tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11471768144882021362024-03-21T22:46:55.040+00:00ben's best thingsA blog about things, they might not actually be the best things but they will, I promise, be things. This is mostly going to be related to techy things that I'm playing with.Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17170194485043447593noreply@blogger.comBlogger41125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1147176814488202136.post-878372573720974922018-10-09T09:00:00.003+01:002018-10-09T09:00:47.050+01:00And slowly we get worse...So this timelog project started as a simple zsh script:<br />
<br />
<div style="line-height: 18px;">
<div style="background-color: #1e1e1e; color: #d4d4d4; font-family: Menlo, Monaco, "Courier New", monospace; font-size: 12px; white-space: pre;">
<span style="color: #569cd6;">function</span> <span style="color: #dcdcaa;">timelog()</span> {</div>
<div style="background-color: #1e1e1e; color: #d4d4d4; font-family: Menlo, Monaco, "Courier New", monospace; font-size: 12px; white-space: pre;">
<span style="color: #c586c0;">if</span> [ <span style="color: #ce9178;">"</span><span style="color: #9cdcfe;">$1</span><span style="color: #ce9178;">"</span> != <span style="color: #ce9178;">""</span> ]</div>
<div style="background-color: #1e1e1e; color: #d4d4d4; font-family: Menlo, Monaco, "Courier New", monospace; font-size: 12px; white-space: pre;">
<span style="color: #c586c0;">then</span></div>
<div style="background-color: #1e1e1e; color: #d4d4d4; font-family: Menlo, Monaco, "Courier New", monospace; font-size: 12px; white-space: pre;">
<span style="color: #dcdcaa;">echo</span> <span style="color: #ce9178;">$(date +%H:%M)</span> <span style="color: #ce9178;">"</span><span style="color: #9cdcfe;">$1</span><span style="color: #ce9178;">"</span> >> ~/timelogger/<span style="color: #ce9178;">$(date +%Y-%m-%d)</span>.txt</div>
<div style="background-color: #1e1e1e; color: #d4d4d4; font-family: Menlo, Monaco, "Courier New", monospace; font-size: 12px; white-space: pre;">
<span style="color: #c586c0;">fi</span></div>
<div style="background-color: #1e1e1e; color: #d4d4d4; font-family: Menlo, Monaco, "Courier New", monospace; font-size: 12px; white-space: pre;">
}</div>
<br />This created a new file if one didn't exist called <<date>>.txt (for example 2018-10-09.txt) that would then put whatever details were passed to it into it.</div>
<div style="line-height: 18px;">
This had several advantages over what I've got to now, mostly it was nice and easy to edit.</div>
<div style="line-height: 18px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 18px;">
With the changes I'm now making it does appear that I'm getting further away from where I was.</div>
<div style="line-height: 18px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 18px;">
I've now got just about a graphql server running that just about works to retrieve whatever has been written, but I'm not yet using that to write to, soon, but not yet.</div>
<div style="line-height: 18px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 18px;">
Adding more interesting and fun technology has been it's own reward, but it's not made what I'm working on much more useful (yet).</div>
<div style="line-height: 18px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 18px;">
The git repos for the more confusing bits are here:</div>
<div style="line-height: 18px;">
<a href="https://github.com/benjimouse/timelog">https://github.com/benjimouse/timelog</a></div>
<div style="line-height: 18px;">
<a href="https://github.com/benjimouse/timelogutil">https://github.com/benjimouse/timelogutil</a></div>
Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17170194485043447593noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1147176814488202136.post-64555634088460088852018-09-25T22:49:00.001+01:002018-09-25T22:49:22.381+01:00Adding a pile of issues...This evening I added a pile of issues to GitHub, and in a shocking turn of events I've managed to fix one of them. By fix one of them I of course mean I found that things already worked that way.<br />
<br />
I've also done some tidying up.<br />
<br />
Next I want to start getting some unit tests in and then start some unit tests in a TDD style manner.<br />
<br />
After that it's to the fun world of Graphql with go. I've found some fun filled exciting blogs about this.<br />
<br />
I'm really quite enjoying go.Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17170194485043447593noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1147176814488202136.post-50606803265618018872018-09-24T22:22:00.002+01:002018-09-25T09:16:23.525+01:00Keeping going with goWell another evening of GO, which has been really quite good fun...<br />
<br />
I've started moving some things about so that the code has separated a bit better. I had started with some testing, but that wasn't going so well, so that's a plan for next time!<br />
