EDIT: At the end of the day (June 3), I now have 3 bundles available for purchase at http://www.flashmasta.com/purchase/. Just note that they may not ship immediately due to me being frequently out of town in the upcoming weeks.
First of all, I’ll give you guys a bit of an update on what’s been happening over the last couple weeks. There were some things that I had mentioned were in my plans for leaving my job and starting my self-run business/life. Here are a few items that have changed. I will write more about this sort of stuff at www.EdMandy.com.
We put our house for sale on the market. We have probably averaged around 1 showing per day over the last week and a half. I think that’s pretty good. We got one offer that was a low-ball deal from some sort of investment group. I think they have some automated system that sends out offers just to see if they get any interest. I don’t think they even looked at the house. Other than that, we’ve had some good feedback, but no real offers.
I started working on the iOS game. So far, my effort has been directed at getting it to compile on my Windows 7 laptop and then installing Windows 7 under VirtualBox on my Macbook. It has taken a significant effort to do these things well, but I feel like it’s working properly now. Oh, the game I’m working on already exists on Windows. I will be bringing it to iPad and iPhone.
This week, my 2 oldest daughters have their last day of school on Thursday. On Friday, we will drive to Wisconsin to attend a wedding. We should get back on Monday and then maybe leave for Rapid City the next day. It will be a lot of driving. I hope to get a good amount of work done even though I won’t be at home. This will be a good test of my location-independence. Again, if you’re interested in this stuff, EdMandy.com might have more info for you.
As far as the Neo Pocket Flash Masta project goes, I’ve been soldering all day today. Over the past months, a friend of mine had been doing a lot of the soldering for me. Since I left my job, I figure that it’s best for me to take over this task again. It’s a long process, but you can see a part of the hot plate soldering method I used. I’m sorry that I didn’t narrate the video, but you may find it interesting, anyway.
After that’s all done, I go over every part with a soldering iron under a magnifying glass. I find that it’s better to just do this, because the chances are VERY high that I’ll have to do it anyway. It’s easier to do them all at once than try to debug ’em one at a time and then go over the parts that “seem” like they need more work.
I just got done with the iron soldering, and now I will need to program each cartridge. Once that is done, I will need to test each cartridge. I’m hoping that over half work right away. 8/10 would be excellent. Then I have to try to debug and resolder the ones that don’t work.
Once all 10 work, then I’ll get to making Linkmasta USB devices to pair with the cartridges. If I wasn’t going out of town, I’d say I should have 10 bundles ready for purchase in a week or so. As it stands now, that MAY be doable, but it’s more likely to be 3 weeks just do to being gone.