Things always take longer and cost more!

The usual preamble goes with this blog posting.  Although I don’t think there are a lot of people following this blog, I hope that one day, there will be some nice reminiscing when I come back to this.

So it has been about 4 weeks since I conceived the idea for this project and decided that I would keep a memoir of the project in a blog. And this is really my first real update on the project, and really not much to report.

I got a reasonable start on the project 4 weeks ago, but life and day job has got in the way of progress, which is a shame. But I am still passionate to keep going and getting this project out there. Since starting, I have spent a lot of time thinking about the project (very little time doing), but  think I have a reasonable view of what the business model is and what the structure is going to be. I have met with the lawyers, but I am still waiting on getting the advice on all the legal implications.

I have also started working on the app. Which has meant that I have started thinking about how some of the functionality will work, and in turn how it will be built. I have written a scenario that I am using as my blueprint for the project, and have started to take the stories out of it that I am going to build in the first release. I am using an Agile process, although more in line with the process we follow over at Aegeon. I am managing the stories in Trac, which is one of the better Free Agile management tools out there, and have my iterations planned out.

I have also started working on the User Interface, which in my opinion, is one of the most important parts of the application. I have settled on a home page that I am going to go out with, as well as almost finishing the search results page.

So what next?

I need to finish the work on the UI, at least to the point that I am happy to start working on the app itself. I then need to get that UI design to a HTML template. I have a few decisions to make here, because I hate trying to get the CSS right. I don’t mind the YAML CSS framework, but sometimes I think that it is a little too heavyweight. I know a lot of people like to work their UI from scratch and reset all the browser defaults, but that is all like another world to me – almost like trying to write something in Latin. So I think I am going to take the easiest path for the moment. And YAML is what I am familiar with.

Once I get that out of the way, I can start working on the application itself. So the immediate plan is to try and finalize some of the UI this week, hopefully I will hear back from the lawyers to see if there is anything that I need to consider in my app, and all going well, I should be writing the first bits of code in the next 7-10 days.

But as a very good friend of mine always says (And he is usually right), “Things tend to take longer, and cost more than what you first intend”, and again – he’s right!