<br />
Things that I've got going so far:<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>Working and compiling!</li>
<li>Reading config file</li>
<li>Connecting to a remote mongo db</li>
<li>Writing to a reading from mongo db</li>
<li>Reading the passed in parameter</li>
</ul>
<div>
I've also got a whole lot of VS code plugins working.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Go seems to encourage multiple repo's which is a little odd, but I suppose it's nice for encouraging code reuse and other bits, sure I'll get used to it (or start with one and then slowly move things out).</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Repo's</div>
<div>
<a href="https://github.com/benjimouse/timelog">https://github.com/benjimouse/timelog</a></div>
<div>
<a href="https://github.com/benjimouse/timelogutil">https://github.com/benjimouse/timelogutil</a></div>
Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17170194485043447593noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1147176814488202136.post-55197908624033535462018-09-18T09:55:00.000+01:002018-09-18T10:18:40.465+01:00Trying out a new language.So about a year ago, my then (and now no longer) boss handed me a book saying you might be interested in this.<br />
That's sat on my desk unopened for almost a year.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://amzn.to/2QzwIYu">The Go Programming Language</a>
I've still not opened the book, but I put together a small command line app that could be used to record what I'm doing, while I'm doing it.
I'll keep playing I quite like it (so far).
If you're interested the repo is here:
<a href="https://github.com/benjimouse/timelog">https://github.com/benjimouse/timelog</a>
I'll update with more details later.Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17170194485043447593noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1147176814488202136.post-30797739728176674622017-09-13T21:25:00.001+01:002017-09-13T21:25:26.641+01:00Tortoise cam has arrived!In exciting news tortoise cam has arrived!<br />
I've put it together and followed a pile of instructions using a raspberry pi I had sat round not doing very much and now we have the capability to live stream the tortoises!<br />
The instructions I followed are here:<br />
<a href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/live-stream-youtube-raspberry-pi/">http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/live-stream-youtube-raspberry-pi/</a><br />
And they were remarkably easy to follow.<br />
<br />
Now without further ado you should be able to see tortoise cam, obviously this is running off of my home wifi, so it could well stop working at any point (and that's without interruptions from a 3 and 6 year old).<br />
The live stream should be able to be found at:<br /><a href="https://www.youtube.com/c/BenBest/live">https://www.youtube.com/c/BenBest/live</a><br />
<br />
If you follow that link in the next few minutes you should see my wife and I attempting to put together a "tortoise table"!Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17170194485043447593noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1147176814488202136.post-2108724522992026322017-09-11T21:59:00.004+01:002017-09-11T21:59:56.354+01:00Tortoise cam...<h3>
Tortoises!</h3>
So in a not very shocking piece of news I've taken a(nother) break from playing with the meteor project. There are a number of reasons for this including 2 children, busy job, life and mostly it stopping being as much fun.<br />
However we now have baby tortoises!<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwvY0KmXIy1CNYjf7KY2HYM-KZsRsyIuyVBNkhN7AgNhjbbJFIAE74TUYJP0bilW1ZnQ1WDgVvrgK90N07fmVyIE9sLItZdn3FFeGjK6i2fEmZ03hI5oFh1bVO7cakREUo8lhJApVsUpW_/s1600/2017-09-04+18.51.06.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwvY0KmXIy1CNYjf7KY2HYM-KZsRsyIuyVBNkhN7AgNhjbbJFIAE74TUYJP0bilW1ZnQ1WDgVvrgK90N07fmVyIE9sLItZdn3FFeGjK6i2fEmZ03hI5oFh1bVO7cakREUo8lhJApVsUpW_/s320/2017-09-04+18.51.06.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
So I'm planning on setting up a "tortoise cam"...<br />
I've got a <a href="https://www.raspberrypi.org/" target="_blank">raspberry pi</a> and I've ordered a <a href="https://www.raspberrypi.org/products/camera-module-v2/" target="_blank">pi-cam</a> so the plan is to set something up to watch them. I've even got a friend who's set up one of these before so have some help when I get stuck...<br />
I'll be posting technical updates here with details of how I'm doing it (and probably the odd cute baby tortoise pic).<br />
---<br />
<h4>
The story so far:</h4>
