I just saw the “documentary” Dark Side of the Moon. Supported by interviews with Henry Kissinger, Donald Rumsfeld and many others, the truth behind the moon-landing is reveal. If you are sceptical about Apollo 11, you will have to watch this movie. It will probably change the way you look at documentaries.

Funny - there is an example on the Apple Developer Connection called iSpend. It’s basic functions are similar to Money (I really need a new name! What about MarkusSpendsTooMuchMoney.app?) and also my interface prototype looks similar.

Part 2 - User Actions
(In todays installment Markus highlights the individual tasks the user will perform)

Priority 1
*) Add a new transaction
*) Add a bidirectional transaction (= a transaction that removes value x from one account and adds value x to an other)
*) Edit the transaction data

Priority 2
*) Search for a transaction
*) View a graphical representation of the selected transactions/accounts
*) Restrict the range of the displayed transactions

Priority 3
*) Add a new account
*) Edit the account data
*) Add a smart account
*) Edit a smart account

Wouldn’t it be a great idea to document the development of my “Money” application? I think this would allow me to analyse the problems that will definitely occur during the design and development process.

Part 1 - Description
(Markus describes how he wants to use this application)

I want to implement an application that allows me to manage my private finances. This basically means that I want to be able to input transactions and I want to have a nice graphical representation of all the transaction, narrowed down by parameters I want to be able to define. For example, all the transaction during a specified periode with a transaction name containing “xyz”. I also would like to be able to manage several accounts (bank account, cash) and easily create transaction that virtually transfer money from one account to the other.

This application doesn’t communicate with my bank account. It’s a simple offline application. All input is provided by the user = me ;-) but I guess it would be great to have a mechanism to import CVS-files.

I guess that’s it. It doesn’t sound too difficult.

Although Core Data and Cocoa Bindings are two very powerful technologies, their use in an infinite-canvas-based application is somewhat limited. I tried to create a Core Data Model for my IC-Framework, but the restricted set of native Core Data datatypes is a real problem. There are ways to overcome this, but I have the feeling that this results in a too “overcrowded” model and hard to maintain code (something I really really hate).

BUT perhaps there is a very simple and slick work-around and my limited knowledge of these technologies hides it from me. In the meantime I’ll continue working on “Money” (the most boring working title I was able to come up) ;-)

My iPod G4 30GB with Color Screen died yesterday. This is no real surprise because it had been foreseeable. For the last couple of months my iPod had been suffering from severe problems with it’s harddrive. The cable connecting the drive with the logic board loosened itself from time to time. I was able to fix this malfunction by shaking it hardly, but the malfunctions kept popping up. Sometimes when shaking didn’t help I had to open it’s enclosure and stick the connector manually into the harddrive. I also tried duct tape to prevent the connector from popping out, but this only help temporary.

Yesterday it stopped working again. I tried all the steps described above with no effect. In a more than stupid attempt to push the connector into the drive with force, I broke one of the pins. Great job Markus!

And by the way, the super drive of my iMac G4 seems to come to the end of it’s lifetime too. It won’t read DVDs any longer. As it turns out this is a well documented “feature” of the Flat Panel iMac on the Apple discussions boards. I’m “glad” Panther came on CD-Roms, this is the system I’m using now.

The Infinite Canvas application is giving me some headaches . It’s really starting to show it’s age and the 1.3.1 release is now over a year old. I’ve been talking about a new version for ages and to date I have nothing to show. Well, I started writing a framework that would have been a great foundation for the new app, but watching the keynote I realized that Apple create with the LayerKit/CoreAnimation something similar, but much more advanced. Adopting this technology would be a logical step, but Leopard won’t hit shelfs until early next year and I doubt that the current IC target user-base would adopt very early in the operating systems lifespan.

In the mean time I started working on a new application. It’s a simple app to manage private finances. I’m aware that there are thousands of similar applications available, but I wasn’t able to find one that fits my needs. I’m currently not planing to release this app to the public. It’s just a test app to learn CocoaBindings and CoreData.

I don’t remember suffering from a severe jetlag during my last two visits to the US. But this time it really hit me hard. This is the fifth night in a row I’ve troubles falling asleep. I’ve been tired the whole day and I went to bed early (at around 10:30 pm) but after lying awake in bed for more than three hours, I have the feeling that I won’t catch any sleep today …

One thing I really dig about OS X is the build-in spell checking. You can activate it in nearly every input field (even in the browser) and it’s really helpful to eliminate typing errors. One thing that always annoyed me was the hassle when typing in more than one language, German and English in my case. Therefore I’ve been a regular user of the spelling menu and I was more than surprised to find the “Multilingual” menu item the other day. Selected it checks the input again every supported dictionary. This will probably cause some words to falsely pass the spelling-test, but so far it has worked pretty good for me.

I’m shutting down aquarius AT mindnode.com. This address gets about 40 spam emails a day, that’s about 90% of spam I get daily. Please use the address with my given name instead.

I safely returned home yesterday. The flight was a lot better than the one to San Francisco. The cabin staff was friendlier and this time I got my vegetarian food without a problem. On my last day I wanted to buy iTunes Music Store gift cards at the Apple Store. I hoped that this would allow me to shop in the US iTunes store. Sadly you still need a credit card when you redeem the gift card - a very friendly Apple Store employe told me. Well, now nobody can blame me that I didn’t try to get the upcoming season of Battlestar Galactica legally …