Accountability for not being Accountable

Posted on August 17, 2026 by donespe

Well, I guess I’ve failed a bit at updating the progress on my Quirky US Explorer app. I’ve been working on it pretty steadily over the last month or so, but I haven’t been doing my part in letting others know my progress.

Well, as it stands, the app is complete and most of the features that I wanted are included. There will always be something to add, but for now I think it’s a decent place to release it. I am still doing some cleanup work to the various displays in order to keep them consistent with each other and easy for a user to understand.

The hard part is staying focused. It is far more fun to add features than to clean things up. I also struggled with the work of adding new locations to explore. I finally managed to get enough to feel it is useful. There is at least one place to explore in each state. This meant researching locations and then deciding which ones to add. Once that happened, I had to make sure I had all the needed information along with an image for each one. It wasn’t always easy finding all of that, but I think I managed to pull it off.

If everything goes right, by the end of the week I’ll have it available for at least preorder. It took longer than it should have, but things happen. I just need to buckle down and get the last stretch finished before I get busier with other things.

I guess that gives a bit of a rundown for where things stand right now.

For now, here are some images from the app to enjoy while you wait for more!

It’s been a while…

Posted on May 23, 2026 by donespe

Well, I guess I have yet to post anything this year. Well, so much for following through with better marketing.

Since it’s been a while, I thought I’d at least put a few words in here to say how things are going. I’ve been updating apps throughout the year, but nothing super major. I was a bit disappointed in my latest release. I like the app and I use it daily, but it hasn’t really found an audience. So, alas it seems like it will end as a commercial failure. But, at least it is an app that I find useful.

I have been doing a video blog daily on Instagram. I’ve covered a lot of topics – many of them political. If you followed the news at all you would know Minnesota has been featured prominently over the last several months (huh, it’s been over 6 months now???). So, that has occupied a lot of my thoughts. I have started to bring my focus back to my apps, though and hopefully I’ll come up with a new project somewhat soon.

If you want to see the Instagram posts, here is the link: instagram.com/duckyplanet

Well, that wasn’t much but at least it’s something. I hope all is going well for everyone and hopefully I’ll keep up with this better than I have been.

Crafting an Income

Posted on July 30, 2025 by donespe

Over the last year I’ve been working on my Craft Pricing Pro app. The app is useful and the interface is clean and easy to understand. I’ve also added many features including some basic inventory and sales tracking. I don’t know how many people will use those features, but they are there and they do work.

But, writing the app – although it can be difficult – is the easy part. The truly difficult part is the actual marketing of the app. It’s nice to have an app finished and available for sale, but it doesn’t really pay the bills until people start to purchase it. That’s the block I’m currently running into. The app works well and the little bit of feedback I’ve been given has been positive. But, the problem is that it hasn’t really been found by the many people that would find it useful.

Yeah, I know it’s ironic that I wrote an app so people can make more money with their own projects, but I’m struggling to make money with my own. The accounting math isn’t hard for me. It’s the actual selling. How to get people to first of all take a look at the app, and then how can I convince them that it will help them make money? It will, I know it will. When I was selling more crafting items, the earlier version of this app did in fact help me make more money. It’s why I wrote it and it’s why I feel strongly about marketing it.

So, with this I guess my newest effort is to avoid adding features or starting new projects. But, instead work on creating interest and sales in the projects I currently have out there. Yeah, that’s scary and difficult, but here we go.