We were given 2 very old tortoises (<a href="https://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/Great_A'Tuin" target="_blank">A'tuin</a> and Molly) both over 100 years old, to our shock Molly laid 5 eggs not long after she moved in. This led to us buying an <a href="http://amzn.to/2wVNYxV" target="_blank">egg incubator</a> at very short notice, reading the instructions meant we realised we needed a <a href="http://amzn.to/2xgGyra" target="_blank">thermometer </a> as the incubator (linked above) had lots of warnings about how it wasn't great at keeping the temperature! We went for the bluetooth thermometer so we wouldn't have to keep opening the incubator door to check in on the temperature.<br />
For those of you not following the links so far we've spent about £100.<br />
Towards the end of August disaster struck! The incubator was knocked over, we lost one of the eggs and we were very worried about the others.<br />
Then on September 3rd there was great excitement when 2 of the eggs started to hatch!<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dyynOhBBvEyO47Pe8_baO7aLskzzEemdRVqHvwl8iz5LYdzzUqDCjoDVoRWG0VvxfB0Nufv8aCLCYFkyLQJSQ' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
This of course meant more things! A tortoise table, a heat lamp, a heat mat and a thermostat. Fortunately we had had <a href="http://www.thevetonrichmondhill.com/" target="_blank">the vet on the hill</a> round to film the tortoises and he had been kind enough to offer to source some of these things for us, they are going to turn up this week.<br />
We now have the tortoises in their temporary home (an old draw), they are starting to eat and everyone is really excited about it.<br />
More details to follow!<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dycHYfxZiwPiHiT0bkMI-XGzwPs0w9LBztKLa2ptKa-o2Hvz5uKeC3MjMztvUX8uIwTWYqzn4tk2EkZbvGgNQ' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
<br />Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17170194485043447593noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1147176814488202136.post-58589550082615471042017-02-05T21:07:00.000+00:002017-02-05T21:07:15.176+00:00Left the previous domain...Well I couldn't justify owning the ben.best domain, it was £70 a year that I could spend on other things. Especially as I own benbat.com. So welcome to the new domain.<br />
<br />
I've also got as far as I'm going to with the Lunch project. I learnt some bits and it stopped being quite as much fun. I may well return to it in the future, but for now I'm moving onto new and exciting other projects...<br />
<br />
Tonight my bit of work was to move the blog, as we've seen previously that can be a lot of hassle, however this time things appear to have "just worked".<br />
<br />
The near future I've got some plans to play with "groovy" and docker, but mostly the idea is to write up fun techy things that I'm doing.Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17170194485043447593noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1147176814488202136.post-29651309526213248132016-10-13T22:15:00.001+01:002016-10-13T22:15:24.051+01:00Picking things up (again)In exciting news I've got some incentive to start playing with Meteor again.<br />
What this means:<br />
I've got "lunch" working in so far as it functionally works. It looks like a developer designed it, but it will help you make a (or several) meals!<br />
It's no longer hosted at lunch.ben.best (though should be again "soon"), the free hosting tools that meteor.com used to supply stopped and they have started paid for hosting. This means that for now, you can get to the tool at <a href="http://lunch.meteorapp.com/" target="_blank">lunch.meteorapp.com</a> if it looks like it's going to cost me money I'll probably stop it being there, but we'll see how it goes.<br />
Meteor has changed a fair amount since I started looking at it and a fair amount of what has changed means I'm going to re-write the app, which I'm sort of looking forward to.<br />
I'll probably be giving up on the domain ben.best, it's a lot of money for something that's a bit of fun, but not really something I can justify. This makes me a little sad, but I'll keep going with lunch (and probably the blog) but I'll be moving it to one of the cheaper domains that I own.Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17170194485043447593noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1147176814488202136.post-91423165362432293972015-12-08T10:03:00.001+00:002015-12-08T10:03:22.861+00:00did I say I was finished?So this evening has been fun working on the app (<a href="http://lunch.ben.best/" target="_blank">lunch.ben.best</a>)<br />
<br />
I've got some things working, I've also decided the way I need to move forward so:<br />
New features:<br />
You can now by clicking on it modify the serving date / time of the meal.<br />
I've started on, though it's not entirely there the work to add a new meal, there's lots more to be added there, but I have a plan.<br />
