early 2023 — me staring at ChatGPT like it was the promised evolution of artificial intelligence, already wondering what it would do to coding, writing, and the shape of "thinking jobs." Then life got loud, client work stayed loud, and Homol Works went quiet.

The builder did not stop. The blog just did.

This is the transmission coming back online — and the honest recap of what the past year has looked like once Cursor became less of a novelty and more of how I actually work.