Yesterday, I open sourced a Letterpress^[1] cheating app for iPhone.

I built it because I knew it would imply a bit of computer vision, OCR, basic set comparisons, yet it could probably be done in just a few hours.

Even though it will never make money and the codebase is slightly embarrassing, I feel reenergized after writing it and my mind is clearer.

Given that most of our projects at MBS spend a few months in incubation before launching, it’s incredibly refreshing to take a break. And of course, that’s nothing compared to projects in more traditional fields of engineering like mech or electrical, which typically take years to release.

So go out there and build something crude but useful.

[1] Letterpress is an insanely simple yet addicting game for iOS by Loren Brichter (a.k.a. atebits). If that name sounds familiar, it’s possibly because he’s also credited with the invention of the Pull-to-refresh concept and built the first version of what’s now Twitter’s official iPhone app.