The Thinkyhead Story
Thinkyhead is a software dojo committed to the creation of fun, interesting, useful, deeply simple software products that push the limits of convention and extend the powers and aesthetic of Mac OS X.
Hi, I'm Scott Lahteine, the programmer behind FretPet X and the founder of Thinkyhead Software. This is a brief account of my programming career and some of the milestones that led to the creation of FretPet X, TabletMagic, and this gaudy web site.
1978: A Geek Is Born
I first got hooked on personal computers in 1978, when as an 11-year-old kid growing up on Cape Cod I spied the inner workings of a TRS-80 computer at the Radio Shack adjacent to the local arcade. One moment there was a blocky picture of a tank on the screen, then with the press of a key the man at the console brought up skeins of mysterious green text - the magic code that lay behind the image. Wow. Up to that point I had enjoyed playing video games, but I never thought of what went into making them go. I wanted to get in on the secret. I begged my dad to buy me the fat BASIC programming book that sat on the shelf. I didn't own a computer in 1978 (who did?) so I wrote my first programs on note paper, running them in my head.
1983-1990: The Golden Age
In the early years I used my Atari 400 to make programs to do my long division homework and wrote games to amuse myself and the neighborhood kids. I tried going pro as a games developer in the 80's, working for Odyssey Software, Digitek, Michtron, and Capstone. During this time I programmed the Amiga games Dino Wars and Bill 'n' Ted's Excellent Adventure and composed music for Byteman and Space War. I decided to abandon the game scene in 1990 and moved to Boston to pursue a life of Bohemian splendor, taking up new interests like writing, music, and philosophy. I became so involved, in fact, that I didn't even touch a computer for 5 years.
1996: Geek Rebirth
I returned to programming in 1996 with the aim of joining my programming experience with my interests in music, art, and psychology. After a couple of months getting my chops together on a secondhand 386 computer, I bought my first Power Macintosh and began working on a simple fretboard reference utility. The concept grew into a full-fledged music sequencer, and in 1998 I released FretPet for Mac OS 7. FretPet won an award from the Institute of Electroacoustic Music at Bourges and got some good reviews, but alas it was not the key to shareware success that I had hoped.
1998-2000: Happy Valley Prequel
In 1998 I moved to Northampton, MA where I did a contract job for Cyberlore Studios writing the Windows installer for one of their popular games. I also worked as a web developer with Tortus Tek in nearby Holyoke, MA. That was fun and interesting, and I learned a lot, but I was restless and in need of a scene change.
2001-2003: Critical Path
I relocated to Portland, Oregon in 2001, taking a position as web developer for the Mac-friendly Critical Path Software. Among other things I co-developed the Native Seed Network website for the Institute for Applied Ecology of Corvallis, Oregon.
2003-2004: Close to the Metal
In mid-2003 I decided it was time to be a full-time freelancer. Around that time I began a collaboration with former Looking Glass game designer Chris Laskowski. We founded Botfly Games in 2004, and began working on our first titles: a darkly humorous outer-space strategy game called Deep Space: Outpost 0 and a pulse-pounding arcade game called Zorbles!. Our funds ran out before we could finish them, but we gained valuable experience and insights into the process of OpenGL game development.
In late 2004 I took a break from the Botfly projects to work on TabletMagic and the enhanced Mac OS X port of FretPet. After many months of intensive late-night programming FretPet X was released in June of 2005.
2005: Prodigiousness Abounds
In late 2005 I moved back to Western Massachusetts. There I joined up with Vegan Radio as a co-host and worked on enhancing the Vegan Radio and Veganica web sites while doing freelance web design to pay the rent.
2007: Web 2.0 and Drupal
It used to be a real drag to make websites in PHP before site frameworks like Wordpress and Drupal came along. In 2007 the Web 2.0 phenomenon really started to take off with the advent of Facebook and Twitter, and I discovered that in order to make websites that meet today's standards, it would be essential to start using website frameworks. As luck would have it, I was hired to do my first Drupal website, Educational Video Center. The learning curve was slightly steep, but during a trip to Brighton, England I shut myself in with a copy of Pro Drupal Development and a bottomless cup of Earl Grey until I got the gist. In the process I fell in love with Drupal, and I've been a devotee ever since.
2008-2009: The iTouch Revolution
In 2008 I got an iPod Touch and began programming my first Cocoa Touch application, a music tool called ChordCalc. I had a good start, but circumstances were pretty unsteady during 2009, so it wasn't until late October that I was finally ready to submit ChordCalc to the iTunes App Store. ChordCalc Lite was posted a month later.
In Fall 2008 I was hired as a web developer by Gravity Switch, a web design company in Northampton, Massachusetts. There I did work for some great local clients like UMass and Veterans Housing Assistance Fund. During my tenure there I continued to evangelize Drupal and began getting more in-depth with Flash and ActionScript. Full-time work wasn't really paying me any better than freelance work, and I was unaccustomed to having go-betweens with my clients, so in mid-2009 I went back to full-time freelancing.
It turned out the be the right choice to plunge back into the freelance life, but initially it was a struggle to rebuild my client base and get some momentum. Unable to keep up with the rent I did a homeless stint for a month, couch surfing and working from my laptop. Fortunately I found Freelancer Dot Com and hooked up with 3dO Medical in Toronto for some Drupal work.
2010: Reinvention
In February of 2010 I moved to Holyoke, MA and began doing contract work for Positronic Design, an internet, SEO, and Flash dojo in its own right. My arrival was fortuitous, because just at that time 911 Blogger was looking to upgrade their Drupal 4 site to Drupal 6. It was a simple site, but the upgrade required lots of careful planning and many trial runs. In the end the upgrade went very smoothly, thus firmly establishing my reputation as a miracle worker.
The Present
Today I'm devoted to my 3 favorite platforms: Mac OS X, iPhone OS, and Drupal. I've worked with some other technologies along the way, such as CodeIgniter and JQuery, and I continue to stay open to the emerging standards that allow all our net-enabled devices to do their magic. My hope is that I'll keep doing iPhone apps primarily, with tie-ins to websites and crossover to Mac OS X. In addition to that, I continue to work on my design and writing skills so that I can create more beautiful things to put into all these boxes.