I totally agree Lylo!
The reason I haven't posted here in the last few days is due to constant demands from BIABrewer and Pat... "Have you done this yet?" "Have you done that?" I hope they give us guys a BIABrewer award or something
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Seriously though, there is a lot of heavy lifting being done atm by the BIABacus team. Even
jamie's offer to be a beta has resulted in complications. Throwing him into the beta team now may actually not be of service to him.
For a start, at the moment, no one has the time to explain the BIABacus to a new beta. The goal of the BIABacus is for it to be self-explanatory but you can imagine how much more work this is going to take! So, jamie would basically end up seeing something pretty cool but, unless he had exactly the right operating system and version of Excel, all he will find is problems! On a first glance, it will look cool but there is a heap of simple but very important stuff that simply can't be done in Excel.
So, even if the beta version worked on his system, he would get no support and would have to at least be totally familiar with the concepts that already exist in The Calculator. These are simple, powerful concepts (more so than we originally thought) but they need a corresponding simple but powerful explanation. It is a totally new approach to recipe design and calculation. (It's a hell of a lot more than that actually.) Explaining the power, simplicity and flexibility of this new approach is, unfortunately and paradoxically, one of the biggest hurdles. In fact, making massively complex things easy is the major theme of the BIABacus project.
I'm not sure if jamie will be accepted into BIABacus Betas. If he is, I think he will be the last for a while. So my advice to others is...
1. Any program takes time to learn. The Calculator looks crap but it is actually a lot more powerful and accurate than other better-looking programs. Most of us experienced brewers, certainly all of us that understand the numbers, treat the existing calculator as our primary tool.
2. You can always get help in
Use this thread to convert recipes to suit your equipment.... BIABacus beta testers like myself are allowed to post BIABacus recipe reports in that thread. In other words, give us a good recipe and, a few of us at least, will be prepared to type it into the BIABacus, click a button and then paste you a recipe report.
3. I had a third point. I should think it through more but basically there are a lot of people working on this project. All of us work for free but we all have an income. Recently someone from a country currently experiencing economic woes most of us will never see said, "I am sitting here dong nothing. I am happy to help you. I do not want or need to get paid."
He is a programmer and has already put his hand up to create BIABacus3. He's a delightful brewer and is just what BIABrewer.info needs right now.
Is it right for all of us to capitalise on this? I don't think so and neither does BIABrewer.
BIABrewer has asked us betas to think of ways to raise money. Until we think of these ways, BIABrewer has advised that any donations will be allocated to the BIABacus development team. In turn, via a skype today, the BIABacus team voted that any donations should be forwarded to the developer I mentioned above.
In addition to this, BIABrewer will record any donations and give the donators a credit. In other words, if BIABrewer offers a paid service in the future, any donations made now will act as a credit towards this. (Apparently they already do this anyway.)
If everyone pitched in a few dollars now, it would actually make a big difference. In a year's time it won't be anywhere near as useful. So, if you have ever thought about clicking on 'Donate', now is the time to actually do it.
PP
If you have found
the above or anything else of value on BIABrewer.info, consider supporting us by
getting some BIPs!
). My main computer has blown up so I can't help you out much today but should be back on board properly in another day or so.
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and put the recipe into BeerSmith2. I've attached it below. (Hopefully the publishers, "Brewing Publications," will ignore this breach of copyright as they are very good to BIABrewer.)
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