Building Bad Yorkie Studios
Why there is a new studio, where the name came from, and what is on the workbench.
For more than twenty-five years, I have built software with startups, agencies, and companies I have learned a great deal from. Along the way, I have also been building apps that were mine. Tantrum Tracker was the first, and they have never quite had a proper home of their own.
Bad Yorkie Studios is that home.
It is a software apps and entertainment-media studio, a deliberately small one. The plan is not to take on outside work; it is to make a handful of things really well and stand behind them for a long time. The first is Tantrum Tracker, an app I originally built in 2011 and have quietly maintained ever since. More are on the workbench.
About the name
People ask, so: the studio is named for Hamish, a Yorkshire Terrier who runs the office (in the sense that he decides when meetings end).
He is not, by any rigorous standard, a bad dog. He is a very good dog who occasionally does bad things: squares up to dogs four times his size at the park, barks at the neighbors’ dogs with real conviction, and considers his dinner bowl deeply optional. “Bad Yorkie” felt more honest than “Good Yorkie,” and funnier, and so it stuck.
A studio should have a little personality. Ours has four legs.
What is ahead
The near-term plan is simple. Ship the rebuilt version of Tantrum Tracker. Keep this site as a place to write about the work. Then start the next app. Further out, a few things that are not apps at all.
If you want to follow along, the blog is the place. Hamish says hello.