<br />
It's still really interesting to return to things that I worked with a long time ago and some of the bits are really clever, getting the checking working so that it validates dates, some of the other bits that "just work". However I think I'm going to have to split out a lot of the Meteor functions so that they are separate to some of the helper methods for the steps or meals functionality. Returning to the "time" object that I'd worked on was a nice feeling of finding something I'd done nicely in the past.<br />
<br />
I think when I next get some time it will be time to add to the wireframes.<br />
<br />
I'm currently waiting at the hospital for a scan (nothing serious), and it's the run in to Christmas, so I'm guessing updates will be quite sporadic.Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17170194485043447593noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1147176814488202136.post-62474632310356297062015-12-02T12:21:00.000+00:002015-12-02T12:21:03.088+00:00fixed it again (again)So I've spent a couple of evenings and I've again got my little app working locally it has been interesting re-visiting things and as ever getting code working I worked on a year or so ago.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://lunch.ben.best/" target="_blank">lunch.ben.best</a> is now running the latest version of the code (and I've checked everything into <a href="https://github.com/benjimouse/lunch" target="_blank">github</a>). I'm at the point where in theory it would be possible to use the app to cook a lunch, though it wouldn't be a lot of fun. So now is the time for improving the app to make it really usable.<br />
Then get it so that others can use it.<br />
<br />
When I left this I had started playing computer games again, last night I decided to leave the <a href="http://wiki.totalwar.com/w/Napoleon_Total_War" target="_blank">conquering of Europe</a> do some coding while the kids were asleep, I'm not sure if this is a good or bad thing, but while it's interesting I'll keep going. You never know I might end up with something interesting at the end.<br />
<br />
I'm currently working on being able to change the time to serve the meal, this led me into the interesting place that is the input type datetime-local. It still surprises me how incomplete the specification and support for the HTML5 input types are. On mobile devices this box is lovely, however it's not supported on IE at all and the chrome support isn't exactly thrilling. I'll probably look at some plugins to see if I can't figure out a better solution, but I'm going to be continuing with the "get it working, then get it pretty" maxim.<br />
I think the next steps are:<br />
Allow date/time change working<br />
Allow multiple meals<br />
Allow multiple users to have meals<br />
Sort out adding / editing steps so it's "nicer"<br />
Pretty up everything (including making it "reactive")<br />
<br />
I'm sure I'll find more steps and do some out of order, but it's nice to have a line in the sand, even if it then gets rubbed away.<br />
<br />Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17170194485043447593noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1147176814488202136.post-24003423803962161382015-11-28T22:33:00.000+00:002015-11-28T22:33:06.382+00:00back again (again)Well I'm back again, the little app I was working on had stopped being fun and as I was doing it in my spare time I decided to stop...<br />
<br />
However I recently had to choose if I was going to renew this domain and I was doing a couple more fun techy things so I thought I'd re-start the blog and use the impetus of having shelled out for a .best domain for another year as a way to return me to the blog and to doing tech stuff in my spare time.<br />
<br />
Not entirely sure exactly where I'm going to go with this. I will probably try and get the app up and working again, although it is successfully (ish) running in its hosted environment (<a href="http://lunch.ben.best/" target="_blank">lunch.ben.best</a>) the version locally isn't working and upgrading my ageing mac appears to have killed off Git. So my plan for this evening is to get things up and running again. I've got an idea for a different app and I want to have a play with some other languages (I've been meaning to look at <a href="http://clojure.org/" target="_blank">clojure</a> and <a href="http://www.scala-lang.org/" target="_blank">scala</a> serverside and <a href="http://coffeescript.org/" target="_blank">coffeescript</a> for ages).<br />
<br />
So I'm going to spend this evening getting things up and running again, I've just installed a new ssd into my ageing laptop and that is feeling a bit like a new machine. I'll let you know how it goes and if what I decide to do.<br />
<br />
In the meantime here's a short, silent video of me replacing the hard drive:<br />
