I ran out of money last month quite early (in NL you usually get paid once a month) and I did not understand why. Since Skrooge got imported last month in KDE SVN, I wondered if that could help me determine why. As usual with financial applications I did not get my hopes up very high. Normally they just don’t do what I want, that’s why I wrote my own application for my Office 9 years ago in php/mysql. But to use that for my personal finances was not a very tempting outlook.

So I installed Skrooge from SVN and hoped for some cool import function to get my bank data imported somehow. There was a csv import. Knowing my bank also provided that as export format, I wanted to use that. But it failed. The format of the csv seems to be a big secret, as I could not find it anywhere. Except in the C++ code of course, but by then I gave up on that. Wondering what else I could do to get the data in, I spotted OFX import. Opened my online banking again, and Yes my bank exports to that format too. Importing into Skrooge went flawless. The only thing I don’t understand is how to set a starting balance for that bank account. Just made a fake negative money withdrawel to solve that.

After that I started assigning categories to each and every transaction. Due to sorting and the possibility to mass update a set of transactions, I managed – after a couple hours -, to complete that task. It is flexible enough to make new categories within the same interface as the tagging, so the application is really trying to get you to get things done it seems.

After categorizing, I anxiously accessed the reports section, still trying to find out what happened last month. After fiddling with all the settings to get the overview I wanted, it became clear: going to the vet for the cats regular injections, buying shoes, paid the bill for the repair of my door, buying a new vacuum cleaner and some other expenses in the same month did not go to well together with the normal bills versus the normal money entering the bank account. Good to know it is incidental. From playing with the reports I managed to get a good overview about the last months, what goes in and what goes out.

This morning I added all the data of last year too, just to get an even better understanding. Which mostly confirms that Skrooge is a winner. Nice application. Some not conventional user interfaces, but gets the job done quickly. Screenies here.

The past week I’ve worked hard to rewrite sections of RSIBreak. I’ve just released 0.10 beta 1.

This new version is based on the 0.9 version, which was basically a port to KDE4. This new version tries to be more stable and provide a better user experience. Because it is a beta, it would be nice to receive as much feedback as possible!

I’ve rewritten most of the full screen effects and updated them to be more KDE4 like. There is a new effect called ‘Plasma effect’, which let’s you see the dashboard during a break.

The gray out effect does no longer fake transparency but uses the real stuff. Also the level of transparency is adjustable.

There is another new effect which only shows a passive popup during breaks, this serves like a permanent, but not intrusive, warning to take a break. Of course it will only disappear when you actually take that break…

Lots more tweaks and adjustments and bugfixes, just try it out…

I thought about starting and ending this blog with ‘Ask not what the KDE community does for you, but ask yourself what you can do for the community’, but I don’t really like that slogan. On the other hand the marketing people did a similar cryptic message in a document about the KDE brand, so it must be good ;-) Anyhow. a great man once spoke about it and we should not abuse it I guess..

When I was a child I once heard someone say to someone complained about the mess on the street and that the city should take care of it that we form the city. Well within KDE I don’t think that’s much different.

So it is good now and then to ask your self if you are a good citizen. Are you raising your voice to protect a community member from the evil outside? Or even the inside? Do you joining an irc channel, ask a question, get an answer and quit irc again? Are you trying to help a subgroup within the community to reach a higher goal?

Sometimes I wonder about those things. I’m pretty much convinced that you need a group of people to lift each other to a higher level. Motivating people, brainstorming together to get more and better and more creative code, thinking out of the box now and then.

It is sad that many application only have one or two developers. I think those are the real hero’s. Especially if they keep up for ages.

Motivation is key for much of stuff we do. Some blogs on planet for example can be motivating for a certain group and be demotivating for another group. Just remember that when writing stuff on planet. But it happens everywhere. You can also think about generalizing classes so they can go to kdelibs and everyone get to profit from your code. Or just take a minute to talk to some developer about his application or things in life. With a little time you can do little stuff, and many people doing a bit, it all adds up to a big thing, just how a community should work.

Hmm, should I end this blog with that slogan now? I thought about not posting this blog, as it is pretty soft (not hard core C++-templating-KFilterProxyModelItemDelegate stuff), but it is my blog and my thoughts and what keeps me busy, so why not ;-)