Forem: Justin Léger

How to lose $1000 quickly

Justin Léger — Sat, 14 Mar 2020 03:51:35 +0000

Start a business they say. It’ll be fun they say

It all started an evening in December 2019. My friend Michel was looking at used freight boats on AliExpress (as one does). He paused for a minute and said “Imagine if taco bell would sell pizza.” That was an interesting thought. What if we sold pizza? Could we even run our own company? We thought so.

A corporation, the solution to a problem we didn’t really have

We always discussed about having a company. It would be an umbrella to our various projects. We came up with a name: Famingo. One would believe that we mistyped flamingo and went with it, they would be correct (but you didn’t hear it from me). Famingo would be the culmination of all our previous entrepreneurial ventures. Those ranged from dropshipping fidget spinners to creating a revolutionary calculator for the Apple Watch. We were ready for the big leagues. We found a promotion to incorporate a company for $50. The offer was too good to pass on. We pulled out our chequebooks and started signing. We had our Meisterstück Classique 164 ready but they used DocuSign. And that was that, we were finally incorporated in the state of Delaware. Founder, CEO, and President to a company that didn’t produce anything worthwhile but we existed, and that’s what mattered.

The first “oh shit” moment

To be quite frank, we didn’t do much after creating the company. We just liked to say that we were cofounders of this stealth startup incorporated in Delaware. It was well worth the $50. We started buying Patagonia as we felt like we joined the prestigious club of startup founders. It was the beginning of our legacy.

Then we got mail. A nice letter from the IRS. Something like “hey, you made a company and you’ll have to pay us by the end of the year :D”. What a pleasant surprise! I called Michel and told him I think we messed up. He agreed.

The second “oh shit” moment

Of course we needed a Silicon Valley Bank account. Although Michel and I use Tangerine for banking (orange key: 41586712S1), we felt like our company wouldn’t be official if we didn’t have a bank account for our company. We checked the little box and requested one. It came with a price of $25/month, so we had to wire money to our SVB account just to pay the monthly fee. The card looks okay and the app is not that great. This was a mistake.

A small intermission

As the months passed, Michel and I started pitching to each other the worst business ideas we could think of. Nothing was off limits from housing insulation made from shredded Patagonia apparel to customizable sleeves for sleeveless vests. Those were hard to beat, but we finally settled on creating an asynchronous standup bot in order to compete with other competitors in the field who will remain nameless. This was a noble cause however a few more months passed and no progress was made.

Wasting time

Every other day, I started writing some small meaningless apps to kill time after work. I embarked on a project with my friend Logan: neural.shop. I also wrote a new gem called gitgud. I found it nice to work on fun projects as there is no pressure to succeed since it’s already doomed from the start.

I read online that you need quotes to make your article sound legit. Here’s one:

They like, “Savage, why you got a 12 car garage and you only got 6 cars?”
— Esteemed British artist 21 Savage

The real “holy shit” moment

We discovered we need to pay a franchise tax in Delaware. We also discovered this after the deadline; therefore, we are on the hook for an extra $200. When we first logged in to the system to pay the tax, we almost got a heart attack. The system was showing that we owed $41,265.86. The real number is around $400 but we are now on the hook for an extra $600.

The cost behind a C corporation

$400 for franchise tax
$200 Penalty fee
$300 SVB bank account fee
$50 incorporation

Total: $950 (Pretty expensive for a joke)

How we are going to fix it

Starting today, Famingo labs will be our umbrella company for all of our projects moving forward. This includes MiniCalc, Quotify, Slackify, Regexify, IoT Doorhanger, Go Here Go There, gitgud, blackrug, and neural.shop. We now need to make over $950 to cover this tax bill. We’ll start some random project and we will document our journey to corporation price freedom. This is only the start to a bunch of shitty projects.

[EXPLETIVE] swear they passed us, they doin’ too much
Haven’t done my taxes, I’m too turnt up
— Aubrey Drake Graham

END OF ARTICLE

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Famingo Inc. 2020 🦩

Making a calculator isn’t that easy

Justin Léger — Sat, 15 Apr 2017 21:35:47 +0000

I bought my Apple Watch as a motivation to build my first iOS app. I knew that I didn’t really need one but I figured it was an investment that would push me to learn Swift, Apple’s programming language. I was not specifically looking to build a watch app, but I imagined that the constraints from a small screen would make the interface simple and limit functionality; therefore, making the app simple and easy to code.

Step 1: Find the idea

I wanted to build something simple that I could build every aspect of it. I didn't want to rely on libraries or frameworks for my first app. I wanted to get my hands dirty and code everything myself. For this reason, I wanted to build an app that was self contained, no network connection or external data source. I thought about building a calculator. I didn’t think twice about it and started doing some research.

Step 2: Look at the competition and find weaknesses

I knew that there were big player in the iOS calculator category. My two case studies were PCalc and Calcbot.

Case 1: PCalc

In the PCalc application, the operations are not displayed on the screen. They are available via a second page. Multiple ways of input are available. 15 buttons on the main screen.

Case 2: Calcbot

Calcbot has 12 buttons visible on the main interface. It support four operations (+ âˆ’ âœ• Ã·) and they are available via a force touch menu.

Findings

Because of the small screen of the Apple Watch, the app should have as few buttons as possible to make the remaining buttons bigger. The app should also offer a fast way to input the operations.

The solution

Remove operation buttons from main interface
Main operations are done using swipes
Least frequently used operations are done using force touch
Offer a complication for quick access from the watch face

Step 3: Build the watch app

The main part of the watch app was done in 24h. The interface is pretty simple. I made it as simple as possible since I did not know a lot about layouts on the watch. The limitations were actually helpful since they guided me to build the interface. After day 1, the app was functional.

Float vs double

1.111111 â‰ 1.111111111111111

A big aspect of the calculator was precision. I wanted to have the highest precision that would fit in the screen. Float was perfect for the watch as the small number of decimals would fit in the screen. Double was problematic since it is has almost the double of decimal places. I wanted the best precision, so I picked double.

New feature: “varying precision

To have the highest precision possible on the watch screen, the precision (number of significant digits) varies based on the sign, number of actual digits, exponent sign and size. Basically, the number precision is reformatted to fit the screen. Although the precision change on the display, the actual double value is always used for calculations. Michel Chatmajian helped me implement this feature.

Step 4: Make a logo

I found a gradient on webgradients.com and sent it to Michel. He proceeded to place an equal sign in the middle. This was the resulting icon:

Step 5: Make the iPhone app

Since the app calculator was only for the watch, I didn't bother making a phone calculator. The phone app would be used to explain how to use the watch app. This made my life much easier as I did not have to build a complex layout. It had two view: main view and instruction view. I also cheated by using a webview for the instruction view. I coded the whole thing in HTML/CSS #win.

Step 6: Build it, pack it, ship it (and wait)

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Step 7: Success!

MiniCalc was approved on the App Store March 23, 2017

If you want to try MiniCalc, you can download it on the App Store

For more information about my other projects, you can check my personal website justinleger.ca

Hi, I'm Justin Léger

Justin Léger — Wed, 05 Apr 2017 19:58:24 +0000

I have been coding for 5 years.

You can find me on GitHub as jusleg

I live in Montreal.

I mostly program in these languages: Java, Ruby, Python, JS.

I am currently learning more about blockchain.

Nice to meet you.