<div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dwFExGrd41c6iMIQ85BwVoZn6jPacBJumxBf4NeWuWbHCYvDjDuEUimqj0rxMCivYBOxMIR2BcCizGf2FxM' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
<br /></div>
Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17170194485043447593noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1147176814488202136.post-81112694241077471952015-04-08T00:12:00.000+01:002015-04-08T00:12:08.197+01:00broke it again...Continuing with the let's see how bad I can mess it up plan that I've been working with so far, this evening I've fixed one thing and really broken lots of others.<br />
<br />
<br />
I now have an app that although it correctly describes things so has got rid of the depends on rubbish and replaced it with done before which is what I needed it to be. Unfortunately it won't now let you save a new step (and I don't like that description either).<br />
<br />
In positive news I can continue playing tomorrow so I'll hopefully at least get something saving.<br />
<br />
I did this evening manage to get some things right. I managed to get rid of a load of the errors that I was having to ignore in the code. These weren't actual errors, they were <a href="http://www.jslint.com/" target="_blank">jslint</a> (a tool for telling you where you've written your code badly) not being told to correctly ignore some errors. I'd previously tried to fix this and failed, actually getting this fixed meant I could see the proverbial wood for the trees and pointed out some actual problems that I'd been missing because I'd ignored all the errors.<br />
<br />
The other thing that this has pointed out is that I really (really really) need to add in some unit testing. This is starting to get embarrassing, I don't actually know exactly when I broke saving things, I think it was this evening, I can role back code changes and find out but that's a faff. Proper unit tests would have highlighted this to me as soon as I broke it. Fortunately I pointed this out about 3 months ago, less fortunately I paid no attention.<br />
<br />
As a sort of PS you might have noticed that I turned ads off. The reason for this was that I no longer needed them. I'd played with them, figured out how to get them working and better than that realised how to set them up and how to turn them off.<br />
<br />
I've checked in the current (broken code base) here:<br />
<a href="https://github.com/benjimouse/lunch">https://github.com/benjimouse/lunch</a>Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17170194485043447593noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1147176814488202136.post-31238233074122245752015-03-11T09:53:00.001+00:002015-03-11T09:54:04.214+00:00ahhh... not as "there" as I thought it wasSo following my <a href="http://blog.ben.best/2015/03/and-im-there.html">proud post </a>declaring I was sort of there, I pointed out what I'd done to a "friend". He pointed out a small flaw in my logic and that <a href="http://lunch.ben.best/" target="_blank">the tool</a> was completely unusable...<br />
<br />
It's clear now that instead of having a "depends on" (which really means nothing) I need two boxes: - "Needs to be done before" and "Needs to be done after". Ah well it'll give me a better idea of what I'm doing and no doubt cause some fun with the idea of circular dependencies...<br />
<br />
Oh well gives me something to do tonight!Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17170194485043447593noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1147176814488202136.post-53787878498397196502015-03-11T01:12:00.003+00:002015-03-11T01:13:06.572+00:00and I'm there!Well I'm not really there, I'm actually a very long way away, but...<br />
<br />
I have now something that's just about useable, it doesn't all work exactly as it should, it looks bloody ugly in places especially the edit and add forms.<br />
<br />
However I am now in a place where I can start writing some front end tests. I'm expecting a large proportion of them to fail, I know the start cooking at the top is broken. I know edit doesn't work. I do however have enough of a framework that all the right fields are there and they all do something.<br />
<br />
I'm pleased with where I've got to, however I'm aware that there is a lot more work to do...<br />
<br />
Now the real fun begins...<br />
<br />
This is where I've got to so far:<br />
<a href="http://lunch.ben.best/" target="_blank">lunch.ben.best</a>Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17170194485043447593noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1147176814488202136.post-51876543158632009502015-02-16T22:35:00.000+00:002015-02-17T07:47:37.305+00:00it's been a while...<p dir="ltr">I've been busy with some good and a lot of rubbish things, but I think I blogged myself out...</p>
