Nov 21 I recently came upon something that made me both excited and sad. I found GroceryGuide.com. As you know I have previously worked on my own similar application called GROP. However, as any user can obviously see, I have been beat.
GROP: My Idea
Earlier this year, I realized that there was a problem with grocery shopping. It was too difficult to just jump in and be able to figure out whether or not a particular price was a “good” price for an item. I would have needed years of experience in order to intuitively conclude that a price was good. And even that is not safe because the human mind (in general) is just not precise enough to remember hundreds of items and their respective prices. However, a computer would be most excellent at such a task. This idea was totally my own, and I was in no way influenced by other ideas to solve this same problem.
Therefore I thought that it would be worth a try to create a web application that users would be able to input their prices that they’ve bought items at. It would create aggregate data from said application such as the average price bought at. This would help users to figure out if a particular product was listed at a “good” price.
GroceryGuide
And then I happened on a site that had much of what I was doing. Okay well I haven’t touched the application in awhile, but we nevertheless had overlaps in our goals and application. Except it was nicer. And prettier. And probably worked better.
The best thing about it, though, was that it didn’t just have data from users’ input but it actually had all of the sale prices from all stores! This would have been ideal for my own application except I have no idea how they swung that. So either they are getting some kind of list from each of the supermarkets, which would have required getting some deal. Or else they possibly had to create custom mechanisms to scrape their listings online. I rather doubt the latter, and I am impressed with the former.
My Feelings
It’s an interesting feeling to be passed. I’m not sure, but I would think that it’s a pretty safe bet that GroceryGuide started before I had even had the thought to create my own web application. And now that it has an upgrade over its previous version, it seems pretty and functional.
I know that in life, getting beat happens daily. The old get older and the new get better. In sports, the younger athletes coming up will surpass you some day. It’s just a matter of time.
Records are made to be broken
is a quote that has already been stated, I’m sure. And if not, then there it is. There must be new ideas, new modifications, and so on. Sometimes the new isn’t always better. Just ask Hershey with their Change is bad advertising campaign. And sometimes that’s true. But as a general rule, beware if you’re the front runner because someone is going to pass you.
Okay so I’m not the front runner. In fact, I found it hard to even get people that I knew to use GROP, let alone anyone else. I had lots of ideas of what I wanted to do, many of which were covered by GroceryGuide already.
On The Other Hand…
There are still things that I benefit from by having my own custom web application. I can use it to figure out when I last purchased something. I cover items that are likely not covered by GroceryGuide (can you really seem them having listings from the Chinese supermarket??).
And Finally
Mine isn’t as pretty. It doesn’t have as much information. But there are still benefits. I think that I should continue to input prices. However, I kind of doubt that I’d put much more development time into my project. There were lots of things that I wanted to do such as:
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Make it prettier. This would have made people want to use it! People are attracted to good looks, even if they don’t want to admit it. This goes for being attracted to people as well. You know that it does.
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Throw on some AJAX to make it more user-friendly. This goes along with making it prettier, but it is a bit more than just looks.
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Improve the searching and viewing of data so that users who just wanted to look did not have to go through the same extensive process that users who were adding had to.
In fact, in hindsight I think that I went a little overboard on the database relations because I had a very Web 1.0 mindset of how I wanted to do it. Oh well, live and learn. Man this post is full of fun little tidbits of wisdom.
So congratulations to GroceryGuide for having a very nice (from what I can see) application. And I’m going to use it. But you know what, in some ways it’s still not as good as my own because that one is mine. But I’m glad that someone out there is working hard on solving this problem that very many of us have.
Nov 14 When you hear a word or phrase and you don’t hear the entire context you are very prone to make a mistake about how it’s actually being used. You will apply your own thoughts and feelings and create a new context. And yet this is also a fun way to test out certain aspects of yourself.
Judging by what you think of the following, you can find out what kind of a person you are. So see what you’re made of!
List of ambiguous terms
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DB
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Apache
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Coupling
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CA
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Perl
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Python
And so think about this list and what you’ve thought about for each. Here are some of the possibilities that I’ve come to think of for each of them:
Possible definitions for ambiguous terms
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Diamond Bar, CA
The city is a possible definition that would indicate that you’re aware of this Los Angeles County city.
Database
This is what I think of usually since I’ve become more and more knowledgeable about them.
Decibel
Well usually it’s actually dB, but who’s checking?
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American Indians
This is likely one of the more popular thoughts. It was the first result on Wikipedia anyways!
Courtesy of Flickr user DavePearson.
Attack Helicopter
Used during the latter part of the 1900’s and even currently, it is a pretty well-known and well-loved machine used on the front lines.
HTTP Server
That means it is the software used to serve you web pages. You see it everyday and don’t even know it as it is reported to serve nearly 50% of all web pages!
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Some arbitrary connection between 2 pieces
Used to identify the connection between any of a whole slew of objects, including those used in automobiles, between train cars, other mechanical devices, etc.
Well…sex
There is a good possibility this is what you thought of. Unless you thought of…
Good computer science practices
Good coupling in computer science is the loose dependence of a particular module on another module. This lends itself to the objected-oriented methodology that is predominant in programming today.
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California
Almost everyone in the United States will think of this unless you’re…
From Canada
In which case you’ll think of your lovely country. However another one that is a possibility is…
Certificate Authority
Used for authentication as a trusted third party, this is very popular in cryptography. When you visit a website prepended by “https” instead of “http” you look for that little lock icon in your browser. Well that lock indicates that a Certificate Authority has provided the website with a digital certificate and you are trusting that the CA has performed due process before you submit your important information to the website.
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Misspelling of pearl
Maybe the person just forgot the “a”.
