What There's Time For

Computer Science for Preschoolers

When my son first asked me to come and talk to his class about what I do, I thought it would never work.  Explain Computer Science to a bunch of four-year-olds?  How is that possible?  And even if it's possible, how dull will I seem after Timmy's dad the dentist gave everybody toothbrushes and Sally's dad the archeologist gave them all fossils???

But then I started to think about it and actually get excited about the possibilities.  I only had 15 minutes, so I didn't plan to teach them to program anything (although, apparently, there are programming languages aimed at the very young).  Instead, I thought I'd engage them first by asking about all the fun things they do with computers and then introduce the binary number system in an interactive way.  As a take-home trinket, they each got their own binary monogram bracelet and a card showing the capital letters in ASCII binary so they could decode their bracelets.

Feel free to use the following as a script, should you wish to do something similar:

First, I introduced myself as Mr. Pants's mommy and explained that I go to school, too.  Did you know that adults can go to school?!

"I'm going to school to study computers," I said, "Who here has a computer at home?"

Everyone raised their hand. 

"OK!  And who knows what this is?"  I asked, pulling my iPhone out of my pocket.

"That's a phone!" shouted several kids.

"A phone!  That's right!  But do you know what else it is?"  I wasn't expecting an answer here, so I offered one pretty quickly myself, "It's also a computer!"

They stared at me.

"And who can tell me what kinds of things you can do with a computer or a phone like this?"   I was expecting them to talk about games and movies, but most of them said things like "typing"!  I recapped their answers and added the games and movies myself.

"So there's lots of cool things we can do with computers, right?  But the one thing I want you to remember today is, that all the cool things a computer does… it's all done with math.  The only thing a computer can do is add numbers together.  It just does it really REALLY fast with lots and LOTS of numbers and that's what makes all the cool things happen on your computer!"  Let that sink in for a second.  "But you know what?  It's even more amazing than that, because computers count in an even simpler way than we do.  So, today, we're going to learn how to count like a computer." 

"First, I know you guys all know your numbers, right?"  I had made a stack of index cards with the digits 0 through 9 written nice and big, one on each card.  I flipped through them in order and the kids counted with me, no prompting required.   "So, now we've gotten to 9 — what's the next number?"

Of course, they all knew it was 10.

"That's right!  But I don't have a card for 10.  How do you write 10?"  At least one child spoke up that it's "1 and 0". 

"Right!  But I can only hold one card."  Clearly, not actually true, but they accepted this as the rules of the game.  "So, Mr. Pants, can you come help me?"

He was thrilled and came to stand next to me.  I handed him the "1" card.  (Make sure the numbers are in the right order for the audience!)

"So, now we have 10!  But it takes two of us to say 10, doesn't it?  Now, we're about to find out that it takes a computer even more people to say 10, because computers don't have all these numbers, 2, 3, 4…"  I flipped quickly through them and dropped them in my bag.  If I ever do this again, I'll be dramatic and toss them over my shoulder.  :)

"So now all we have is '1' and '0',"  I held up the cards.  "How high do you think we can count with just '1' and '0'?"

That was kind of a trick question, I know, and they fell for it.  But that's ok, because…  "Prepare to be amazed!"  (I don't think I actually said that, but I wish I had!)

First, we started with '0'.  Then '1'.  "Now what do we do?!  I can only hold one card and we're out of cards!"

I handed the '1' card to Mr. Pants and took up the '0' card again myself.  

10 is binary for 2

"Two!  This how your computer thinks 'two'!"  I'll admit there were no immediate signs of recognition from my audience.  But my goal was only to plant a seed, so I went on, "Now how do we get to three?"

I think one of the kids knew we should add '1' to '2' to get '3', but I was having a bit of tunnel-vision from performance anxiety at this point (silly, but you know how it goes) so I don't fully remember.  The point is, it's fairly simple to see that I just need to replace my '0' card with another '1' card.  

11 is binary for 3

"Three!  And now how does your computer get to say '4' with only zeros and ones?  We're all out of space, right?  We're both holding '1's and we've got nowhere else to go!"  I had my son pick a friend to come up and help us.  The friend got a '1' card and my son and I both went back to '0'.

