Hi, I'm Iván

I make small apps to solve big problems. Or maybe they're not that big, but they're the kind that bug you if you got up a bit grumpy that day. Maybe they're not even problems, just more efficient ways of doing something.

I come up with them, design, test and publish them all by myself, with no marketing team and no man in a tie demanding spreadsheets in exchange for Powerpoints. Instead, I get there by cracking a digital whip over my army of robots until they build what I have in mind.

Sometimes they talk back, sometimes they get called things you can't say on TV. Once I thought I heard Claude crying in a corner, but I have no regrets. In the end we love each other. No much, but we do. And the apps get made, which is no small thing.

Things I like

Wire-haired fox terriers
Doggos
Egg tarts
Doggos, again

Another thing I like is my apps. I make them for myself, but with the idea that other people might like them, find them interesting or find them useful too. With a bit of luck, all three at once. Every one of them has my seal of approval, which isn't easy to earn, since I've tried an app or two over quite a few years.

Since 2008

20 years writing about apps. Now I make them too.

Since 2008 I've been writing about apps in more than 8,400 articles for Softonic and Xataka, which is quite a few: 8,400, to be exact. If you'd rather count in words, that's about five million words, roughly thirteen Don Quixotes or around a thousand Carrefour sale flyers, give or take. That's a lot of special offers.

8,439articles

≈ 4.85 Mwords

18years writing

Xataka Android5,687
Xataka Móvil1,793
Softonic566
Xataka393

So how much is that?

0.97 m

At about 500 words per page, that's 9,700 sheets of paper. Stacked up, they make a 0.97 m tower. Not nearly enough to reach the Moon, but who needs to? There are better ways to get there.

A door2.03 m
My paper tower0.97 m
A wire-haired fox terrier0.39 m

4.8 chihuahuas

My paper tower is 0.97 m tall. Matching it would take 1.2 Great Danes, 2.5 wire-haired fox terriers or 4.8 chihuahuas, stacked on top of each other. I bet they'd look adorable.

My paper tower0.97 m
A Great Dane0.8 m
A wire-haired fox terrier0.39 m
A chihuahua0.2 m

8.5%

Laid out on the ground, those sheets cover 605 m²: 8.5% of a football pitch, almost a whole penalty area. The hard part would be picking them all up afterwards.

A football pitch7,140 m²
A penalty area665 m²
My sheets605 m²

2.9 km

Laid end to end, one sheet after another, they stretch 2.9 km: 7.2 laps of a running track, which is roughly how far I can run before my spleen comes flying out of my mouth.

A half marathon21.1 km
My sheets in a row2.88 km
One lap of the track0.4 km

5.5 years

At about 500 words an hour, research included, that's 9,700 hours: 5.5 years of full-time work. Just typing it would take 84 days nonstop, and reading it all, 13.5 days without sleep. If it took me 18 years to write 5.5 years of full-time work, so I must have been writing really slowly. Sorry about that.

Writing it9,700 h
Typing it nonstop2,021 h
Reading it all323 h

12.7 Don Quixotes

Don Quixote has about 381,000 words and the Harry Potter saga, close to 1.1 million. My articles add up to 12.7 Don Quixotes or 4.5 complete Harry Potter sagas, but the plot is way better.

My articles4.85 M words
In Search of Lost Time1.27 M words
Harry Potter (all 7)1.08 M words
Don Quixote0.38 M words

8,439

If I ate one egg tart per article (and that sounds like too few to me), that would be 8,439 egg tarts: about 506 kg, more than a concert grand piano, and enough calories for 844 days.

My egg tarts506 kg
A concert grand piano480 kg
A wire-haired fox terrier8 kg

All my apps are free and most of them don't even have ads. They're the apps I'd like to find in the app stores myself, because I'm their very first user (and, with any luck, not the only one).

If they've been useful to you, or you just woke up feeling generous today, you can always share the love for non-app-noying apps by buying me a coffee so I can wash down today's egg tarts. If not, you can always leave me a 5-star review, if you think the app has earned it. Spreading the good news with your friends is another option: everyone needs help with taxis in Thailand.

Buy me a latte Give Thai Taxi Calculator 5 starson Google Play

Specifically, Thai Taxi Calculator is free with ads, which means you can use the app without paying anything, but you'll see one ad while the route is being calculated and another one in the results. They're simple, unobtrusive ads, and they're not there to make me rich, just to try (unsuccessfully, by the way) to keep me from losing money on the app. If you're not a fan, you can buy me a coffee and, as a thank-you, the ads disappear for a while. I get coffee, you get no ads. Everybody wins.

Thai Taxi Calculator

Why I made Thai Taxi Calculator

The idea behind this app was clear: estimate in advance how much financial damage a taxi ride in Bangkok is going to do. It's easy enough to work out from distance and time, but the tricky part is factoring in traffic jams. And boy, do you need to factor them in.

Some taxi-booking apps have their own estimates, but you don't need to be a genius to notice there's a big gap between what they predict and what you end up paying on the meter if you try your luck. This app was born to offer more realistic estimates.

Back to Thai Taxi Calculator

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