Programming language
A popular scripting language that can be used for a wide variety of tasks. Often it’s extremely quick to construct usable scripts with this language and it provides constructs for easy text processing. There are plenty of modules available to do just about anything that you want to do. It has the distinct pleasure of allowing the programmer the write the most disgustingly hard to read code ever because its philosophy of allowing the programmer many ways to do the exact same thing. Super.
Courtesy of Flickr user ricmcarthur.
A snake!
Generally not dangerous to humans, they are intimidating for their large size. They kill their prey by constricting them and thus are extremely strong.
Another programming language
Focusing on readability, it’s rather a joy to work in compared to other languages. This high-level programming language sits over C/C++ and allows for all types of extensibility. It also sits in contrast to Perl because it strives to only have a single method, and preferably only that single method of doing something. It is easy to learn and easy to read although it allows great functionality if you so desire. Can you tell that I like it?
Conclusion About Me
So what do all of these things have in common? I’m sure that if you’ve read them all (which, thank you very much for doing so!) you’ll notice that there is a disambiguation that tends towards the nerd in me. That’s right, they can all be nerdy. Haha I wonder if anyone else out there thought of the nerdy options for those phrases.
Nov 9 So I just finished traveling for work. It was quite an interesting experience. First of all, I’ve not traveled for work before. Secondly, it was supremely interesting getting to watch this whole slew of people that I would not normally get to watch.
People watching was probably one of the more interesting things that I got to do.
Why do we like to watch people?
I’m of the mind that we (well at least I) like to watch people because we are interested in the human experience. Well that and because very often it’s pretty amusing. Or perhaps at the very heart of the matter, we like to see how we stack up against everyone else that’s around. Sometimes they’re stranger, sometimes they’re scarier, and sometimes they’re just like us. Alright they’re never just like us. We wouldn’t ever want to admit as much anyways.
People are interesting. Even the boring ones. Because the boring ones are very interesting when they don’t know that they’re being watched.
Benefits of people watching
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Laughter
You gotta hand it to people, they’ll do some ridiculously hilarious things when they’re unaware that they’re being watched
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Entertainment
Just because you forgot your electronic device or book, you’ll still have something to do. Almost no matter where are (unless you live as a hermit in which case this post is not for you).
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Learn
Other people have had different experiences in their lives. Perhaps watching them will teach you lessons about how you can be a better person.
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Smile
Catch those “cute” moments that nobody was supposed to see. You know, that darling thing that a child did or that self-sacrificing act that someone does for another. It’ll brighten your day and maybe next time you’ll be the one who puts a smile on somebody else’s slightly-creepy-people-watching face. :)
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Help
If you’re not aware or watching, someone could need your help and you would have never known. If you’re people watching, you’re (by definition) aware of your surroundings. So that makes it easier if you see someone getting hurt or in need of your assistence because you’ll see the need and lend a hand, won’t you? Let’s hope so!
People watching is a great thing to do. And it’s even more fun to do when you are surrounded by people that you would not normally be around (as I was this past weekend for my work conference). I didn’t know the vast majority of them, but I still enjoyed getting to watch them. I got to see how they interacted, I got to laugh at humorous things that I saw, and I got to amuse myself even (hopefully nobody really noticed me doing so).
Nov 4 Commenting is a fun part of going around to different blogs. One thing that I’ve found is that it’s easy to respond to comments left on my own blog because I have a central place to access them from (namely my WordPress administration panel). It allows me to easily have conversations with people that stop by and leave comments.
However I’ve found that it’s not quite as to do with comments that I’ve left on other blogs. The reason for that is because I don’t have that central place to access to see all of my comments! I’m not very well going to remember the URL of every post that I leave a comment on. That would frankly be ridiculous.
I’ve found a key to this problem. I’m sure that there are others out there, but I think that this one works decently enough. Check out co.mments.com if you want to see what I mean. In fact, you can even let other people see what you’re commenting on so that they can check it out and see if they’re interested in the same posts! Here is my public co.mments.com page.
Nov 1 So after more time than I’d like to admit, I’ve finally finished enough of my theme to put it on goingthewongway! I’m excited that I’ve changed it. Check it out and let me know what you think!
And now I present to you: Soi-disant
I’ve only changed my theme once to (Not So) Fresh as I posted in New Look. That was 8 months ago and since then quite a bit has changed.
Why I wanted to make my own theme
Have a unique look to my blog
I’ve come across other blogs that had the same theme, and that wasn’t too exciting for me. I want and like to be my own. So even though the last one did look nice, it was unfortunate because other people thought that it looked nice as well.
Learn much, much more web design
CSS in particular, HTML and PHP to a lesser degree since I already knew a fair amount before doing the theme. Part of who I am wants to understand how things work and why. So learning new things can be very exciting to me. Not to mention the fact that it’s very pertinent to my profession of computer programming. (Although I must admit that I believe that I lack the creativity necessary to actually ever become a web designer. I know the nuts and bolts but lack the vision. :P)
Create a fluid display
I wanted one that would show up well on the very popular 1024x768 and 1280x1024 screen resolutions in addition to any other screen resolutions. I’m sorry to say that it’s very likely that anything below 1024x768 won’t look all that great. A fluid display means that the text and page elements will expand according to how much space is available. My previous theme was fixed width so it didn’t look too great to me on higher resolution displays.
Speed things up
The last theme used a fair amount of images to create all of the nice effects. And that’s nice for people on fast connections (which at this point is a very fair amount of people). However there still are people on slower connections, and I want my blog to be accessible to them as well, too.
Soi-disant
I got the name of this theme (Soi-disant) by looking up a word of the day online. Lame, huh? I thought it was cool because it means calling oneself thus, self-styled, or so-called. Seemed interesting to me so there it is.
So I did it all for this theme: header logo, PHP code, HTML, CSS. It was a learning experience, that is for sure.
Wordpress theme designer: check