100 is binary for 4

"Four!  This is '4' for your computer, but what does it look like to you?"  They knew it looked like one hundred.  "Exactly!  Can you believe it takes this many numbers for your computer to say '4'?  We can get all the way to a hundred in the space our computer needs to get to just 4.  Pretty cool, huh?  So, your computer can count just as high as we can, it just needs a whole lot of places to hold zeros and ones if it's going to count very high."

I stopped here with the binary counting, but I still had the kids' attention and I think going a number or two (or all the way to 8 and adding another volunteer card holder!) would have helped make the concept clearer.

With slightly older kids, I think it would be really fun to then say, "You know what?  I bet we can count with no numbers at all!"  Toss out all the cards and have the kids be on/off bits by turning their back to the class or covering their face for "off" (0) and facing forward/uncovering their face for "on" (1).  Wouldn't that be fun once they got the idea, counting at a decent pace and having the kids flipping around in their places?!  So fun.  I so want to do that someday.

So, that was pretty much it.  I passed out the binary initial bracelets we'd made, along with a decoder card.  Several of the kids were very into it, figuring out which color in their bracelet was 0 and which was 1 and matching it up to the card.  The teacher seemed pretty excited that they were catching on to the pattern/encoding idea and she also pulled out a dummy keyboard they have in the classroom to ask, "You mean, when we press this 'A' key, the computer is really storing those 0's and 1's like you have on the card?"  Yes!

Really, it went very well.  I am thrilled that I decided to do it and I feel good knowing that even if none of them remember any of the details, the first person (probably) who ever told them anything about how computers actually work was a woman (and a mother!).  And I hope that my enthusiasm and directly connecting math with all the fun stuff you can do on your computer or on your phone will be a positive drop in the bucket of their feelings about math.  And a positive drop in the bucket of their feelings about computers being something they can understand and learn to control.

Let me know if you ever want the file with the binary decoder cards.  I'd be happy to send that along!

May I Draw Your Attention to the Sidebar?

I decided to add my Twitter feed.  This way you can get some sense of why I'm not posting on the days I'm not posting, or what is going on in some other facet of my life than what I've written about that day.  :)

I'm definitely warming up to Twitter.  It is turning out to be a great way to find interesting links and get a sense of the personality behind books/blogs/etc I've enjoyed.

If you see someone else's name in front of a tweet in the sidebar, that means they wrote it and it's showing up because I've retweeted it.  Because I thought it was interesting.  :)

Here We Go Random — WWDC Edition

The wireless internet at Moscone is slooooooow.  (The ethernet, however, is blazingly fast.)

I'm not quite as novice as I thought!  And maybe not as introverted, either.  :)

There are so many smart, enthusiastic, friendly, creative, interesting people here.

If I used Foursquare, I could have checked in at Foursquare's San Francisco office last night, which would have been cool.  But I don't, so I didn't.

Another thing I didn't do?  Tell the people at Foursquare that I don't use Foursquare.  ;)

I'm getting no more sleep than I do at home, but I've taken a shower every day without ever once worrying if the kids were running with scissors while I rinsed shampoo out of my hair.

Small(ish) community celebrity is a charming phenomenon.  I recognized Daniel Jalkut, one of my favorite podcasters (if you're interested in Mac/iOS development, the podcast is Core Intuition)  on Sunday and actually had conversation with him.  He turns out to be as nice in person as he is on air.  (I will say, though, actually speaking face-to-face with a voice you've listened to broadcasting for a long time is very disconcerting.  And I think I had parsley in my teeth.)  Two days later, I listened to Marco Arment's podcast Build and Analyze and he told a great story about noticing Scott Forstall at a bar the night before and working up the courage to introduce himself.  Sitting down in relief after a brief conversation, a fellow attendee approached him, clearly nervous to be speaking to Marco Arment, the founder of Instapaper.  :)

There was a line for the ladies room this afternoon!

I can't believe the week is almost over.

Here We Go Random

Spent the weekend Easter egg hunting and drinking in the sunshine at the zoo.

