PlanetB

Apps Update. What’s the Word?

April 22nd, 2013 No Comments

It’s been some time since my last post. Time inevitably flies. So what have I been up to lately?

Since my last post in February, a few things have happened. First – BlackBerry launched their Z10 and BB10 OS. So did 2 BB10 apps I made – Tuner and Beats Brainwaves for BB10. Tuner has been doing alright. It was recently a featured Built for BlackBerry app in BlackBerry World and has been listed on the trending list a couple of times now. But it’s only generating about $10 per day. Even after a post on CrackBerry.com, purchases on the app remain pretty low (around $14 for a brief time). That’s pretty small beans in the gran scheme of things. A part of me is considering upping the price from $0.99 to $1.99 but another part of me is thinking that doing so might have the reverse effect. I may do some price testing over the course of a week to see.

Beats Brainwaves for BB10 hasn’t been doing that well either – mostly because of a bug in the app for some devices and on some versions of the OS where the app crashes when the device goes to sleep. This has been recently fixed, so I’m hopeful that purchases increase in the coming weeks. Unfortunately the latest version of BB10 (the one before 10.1) hasn’t been pushed out to Verizon yet (apparently) so some Verizon folks still see the issue.

I have a new BlackBerry 10 app that I’ve been working on for a bit. I’m tentatively calling it Quiet Mind – I originally wanted to get it done in one evening and submit it as part of BlackBerry’s Last Chance Port-A-Thon in February where they were handing out $100 for each app that got approved during the one day event. This didn’t happen but I did manage to submit a couple of other trivial (dare I say ridiculously simple and nearly shameful) apps and, as promised, was paid out $100 each. Unfortunately the scope of Quiet Mind quickly increased substantially and as such has taken not just one evening but over a month to get nearly complete.

In non-BlackBerry app development news, I finally updated WOD Timer for iPhone. This has been on the backburner for quite some time. But I recently saw a tweet suggesting that apps would be pulled from the app store if they didn’t support iOS 5 or retina graphics, so this backburner project quickly shot up to the front of the line. I didn’t have time to do any of the work myself so I turned to oDesk and paid $200 for someone to get it done in a couple of days. Ahh the beauty of outsourcing work. The release of the update hasn’t dramatically affected downloads but I do feel a little better that it’s out there now supporting retina graphics and iOS5. I also had the opportunity to fix a couple of bugs as part of the release.

So since my last post I’ve gotten a couple apps out for BB10, updated an iPhone app that hasn’t been updated in 3 years and I’ve delved a little more into outsourcing work when I just don’t have the time to do it myself. This has made me a little money, cost me some money and I got a free Limited Edition red Z10 and a BlackBerry Dev Alpha C device.

And that is the word.

The Man Who Thinks He Can

February 22nd, 2013 No Comments

I’ve been reading (or rather, listening to) The Law of Success in 16 Lessons by Napoleon Hill. First of all, it’s a fabulous book. I read Think and Grow Rich a few years ago and thought that was good. Well, this one is better. Way better.

The first thing that struck me was that bang off the start, Hill talks about the Mastermind… It was only a couple of posts back that I mentioned how this concept has only recently hit me like a ton of bricks. As with Think and Grow Rich, Hill discusses at great length the power of the Mastermind – the power of harmony between minds. His discussion goes a little meta-physical and new age for me, but overall, the discussion is great and certainly inspiring.

I’m only at the third lesson – The Lesson of Confidence, but this part of the book has had a number of great quotes. If it weren’t an audio book that I was listening to, I’d have underlined nearly the whole thing I’m sure.

At one point in this part, Hill suggests the reader should memorize a poem. He implies that he, himself, wasn’t the original author but fails to say who actually wrote the poem. It’s a great poem and when I did a quick Google search, most of the references seem to indicate that Walter D. Wintle wrote it. According to Wikipedia, it’s called “Thinking”, also known as “The Man Who Thinks He Can”, published at least as early as 1905.

Anyway, it’s a great poem and one of the many great parts of the book that I want to catalogue.

If you think you are beaten, you are
If you think you dare not, you don’t,
If you like to win, but you think you can’t
It is almost certain you won’t.

If you think you’ll lose, you’re lost
For out of the world we find,
Success begins with a fellow’s will
It’s all in the state of mind.

If you think you are outclassed, you are
You’ve got to think high to rise,
You’ve got to be sure of yourself before
You can ever win a prize.

Life’s battles don’t always go
To the stronger or faster man,
But soon or late the man who wins
Is the man WHO THINKS HE CAN!

