Shacknews LoL

Yo Shackers - I made a game:

It's been tradition, for the last ten years, that whenever I make a new game and upload it's first trailer on YouTube, the very first place I share it publicly is here in the Chatty.

Well, I made a new game and as I write this I'm uploading it's release trailer (combined with ten minutes of gameplay commentary) to YouTube. I'll link to the vid at the bottom when it's done.

It's a 'Competitive Physics Sandbox' game and quite honestly I have absolutely no idea what the world is going to think about it. I've had reactions from it being one of the most addictive games someone has played in years to 'meh, looks okay mate'.

This is the first time I've shown the game to more than a couple of dozen people at once, so be gentle, let me know what you think and if you have any questions I'll obviously be more than happy to answer.

BTW. If you aren't an old school Shacker, and don't remember my other games. I made NeonXSZ and 'Space Bob vs. The Replicons'. I'm sure there will be at least a few of you who see this and remember when I first posted videos of those games here in the Chatty. Shacknews was even kind enough to do an interview/article back in the day for NeonXSZ.

It's not on the same scale as my other games so it's only going to be $3.99 on Steam. Still super cheap for what it is. It's releasing next Thursday, so if you like the look of it, please share and maybe I'll see you on the Steam Leaderboards.

Free beta key to whoever pretends to be the biggest fanboy.

Here's the video, I haven't even shared this with friends or the game's Discord yet. Exclusive first look, as per tradition, for the Chatty.
https://youtu.be/FfqtfYW_FXE

So after woggle.net was shutdown, everyone started seeing those errors on Shack Browse startup for being unable to contact the woggle servers. Push notifications have also stopped working as that relied on woggle. For the time being, I am going to step up and try to get the app into a bit of a nicer state.

First off, a warning. I have two kids, a full time job and I measure my spare time in minutes. So this is going to take a while to get push notifications working again. For my own sanity, I'm going to have to do work from time to time when I can.

I have forked the repo from bradsh and have started uploading release APKs to my fork on the releases page:

https://github.com/StimpyDad/ShackBrowse/releases

The current v7.0.1 release has the startup calls that pop those error dialogs disabled. I have done as much testing as I can right now but I have those time limits. The biggest risk here is that I had to update the Android version that is targeted and that may cause a whole number of breaking issues or crashes. I have been daily driving it on my Pixel 6 and haven't seen anything yet, but YMMV.

So ask yourself, am I truly annoyed by that startup error?
If it truly bothers you, then go ahead and try out sideloading this APK. You will likely need to uninstall the Play Store version to install this and as a result you will lose all your settings. Remember your blocklist in advance if you use it. If you can live with it for now, I'd advise waiting until some other people try things first and push notifications are working again or even if we can get this on the Play Store.

There are a bunch of guides on how to sideload, but this one looks good. https://www.xda-developers.com/how-to-sideload-install-android-app-apk/ As mentioned above, you will likely have to uninstall the Play Store version first and you will lose your settings/have to login again/etc. I do not have the original release key so I can't update over the Play Store version.

My initial plans are to:
- Get push notifications working again by integrating with another notification server. Failing that, write one or fork an existing one.
- Try to put Shack Browse back on the Play Store. Google is a PITA to deal with for apps and I'm not sure if they will like me trying to upload a new version of a previous app on the store, but I can try.

I have Crashlytics enabled for the app, but if anyone has *new* crash issues then let me know either here, by shack message or in #devdump on the Discord and I'll see what I can figure out. I'll likely need to know the Android version. If anything is going to start having an issue, it'll be because of the target Android version update.

I am 39 today.

I am so thankful for this place and all of you.

Thank you all for everything, and keep being wonderful.

❤️

The 10,000 striking John Deere workers voted to approve a third contract offer 61%-39%, ending the 5-week strike & solidifying major concessions from the company.

The big wins include:
- $8500 bonus
- Immediate 10% raise
- Another 10% raise by 2025
- Improved pension


Very nice. Strikes work. Unions work. Blizzard employees should form one and officially strike.

20 percent raises in 4 years and guess what? JD will still be fine as a company. Imagine if Amazon workers could unionize and strike

Dune 2 officially GREENLIT - OCT 2023

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/dune-2-greenlit-movie-release-date-1235036655/

Shack Staff posted a new article, <a target="_blank" href="/article/123804/the-shacknews-origin-story-as-told-by-shugamom">The Shacknews Origin Story, as told by sHugamom</a>

Happy birthday to me! 🎉

This is the best I can do in my front yard. At some point I'm going to try a barlow.

http://chattypics.com/files/shackbrowseUpload_ejb0nkq0p7.jpg

http://chattypics.com/files/shackbrowseUpload_kb6c214582.jpg

http://chattypics.com/files/shackbrowseUpload_nqe40knsvw.jpg

Personal pride post!

This morning I hit my personal target weight for my diet, so I took my "after" photo. If you want to see the before-and-after comparison (warning, I'm only in my underwear), it's at https://photos.app.goo.gl/XHTafhE9kSaw8NqF7 . I did my best not to "sell" the shots in any way -- no sucking in my stomach, no flexing or smiling or better lighting or makeup etc. It's still instantaneously obvious; losing almost 50 pounds (or for metric people, about 22 kilowatt-hours) will do that.

This represents three months of complete adherence to a medically-supervised calorie-restricted diet, ranging from 800-1200 kcal/day. I never cheated (though I fiercely wanted to!) and I'm still not (and will never be) "done" -- I'm transitioning slowly back towards more control over my eating, and more of a "maintenance" schedule. Maintenance intake should be about 1700 kcal/day, plus more for physical activity. I've started to exercise again. Fruit tastes amazing.

This is probably similar to what I weighed when I joined Google in 2006 (I wasn't weighing myself then, so I don't know) and is lighter than I've been in at least 9 years but probably more like 13. I'm really proud of myself. It took a lot of self-discipline. Now I feel like I want someone who knows how to pick out clothes to help me go shop for a new wardrobe :P

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