Skip to main content

Direction - I Haz It?

Yep, I know what I wrote in If I Grow Up… I had a direction and I wanted to follow it. I’ve been thinking about it a lot. I want to write, I love to write, I’m going to write. But do I want to make a living off of it? Perhaps I just want to do it for fun.


There’s a bit of a problem with this, in that I crave something to do. The most lucrative thing I can think of is developing software. I like doing it, and I tend to do it anyway, just like writing. There’s at least one project that’s really got me interested, and I’m sure I can cook up more ideas when I’ve finished it.


Finishing What I Start! It’s always been a bit of an issue for me. I’m just going to have to try harder to stay on target and not lose steam before I’m done. I’ll have to nail down my requirements and feature list well before I start coding, and freeze those requirements for version 1.0. There’s always room for improvement later on, and if the first version isn’t solid, what kind of a message does that send to users?


Polish It! Polish is one thing I’ve had trouble with in the past on my personal projects. I tend to get some small details down really nicely, but the overall product is something I’ll have to pay a lot more attention to. If I need to pay someone for a good set of icons, I’m going to have to shell out for it and not balk at the expense. Polish is key to a product that sells and encourages word of mouth.


Marketing? Yep, another part of the process I’ll need to deal with and pay for. It’s inevitable if you want to push a product and make it popular. This is especially true with the iPhone OS App Store being flooded with cheap or free apps. You’ve got to sell your product in a way that justifies a cost high enough that it doesn’t leave you without suitable return on your investment. In-app advertising is, as far as I’m concerned, not the kind of thing I’d want to rely on. A lot of the apps I’ve seen use the same advertising services, and the same products get flogged across the apps the consumer uses. It also cheapens the user experience. I’d rather make a feature-limited free version than a full version with ads.


Platform? I’ve always been a Mac guy, so the iPhone OS and Mac OS X platforms are a shoe-in. If I write any utilities I’d likely create a Mac and iPhone OS version with some way to synchronize between the two. The App Store is a bit of a sticking point, but having a way of simplifying distribution, payment and updatings of at least the iPhone half of a product would be great.


Product Types. Ideally I’d like to write small utilities that help make people’s lives easier, as well as small casual games. While I’m confident in my ability to produce a polished product in the first category with little external help, I’d definitely need someone external for graphics and sound for any decently polished game.


That’s what I’m looking at right now. I’ll still be writing here, hopefully with the original frequency I had in mind for my blog. I don’t think it’s healthy for me to let things distract me from writing, and I’m going to make a more solid effort to give myself time to write. I’ve been terrible lately, spending way too much time on twitter. The people are great, and I think that’s part of what’s got me stuck to it.


I suppose I should get to writing up a requirements document for that utility I’ve got in mind!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Losing a loved one, as an atheist

When I was around 11 or 12, I started to question the received wisdom that there was a deity. I came to the conclusion that all signs pointed to no. Do I outright, unequivocally and without reservation deny the existence of such an entity? No. However, I don’t see it as a likely scenario, and until I’m presented with hard evidence, I have enough reason to say that there isn’t. Some people take comfort in their religious beliefs, especially their belief in an afterlife. I have no interest in an afterlife, either for myself of my loved ones. In the past five years I’ve lost both my grandmother and mother, both of whom I loved dearly. No amount of belief in an afterlife would soothe my pain. I mourn at the fact that they are lost from my life, right here, right now. I imagine it’s the same even for those who believe that the dead pass on to somewhere else. You can’t escape the fact that their tangible presence is forever gone from your life. Unless you believe in ghosts, but that’s a ...

Living with Bipolar Disorder

Feeling down when something bad happens is normal. Feeling elated when something good happens is great. Bipolar disorder is neither. Previously referred to as manic depressive disorder, bipolar disorder consists of mood episodes ranging from deep, dark depression to the sense of invincibility and superiority that is characteristic of a manic phase. It disrupts the lives of those who suffer from it and all those around them. Luckily, however, with the right course of treatment it can be kept under control. Bipolar disorder has been found to be linked genetically and physiologically to schizophrenia. A person suffering from bipolar disorder can experience the same sort of hallucinations and delusions as someone with schizophrenia. Both have a genetic component, with a number of genes interacting to create a pre-disposition to these disorders. The families of those afflicted often include others with one of these disorders, mood disorders or alcoholism. Depression is a common symptom ...

An Open Letter to David Hewlett

Dear Mr. Hewlett, I’m writing to you in the hopes that you’ll read this and learn a bit about the great woman who was my mother and a big fan of yours. Helen died recently at the much-too-young age of 59. In April she found out she had pancreatic cancer; less than 5 months later, she passed away. If you don’t read this, that’s okay, I guess, because it’s also a part of my grieving process. I think you’ll be touched by it, but at the same time, it’s helping me deal with the loss. My mother as your fan Every movie you were in, she wanted to see. She didn’t get a chance to before she went. I had wanted to buy her A Dog’s Breakfast for Christmas; I think she would have really liked it. I think Cube would have given her a bit of claustrophobia, but didn’t it do that for everyone? She loved Atlantis. I think your performance was a big part of that. Joe Flanigan and Paul McGillion may also have had something to do with that. The episodes she watched of SG-1 were mostly the ones with...