Rukus Flashchords

 In all honesty, I'm not entirely happy with Thunkable and the help I received on the app anymore. Every day I was so impatient because I felt like the longer it took for me to get this all finished, the lesser chance I had for it to become popular and successful, and ultimately just stay... up.    I realize that this hellbent desire for Rukus to become some famously known app or super successful isn't because that's what I really want. There are things I think I want. A job. My partner to work less hours. Haircuts. Personal time. Travel.   During this sound update journey, I got free sounds from a uke player who happens to be a developer. He understands the vision and the importance of free resources of musicians, as he built an entire community for uke players. His wife is a developer too, how friggin cool is that!? He would finish the job for as much as a single year of subscribing to Thunkable. It's a no brainer, but my thought loop was that I'd lose au...

 Whelp that opportunity went nowhere. And the custom sound playing feature I wanted is not possible with Thunkable's setup. Sounds can't play instantly when the chord flashes, which defeats the concept I was going for. Essentially, the .wav file has to travel too far through Thunkable's foundation for it to do that. If the app was made from scratch coding then it would work.  Anyway. At least Playlist does what I want it to do. At this point I just have to clean things up and get everything uploaded, repay my subscriptions. It's time consuming but I'd say I have about 5-10 hours of solid work before it's "done done". Then I'll make a few videos and leave the rest to fate.    I'm tired thinking about it. Lol 

 So I go into my spam folder of my Rukus email, right? Totally aloof, what could possibly be hiding here. Probably something silly and explicit like my other spam folders on my soldout emails.    Dude. This guy FOUND me, through the newspaper article I was in, and reached out about a super cool super fancy convention in SAN FRANSISCO and wants to chat about something... idk. I started crying. Just to be recognized like that for the work I'm doing feels really special. I had to hire some help to finish Playlist and Custom because it is beyond what I have the time and expertise to accomplish right now. My babe is 18 months old and hopping, running, skipping, jumping, just a total force of nature and I am loving every second of it. But there is absolutely no way I could continue to build the app like I was doing when she was 5/8 months old. The transition to toddlerhood is a whole new level of sleep deprivation and emotional regulation. I am staying consistent, however. Smal...

Wow. I think this next big step is what completes the app. Anything after this will over complicate things. But my last steps are this:  Playlist - a community playlist of chords in the order of songs that you can practice and play.  + you don't need to manually enter something if you can find it + lots of people contributing  Custom - hear the chords before they flash. An option to save decks in an advanced version of the screen + allows personalization at a basic level The only thing is that people will probably prefer the custom saved chords over the community chords, but whatever. The playlist community was really just a workaround for this custom screen thing that I'm just gonna try and ship.  Kind of like when I had just started, with the Styles button. It was a workaround for Playlist, building custom chord decks. But I ended up keeping the feature anyway because it's fun to try.  It's funny how simple my guitar apps look compared to what's coming. This n...

After numerous people suggesting that hearing the chords would make the app more helpful, I am going to explore it. I have a few people interested to record the individual audio files, which is sort of shocking considering I don't have any money to give them.  I keep saying to myself "this next feature is going to be the one that makes the app big". Well, I think this one is. I can't imagine what more I could offer after this within my abilities. I thought it would be cool for the song lyrics to show up on the chords as they flash, but I don't see that working out.  I could build a whole other app for left handed players as well, but that is... a lot of time. Yeah, even thinking of it is like holy shit.  But if this becomes my job, or helps me find a job, or I start to miss app building after a short break... then yeah I could definitely see that happening.  Wish me luck, void   

 Alright. Whelp. The update is done. Songs can be saved now. I have to count the days individually and hope that google approves it after 2 weeks and hope my testers actually do the thing. Ughq;eufhjnlfjqwe fiwknf;modwukfnjqvmlierf   as nice as it feels to be doing this app and to feel like I have some sort of direction, not making any money for doing all of this work, hearing back from any recruiters about other types of jobs... one thing at a time I guess. I've been working at this every night for weeks, when she naps, when she sleeps.. it's the only time I get to myself. Now that I'm just done with this update I've got all of this nervous energy built up. I need to rest.

 Ok y'all I'm really gonna send it. Firebase. Cloudinary. I was hesitant because I don't know these programs and I don't want to get defaulted into a subscription, but I figure even if I get that many users to justify it, then it's worth a shot. I am holding back on the design updates. I just want everything to send at the same time. All the designs looking the same on all the apps. All the features looping/acting the same. I just want to plop it all out there instead of trickling updates and progress... so yeah things are bound to look messy for the next couple of weeks but I am tinkering away on the back end as much as I can for that final send.  I... am... eexcitttteeeddd!!!! This is so cool! I don't expect it to take off right away, but just to have a new direction to go into with the app. Even though it's unknown waters, it's something new and I'm eager to give this a shot. I really feel good about all of this. It's all been a momsical whim ...