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!