Mr. Pants continues with his existential angst, moaning several times a day, "I don't want to die."  It's unsettling, even for someone with a strong morbid bent.  We tell him dispassionately, That's OK, no one wants to die, and You don't need to worry about that right now because you aren't going to die for a very very long time, and then we move on.  I'd say he's too young to be so preoccupied by death, but I was similarly at that age (and often afterwards), so.

Also unsettling is his new habit of smearing poop all over the place after using the potty.  Let's have a WOAH, TALK ABOUT OPPOSITE END OF THE SPECTRUM!! shall we?  Two years old and younger, that's who's allowed to have this problem.  With a four year old, it's just WRONG and we're having trouble figuring out how to deal with it.  Big dramatic shows of parental shock and displeasure had no effect, so now we've revoked the "privilege" of pooping alone.

I'm thinking about adding some links I like to the blog sidebar.  Do you ever check out sidebar links on blogs?

Finally hacked out another insidious problem in Cross It Off!  Update coming in a week or so, I think.  If you've run into weird problems after the app's been open for a while, I'm crossing my fingers that this is the last and final fix that will slay that dragon once and for all.  They say free programming advice is worth every penny and... I relied on some free programming advice while implement caching of the header views.  Having gotten my hands dirty since then, here's my bit of priceless programming advice:  Never implement a cache without putting a hard limit on its size.  No matter how sure you are that you know how these objects are being used and there will never be too many of them.  Don't do it.

Do you ever wonder how people come up with new TV series ideas for kids?  Mr. Pants's new favorite is pretty obvious:  What do kids love?  TRAINS!  What else do kids love?  DINOSAURS!  Except that those two things go together about as well as herbed cream cheese and Nutella (Mr. Pants keeps requesting - and not receiving - this combo) so you'd think no studio executive would have ever signed off on the idea.  But Dinosaur Train made it through at PBS and... it's remarkably good!  Sweet, clever, educational...  And probably the proximate cause of the aforementioned existential angst (the dino kids discover a much earlier fossilized dinosaur named "Fred").  Also possibly to blame for the poop problems...

(skip to the last minute or so if you just want the song.  Yes, SONG.)

   

Let Me Count the Ways

(...continued from yesterday...)

Even if I worry technology is distracting me from really being there for my kids and even if I have been known to go off about the pointless evil of video games (I'm softening my heart, cautiously; really want to read this book), technology has brought so much good to me and to our family (and to many many others) that I can't imagine simply pulling the plug.

When I started college, they were laying high-speed fiber to bring Internet to each dorm room.  While we waited for that, my friends and I trooped over to the computer lab in a different building to check our email twice a day.  Most of us had never had email before, had barely even seen our parents using email.  Our parents had cell phones, but we sure as heck didn't.  We communicated by calling each other's landlines and leaving voice mail (which some of us eventually figured out how to check remotely from a wall-mounted "campus phone") or by writing messages on the white boards we all had mounted to our doors.  By the time I graduated, all that fiber seemed like a poor investment and Wi-Fi was in the works.  Within two years, we were shocked upon visiting to see hoards of students roaming campus while talking on their cell phones.  They were considering removing landlines from the dorm rooms.

When my parents flew to Africa with the Peace Corps, they knew they wouldn't be speaking to their families for two years, but they felt lucky they had airmail and could record their own voices on cassette tape to mail home describing what they were up to.

When my dad studied Computer Science one semester in college, he had to work out his programs in long hand, then schedule time at the lab to type them in and test them.  The final project was a chess game with, I'm pretty sure, no graphics at all.  It probably printed out (in neon green on black) things like:  "KNIGHT TO C8"

When I studied Computer Science in college (it was my minor), I never even got to GUI's (Graphical User Interface, aka what you're used to - you click on pictures and stuff happens).  I liked programming my own stuff but it seemed the only real way to do it for a living would be to join a major software company and build small bits of huge, dull programs.  I didn't.

In just the past ten years, email and broadband have become so widespread that my extended family now keeps in touch every single day.  That includes me in Europe, my sister in South America, my cousins all over the US, including my dad's home town, and my great uncle in Africa.  We share pictures and articles, videos and stories, blog posts and Catholic Mission newsletters, memories and birthday wishes.  It's incredible.  I often think about the teary song Killkelly, how all of our ancestors were once emigrants who left nearly everything and everyone they knew to start life over halfway around the world, knowing they would probably never see their homes again, having whole lives that their parents and siblings left behind would have little to no awareness of.

