Why I Gotta Catch ’em All

As a child of the 90’s, I like many others grew up in a virtual world of mystery and wonder defined by the existence of 150 (151 if you knew what you were doing) creatures known as Pokemon. Many memories were made traversing through places like the Viridian Forest or Seafoam Islands in the pursuit of completing a Pokedex, my favorite piece of technology of all time. My fondness for Nintendo, however, has very little to due with why I chose to work on a blatant knock-off of Poke-something GO, instead my desire to build such an application stems from a shared use of features between it and another mobile application I’ve been working on in my spare time.

Poke-something GO’s reliance on many GPS-related features and overall mobile nature represent attributes similar to those needed in slightly altered formats for a gym/fitness-related application that has been more constrained to the metaphorical Poke Ball that is my thoughts rather than brought to life in any editor. I blame this on a condition commonly referred to as Pkrs (Procrastination Keeps Ruining S***) which manifests in the form of me spending way too much time toiling away with non-coding related activities as my bookmarks folder becomes inundated with Swift tutorials that I keep telling myself I’ll look into but never actually do.

Pkrs is a strange condition, as not all of it’s symptoms are necessarily detrimental to ones livelihood. I personally have also applied to some 75+ jobs via indeed/linked-in as a result of this affliction and although the disease has progressed to the interview stage at times, it’s final destination, that is the one in which I obtain employment has not yet been met. It’s also forced me to really get back into the gym, like the literal gym and my overall health is the best that it’s been in recent memory. I cant stress enough how much of an overall boon both emotionally and physically that regular exercise can have on the body and being able to contribute to the world an app that motivates people to get into and stay into fitness is something that I’m more than passionate about and is unquestionably the motivation behind my project choice for CS467.