I'm So Excited

It's been a while since I dusted off the old 'blog and gave you some loghound goodness so tonights a two fer.

First I wanted to talk about a little project I'm in the middle of. It's got me pretty excited and no, it's not some fancy new plugin or application. In fact most of you will see it and shrug or say "Well, it's about time"

Let's just say that I'm getting a help from a fellow dog...

Finally I wanted to talk about the creativity of constraints. It occurs to me that most of what I've ever produced (and decided to share) is a form of plugin. Not just Rapidweaver but I've also done plugins for Address Book, iMediaBrowser Sandvox. It would frighten you to know what other apps I've done plugins for but choose to not every let see the light of day. More than once I've told someone NEVER AGAIN... Never again would I do a plugin. There are moments where I want to scream -- I want to do something simple and I can't because of the way the plugin interface works . Or I do what I think is correct but something in the main app kills me or ... well you get the idea.

I dream of my own app that I control soup to nuts. I imagine working in an environment where I control all of the source code and believe me, it's attractive but I keep on coming back to plugins.

Why? Why do I beat my head against the wall like this? I finally figured it out today.

Constraints free your creative mind

The fact that I have so many constraints forces me to think, and I mean think hard. More than once I've gone to bed thinking "It's helpless.. there is no way" and the next morning something clicks (Lockdown is a great example of that) it actually makes the problems more interesting and when I get it working it's that much more satisfying.

I've seen the same reaction from the guys who can take a 16x16 icon and make it look great. Would it be nice to have 1024x1024 for icon design? Sure but there is something deeply satisfying by making the icon look great with 16 pixels on a side.