Fileformats

There is a particular failure mode that has bedeviled my project life for decades. I call it the “extra mile” problem. I build things because they solve a problem for me. Once I get a solution that works for my particular case, that itch has been scratched, and the remaining work — onboarding, explainers, error messages, edge cases, polish — is an extra mile of annoying minutiae that never seems as appealing to me as the next problem waiting to be solved. So I tend to move on without ever sharing the results with anyone else.

It’s a shameful, totally selfish habit, but fighting your own subconscious is a constant battle that you’re doomed to lose in the end anyway. So instead of fighting my own nature, I look for ways to trick it. And with FrankenTongues, I think I’ve finally done that.

But the epiphany required was so profound that it had to arrive in three parts.

I’ve been experimenting for months on different ways to convert podcast content into a form I can use in Frankie. I’ve found several solutions, but along the way, I’ve left the resulting file tree in absolute chaos. I’ve got files in a dozen directories and an equal number of formats. There are fragments of scripts and clips and tools scattered throughout the hierarchy like bodies left to rot on a medieval battlefield, but there’s also no consistency, little documentation, and worse, still no definitive process.

Well it’s time to loot those bodies, gather the useful bits into a proper plan, and bury whatever is left.

To me, budgeting is fun - until something goes wrong - and then it’s like herding fish. Money is always in constant motion, so it’s hard to look at just a single frozen moment - to examine all the parts and see how they fit together - before everything changes again.

Funds go in and out of your accounts a hundred times a day. You get pay deposits, cash withdrawals, you buy stuff on credit or with cash, you pay bills. Then there are the transactions that happen without you even being involved, like automatic bill payments, subscription services, charitable donations… And let’s not even talk about our kids and spouses out in the world spending more money while you’re still in the basement trying to get a handle on what they spent yesterday.