I’ve been doing some initial work on the app now and have built the basics stylesheets and database tables to let me develop the app and be able to see what I’m doing. It’s important to me to be able to see some meaningful output as I work, and the initial CSS only took half an hour or so to knock up. Plus, I find it easier to keep good HTML coding in mind if I have an output model to aim at - I know the structure of the markup I want to put out and I can change the look of it to something a bit more professional once I’ve built the basic framework of the code.

The requirements text looks like this so far:

Overview

Birding Record is a tool to help birders keep track of the birds they see, the venues they go to and the birding trips they make. The software should be as easy to use as a paper tick-list, but powerful and flexible enough to be able to analyse records in whatever way the birder needs to get the most out of their hobby.

What it is

Birding Record provides:

• as many lists as the birder needs to record the birds they see
• for non-year lists, a simple tick yes or no which records the date seen
• for year lists, a tick to record yes or no, plus a ‘first date seen’ and ‘last date seen’ field for recording migrant arrival and departure dates
• bird records provide space for notes, and for users to upload their own sound and image files for each species
• venue records let you record details for the places you go birding
• journal records let you record notes and bird counts for species seen on each trip, and these can be linked to venue records to build up a detailed record over time

What it is not

Birding Record does not provide:

• field guide notes to help identify species—the aim is for the birder to record their own notes as they go rather than to provide generic information for them
• venue information for where to see birds
• wider migration records for species (although it is hoped that, with a big enough user population, we could collate results on a central site)

My first big decision

I am stuck on how to associate bird records with the lists they appear on. For each bird I would like to be able to record a number of lists, with a simple true/false record to show if that bird should appear as ticked on that list. There appears to be two ways to do this:

• Record this value in the Bird table - nice and easy but will require a more substantial update to add new lists as I’ll need to update every record in the table
• Record these values in a separate table for the list and provide a separate table for each list with each row recording the bird id and date ticked. Makes the queries a level more complex, but would allow for recording extra data such as date last seen and count

Database good practice leads to the latter, only recording the data for birds you have seen. The extra flexibility of being able to record additional data for each tick is promising, the only downsides being slightly more convoluted queries and a bit of overhead to create the table in the first place as it will need to be created with 500-odd rows to initialise the data for each bird. This seems like a small price to pay though, so I’ll build the structure like this, at least to begin with.

This is all well and good, but the process has been long and the changes very many. Not something that I could put together and write up as great example of developing and delivering software. My idea is to push through and build some of the other apps I’ve been thinking about and keeping a journal here to document my thoughts and processes. I’m doing the work in quite small chunks on the train which gives me a good amount of stuff to write up each day.

The project

The first app I’m building is a tool to help birders keep tick lists and journal entries. I’ve had a look at software available and there doesn’t seem to be anything available online, and the installable software seems to be mainly for PC (not suitable for me as a strictly Mac/Linux user). The core features need to be:

• All British birds are maintained in a database with details on names, categories and other non-changeable (or rarely-changeable) data
• lists for users to keep a record of which birds they’ve seen - life lists, year lists, garden lists, county lists, etc. - some already in place but users can add their own. Each record can be linked to dates so that the user can build up a picture over the years of migration patterns for birds in their areas of interest
• main page will show the list of birds with ticks to show which have been seen on which list
• Detailed pages for each bird will allow users to upload their own photos, notes and audio to build their own record of information for each species
• Journal allows users to record detail for individual birding trips, with links to bird species pages where applicable

These will form the basis of the design spec and screen layout, and I’ll build the architecture in such a way that I can easily extend and add features once it is all up and running.

Watch this space…

Post script: Anyone reading this who wants to have a look at my task management application and give me some feedback - please drop me a line!

“The head of Black and Decker once said, folks don’t buy our products because they want one inch drills, they buy our stuff because they want one inch holes.”

I’ve often felt, as a project manager, that I get called in to help people buy drills, and my real job is to help them understand that they need holes. Trouble is that a famous quote from Einstein is also true:

“Problems cannot be solved by thinking within the framework within which they were created.”

Unless your client understands the truth of this, they are never going to be in the market for holes and you should leave them alone to get on and buy the drills.