Free (or Cheap) Workouts – No Gym Required

January 22nd, 2013 No Comments

In an attempt to cut down on personal expenses, we’ve done a number things. One of the most significant is actually making meal plans for each week. Our grocery bill used to be over $600 per month!! Now we find we can get by pretty well at about $75 per week simply by planning exactly what we will eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner each week before doing the grocery shopping.

But I digress… What I wanted to cover in this post is how to save on fitness. We’ve typically always been gym members for as long back as I can remember. In fact, I used to spend a large amount on gym memberships having belonged, in the past, to both the “Globo” and Crossfit Gyms simultaneously. But now with our attempts to cut costs, one thing we’re looking at is saving nearly $100 per month by chucking our gym memberships.

But once we have no gym membership, what are some alternatives? Fortunately, having also been a personal trainer in the past, I have some answers.

Here are my top 10 FREE, no gym required, DIY workout tips (in no particular order). Actually, they aren’t all free, – some require a little up front cost and then they become FREE!

Go running outside. Make running fun. For me, running has always been a chore. I enjoy it for about 10 minutes and then I just want to be done. I get bored easily. Last year I started running a little more outside and began tracking my routes and stats with the Endomondo app for my BlackBerry. Once I began doing that I found it became more interesting. Being able to look back at my running and see how I did in comparison to previous runs makes it more of a game. The app also posted my times to my BBM profile and Facebook and in doing so publicized my progress and I’d get support from friends and family.
Get some weights (for cheap). Several years ago I began looking on Kijiji for cheap weights. Every so often I’d come across some decent looking weights for $10 to $20 and I’d pick them up. I received a nice score of great weights one time for $10 and to this day I still use those at home nearly exclusively. You can also find benches and other gym equipment cheap, but really you only need some weights to get a good workout in. Heck – you don’t even really need them, though it does make some exercises easier.
Install a homemade pullup bar. Several years ago I posted this article on TheFitBlog.net about how I built a home made pull up bar in my basement. It was super easy and took only an hour to install. I’m not even that handy. For me, pull-ups are a key exercise that I love to do and has gifted me with some great strength conditioning over the years. It also cost less than $20 to build.
Get a skipping rope. Seriously. Get something under $5. This is possibly one of the best cardio exercises I’ve ever done. And once you’re good with skipping singles, learn how to do proper double-unders. Check out my article, Tips for Double Unders. These are when the skipping rope does two revolutions per hop. I once did over 100 consecutive double unders and then nearly passed out (see Death by Double Unders). They are fabulous.
Learn some routines. Learn a few routines of exercises that you can do for 20 minutes and get a good (and quick) workout in. For example, do 10 rounds of the following: 10 burpees, 20 lunges, 20 bell squats (with 25lb weight), 5 pushups, 5 situps. This kind of sequence is popular in Crossfit and can be adapted to no end. Get a couple of good routines that you can do a few times per week. Learn some standards like Tabata squats. Watch YouTube. I’m not joking here. There are literally hundreds of thousands of videos on YouTube of great workout routines.
Play some sports. I play tennis a couple of times per week during the warmer seasons, for free at a public court. I have also participated in pick-up sports leagues in the past. Meetup.com often has local sports meetups that you can participate in for free. I’ve gone to a local meetup (via meetup.com) for playing basketball and volleyball – both for free. This is not only a great way to get some exercise, it’s also pretty fun and a good way to meet people.
Set a pushup or situp goal. This has become somewhat popular in recent years. Set a goal of say 100 consecutive pushups and every day attempt to do as many as possible, always pushing for one more. There are apps available for the iPhone and Android (and other platforms) that actually help keep track of this for you.
Go for a walk with someone close. Sounds a little cliche, right? But Sonya and I have been going for a number of walks with our daughter every week for the last year and they have actually been incredibly good. It’s not only a good way to get some exercise in, it’s also a fantastic time for conversation if you can go for a walk with someone else, void of gadgets and distractions. We will both be in the worst of moods, but half way through a walk, we’ll be deep into a great conversation – sometimes about important things, sometimes not so much, but I always finish a walk feeling good.
Read crossfit.com. Every day crossfit.com posts a new workout – many times that can be adapted so that no equipment is required. Follow a couple of the crossfit workouts one week and be prepared to get addicted to the approach.
Checkout what your community center has to offer. I know my local community center has a number of free (or very low cost) programs, including some yoga and a fitness bootcamp. There’s nothing like working out in a group setting. Feeding off of the intensity of the rest of the class and being motivated by a group exercise trainer.