And now I'm back, near the birthplace of some of those ancestors, learning the language they spoke, and holding my baby up to the computer camera during a video chat with her grandparents back home.  And my son keeps asking me where his best friend is from and where is Malaysia and why can't he come back to America with us?  And eventually he asks so many questions that I explain about the early humans leaving their home in Africa to spread out slowly across the whole world, even to America and Malaysia, growing apart for so long and now, just now, very slowly for the past few hundred years and now very very fast, growing back together.

There are problems in this world.  HUGE problems, some of them directly caused by the very technology I love.  We are in no way within an easy stroll of stable world peace and justice.  But as a pacifist with a pragmatic outlook that favors digging into really why we are like this, why we are violent and cruel to ourselves, to each other, to the Earth, and to other living things, I've read enough on those subjects to say pretty confidently that if we do ever achieve peace, it will be because of this astonishing shrinking of the world through personal connections that technology has made possible.

But I think I've gotten a little off track.  Back to the day-to-day ordinary scale of life with the smartphone...  Being able to tap out an email here, check a blog there, download my app sales info when I have a moment anywhere, all that has helped me fit more of ME into my life as a stay-at-home mom and I think that's good.

I have drawn limits for myself.  I cull my blog roll regularly.  I have dropped out of Facebook.  I do not use Twitter.  At all.  (I kind of wish I did; I feel like I'm missing the party.)  I don't browse the phone while on a walk (never was particularly tempted to, though).  I've banished technology from the dinner table and I'm working on banishing it from the hours of 9PM to 6AM in the hope that will improve my sleeping.

But then there's the problem of paying attention to the world on my phone instead of paying attention to my kids and I do think this is a tough one.  Not ENTIRELY NEW, though.  Moms talked on the phone for hours when I was a kid.  Dads read the newspaper.  TV has been a temptation for generations.  I've been told of a distant relative, a young mother before 1900, whose children ran off on a beautiful sunny day while she was engrossed in a novel.  When she realized the kids were gone, she was terrified and overwhelmed by guilt (the frivolous pleasure of reading a novel being quite forbidden by her religion).  The kids were fine, but I'm not sure she ever got to finish that novel, or let herself read another one.  (MarMar will step in and correct my facts in the comments...)

What I try to do, what I think is the only real answer, is to be aware of where my attention is at any given moment, to know where it might be needed or wanted at short notice, and to be prepared to shift it with a minimum of fuss.  The truth is, I don't think kids want or are benefitted by an adult's undivided attention at all times.  They do need to be treated like people when they have something to say or show or ask, though.  So, I pretty much think it's just fine if my son is playing with his Lego Buzz Lightyear et. al. and I'm reading a new blog on how to deal with picky eaters, as long as I can put the phone down and listen when he comes over and wants to talk about why Woody didn't like Buzz at first or why doesn't God let my friend eat the food at school or would you be sad if I died?

And because, yes, I would be sad if he died, I am glad to be able to show him a YouTube video of an official crash test when he shows no understanding of my explanations for why he must keep his seatbelt on while we are driving.

And I'm thrilled to find footage of a replica of the first airplane actually flying when he wants to know how Wilbur and Orville's plane worked.  Or share Hubble images of far distant galactic beauties with him in 3D.  Or download a favorite song from my own childhood to pass along to him right now.

***

How many ways do you love or hate technology?  Do you feel like you are finding a balance?  Do you mostly revel in it or worry about it?

And to Illustrate My Point...

As I was saying on Friday, software is imperfect.

A fact which was boldly illustrated if you downloaded the version 1.1 update to Cross It Off!  (not Lite, Lite was unaffected) shortly thereafter.

The bug was one I had no way of testing for, since it only happens when you upgrade from the store, and it was one I in no way expected, though, in retrospect, once I figured it out, it was because I was keeping track of files in a predictably fragile way.  I've fixed it, (I'm pretty darn sure I have), and I've requested that the new update be expedited so everything will be fixed for everyone as soon as possible.  And that's about what I can do.

