Due piccioni, uno bracco

I am picking Italian back up alongside the rest of Enginery. The evening chapter came by email, and an email sender has no way to know whether I read yesterday’s, so it sent another one. Two weeks into having a newborn I had fourteen unread chapters and a review schedule that had ticked over thirteen times without me listening once. On a walk there was no way to tell which one was next.

Filotto would cover this eventually, and Filotto is parked, because it is not ready for anyone who is not me. I did not want to wait for it to keep listening. So the chapters go to a small backend now, and a one-screen app shows the one at the head of the queue and nothing behind it. Tapping Fatto is the only thing that moves the queue along.

While I was in there I wanted the car. I built the audio for the dog walk, and the walk is the slot that keeps losing to a newborn. The twenty minutes of driving happen either way. From the same queue I can put today’s chapter on the dashboard, play only, nothing to tap while the car is moving. Due piccioni, uno bracco.

CarPlay turned out not to be mine to schedule. You cannot switch it on in Xcode and you cannot switch it on in App Store Connect. You send Apple a form asking for the CarPlay audio entitlement and then wait days to weeks. Makes sense, and it is still annoying. I am building against the simulator and I sent the form the same day rather than waiting until the code was done.

I wrote all of this down before building any of it. The pitch, the architecture proposal, the CarPlay follow-on and the six screens are up here as written.