Yesterday I had a secondary milestone in that I logged my first bugs (3 total). Which were my focus for today, and probably will be for the next few days; so I can hit an initial private beta. There are 3 bugs and 3 small features I need to complete for this to happen. My plan (in FogBugz at least) is to be in beta by this Thursday. I think I can complete what I need to complete in time, but it will be a pretty rough application. Beta in this definition is a usable application that visually is still rather generic (except on one view) and is used by others (hopefully 3 people I know) who will give me some feedback (and hopefully open it more than once). I’m planning to use TestFlight for this.

Weekly Review

Today completed three weeks and my first major milestone. I started my week off poorly by missing a day, but finished strong.

Days Programmed: 19 out of 21 (90.5%)

Weekly Checkups: 3 for 3 (100%)

Project Progress: 5.75%

I’m happy with these numbers. This early on I would rather be at 100% days programmed. None the less my project is moving forward, a milestone has been hit, I likely will get a beta out this week. I’d call this successful all right.

Is there anything better than sitting down and within a minute fixing something that was stumping you yesterday? I often marvel at how the human mind seems to have a subconscious developer that keeps working on a problem after you think you stopped working on it. At least that’s how my mind works.

And as if to add sprinkles on top of my preverbal ice cream sundae of code that quick fix finished off another feature. Progress strikes again!

Now I’m just one feature in FogBugz from having a usable app (that only the developer could love).

It just so happened that I’ve been thinking about my current direction, career/passion wise, for the past couple of months. It was not my intention to finally decide how to progress forward at the culmination of a year. Nor was it my intention to set a few goals towards my new direction at the genesis of a new year.

Yet here I am.

And so I begin with “Code 365″ my plan to work on my passion everyday this year*. Code 365 encompasses the six things I plan to do in 2013 to further my passion with entrepreneurism and my new passion iOS development. Some of what I plan is.

• Complete 4 iOS applications
• Two apps will be sold in the iTunes store, 1 is for my current jobs and the last is an idea for an open source project I’ll address later this year.
• Trim the crud that holds me back from advancing my goals (namely old projects I’ve clung on too long too)

Because no goal matters without a way to measure progress I’m planning on doing the following to stay the course.

• Write my goals down
• Spend an uninterrupted** hour a day all year long working on my projects
• Track and blog about my progress daily
• Weekly review my progress towards my goals and reevaluate

So here I go.

* Except on vacations. I have about 3 weeks of vacations planned so far, so Project Code 344 is probably a more apt name.

** As uninterrupted as I can be, having a family that I love to be with.

There’s a great article over at Ernie Miller’s Blog called Why I Love Being A Programmer in Louisville (or, Why I Won’t Relocate to Work for Your Startup). He hits many of the thoughts that have been on my mind lately.

A common theme in the development community I most readily identify with (the Ruby community) is one of optimizing for happiness … I strive to optimize my daily life for happiness.

Duh. Everyone does that, you might think.

Maybe. As I’ve talked to other programmers, I get the distinct impression that if they are optimizing for happiness, they’re being a good deal less intentional about it.

Emphasis mine.

I completely get his sentiment. One of the things that has kept me at my current job (which is a mile from where I live) is I love where my family lives. I love the life style a small town gives and that my kids are in the same great school district their whole lives.

But I have to say I would like to cut my teeth on new projects, work in new areas, create new things; but still keep our current lifestyle. That’s why I’ve really been encouraged by our industry lately. Companies like 37 Signals, Treehouse, and Remember the Milk have successfully embraced remote working. I hope to see more great companies take this route.

I couldn’t quite put my finger on why I was so upset at the passing of Steve Jobs; I’ve never personally met him. Then I read Marco Ament’s post and then I understood.

I didn’t know Steve. I never met him. I never worked for him. I never even got one of his famous one-liner email responses.

But it feels like someone close to me has died. He was so intimately involved in his company and its products (which have become critical parts of my career and hobby life), and he has publicly injected so much vision, personality, and care into our entire industry for so long, that I do feel like I knew him, even though I really didn’t.

So thank you Steve. You made us imagine.

Sorting out “Saw it in the keynote, but it’s not in the product we have” fun right now. Visual Studio 11 Developer Preview apparently doesn’t have the nice new Blend style editing of XAML in it yet. Also Expression Blend 5 apparently only supports HTML5/JavaScript projects and not C#/XAML projects.

Small roadblock, but would have been nice to use Blend for the XAML; especially with how nice it looked in VS in yesterdays keynote. Good job blend team.

Completed Tasks Tasks

- Specify features for app.
- Sketch Application Layout

Current Tasks

- Edit Grid Template C#/XAML app to reflect our UI (Bryan)
- Replace sample data with our own data using roaming profile storage (Dan)

So we’ve setup TFS using the cool hosted TFS accounts they handed out. So we’re setup with source control. Very nice and easy to use. We’ve installed the Visual Studio 11 Developer Preview from the thumb drives they gave us. We’ve found the appropriate documentation via Microsoft Connect, and the solution and project are created.

Time wise this took one Corona and a small latte to complete (yay for free drinks).

Now starts the fun part!

So I’m at Microsoft Build with a buddy of mine (Dan). We’ve had a day and a half of keynotes showing us how to make just one too many RSS readers; but overall we’re both pretty impressed with what we’re seeing in Windows 8. I’m actually writing this post on the Samsung Tablet’s that were handed out.

To really get to know the changes coming out we’ve decided to do a Hack-a-Thon and use these tablets with the new Visual Studio tools to create a “Metro Style” app (I’m already tired of that phrase). Our plan is to hit a session later this afternoon but to skip the party tonight and see just how far we can get with an app.

We’ve got a couple of ideas so far. But right now the only things we know for sure are we’re going to use the new hosted TFS account we were given, create an app that uses the new contracts for sharing and searching using C# w/ XAML.

Updates to come throughout the rest of the day/evening.

Let the Hack-a-Thon start!

The brands that curate their products well, with thoughtfulness and consideration for the customer, end up the winners.

In reference to the past success of Sony and the current success of Apple.

How Steve Jobs ‘out-Japanned’ Japan via Daring Fireball.

Happy New Years!