<p dir="ltr">I've not been doing nothing though, this evening I've run some updates and continued with the <a href="http://lunch.ben.best/">lunch.ben.best</a> app, however the version at that url isn't great (is a bit rubbish) at the moment.</p>
<p dir="ltr">I'm having some issues with this due to the nature of using mongo in the back end, I was starting to write up the issue but fortunately (for you lot more than me) Sarah Mei has done so a lot more eloquently that I would have here:<br>
<a href="http://www.sarahmei.com/blog/2013/11/11/why-you-should-never-use-mongodb/">http://www.sarahmei.com/blog/2013/11/11/why-you-should-never-use-mongodb/</a> </p>
<p dir="ltr">If you don't want to read all of that (you really should though) the basic gist is that you'd going to end up wanting to do something relational. You then have 2 choices - 1 include other object(s) as part of the mongo document and cope with the update that means, or store the id and then write your own relationship management.  The tutorials I've been looking at for Meteor seem to go with option b and as mongo db version 3 is about to land it's possible that this will be something that will start to become at least easier...  No one I've been listening to / reading has suggested that might be happening though.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Anyway I'll try and keep going with this, thanks for sticking with it...</p>
Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17170194485043447593noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1147176814488202136.post-58689501261629070742015-01-07T18:44:00.002+00:002015-01-07T18:44:09.385+00:00a proper restart and some resolutionsI've been lax due to mostly a death in the family and the recovery from Christmas but finding a <a href="http://www.mypebblefaces.com/apps/3628/3490/" target="_blank">rogue like game</a> on the pebble didn't help. I've also started this post a few times and then been interrupted or it's been pointed out that I need to assist in the taking down of decorations.<br />
Excuses aside here's some plans for what I'm going to do in the next year:<br />
<h4>
Get the <a href="http://lunch.ben.best/" target="_blank">lunch.ben.best</a> app running*</h4>
I was really quite disappointed that I didn't manage to build this in time for Christmas. However I managed Christmas lunch more than successfully without it. That shouldn't be an excuse not to get it finished.<br />
<br />
<h4>
Have a pull request accepted into an open source project</h4>
<div>
This is just something I've been wanting to do for a while I've got loads from using open source software and it would be nice to give something back.</div>
<h4>
Play with <a href="http://developer.getpebble.com/guides/js-apps/pebblekit-js/" target="_blank">pebble.js</a></h4>
<div>
Although the majority of pebble apps are written in C and I could go back an re-learn that it's not something that inspires me. However playing with javascript has been really interesting these last few months so that's probably where I'm going to go with this.</div>
<div>
<br />
<h4>
Finally something interesting - <a href="http://plague.io/" target="_blank">plague</a></h4>
I've been playing with plague on the phone, it's horribly addictive and I'm finding it an interesting guilt free social network. The concept is quite simple, you swipe up to send an article (which can be text, an image a link etc.) to the people near you or down to not send it on. I've found some interesting bits. My largest concern with it is if it does gain in popularity then it'll be filled with less savoury images and links, that have thankfully so far been missing.<br />
<br /></div>
<div>
*By running I mean in a state that I can use it for cooking a meal, once that's done I'll look at additions and shine.</div>
Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17170194485043447593noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1147176814488202136.post-62919545969084472252015-01-02T12:15:00.004+00:002015-01-02T12:15:44.660+00:00so that was Christmas...Well it was fun, with lots of food, presents and excitement.<br />
<br />
Perhaps unsurprisingly I didn't get the app that I was building to sort out the cooking the Christmas lunch finished. I'll continue working on this, but with the urgency now removed I've decided to take a break. After all this is supposed to be fun and it's something I'm doing in my spare time so taking a bit of a pause should be fun. On that note I managed to not touch a laptop for over a week over Christmas which was a nice break.<br />
<br />
As a surprise Christmas present I was given a <a href="https://getpebble.com/" target="_blank">pebble</a> for Christmas, it's been lots of fun playing with it. I've also had a few frustrations, I think this deserves it's own post so I'll write one up and put it in after I've finished this.<br />
