FlexTime begs to be controlled remotely. That is, from across the room where you’re doing your dance, meditation, or presentation. Apple is shipping remote controls with more and more of its computers, but has done little to enable integration with 3rd party applications.

Fortunately two great applications exist for managing the remote’s functionality in a number of applications. Sofa Control and Mira each provide support for FlexTime, bridging the gap between your computer and where you’re sitting, standing, or jumping while you use FlexTime.

Twisted Melon, the company behind Mira, has taken things one step further and developed a hardware product to give Apple Remote support to those of whose machines don’t come with it built-in.

Cool stuff!

A reader pointed out that a 3rd app, Remote Buddy also targets this crowded field of applications. But Remote Buddy doesn’t seem to have any built-in or downloadable support for FlexTime.

I just finished reading The Monk and the Riddle, on the recommendation of Paul from Rogue Amoeba. It’s a sort of business philosophy book by Randy Komisar (with writing help from Kent Lineback).

It was a surprisingly fast read. Enjoyable and inspirational. But let me summarize it in one sentence:

The two most recurring themes in the book are roughly “the journey is the reward,” and “how can you change your current work so you’d be willing to do it for the rest of your life?” He describes a malady that many of us are probably familiar with: the “deferred life plan.” This is the rationalization of present unhappiness as a mere means to an end. We’ll work for 40 years at a job we hate just so we can pursue our passion later in life.

Great food for thought, and especially pertinent in the wake of my recent article about the indie life. I tried to examine my own circumstances using these criteria, and it boils down to four basic desires. I want a job where I build cool apps, blog, exercise, and make music. Whenever inspiration strikes me. A tall order, I know. I’m not quite there, but am hopefully moving in the right direction.

What do you want to do for the rest of your life? Are you suffering under the deferred life plan?

FlexTime has a major flaw in it where references to AppleScripts are not reliably saved/restored in routine documents. I’ve fixed the problem but it actually required quite a bit of change to my scripting code. So… I’m both embarrassed about the bug and nervous about the changes. Rather than release an update and hope for the best over the weekend, I thought I’d float a beta build.

If you’re using FlexTime’s scripted cues and can’t seem to figure out why the script isn’t running reliably, don’t feel stupid, it’s not your fault! Please do me the favor of downloading FlexTime 1.0.4b1. You’ll find the scripting experience much less frustrating.

Assuming I don’t hear any negative feedback, I’ll be releasing a final 1.0.4 build next week, so this problem won’t bite too many more people.

Update: I released FlexTime 1.0.4 today (September 20, 2006) with no changes from the beta (aside from the version string).

In my last post, I talked about the series of events that have led to my running my own company. But getting there is only half the battle. Once you’ve decided to venture out on your own, you have to come up with a name for yourself.

Alex Repty recently observed that a large number of Mac software companies are named using the formula “Adjective Noun.” I think it’s probably a trend that transcends the Mac community, but I can’t help but agree there are lots of us around. Red Shed, Toxic Software, Martian Technology, Rogue Amoeba, Delicious Monster, and Flying Meat all come to mind within a few moments of pondering. Others come close but diverge just barely from the pattern. Foggy Creek Software?

So what is the ambitious new business-person to do? Need some help figuring out what to call your stunning new venture? Allow me to lend a hand…

Adjective Noun Software

Now that you’ve got motivation and a name, all that’s left is the work. Get moving!