What am I up to right now?

Last updated September 21, 2026.

App Store Submission Dance

I recently did a full port of Poe Language Lens from Android to iOS and am currently in the midst of a back-and-forth with Apple’s App Store submission process. A process I had heard could be lengthy and sometimes frustrating due to requests info or alterations that you’ve clearly already provided.

It’s definitely more stringent than Google’s process but I don’t mind it. I can’t imagine the number of apps they have to review these days from the onslaught of vibe-coded apps.

The iOS porting process which I wrote about here was done in large part via agentic tools with local LLM models. Being a port, the LLM’s had access to the full Android source code, making this mainly a translation process from one language (Kotlin) to Swift, something LLM’s are pretty good at.

The main obstacle I had was fitting the app into the restrictive iOS world. Poe on Android allows you to hover a floating cursor over text on any app at any time, but iOS doesn’t allow this kind of freedom. The issue being that the main selling point of the app is how fast you can use it. So I had to come up with ways to retain this speed whilst maneuvering around iOS restrictions.

It’s definitely not the same but in some ways I think it is a little better than the Android side and I learned some things on iOS that I can carry back over.

Pixel Art

I’ve been re-learning pixel art and sharing both static art and animations on my instagram. People seem to really like the nostalgic feel of Pixel art, as I do, and especially my art related to the game Earthbound, a childhood favorite of mine that I’m actually replaying now in the Japanese version.

Japan and Japanese

I’m still progressing in Japanese whilst living in Japan. I signed up for the JLPT N2 which is in December so I’ve been studying daily for that. Learning Japanese continues to be the hardest thing I’ve ever done.

Want to chat? Feel free to email me or dm on X.

Balloon Kirby