Linux Command For Bulk mp4 to mp3 Conversion

January 20th, 2013 No Comments

I was searching for a way to bulk convert a bunch of mp4 video files to mp3 audio files. I came across a number of things online and put them together to this one command line that can be run in Linux bash. I really just didn’t want to forget the command so I decided to create a blog post.

for f in *.mp4 ; do faad -w -f 2 "$f" | lame -r -h -b 96 - "${f%.mp4}.mp3" ; done

Hw Determined Are You to Win Your Race? Inspiration in the last 200m

January 5th, 2013 No Comments

I saw this video earlier today and it blew me away. This girl seriously inspires as she falls on the last lap of a 600m sprint and then wins. Incredible!

The Dollar Store and Small Business Opportunities

January 4th, 2013 No Comments

I’m gonna start this post by suggesting that if you’re reading this because of the post title, you’re probably not going to get what you expected.

My head was spinning yesterday so I went out for a little drive for lunch. My first stop – the Dollar Store, of course. Sonya and I are under a tight budget at the moment so I thought I’d go exploring through the Dollar Store to see what kind of deals I could get on household items, should I need them in the future. This is the one place where deals abound.

The Dollar Store is awesome. In hindsight, I should of hit it up for all the stocking stuffers I bought for Christmas. I would have spent a fraction of what I did. Secondly, if you ever need to host a party, everything you need can be purchased there. Seriously – the Dollar Store is a party hosting dream. Finally – on the way out I noticed that you could purchase gift cards for the Dollar Store. If anyone out there is looking to buy me a stocking stuffer for next year, I want one of these!!

I held off on buying a neat Nerf (like) dart gun for a buck and then headed to Chapters to browse the magazines. I like doing this sometimes. It’s neat to see everything that’s currently going on in the World right in front of you in print. I went straight to the Business section as I typically do. I flipped through Entrepreneur and Fast Company and the like and then I picked up Small Business Opportunities magazine. Holy crap! I think I found my new favorite magazine! I must have spent 20 minutes there just flipping from the back to the front, reading all these little ads that are pushing “Get Rich Quick” schemes. Given my affinity to Internet Marketing and App Development, I’m a sucker for these kinds of things I guess – not that I purchase these programs (much). I just like seeing what other entrepreneurs and marketers are pushing.

So next time you’re at a book store, check out the magazine rack and take a look at the small business magazines – fantastic.

The App that Keeps on Giving

January 3rd, 2013 No Comments

In 2009 I started my first iPhone app. I purchased a first gen iPod Touch earlier in the year and I thought I’d take a stab at iPhone development. It was a part time thing and I had no clue how to actually develop in xcode (nor did I even actually have a Mac, but that’s another story). By April of 2010 I had my first app completed. It wasn’t the prettiest thing in the World and when I look at the code now, I shudder. But it was done and I was happy when I finally submitted it to the App Store. I was even happier when I first started getting paid for it. That was early 2010. It is now 3 years later and I’m still happy as money continues to get deposited into my bank account from the very same app, even though I really haven’t touched it since its release.

The app is called WOD Timer. I was heavy into Crossfit in 2008 and 2009 and I decided that I’d build an app for the Crossfit community – to help time Crossfit workouts which often involve sets of short (but grueling) exercise intervals spaced with moments of timed rest. Doing this sort of thing on a stopwatch isn’t easy and I thought that having a dedicated app for it would be brilliant. So I built WOD Timer and submitted it to the App Store and it was approved.

The app was initially free. I posted on the main Crossfit message board about it and when I moved it from free to paid, I again posted on the Crossfit message board and I offered promo codes to anyone who responded to my forum thread and asked for one. A lot of people asked for a promo code.

At first I saw quite a few downloads. It was initially averaging well over $300 a month in profit. I made a small update shortly after it was released because of a pretty big bug when the iPhone went to sleep or was auto locked. Other than that one fix, I seriously haven’t touched the app since mid 2010. Yet despite being non-retina, despite seriously showing its age, the app continues to get purchased and downloaded and used! And despite this, I haven’t received any support requests in 2 years.

Here’s a chart showing the my weekly revenue from WOD Tmer.

As you can see, at this point it’s not a lot. Maybe $20 per week on average since October 2012. Still, $20 per week is better than $0 per week and the kicker is that I don’t do anything for this money. I worked on it for maybe 40 hours over the course of a few months and that 40 hours has turned into on average about $200 per month since its release! I estimate that in total, WOD Timer has made me about $6000. $6000 for 40 hours of work is not a bad investment at all. Bonus is that it just keeps coming.

I often think that I should make an update with retina graphics at least. Maybe now even support iPhone 5. This would generate some additional sales for sure and maybe even increase its App Store rating generating even more sales. In fact after writing this last sentence, I’ve made a note to add those two items to my February goal sheet.