Well, I can also stew about mistakes and success and failure and learning and venturing to try things that you might screw up, of course.

I was really glad I'd just read a post by Will Shipley (hugely experienced programmer) describing an update bug which was a much less severe and much more tricky bug than my disaster, but the post provided a little comfort that, hey, even really great programmers make mistakes sometimes.  Plus, it was an entertaining and educational read.

I am also really glad that one of the first people to experience the bad update left a review... a bad review, of course, but one that told me there was a problem and explained the nature of the problem in enough detail to get me to an answer pretty quickly.

And I'm glad that, a few years ago, I read about how the nature of praise affects children, because ever since then the astonishing results of that study (that children praised for their intelligence become more timid and less willing to try challenging problems, while children praised for their effort become more self-confident) have been a nearly-constant influence on how I think about my growing-up experience, about how I perceive my own fear of making mistakes, and how I interact with my own children every single day.  I try hard to praise their effort, not their innate abilities, to note their progress on difficult tasks with more interest than their instant success on others, and to let them attempt things I think they are not yet capable of, or leave them alone to struggle with others until they ask for (or really, truly need) help, which even then I try to respond to with encouragement to try again, rather than immediate hands-on fixing.

Because, well, making mistakes (especially big, public ones) feels bad.  But vigilantly avoiding any opportunity to make mistakes day after day after day feels pretty bad, too.  Because living in constant fear of making mistakes, just like living in constant fear of what "people" will think, takes a huge amount of energy "to hold yourself back, to keep a part of you down," in the words of Peter Lappin (extraordinary sewist and ebulliently cross-dressing author of Male Pattern Boldness) in a wonderful post of his recently.

There is always the refuge of knitting, where mistakes happen but affect only me, and fixing them happens when/if I want.  I fixed a lot of mistakes in these while getting used to how the lace pattern in the cuffs works, and left one little one at the end because it didn't bother me enough to rip back a finished piece for.  I love the final product and although fingerless gloves in super-warm alpaca may not have been my brightest plan, they have been getting some use during the cool blustery days of springtime in Vienna.  (Veyla by Ysolda, knit with KnitPicks Andean Treasure in Lilac Heather, discontinued color)

Perfecting the Magic... or, Mistakes are Interesting

I've been wanting to tell you the inside story on the development of Cross It Off!, but keep losing my nerve, thinking you'll find it boring or too technical or...

I do hope that you'll find this interesting and I will try to keep it not too long and not too technically jargony, but if you're not going to read it and you're using Cross It Off!, the main thing you need to know is, software is a work in progress.  I mean, I hope the software autopiloting my airplane is a totally finished, absolutely perfect piece of engineering (while recognizing that it may not be, completely), but as a general rule, consumer software is imperfect.  It's especially imperfect early on, when it just hasn't gotten a lot of real world experience being used by a wide variety of real people.  The point is, you, my dear friends, loyal readers, and early adopters of Cross It Off!, are serving a really important role.  So, please do let me know if Cross It Off! ever behaves oddly for you or if you find yourself wondering, Why'd she do it *this* way?, and definitely if there are features you'd like added.  

So far, I've had one new feature request and the new code is already in process and should be available, like, today!  Or next week.  Cool, right? Don't you want your own feature?  This update will also make Cross It Off! run full-screen on the iPad and improve some small bugs.  :)

In the meantime, if the app is acting weird (not scrolling properly, for instance), just quit it.  But note that simply exiting the app doesn't actually quit it.  To really quit an app, you have to either follow these instructions, or turn your device off.

So... How could an app as insanely simple as Cross It Off! take two months to code and still not be autopilot-perfect?  This is where things get interesting, at least in my opinion.

First of all, the pre-built building blocks available to developers are amazing, but only get you so far.  For instance, there's a simple ready-made thing (called UITableView) to easily map lists of information onto the screen.  It comes already able to handle going into edit mode and displaying those delete controls and the reorder controls and the little blue arrow next to your list titles in the main menu that you click on to get to the list in question.  The programmer still has to write some code to make tapping on those things actually do anything, but it's not a major deal and there are plenty of examples freely available.

