Short Term Project Announcement | EP #2

What I'm thinking this morning, what I'm thinking, what I'm thinking this morning

is quite pedestrian. It's quite pedestrian in that what I'm thinking is,

and this ties into what I was talking about in yesterday's bonus episode.

Yesterday's bonus episode I talked about having long-term projects and

short-term projects, and I thought of an idea for a short-term project, and I

reckon that's what I'm gonna be working on today. What I thought of my idea for

the short-term project is a timer app. Now there must be a hundred million

timer apps in the App Store, so why the heck would you think of, would you come

up with the brilliant idea of creating a timer app? Well I reckon the reason that

there's so many timer apps in the App Store is that the native timer app that

comes with your phone, it's just very basic and it falls short in so many ways.

And it's actually quite surprising

what you actually might want from a timer app that that the native timer app

doesn't provide. And I came up with the idea the other day while doing my daily

kettlebell exercise where I do kettlebells for a set amount of time, and

I use the native timer app to keep track of when I'm when I've finished or not.

Okay, the problem with the native timer app is it doesn't stay on. The screen

goes dark, you know, the auto screen shut off thing goes goes dark, and that's one

issue that I don't like about the native timer app. And another issue is I would

like the timer to start after a little countdown, because the way I do it now,

so when I'm doing my kettlebell, I start the timer and then I start the kettlebell.

So there's like a little bit of time it takes to go from starting the timer to

starting the kettlebell exercise. So say I'm doing kettlebells for a minute, I'd

have to go like a minute and one second to equal a minute because I started a

little bit after the timer started. So it would be cool if the timer app had a

little countdown before the timer actually started going. That's my idea. So

I'm gonna call the app countdown timer. Countdown timer dash visual timers. So

countdown timer in the title, visual timers in the description. So that's my

idea and it's gonna be very simple, like a bit of visual timer that takes up the

whole screen. And I think I will give the user the option to choose

from various styles of timer. So you could have your simple pie, like, you know,

pie looking timer thing where it rotates. And you could have various other styles.

And that's the idea.

And also you could choose from different sounds that it makes when the timer

finishes, perhaps. And you can choose how long you want the countdown for before

it starts. And of course the screen's not gonna turn off while the timer's going.

That's gonna be a major selling point. It's such a basic feature.

Yeah, so. And there is a way to make the screen stay on with the native timer. You

have to enable guided access and all that stuff. But shouldn't have to jump

through all those hoops just to have a visual timer, I don't think. So that's the

idea. So I'm gonna start working on today. And that's what I'm thinking this

morning. That's what I'm thinking, man. I'm still working on my long-term

project, which is the GridDraw V2. And what my idea for that app is an infinite

grid on which people can create grid-based artwork. See, most graphics

apps have a fixed canvas size. And you usually choose the canvas size up front

or there's a default that it uses. But with my app, you don't choose the size.

And that's a key aspect of my app, is you don't choose.

Initially you don't choose the size of the canvas. So actually drawing a grid

with those parameters, with that underlying assumption that you're not

gonna have a fixed size canvas, actually drawing the grid dynamically with the

ability to zoom and pan and also define the pivot point of the grid and rotate

about the pivot point. All that combined has kind of made this quite challenging

for me. I might not be approaching it in the right way.

There might be an easier way to do it than how I'm doing it. But anyway, I've

kind of... Yeah, sorry for the interruption there. The way I'm doing it is very

challenging. And maybe I could be doing it an easier way. These are the

perils of working by yourself. You never really know if you're going down a

dark alley because you don't have anybody to bounce ideas off of and stuff.

Or to tell you that you're doing something stupid. I have AI, of course, but

AI... I've tried to use AI for this particular problem and it doesn't really

get what I'm going for. I've tried to describe... You know, I might go at it again.

I might see if I could approach it differently. But if I describe what I'm

trying to do, it doesn't really come up with a solution that works. So, so far I

haven't been able to use AI to do it. To create an infinite grid that you can pan

and zoom, rotate, and redefine the pivot point. And I also want to redefine the

pivot point without the grid shifting. Anyway, this is all kind of very

technical. Sorry if this is boring you. But we're nearing the end of this

morning's episode. And yes, sir. So it's all about the short-term project today.

The timer app. I don't want to get too down and dirty in the mud on my

long-term app and have nothing to show for my work for such a long period of

time. So that's why I'm gonna start on the short-term project. And perhaps I'll

do a video series on it on my YouTube channel. Because I've done that in the

past and I enjoy doing that. And people seem to be at least mildly interested

that Algorithm treats it fairly well. These types of videos. So I might see

about doing a video series on the timer app. That's all I got for you in this

morning's LoneDev semi-daily podcast. Thank you for listening and I'll see you

in perhaps a bonus episode later this afternoon. Peace out.

Yeah!