Hello everybody!
It’s been quite a while here since any update and I have some news about MerQury.
But first, let me give you a bit of history.
Act I
Almost a year ago, I was given the challenge to implement a fast and cheap way of creating a redundant backup system for Qlab 2. I had an idea rumbling around my head about an array of Qlab machines working on concert over a network and here was the opportunity to start working on this idea. Hey…but what else could work over the network? The iPhone!
I should note, at this point I am very much in my adolescence as a software developer. I had done a bit of homework about the technology needed to create MerQury but, I couldn’t really see all the moving parts ahead of time. Anyway….I got a really dirty redundancy solution working. On that, I started building in an iPhone server and iPhone remote. I got a basic version working…play, pause, forward. It really wasn’t what I envisioned. I wanted to be able to select cues at random and have controls totally custom to the iPhone. This sent me down a road for which I am thankful, I got my hands dirty in all kinds of Cocoa frameworks that I probably wouldn’t have. I rewrote the network code from the ground up…twice…and I got a really solid handle on Core Data. As of this post, MerQury is still really good at creating a fast redundancy machine…and the Blind Editor is a pretty cool idea.
There is a roadblock though, and its Apple’s Scripting Bridge. MerQury really pushes what it was designed to do. Scripting Bridge in essence allows developers the ability to let users create their own utility scripts and apps. In MerQury’s case, there are still a few missing pieces to the overall puzzle. But one of the most problematic features of Scripting Bridge is it’s “back seat” nature. Imagine a car. In the drivers seat is the application, like Qlab, you are trying to talk to. Never in its whole life says a word to you…unless you ask. You end up asking (amazingly fast) over and over, “Are we there yet?” So…the very nature of SB has made it particularly challenging.
Act II
There are 2 new applications in development here that are soaking up all my development time. One about 4-6 months out is a non-theatre related iPad app. The other a non-sound related theatre application which I believe to be a whole new class of theatre software. I’m really excited about it and all my spare time outside of work is spent here these days.
So what about MerQury? I’m going to keep working on it but, not as much as I had been. I do think that there are some useful bits of code in here that could be valuable to the Qlab community. For example, how MerQury imports cue information into Core Data is useful for a number of other types of utilities. So below is a link to its now open Github store.
All official updates will still come though on MerQurys updater. Oh…and if you end up using some of the code…let me know!
http://github.com/jason-tratta/MerQury