The big thing it doesn't do is let the user type their own content into the UITableViewCells that contain each line in the table.  To get that to happen, I had to create a subclass (you can think of that as a child, it inherits characteristics from the parent, either completely or with modifications, and can add its own new characteristics) of the cell that contains an editable text box instead of static text.  Thankfully, the editable text box is a ready-made thing that takes care of all kinds of stuff, including bringing up the keyboard and collecting the input from it.  There's still some coding to be done to make the changes the user makes actually stick, but, again, not too terribly hard.  (The text box can't cross itself out, though, so I had to subclass the text box itself and dig into the graphics rendering processes to draw that nice little line.)

Guess what, though?  When the keyboard automatically pops up, it might pop up on top of the place you're trying to type.  It's the programmer's job to scroll everything up so you can see what you're doing (it sometimes happens automatically for the cells, but never for the headers - typing directly into those headers is not a "normal" thing to do, but it makes my app much more intuitive and efficient to use, I think).  That was hard, mostly because all the examples I found were not specific to table views and several of the methods suggested didn't, for whatever reason, work.  The one I eventually settled on requires calculating the height of the entire list (in pixels) to the line being edited, figuring out the height of the current screen and keyboard (which will change, based on whether you're in landscape or portrait mode, and in some cases based on what language you're typing in), and doing some math to tell the program exactly how far to scroll (over-enthusiastically scrolling the box right off the top of the screen isn't very helpful, obviously).

You might have noticed that the autoscrolling when the keyboard pops up can be a little jumpy or the thing you're typing doesn't always end up in exactly the same place...  That's because I hadn't figured out exactly the right numbers to use in the calculation.  Some poking around and zooming in on screen shots and thinking it over eventually got me to the answer:  the real height of cells on the screen is one pixel taller than the reported height of cells inside the program.  That doesn't matter too much for normal-length lists, but it starts to screw things up when lists get really long.  (The update about to appear has the right numbers.)

Now, back to the section headers.  Like I said, the intention of the original table view was never to allow users to type directly into those headers (nor was the intention to allow users to create headers on demand).  But that's what I wanted and I was able to make it happen, mostly through more subclassing, but then there were consequences that had to be dealt with.  Things like the scrolling properly when the keyboard comes up, or changing the background of the text box to white while you're typing because the cursor is blue and you couldn't see it otherwise, or - and this was a major one - holding onto the headers when they scroll off the screen and reusing them for the new sections that scroll into view (something that is handled semi-automatically for the cells, but not at all for the headers).

Obviously (it is obvious, right?  anybody still reading?), I could go on.  But I think that pretty much paints the picture and hopefully was interesting to read.  :)

With all that and more going on under the hood, I've realized several places I could be handling memory more efficiently.  Right now, if you keep Cross It Off! open for a while and use it a lot (yay!), it might get a little less responsive/slower.  I'm working on it!  In the meantime, like I said, quit out of the app completely if you run into trouble and pat yourself on the back for being a pioneer user of a brand new really cool app!  And let me know about your troubles so I can make them go away!  And your dreams so I can make them come true!  (App troubles and dreams, specifically; I'm not actually a genie.)

Thank you!

She sells shallots by the chalets

So much mischief to choose from, yet Shmoogie's first stop upon getting into the kitchen is usually the onion cupboard.  The onions, garlic, and shallots go wandering around the house.

In the meantime, Mr. Pants is very quiet in the living room with his sandwich and when I glance over I think I see a rather surprising amount of crumbs.  "What are you doing?" I ask.  Silence.  "What are you doing?  Because it looks to me like you're making a very big mess."

"I'm not.  I'm cutting out a shark."

i.e., for the record, making a very big mess

***

I fear you may be entirely tired of hearing about the app, but I was up in the middle of the night having deep thoughts and trying to figure out what exactly the odd feeling is that I get when I look at the download history - people sprinkled across the world downloading my app to their phones (not TONS of people, but definitely people; real, countable people).  You'd think (well, *I* thought) it would feel a lot like looking at the blog pageview numbers.  But it doesn't.  Similar, in that kind of weird/cool at-a-distance intimacy way that the Internet makes possible, but actually even more so.