One day the man comes up and says, “I’m just sitting in my truck all day doing nothing, and I have pretty good relations with a lot of people around the world, if you need anything tracked down, just ask”. It seems too good to be true, but we start asking and he starts returning. He doesn’t actually fetch things for us, but he puts us in touch with people who can. The more of our neighbours who used him, the better he gets.

A while later he comes up and says, “You know, My truck is just sitting there, perhaps I could collect all the mail for your street. You can come and get it from me, it’s only a short walk after all, and think of the convenience - I have a big storage area so I could hold onto your parcels and all, save you room”. We need to remember to check in with him every day, but yes it does seem convenient. It’s free and he’s got enough storage for all of us.

A while later he comes up and says, “You know, I could store a lot of other stuff in here as well. I’ve got enough room for you to get rid of a lot of other stuff too; keep your house tidy.” Seems good.

Next time I go to collect my mail he stops me and asks if I’ve heard of this new magazine that’s coming out. “It’s really suited to you I think - I’ve been monitoring the mail you get and the things you store with me and I’m pretty sure it’s right up your street. Here’s a flyer - call them if you fancy trying it.” Odd.

Next time I go to collect my mail he does the same. And the next time. We used to have quite a mix of smaller vans and cars coming along that road, but there’s no room for them now. We don’t miss them though, and the man doesn’t seem to recommend them in any searches he does for them. I guess they’re just not as good as we used to think they were or more people would still need them.

I ask him to get me a new DVD and when I come to pick it up he first offers me three others that I have no intention of buying. “Sorry,” he says, “but these people have paid me to try and get you to buy these first.” Not much of a hold up with just three, but a bit inconvenient. Still, it’s a free service so what should I expect. As I leave he says, “This new shampoo is just what you need. I saw the letters you’ve been sending your sister and I agree that you probably need some more control.”

I pop down to find out the address for my cousin - it’s on the letter she sent me, and why bother writing it down elsewhere when his truck is always there? No problem getting it, but he makes me sit down and watch a short video first. It’s about a new car I probably won’t ever get, but it seems strange. He’s still free though.

When I came out yesterday the truck was gone. Taken away for maintenance said the sign. He was back in the afternoon, but I missed a deadline for sending in a job application as I needed to double-check some facts in one of the magazine articles that I’ve started letting him collate for me. Perhaps I could do what my neighbour did and pay him to let me keep a copy of the articles in the house.

This morning, the truck is gone. I have an invoice through my door, and apparently I can have personal access to it every other day, for a fee. The man has also promised to stop reading my mail and going through my things if I pay him double.

I think the strangest thing is remembering why we trusted him so much in the first place. And I’m sure that truck was smaller when it got here, that it didn’t block quite so many other roads.

I think Mastercrafts has been a great programme for two main reasons: it’s wonderful to watch people talking about and doing something they are passionate about, and it’s also nice to remember every now and then the satisfaction that comes from working hard to acquire deep knowledge and true craft. Too much today focuses on the short-term, do-it-well-enough-to-get-by ideal; on the ability that technology and affluent society has given us to buy in pseudo-skill.

An example? I went on a ’snake photography day’ a couple of years ago. The day was held on heathland in Dorset where snakes are found - all three main UK species if my herpetological knowledge is reliable. I was very excited that we would be shown around the heath, learning about the habitat of the snakes and, perhaps, being lucky enough to see and photograph them. Nothing is more thrilling than observing animals in their native habitat, particularly a habitat that has suffered the depletion that heathland has in the UK over the years. The reality was disappointing. There were two snake-handlers with us on the day who had captive snakes and lizards which they manipulated for us, positioning them to get us the perfect photos of these creatures in their natural environment. Instead of a day learning valuable knowledge and field skills everyone ended up with about 2000 almost identical shots of the same snakes. Instead of having to combine fieldcraft and photographic ability, the most we had to do was make sure the handler’s fingers weren’t in shot each time. A number of people on the trip were regulars who had also done a similar thing with tigers, wolves and bears at the local zoo, although by the look of the gear they had you’d have thought they were off to Kenya on a photoshoot for National Geographic for a month.

