charliepark.org

Subtle. Refined. Boring.

Just kidding about the “boring.” I think.

I’ve been working on the main page of charliepark.org for the last week or two, and I had been playing with a new, blue palette. I guess I was inspired in part by the good folks at nclud, but it was a departure from my standard palette of white, black, gray, and red.

I kept tweaking it, kept playing with it, but it just wasn’t working for me. So I tried dropping the color out, applying my classic color scheme. What a breath of sweet, fresh, familiar air. In time, I’m sure I’ll expand into bold new arenas of color — maybe like the black-and-hot-pink placeholder at Wallet Garden. But for now, I’m holing up in my old, familiar camp.

(Ironically, in playing with the front page, I’ve managed to bork the blogging engine, so you won’t actually even be able to read this post until I’ve spent some time and fixed it. But in the meantime, this post will just sit in the background, patiently waiting to be rendered in beautiful #333 on #fff, with a little #800 thrown in at the links.)

Calling

Some insight from Shaun …

Whatever you decide to do for a living, decide to love God more than yourself, love the poor and the sick and the hopeless more than your own happiness, love the intern as much as the boss, love your kids more than a promotion, love your wife more than your laptop. This is God’s will for your entire life. To pull this off you’ll need to buy as little as you can. The more stuff you own the more you’ll feel you have to work, the more depressed you’ll be when work isn’t fun, and the more you’ll equate God’s will with what you do for work, and the less time you’ll have to discover all the other things life is supposed to be about.

Realigning pearbudget.com

I re-did pearbudget.com’s page, since I hadn’t touched the main code base in about two years or so. When I looked at it the other day, I was surprised at how antiquated my CSS techniques had been. I mean, they were appropriate for the time, but a lot’s happened since then — both in CSS development in general, and in my own skills.

So, over the last few nights, I’ve been overhauling the backend of pearbudget.com.

I plan to write some more up about this, including some explanations of how I cut the code back and where the efficiencies are, but you can compare the before and after yourselves.

A quick thanks to Douglas Bowman and his Sliding Doors technique, which I turned on its ear (as it were) for the rounded boxes, and to Jiri Kupiainen for his simple correction to fix the bug that Google’s UrchinTracker kept throwing. And, of course, huge thanks to Firebug for the help in mimicking the existing page’s style.

Thank you, WP-o-Matic!

I was wondering how to syndicate multiple feeds. You know, pull the PearBudget feed, the Nymsy feed, etc.

It looks like the brilliant WP-o-Matic is just what I was looking for. Thank you, Guillermo Rauch!

The only downside is that, if you’re just joining us, you’ll have missed the now-buried post with the kittens-as-target-practice photo.

WSJ blurb

The Wall Street Journal featured an article on free budget programs on the web, and included PearBudget in the writeup. Here’s the relevant bit about PearBudget:

Budgets are like diets: easy to start and even easier to quit. But a growing number of free programs available on the Web are giving people the chance to play around with multiple budgeting tools and find something that works. …

With PearBudget, users can create a budget in about 10 minutes and can maintain it in less than 30 minutes a month. The spreadsheet file you download from PearBudget.com isn’t pretty, but it is easy. PearBudget doesn’t care if you bought gasoline at Chevron or Shell, ate three meals a day or two; it only wants to know how much you spent. Users can see how they’re doing versus spending targets over time and also monthly.

Creator Charlie Park originally built the program for personal use, when he’d just graduated and had a wife in college. “I couldn’t afford to buy a program,” he says, “especially if it wasn’t something I knew I’d be able to stick with.”

Jaclyne Badal, the journalist who wrote the piece, was terrifically nice. Thank you, Jacki! (Hopefully you’ll find the new version prettier than the spreadsheet! I mean, it is a spreadsheet, so I know where you’re coming from.)

I wish I had more news for you all about where the new PearBudget is right now, but that’ll have to wait a bit longer. (If any of you are wondering, the twins, Kate and Frances, are both doing well. Thanks.) There’s also some other news that I’ve got for you, currently embargoed, but that I’ll break in a few weeks. Thanks for your patience.

media, reviews

shmaxes

Tax time is coming. Although this doesn’t have much to do with PearBudget, per se, everyone has to deal with personal taxes, and I thought I’d throw up a quick note that might help you out.

First off, I have nothing but good things to say about H&R Block’s TaxCut software. They’ve done a terrific job of explaining everything you need to know, and they’ve made the interface extremely usable and clear. I finished my federal taxes in about four hours, but part of that was time spent looking for receipts from insulation so I could claim them. I think the many hours I spent looking for old receipts netted me $11. Gar.

Second, for those of you who, like me, earn less than $52,000 a year, you can use the IRS’s Free File resource to get TaxCut for free. Actually, they have 20 different free tax prep software options there, although there are different salary and age ceilings that might limit your options. Regardless, you really should check out what they have. It’s just not worth the pain of going through the newsprint tax book and ScanTron forms when these resources are available.

software, taxes

Work Music

A quick note. Just wanted to mention two bands that I’m loving right now. If you’re into The Postal Service (or other IDM / indietronica / armchair techno / glitch artists), you’d do well to check them out. Emancipator. The Philippians.

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Debt Free Girl

Debt Free Girl is a blog from a woman working to get out of more than $15,000 in credit card debt, using PearBudget as one of her main tools. She just started her blog, so she has a ways to go to pay that down.

In this post, she assesses her January spending and — like everyone else who tracks his/her spending — is appalled at how much she spends dining out.

As scary as it is to look at numbers like that, it’s so, so, so good that she’s doing that. I hope she’s able to keep it up, that she’s able to tweak her spending habits, and that she’s able to decimate that credit card debt. I’m thrilled that PearBudget’s helping her set and realize her goals.

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How to get your Web 2.0 application onto an iPhone

Notice something funny about the iPhone above? Look in the bottom-right of the block of programs. Yes, my friends. I’m proud to announce that PearBudget is going to be on the new iPhone.

Or not.

Apple is, apparently, going to be tightly controlling the programs that can be added onto the iPhone. I can understand that. But if you have a “Web 2.0″ company (and who doesn’t? I have three!!1!), you, too, can get your logo (or your picture, or whatever you want) on the iPhone’s main screen … before Apple even launches it this summer.

Just download this PSD file and stick your icon (or whatever) in the bottom-most layer.

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2007 Spreadsheet Up

So those of you looking for the 2007 version of the PearBudget spreadsheet can rest easy. It’s at the normal download place at pearbudget.com, or you can just get it here on the blog.

Those of you eager to try something new can download this excel sheet, which is a tweaked version of PearBudget. An Aussie named Oliver Granger worked with the original spreadsheet and sent it on to me months and months ago. I finally had some time to go through it and make sure things were in order. I think it’s all set, but I’d love any input from you. Yes, I know, a currency selector would be nice. And more categories. Those will have to wait for the web-based version. Let me know if you see any issues with it. In a few weeks, if there’s nothing alarming, I’ll just replace the existing 2007 version with this one.

spreadsheet, update