willclarke.net

I’ve just added Adsense ads to my Scrabble Word Finder web application. This is the first time I’ve really played with Google ads before - the ad creation process is really easy but I had a hell of a time getting my account sorted out with them. In any case, now that it’s somewhat monetized (PayPal donations are next) I think I will try and get it re-listed on Apple’s home page.

People who know me know that I like Barack Obama. Since reading his book, The Audacity of Hope, I have been a big supporter of his campaign. He is clearly a smart and thoughtful public servant who would be a much better choice than anyone else running, especially McCain. But my man-crush is over.

First, I’m disappointed that he broke his pledge to pursue public financing for the general election. I agree that the system is broken, and that even after negotiations with McCain’s campaign it probably wouldn’t have worked out, but he honestly didn’t even try. I believe spending some time discussing the issue would have brought some attention to the system and made it easier to reform next election cycle. But he didn’t. It was vaguely reminiscent of when Bush claimed to be trying to avoid war with Iraq, when it was clear nothing was going to stop him from invading. And I don’t like being reminded of that mess.

Second, I’m disappointed that he has decided to support the FISA compromise bill that includes retroactive immunity for telecom companies that broke the law. I hope that he holds true to his pledge to filibuster the bill if immunity is not removed - but judging from how he broke his pledge to seek common ground on public financing, I’m not holding my breath.

And third, I’m disappointed with the way he is condemning Muslims. His campaign has made an effort to squash the rumors that he is a Muslim in a way that is insulting. The fact is that someone who would vote against him because they thought he was a Muslim would probably vote against him anyway. He should clarify that he is Christian, but always add, “and so what if I were a Muslim? Because their retarded beliefs are just as stupid as those of Christians and Jews.”

Okay, maybe he should leave that last sentence off.

Apple has removed their link to my Scrabble Word Search app, probably because it linked to a picture of naked people playing Scrabble.

As you can probably expect, page views have dropped rapidly as a result.

I will probably grudgingly resubmit it with the link removed. But I will miss you, naked people.

I wrote my first publicly available iPhone Web App last weekend - the Scrabble Word Search. On your web browser it might not look too great, but on an iPhone or iPod Touch it is gorgeous.

The inspiration for the app came from playing Scrabble with friends at various places in public and needing to look up words. I’ve been playing Scrabulous on Facebook for a while so I’m used to using the Tournament Word List (TWL) for challenges but there just isn’t a good way of looking up words on the iPhone (Scrabulous has a lookup page but it tries to open in a new window and isn’t very iPhone friendly).

So I downloaded the TWL (along with the SOWPODS dictionary), imported them into a database, wrote a simple lookup script, a few static pages, and styled it with CSS. In four hours it was done.

I also submitted it to Apple’s Web App directory and they posted it as a Staff Pick! I’ve gotten about 6k hits in 12 hours. Not too bad for my first try.

I have some ideas for feature additions, most significantly, the ability to keep score for a game. Stay tuned!

Well I’ve decided to start blogging again - this time using wordpress. It was fun with my own software, but I got tired of getting hacked.

I’ll mostly blog about politics, programming, and random shit I see in Atlanta. Stay tuned.