A twist on chickens and eggs

I still don't have that whole intrinsic motivation thing down pat. But when I've been able to afford it, I've made the purchase of a new toy the reward for longer-term achievements such as a semester 4.0 average, the force-march through a multi-month project, and so forth. So it seemed fit enough that my reward for slogging through enough SQLite & Android to write a non-trivial application should be an actual Android device to run it on.

Now, it's no secret that writing software user interfaces--i.e. the screens, buttons, forms, etc.--is most certainly not my strong point as a programmer. So I decided to take a page from Kathy Sierra's book and work everything forward from the "How will this make the user rock?" First stop: Mind-mapping. Tools of choice: 11 x 17 paper and a refillable pencil dating from college.

Which is when I thought, "Wouldn't this be a great application for a tablet PC?" Sigh. Chickens and eggs, 2010.