Building privacy-first apps that actually respect you Label Guard • Vspot • BottleCard 100% on-device • Zero subscriptions • No data collection Founder • Oregon
Vancouver, WA/Portland, OR
Joined April 2009
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Building Sugar Squadron took 4 months and a lot of tools, including SI (the entity formerly known as AI). Now I'm documenting the marketing.
Live on the App Store since Oct 28. Fresh accounts, zero followers on YouTube, TikTok, IG and FB. Daily clips for parents, small Apple Ads test Monday.
Weekly updates here: real social numbers plus Apple Ads wins and fails. Tell me what I'm doing right and wrong. This should be fun.
#buildinpublic #indiedev
Sugar Squadron 1.0.1 is live 🍭
Full campaign is open: 7 candy warlords, from the Donut King to the Supreme Sprinkle. Then chase high scores in Endless mode.
First 2 missions free. $1.99 unlocks the rest. No ads. No subscriptions. No accounts.
#indiedev #iOSgames
apps.apple.com/us/app/sugars…
Apple rejected Sugar Squadron 1.0.1 😅
They wanted a "demo account" to reach Mission 3 and test the unlock. There are no accounts. It's a kids' game, everything's on device.
So I added an "Unlock Full Campaign" button to the title screen. Built, uploaded, resubmitted same morning.
Back in the queue 🍭. Fingers crossed. The initial approval took over a month. last review took less than 48 hrs...so I'm hopeful.
Shipped my first game to the Apple App Store. Forgot to ship the paywall. Thanks @PlayWaggle for catching it!
StoreKit lesson: your first non-consumable IAP only gets reviewed if you attach it on the version page.
Still live as a free demo (first 2 missions). v1.0.1 is in review.
Last Sugar Squadron post from me this week, promise. Meet Nova: sugar glider, squadron leader, screen-clearing Nova Blast. More pilots and boss fights are dropping on the game's own socials so I don't spam you here. #indiedev #gamedev #iosgames #madewithAI
Shipped-it: Sugar Squadron is out on the App Store today. A candy arcade shooter for kids: drag to fly, it auto-fires. No ads, no accounts, no loot boxes, works offline. Built solo after retiring from the Navy. #indiedev apps.apple.com/us/app/sugars…
Opening shot made with AI; the rest is real gameplay. Get it here: apps.apple.com/us/app/sugars…
Had my grok bot book my barber, then fight Apple's Genius Bar system for me. It found a slot, canceled the ones I didn't want, and watched for a Saturday opening until one popped up. Booked it automatically. I hate how much I like this. #GrokBot
Day 37 of my morning briefing site. Still up. Still serving May 27 content. The deploy automation works perfectly. The content generation doesn't. Two different problems. #buildinpublic
Two months ago today I wrote the Vspot v3 plan for my macOS prompt manager. 56 days later: zero lines of code. The plan file is the only artifact. #macosdev
55 days since I wrote the Vspot v3 plan for my macOS prompt manager. Two months tomorrow. Still haven't shipped a line. #macosdev
34 days. My morning briefing site never went down. The content, however, is a time capsule from May 27. The deploy stayed green while the content generator quietly stalled. #buildinpublic
97 cold emails sent. 47 follow-ups mid-flight. Stopped checking reply rates daily. The numbers are what they are. #buildinpublic
New Siri dev access unlocked. My iOS apps just got capabilities that didn't exist last week. The indie dev who spent 16 days wrestling Apple Search Ads just got handed a new playground. #iosdev
29 consecutive days of my AI-generated morning briefing. Past one month. The ad campaign came and went. The posting bot died. The briefing never missed a day.
47 follow-ups went out yesterday. First reply was a no. The pipeline's reply rate is 4.2% so far — not zero, but not a yes either. That's the honest middle.
Holy smokes!!! 🤯🔥 I just scored the NEW SIRI accesssss... devs this is straight-up MIND-BLOWING excitement overload!!! 🚀💥😍 WOW we're gonna BUILD insane magic on it for SUREEEE!!! ✨🛠️🌟🔥🔥🔥
Six autonomous posting days. Zero human intervention. Cron-mopullis — my automated X posting pipeline — isn't an experiment anymore. It's infrastructure. #buildinginpublic