I guess I thought, Hey, it's software.  A very tiny piece of software.  People don't download apps thinking, Someone designed this!, they download apps thinking, This might work for me.  In the way that people purchase a new kind of garden hose thinking, This might work for me.  How often do you think about the person who designed (or manufactured, or shipped, or advertised...) your garden hose?

And, from the consumer side of the app world, I don't think it's any different.  A crossable list might as well be a new kind of garden hose.  But from the developer side (at least, the one-woman-show kind of developer that I am), it's amazing and humbling that these random people in, say, Argentina, are taking a little invention of mine - an invention I've been so deeply wrapped up in every minute detail of that it almost feels like some shard of my brain has been duplicated and beamed through the ether - and auditioning it for a small but useful part in their daily lives.

It's like I've spawned some kind of tiny self-cloning helpful fairy.  And, somehow, that feels weirdly personal.

***

Thanks to everybody who has downloaded either version of the app and many many thanks to those who have reviewed it and those who have mentioned it to their friends.  If you have downloaded Cross It Off! Lite, I would really appreciate if you could take a moment to review it  Likewise, if you have downloaded the full version, please review Cross It Off!

I know the reviewing is not the best part of getting a new app (I never used to review apps), and it turns out relatively few people do review apps (unless they're unhappy with them).  In addition, it is hard for anyone to ever see an app in the App Store until it has five ratings (because the average stars aren't displayed until then).  Cross It Off! Lite now has three ratings, which means only TWO more and the stars will show!!!  Cross It Off! has none yet... you could be the first!

And if you'd like a free download code for the paid version, for yourself or to give to a friend, email me or comment here.  :)

Thank you!

Cross It Off! is HERE!!!

Ladies and Gentlemen, Owners of iPhones and Spouses of Owners of iPhones and Those Who Will Buy an iPhone Just to Get this App Once You Watch this Video...   ;)

 

Cross It Off! is ready for download!  Download Cross It Off!* from the App Store right now or...

1. Download Cross It Off! Lite now (free, keeps one list at a time)
2. Try it out!
3. Review it in the App Store!  This is really important because until an app has five separate user ratings, it doesn't get any stars displayed in the App Store.  (If words aren't your thing, just give it some stars - down there at the bottom right of the page, "Rate this Application", just click on the star you want)
4. Come back here and tell me what you think!

Or, hey, just download the full version now.  You know you want to.  :)

(Note: this app requires iOS version 4.2 or higher.  Syncing your phone with your computer should give you the option to upgrade the iOS if you're still below that.)

Extra love from me if you also...

• Go back and review/rate the full Cross It Off!, too.
• Facebook/email/tweet/tell your friends about this awesome new app!

Now, what are you going to do with two versions of Cross It Off! on your phone, you may be wondering?  Why not just download the full version?  Personally, I love having my Cross It Off! Lite dedicated to my grocery list, so it's always just one tap away from my home screen.  The full version gets all my other lists.

Thank you so much!

Especially thank you to the first person who has already downloaded and reviewed!  You know who you are!

***

*If you own an iPhone but have never bought an app before - the rest of you, stop laughing! - it will be very simple if you are viewing this page from your iPhone.  Just click on one of the links above and the App Store page for the app will open on your phone.  You can read about the app there and see the screen shots, etc., but the key is the green rectangular button under the app icon - it will say "Free" or the cost of the app.  Tap it, and the button will change to "Download" (for free apps) or "Buy" (for paid apps).  Tap again and you will be prompted for your apple id and password (I hope you know those) and then the app will start downloading.  As soon as the icon is full color on your home screen, you can tap it to start using the app just like any other.

 

Here We Go Random

LATE BREAKING NEWS!!!!!

