To say I had a moment of panic would be overstating things.

I did open up my standard audio project for recording this podcast, and yeah, it was not empty.

It was just wrong.

It was like a song that I had been working on that somehow overwrote my Your Daily Lex project.

And so I was like, well, that’s not good.

I’m going to have to recreate a lot of stuff.

And then I went to the file menu in Logic, and there was a revert to, and apparently Logic automatically makes backup of my stuff.

So everything was fine.

Nobody panic.

Everything was fine.

Let’s do a show.

Your Daily Lex.

In news that I am excited about, I can finally announce officially, as you may have inferred, that I have been cast as Steve in Jagged Little Pill.

They finally announced the cast today.

Our first rehearsal is a week from tomorrow.

So not underway officially yet, but at least officially known.

The show will be in June, so we’ve got plenty of time.

Really, we’re barely using any of March.

We’ve got April, May, and then some of June to get ready.

That feels like enough time.

It’s the kind of thing where I’m already listening to the soundtrack.

I’m listening to my songs and trying to start learning them a little bit, but you also don’t want to learn exactly what’s on the soundtrack, because that may not be what the music says.

It may be not what the music director wants.

So you can’t lock it in, but you can at least get familiar.

You want to know enough to be able to do it when rehearsals start coming.

So I’m in that phase, which is exciting.

I’m hard at work on my next app, my first true multiplayer app, which I suspect I will release, boy, I don’t know, April?

Maybe late March?

But I’ll release in the next couple weeks.

If you’re looking to beta test it, find me on any social media platform, and you’ll find the beta testing link to the test flight.

But I love Scrabble.

I love crossplay.

I liked Words with Friends back in the day.

I think crossplay from the New York Times has a really smooth interface for playing Scrabble.

But I don’t think it’s fun enough.

I think that the boards on crossplay get really crowded, really dense.

And I kept thinking about what would make these boards more fun, and I realized one of the issues is everybody plays the boards, everybody who’s really good plays the boards the same because you’re trying to get to the same corners or block the same corners.

And what I realized was it would be fun to me if the boards were random.

So I was like, what if I made a Scrabble game where the board is random, randomly generated every time?

So I did that first.

And then I was like, well, what if there were bonus squares where you could trigger other actions?

And it reminded me a little bit of Mario Party or even Mario Kart.

In Mario Kart, you hit those question boxes that you don’t know what you’re going to get.

In Mario Party, you can unlock these things, and there’s like a little almost slot machine that rotates through some things, and then it lands on one.

It’s like, hey, that’s what happens.

And most of the time it’s cool, but sometimes it’s bad, and I was like, I want to do that.

And I think it’s turning out really fun.

The game is called Tile and Error.

And even just with random beta testers, even playing against the computer, it’s fun.

I’m enjoying myself.

Hard as hell to make this app.

Boy, oh boy.

Hard, hard, hard.

What’s nice about it is, man, can I make that weird grunting thinking sound anymore?

I don’t think I could.

What’s weird about it is, or what’s nice about it is, once it’s live and it’s working and it’s good, I don’t have to make a puzzle every day.

I did even include a puzzle element in the game where it’s got a daily puzzle, but it can generate itself.

It puts together a Scrabble board, or in this case, a Tile and Error board, and then prompts you to get the most points you can for that day, for that layout.

And it just ranks people on the leaderboard.

It’s just a fun way to kind of compete against yourself, compete against the world.

I like it.

Boy, boy, making the algorithms for the computer to take its turn.

Hard.

Hard.

Thinking about what should be free and what you’re going to charge for it.

Also hard.

But it’s getting there.

It’s coming along.

I think that’s all I got.

Today was one of my early mornings, so you can hear me yawning and being tired.

I also woke up before my alarm, which only makes me yawnier and tireder.

But still, I’m in a good mood.

I’m casting that show.

I’m excited.

And I finally got to announce it, so now it feels real.

Now they’ve told the world.

Now I know what’s happening.

A pretty big gap between when I finally got cast, which took longer than some people, mostly because they just didn’t tell me, even though I had been cast.

And then an even longer gap from when I found out I was cast to when there was any formal communication from the team.

And at first I was worried about that, but it turns out it’s just that they were all involved in another show, so they were feeling a little bit slammed.

But now everybody’s lives are calming down, and we’re getting ready for this one.

So there you go.

Happy Tuesday.

More soon.

Lex.