I got started on a bit of a Personal Finance kick in August of 2007 when I realized for the first time that I was living beyond my means. Like most people who experience a shock to their systems, I overcompensated and went on an all-out purge of unnecessary spending, studied up on investing as if I had a final on it the next day, and spouted off about my epiphany on my blog. Without even noticing, I became one of my Most Hated Things: an evangelist.

I’ve mellowed out since then and have found a satisfying balance between spending and not spending, so I can once again proudly call myself a staunch Moderate, but I do still read two or three personal finance blogs just for the occassional moments of insight.

Thing is, though, personal finance bloggers are really starting to annoy me. Let me show you why.

Around this time last year, a certain blogger made a purchase that he found himself regretting terribly. Consumed by guilt, he chastised himself for his frivolity and thought about what he could have done with the money that he no longer could. He could have paid down debt! He could have invested it! He could have put it towards his next car purchase! But instead, he squandered it on a material possession. Fortunately, he shared this experience with the world, so that his readers could learn from his mistake.

The mistake? He spent $50 on a copy of Mario Kart Wii.

Are you. Fucking. Kidding me?

Simple Dollar Trent is a pretty smart guy who has a lot of insights to offer when it comes to frugality and investing. Okay, so pretty much everything he says is lifted directly from whatever book he’s read that week anyway, but that doesn’t make his blog any less useful.

But turning on the Guilt Switch for a small indulgence like a Wii game?

There’s another group of people who beat themselves half to death whenever they make the slightest deviation from their heavily polarized lifestyles: Clergy. The more I read blogs like Trent’s, the more they sound like the endless rants about how one should behave that come from the world’s religious epicenters. Adept though he is at relaying helpful financial advice, it’s hard to ignore the fact that he is, ultimately, just another midwestern psycho-conservative.

It’s fine to concentrate on living within your means and saving for the future. Better than fine. It’s crucial. But to take it to such an extreme that you forget how to enjoy the occasional splurge will only turn you into a preacher.

Finance, Opinion, Philosophizing 1 Comment »

I downloaded Brushes for the iDevice a couple weeks ago and finally started really playing hard with it yesterday. It’s a fairly simple application. It’s got three brush types with a wide range of sizes, a fill tool, a color picker that can also set transparency, and an eyedropper, and it can zoom in on your work by up to 800%. It doesn’t sound like much, but it’s a maniacally elegant design that’s enough to put together some really nice drawings. Plus, the simplicity probably has a lot to do with how responsive the program is, which it is very. I came up with these two drawings (click to enlarge):

The neatest thing about the app is the way it records all of your brush strokes as you go along. This allows it to provide two very cool features in a free companion desktop app (OS X only, I’m afraid). First, you can play back the entire process of creating your drawing, and then export it to QuickTime. Here’s the video for the drawing of Burrito Boy above:

Second, the desktop app can export HUGE versions of your drawings. The final image that’s stored on your iPhone is only the resolution of the screen (320 x 480), so you’d think that blowing the drawing up to 1920 x2880, but what results is actually really clean and just looks like it was painted with a thick brush. I’m pretty sure it does this by simply playing back your brush strokes onto a much larger canvas. Pretty genius. Here’s a humongulous version of the same Burrito Boy (click to enlarge, a lot):

If you’re the drawing type and you own an iPhone or iPod Touch, it’s definitely worth the measley $4.99 Brushes costs to try it out. It’s a great way to pass the time at work.

There’s a similar app called Colors! that I may also try out. For me, the real draw with that one is that it can upload and share your drawings on their online gallery, which also includes drawings from the DS version of the application. The gallery even boasts the same playback feature that Brushes’ desktop app has, without you having to go through the rigmarole of uploading a Quicktime video to YouTube.

I really dig the way developers keep finding ways to make my iPhone more indispensable.

Art 1 Comment »