I came up with the idea of Nostalgia, a photo annotation data mart, because I wanted, needed a way to remember the life I was building with my wife. I wanted to add more dimensions,information to the pictures because I knew when I was old and grey, my own ability to recall these memories would be limited. I fear though I work on it a little at a time, my skills implement much slower than my imagination builds the application.

Necessity is the mother of invention There are a ton of information systems that can be useful but no one has built. In the past, only applications that could have wide use and profitability were given much energy in their implementation. Today, open source contributions are making it easier to piece other people's code together to speed up the process. In my app, I used a model-view-controller example from Phil Hanna as a skeleton. I also plan to use a open source library from Drew Noakes to parse information from digital phots.

As a programmer, you are responsible for honing your skills. If you have a family to feed, it is your duty to remain sharp as it is your only insurance of employment in a competitive technical landscape. With the resources out there, it is a noble exercise to brainchild ideas for applications, build a working first version, and put it out there for people to use and improve. I am excited because I plan to do just that early next year.

Speed of my recretional development will get better as I continue to exercise my skills. Remember, I am in business intelligence and not a pure web developer. I hope when I release my first cut of Nostalgia that I can have a few apprentices who want to learn and teach me things as well.