RTigger

I used (and they recommend) Camtasia Studio. Also picked up a Rode Podcaster microphone for decent audio quality.

When I was younger and struggling with issues, I did exactly this - plot my happiness on a graph. It was one of the few things that helped me get through a day, seeing that there are ebbs and flows, and for every low point there's likely a high point coming up.

This app needs to be published.

"It’s a bit ironic considering that yesterday Marcus took to Twitter to say his credit card was hacked. So clearly not all hacking is acceptable in Marcus’ book — only hacking that supports the company’s business objectives."

sigh.

I don't think it's a joke at all - I know lots of companies and people (myself included) who stress their culture and fit so much that technical skills often fall by the wayside. Sure, we want to know if you can code, but that can usually be figured out with a 15 minute white board test. If you're truly a pain to work with, unable to work in a team environment, or generally not collaborative, you probably won't get a job at my company.

Conversely, if you're a self-motivated learner, a good team member, and able to contribute, but don't quite have the technical skills we're looking for, we'll gladly take a training hit (usually 2 to 4 weeks) to get you up to speed on language X in exchange for an engaged and valuable employee.

But that might just be my company.

Related, I like to leave non-working code or tests at the end of a day so I can easily find where I left off. For some reason when I try to build / test and the errors pop up I'm able to immediately pick up where I left off. A combination of a bookmark and the Zeigarnik Effect I guess?

I like to set external-facing deadlines. I'll do things like tell my department I'm going to do a presentation on technology X in two weeks, and then start learning about it. If I don't get it done, I have to tell 20 other developers why I have to cancel the meeting they've all accepted.

This is part of the motivation of team and peer-accountability in some of the agile methods like Scrum / XP / Pair Programming. If you feel personally responsible to someone else, you're likely to follow through. A good way to do this with personal projects is to find a partner - I work with a designer on a lot of my personal projects, and telling him that I'm going to get X done helps, as well as seeing the time and progress he's invested in the project.