Three Days in ASS
January 25th, 2009
Published in
Miscellaneous
2 Comments
Tags: applescript, feemeter, mac, programming, UGCX
No, it’s not what you think. This is not a post about farts, poop or worse, although the word “shit” did cross my lips several times, during the duration. ASS, in this case, is short for Applescript Studio, which in turn is a development environment for making Mac programs. Did I mention that I am not a programmer? I worked with some and have friends who can code their asses off. I did take a class 10+ years ago (getting a mediocre grade) and suffer headaches from prolonged exposure to math. Luckily, I’m pretty good at using Google.
But let me take a step back and explain how I ended up in ASS in the first place. It started with a want and a need. The want was to step out of my comfort zone and do something different, challenging and educational. The need was for a tool to help with my client work and Applescript looked fairly easy to learn. At a glance.
I figured why not make the tool myself, satisfying aforementioned want in the process? The end goal being twofold: To stimulate my creativity and inspiration, as well as providing me with the tool.
The program is nothing special, really. It’s a meter that counts time and money, like the meter in a cab, and with each go, I can attach a project reference and an hourly fee. That’s how I came up with the amazingly original name for it, too. I call it FeeMeter. It saves the data in a log, which I can export as a csv-file (so I can import it to an actual spreadsheet later). Since a lot of what I do is by the hour and for different clients, I’ve been needing to log billable time, and help measure whether I’m selling my services at the right price. None of this requires a lot of programming skill, mind you. Mostly planning, a general understanding of how programming languages are structured, a good book and a website. And time.
It took me three days finish a working version, able to do all those things I wanted it to. I could’ve probably found a better application, capable of even more and fancier things and at an affordable price to boot. And even if the code I wrote for FeeMeter is messy and grim, it works and I completed my own challenge by making it.
Unfortunately, it has kept me from taking (m)any pictures. I am falling way behind on the 365 project and I have officially failed my own, easy challenge for January: To take 10 photos every single day. But it was worth it, almost like a vacation. Because as much as I enjoyed my three days in ASS, I wouldn’t want to live there. And now I return, fully energized but still with a bit of a headache, to the normal world. If you want to, you can come and meet me there at the upcoming UGCX conference in San Jose, where I’ll be on a panel talking about microstock.
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