Cross It Off! Lite has been approved for sale!!!!  Cross It Off! (paid version) should be close behind!!!!!  It may be a few hours (or more than a few) before you can actually find the app on the App Store, but it will be by sometime midday tomorrow (or earlier).  I'll be offering free download codes for the paid version to you my dear loyal readers, so stay tuned!  As soon as I see the app for real in the store, I'll post here.  Beware if you read via Google Reader that posts are often hours and hours (sometimes more than 24 hours!) delayed reaching Reader...  Not that you have to check here every half hour or whatever, not that I would mind at all if you did... feel free to obsessively check the App Store along with me...  Who will be the very first person to download Cross It Off! (Lite)?????  Do I sound a little hyped up?  I'm a little hyped up.  I was making dinner for the kids when I checked my email and got the news and I was kind of stunned.  And then I got back to the important business of dumping elbow pasta into boiling water.  And then I called Mr. Right.  And then I obsessively checked the App Store and my email and then I went to get the cheese out of the fridge and suddenly I was jumping up and down with the fridge door open.  Crazy.  Uh...  Thanks for listening.  :)

Now, back to your regularly scheduled programming....

***

I still hate Daylight Savings Time.

On the way home from attempting to take Mr. Pants to school this morning (which failed because it turned out he was sick, not feverish sick, but shivering sick, and I had chalked his dazedness up to being woken up five minutes before leaving the house... Daylight Savings Time!) I told him when we got home he could watch the movie I made yesterday.  It's a little boring, I told him, but I've worked very hard on it; it explains how the program I wrote works.  "I won't think it's boring," he assured me, "I would like to watch it."  He sat with excitement in the computer chair as I clicked play.  A few seconds in I asked, "Is that Mommy talking?"  He shook his head, No.  Soon he was saying things like, "It's a little bit boring," and "but I can't see any Toy Story."

So, my first foray into cinematography does not entrance a four year old.  To be fair, he was mildly entertained when the screen changed color once - "Look, now it's different!"

I'll be posting the video as soon as the app goes up for sale it's up! click on the Cross It Off! icon over there in the side bar to view it, so you'll be able to judge for yourselves just how boring it is.  But please bear in mind, it takes several hours of tedium to create four minutes that boring.  :)

***

When Shmoogie (already in the backpack) handed me a 10 Euro note this morning, I thought, Huh.  Where did that come from?  And then I spent several minutes looking all over the house for my wallet.  After giving up on that and arriving at the car, I swung Shmoogie off my back... and a shower of bills and cards and my half-empty wallet tumbled onto the garage floor.

***

Mr. Pants had his first honest-to-goodness playdate on Sunday - his friend at our house for a few hours without her parents - and it was pretty great.  There was a lot of shrieking (especially early on when the game seemed to be the-Shmoogie-monster-is-coming-to-get-us-AAAAAH!!!; Shmoogie thought it was a great game; it ended when the friend remarked, "I don't think she wants to eat us!  I think she wants to be friends with us.  Aww!  She's so cute!"  Girls are so weird.) but it was a lot better than the usual boredom-induced mischief we get on the average Sunday.  Will repeat.

***

Thursday was a descent into parental self-doubt after I picked up Mr. Pants at school and he proudly performed for me the taunts with which he apparently torments his sometimes-friend.  I expressed my disappointment; he said it was "fun".  I was further disappointed, attempted to excite feelings of empathy and remorse, only to begin worrying I might be raising a sociopath when his response to "How do you think that makes them feel?" was a grinning, "Sad," and his next reply to my response was, "Because I want them to be sad."

Eventually, I gave up on the discussion, tried to remind myself of all the ways in which my sweet boy is not, in fact, a sociopath, and chuckled quietly when he asked Why I did not want him to say things like that and I said, Because I know you are a very sweet boy and I want everyone else to know that, too, and he said, "But [my friend] is a sweet boy and he does that."

Apparently, though, I wasn't completely over it, because when Shmoogie toddled over hours later with a Memory card picturing a group of little plastic green army men and Mr. Pants asked, "What are those?" it set in motion a train of my answers and his questions and eventually I was saying, "And that's why we have to learn to be nice to people when we're little because when we grow up we're strong enough to do a lot of things, even kill people," and he was looking mildly horrified and saying, "But I don't do things like that!"

And then a few hours after that, I was confessing the whole thing to Mr. Right and his only response was, "He is so sheltered.  I mean, a four year old boy who doesn't even know what little green army men are?"

Sigh.

***

I'm going to try to deal with the anxiety of waiting for my app to be reviewed by making another apron.  The challenge deadline is Thursday.