Another example? My local fishing shop staff often tell of people who come in and spend upward of £2000 in one go to get everything they need to start fishing. They then spend a few weekends on waters that are overstocked, catching fish that are on first-name terms with most of the anglers who fish there, then sell their gear the first time they have a blank session.

Now, I’m not saying for one minute that people shouldn’t approach things in this way, or that all people who invest a lot of money in a hobby have no real talent. And I’m certainly not saying that the purists are somehow more entitled to the hobby than others - those who are still using split-cane rods and centrepin reels to catch pure, wild fish, or those who are stalking animals in tweed suits and deerstalkers, taking photos of them on bakelite cameras and developing them in their own dark rooms. In my view the extremes are just as bad as one another, and people at both ends can be equally damaging when they offer advice to newcomers on internet fora and mailing lists.

What I am saying is that you don’t need great gear to do well, you need to understand the craft of your hobby and have the right gear to do what you want to do. If you want to take photos for glossy magazines and billboards then you probably do need some high-end gear. If you want to compete at world-class level you need the right gear to fish alongside the pros. But don’t think that having the gear for one minute means you can take those photos or win that championship. If you take the time to learn the craft, to really appreciate what you need to do with the tools and to be able to get the best out of lower-down-the-range gear, then you might just stand a chance of succeeding when you do get your hands on the right gear. There’s a famous saying with pro photographers when asked the question, “Wow, what exposure time did you use to get that shot?” - “1/8 of a second and 35 years”. You won’t get great shots by using the same gear as the pros or by using the same settings as the pros. Photography is as much to do with gear and settings as great literature is to do with spelling. You can only get really good at something by investing time, passion and application in the craft.

An illustrative anecdote? When I was a kid I was working with my dad in a school over the holidays. There was a horrible little drum kit there that I banged around on for hours on the first day - much to the delight of my Dad. It was a truly horrible sounding thing that was a good few steps away from being usable. On day two one of my Dad’s mates was working with us too. He was a jazz drummer who played every now and then in clubs and pubs. At lunchtime he sat behind the kit and, after a few exploratory taps and tests, proceeded to produce some wonderful sounds out of it.

With that in mind, I’ve started to practice more on my guitar, learning a little music theory, strengthening my fingers and listening to people I can learn from. I have everything I need to get as far as I want to go with music, the only thing I need to invest this time, is time.

• If it’s not automated, it’s not a real backup.
• If it’s not redundant, it’s not a real backup.
• If it’s not regularly rotated off-site, it’s not a real backup.

All good stuff, and I recommend you take a read of his article and the Daring Fireball article that inspired it; it’s all good ‘cautionary tale for our times’ stuff. I’m not the greatest fan of Merlin’s style of writing — I find he sometimes talks in language that is too absolute for stuff that is grey around the edges — but his blog always makes me think deeply about the things he writes about. As a blogger I think that puts him in the top 99.8th percentile.

Why do I say his voice is too absolute at times? Well, a case in point is saying that “if it’s not automated then its not a real backup”. As long as you have a plan that you stick to which keeps your backup as safe and current as it needs to be, then you have a real backup. I used to automate my backups but found that I missed too many by not having my laptop plugged in and connected to my backup drive at the right time, and then cancelling the backup when I plugged in because it wasn’t a convenient time to run. Automating it actually made my backup less safe, and manually choosing when was best for me in the day to run it kept me far more current. I know that Merlin means “automation is the best way to get you doing your backup as regularly as you need to, and that’s what we’re really aiming for here”, but the minute you use that absolute language it sounds like there is no room for the grey around the edges. And don’t even get me started on just how flawed the concept of ‘Inbox zero’ really is.

But no. Half an hour spent judiciously pruning software in Synaptic, and some minor config file tweaking later, and I’m back up with a lithe, almost pristine system. And with no time-consuming reinstalling and reconfiguring, not to mention the lack of stress I always get when I hit the continue button after repartitioning. Even if I know I’m all backed up and have done all I need to, I always suffer the heebie-jeebies after OK’ing that “You do know that all of your data is about to be destroyed? All of it?” dialog.

Long and short - I’m keeping on top of my game and actually quite enjoying not stressing about the system I’m using. I’ve also started to look at Linux home recording stuff ready to write and play some new songs. More on that anon.