Final testing stages

So, I don't know how many developers are out there, but have you ever had one of those experiences where you write a bunch of code, it all works really well when you're doing your initial testing, but then when you go through and do a complete system walk-through, you find a bunch of crap that you didn't know about, but there was no reasonable way you could have missed it? Well, my name is Thomas, and I very unreasonable missed a lot of stuff.

Most of it was minor, and quick fixes, but some of it I'm still working on. But good lord! I guess in a complex system of n parts there's n-squared places things can go wrong... I think I found all of them.

And to those test-oriented developers out there: bite me. ;)

Screencasts are a-screenen'

So the screencasts are (finally) done. I just now finished them, and stuck them into the tour page of the site. Sorry, though. Still can't see them.

The way things are looking right now, the site should release in the next 2 weeks. So stay tuned!

Dev update

Things are coming along nicely, I'm quite proud to say. I'm almost done with the screencasts, which will be up very shortly. Beyond that we are going to do our last internal full walkthrough, and then open things up for more "outside" testing. At first, this will be invitation only so that we know we have a good control group, but it won't be long after that that we can open things up to the world.

Stay tuned!

Problems and solutions

I was thinking about what inspiration drove me to make this wonderful little app (www.simplecheckregister.com), as well as a few other apps (that I don't want to post about right now because they are nowhere near done). I realized that I'm getting closer and closer every day of living the dream of every creative coder; working for myself and retiring early. But then it got scary. Will I have enough ideas to keep myself afloat? Will they be any good?

But not to worry. I realized what my inspiration has been so far. It's simple: out in the world of computing, there are problems. Lots and lots of problems. Many of the systemic to the very nature of the internet. As a creative person, and someone who values my own time and effort, I don't like to put up with those problems. And as a coder, I want to build solutions. As long as there continue to be bottlenecks in the way we do things, there will always be a place for people like me to make it better.

A lot of what we (as techies) do online comes from an inspiration of a solution to a problem that we don't have and can't relate to (as happens with someone who takes orders from on high), or is a solution to a problem that nobody except the coder has (how to make an artificial neural network that finds the most optimal method of getting out Mt. Dew and Cheeto stains). It takes a special kind of person that has the skills to write good code, the creativity to give themselves drive to do it, and a normal life that provides normal problems for which there is an audience for your solutions. I feel very lucky to have been around people like this for most of my life, and I hope that some of it has bled off.

It's so easy for tech people to get sucked into a tech world, and see only their corner-case problems as the only problems, but forget about the other 90% and their problems. We are the sort of people who are all about efficiency, and so we don't have the same problems a lot of people have; we find more efficient ways of working. Of course, that just means that we have different problems.

I am making it my goal to not be that person. I want to be the guy that has normal problems. That has normal frustrations with technology, and can create a solution that everyone can use, not just me.

Can you imagine an internet filled with people with that goal, instead of all the strange things we find on the web? I think that's a vision worth working towards.

Screencasts are...fun...

So I'm working on putting together the screen-casts for the tour/help section of the site. I bought some screen-recording software (quit nice stuff, actually. iShowU. If you're a mac person making scree-casts, I definitely recommend it). Despite the very nice software, there are some things that suck about making screen-casts, as it turns out. For example, I didn't know what I sounded like on my little USB head-set. Apparently like hell. I wish someone on one of the endless conference calls at work would have clued me in to that.

There are also just a bunch of little things, like the fact that things running over the interwebs are sometimes slow. But running code locally behaves slightly different. It sucks getting half-way through a recording and having a big error flash across the screen, and having to re-do the whole thing.

In the end, I spent 5 hours on screencasts, and almost have one done. Good lord! The good news is that now that I have the hang of all the little details, it shouldn't take too much longer for me to crank them out (the last good take only took about 5 minutes). Which means that all of you nice folks will be able to get a look into what's going on around here. Win-win!

The theory

I realized that not everyone would understand where I was coming from building this tool, and I haven't written anything like this in a while, so I figured, "what the heck". I'll write something about it.

The basic idea is simple; people don't manage their lives well because it's hard to manage your life. What I mean by that is, a person won't cook themselves a mean, even though it is healthier and cheaper, if they perceive cooking to be difficult. As a result, they will eat out, get un-healthy and spend more money than what they should be, which will of course lead to all sorts of other nasty things. All just because it's "hard" to cook (to their mind).

I figured that the same thing applies to every part of our lives. In the case of simplecheckregister, the idea is that people don't manage their money because the only tools that are out there to do it, are hard to use. We have large, bloated software that does everything under the sun, but just telling it that you spent 10 bucks on gas involves tracking orbital trajectories of the hale-bop comet. In your head. Under a time-limit. The only other option is to carry around a physical check register, which is great for people who just have a checking account without any cash on hand (ever), no debit card, no credit cards, and never draw from savings for anything. Ever.

There was a time when people lived like that. And it was good, at that time (mostly because people still took checks back then). We, as a society, have moved away from that time, and that method of tracking our personal finances just doesn't keep up anymore.

So, in the interest of saving the sanity that you lose using software more complex than what you need, and in the interest of making it easy and compelling to keep your life in order, we made simplecheckregister.

We believe that if it's easy to do, and has value in your life, then people will use it and be better for it. If all of a sudden, it's not hard to track your personal finances and you get the immediate value of getting rid of late-fess, overdraft fees, etc, then your life will be that much better and easier.

And there's a lot more coming!

Coming soon...

So there's this new thing, called simple check register that I've been working on. Here's the skinny: People so often don't live their lives in a way that makes it easy to track their personal finances. I know that I use my debit card like cash, and all those $2 and $3 purchases add up. And I don't remember any of them because they are small enough dollar figures for my brain to think they are basically zero. I can't imagine that I'm the only one out there that needs to track my money a bit better.

So I started to look around, and all I could find was either something that I had to carry around in my pocket (ew... analog device...), or software that was way more complicated than what I needed. So I set out to do better. A site where you can safely and easily track your finances in a way that makes it easy for you. Controls that get the hell out of the way. Information that matters. You don't need Q*icken unless you're writing paychecks or tracking large, complicated stock portfolios. I know I don't.

Keep an eye here for more information. Personal financial sense coming soon!