I’ve been working on an iPhone application since late October. It’s my first one and my first programming effort in two years. I’ve just published the site for it. It’s called Oddage. It’s a time wasting game. You’re faced with four buttons. Three buttons are labeled with similar things: say, names of colors. Then there’s a fourth button, whose label is entirely different, perhaps the name of a shape. You’ve got to find that one odd duck, and tap it. Do it quickly, you get more points. Get more points, more buttons appear. Eventually you run out of time and a score is tallied.

We’ve all been there: stuck in line, waiting for someone to get off the phone, sitting in a waiting room, whatever. You have four minutes to burn. The thing about that four minutes is that minute four isn’t the worst part. Neither is minute three. If you’re like me, the worst part is the first thirty seconds where your brain realizes “Oh, dear, I don’t have dick to do right now.” Then it thrashes about for engagement. That’s where you apply the analgesic of Oddage, which launches in under five seconds. Then, away you go. The game starts immediately and bombards your brain with problems to be solved. Your first game ends, you hate your score, and you fire up a second one and see if you can do better.

And then, hey – you’ve somehow made it to the front of that post office line.

Oddage is simple and does one thing well. I’m going to post a series of post-mortem journals detailing its creation and how I learned how to write it. In the meantime, join me as I grind my teeth awaiting Apple’s approval of Oddage for App Store distribution.