<br />
I'll also try and sort out an interesting things post later today.<br />
<br />
Over all I've had a fab Christmas and today is back to work, let's see how that goes...Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17170194485043447593noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1147176814488202136.post-7841094670008762662014-12-22T20:27:00.001+00:002014-12-22T20:27:52.188+00:00the story so far... III've not spent as much time as I would have liked on the 'lunch project' this week. The idea is to create an app to help me with Christmas lunch. To say I'm cutting it fine is well... true.<br />
<h4>
What I've done</h4>
<div>
<ul>
<li>I've decided to make <a href="http://blog.ben.best/2014/11/christmas-dinner.html" target="">an app</a> to aid in the cooking of Christmas dinner</li>
<li>I've created <a href="http://blog.ben.best/2014/11/starting-on-christmas.html" target="">wireframes</a></li>
<li>I've started to build <a href="http://lunch.ben.best/" target="_blank">the app</a> using <a href="http://www.meteor.com/" target="_blank">meteor</a></li>
<li>I've had some fun with DNS which has now been fixed.</li>
<li>I've added adsense to this blog</li>
</ul>
</div>
<h4>
Where I am</h4>
<div>
<ul>
<li>You can now see steps and add new ones to <a href="http://blog.ben.best/2014/12/javascript-really-really-really-isnt.html">the app</a></li>
<li>I've fixed the dns for <a href="http://ben.best/" target="_blank">ben.best</a> (so that it ends up here you may need to clear some caches if you've already tried this)</li>
<li>I've also got to the point where the times add up.</li>
</ul>
<h4>
What I'm hoping to do</h4>
</div>
<ul>
<li>By Thursday (25-12-2014)</li>
<ul>
<li>Get something working that I can use on Christmas day. The next big step is sorting out dependancies.</li>
</ul>
<li>On Wednesday (24-12-2014)</li>
<ul>
<li>Write a how to post similar to the <a href="http://blog.ben.best/2014/12/managing-mailing-list.html">how to set up a mailing list one</a></li>
</ul>
<li>On Friday (26-12-2014)</li>
<ul>
<li>Write "friday's interesting things III" based on "<a href="http://blog.ben.best/2014/12/fridays-interesting-things-i.html">friday's interesting things I</a>" or "<a href="http://blog.ben.best/2014/12/friday-interesting-things-ii.html" target="_blank">friday's interesting things II</a>"</li>
</ul>
<li>On next Monday (29-12-2014)</li>
<ul>
<li>Write another "story so far post" admitting what I didn't get done from the above list.</li>
</ul>
</ul>
Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17170194485043447593noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1147176814488202136.post-7031166336952752382014-12-19T09:16:00.002+00:002014-12-19T09:16:54.820+00:00friday's interesting things II <div dir="ltr">
Taking a break from building an app here's this weeks interesting things that grabbed my attention this week. Though I'm sharing them here, I'm really using these lists as a sort of bookmark list.</div>
<h4>
<a href="http://meteorpedia.com/read/Tutorials" target="_blank">Learn Meteor in 6 weeks</a></h4>
<div>
This is interesting, I've done quite a few of the tasks, though following the <a href="http://blog.ben.best/2014/12/an-evening-of-sorting-out-meal-getting.html">disaster last night</a>, I might need to re-visit some of the earlier steps. I know that I don't have 4 solid hours a day to work on this sort of project (and that would put me a long way after Christmas) however it does look like a fun list.</div>
<div dir="ltr">
<a href="http://meteorpedia.com/read/Tutorials">http://meteorpedia.com/read/<u>Tutorials</u></a></div>
<div dir="ltr">
<br /></div>
<h4>
<a href="http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pbio.1002020" target="_blank">A world without microbes</a></h4>
<div>
A friend of mine from 6th form college (which was a very long time ago) has written an article about what the world would be without microbes. Even though my biology lessons finished with my GCSE's at 16 I found this accessible and really interesting.</div>
<div dir="ltr">
<a href="http://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.1002020">http://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.1002020</a></div>
<div dir="ltr">
<br /></div>
<h4>
<a href="http://dominusgame.net/" target="_blank">Dominus</a></h4>
<div>
Dominus is a nice (free) web based game built with meteor. I've just started playing and it looks really interesting. Also the author has some interesting things to say about Meteor's <a href="https://medium.com/@Dominus/meteors-check-var-number-a74c80085965" target="_blank">check function</a></div>
<div dir="ltr">
<a href="http://dominusgame.net/">http://dominusgame.net/</a></div>
<div dir="ltr">
<br /></div>
<h4>
<a href="http://whatcolourisit.scn9a.org/" target="_blank">Hex colour clock</a></h4>
<div dir="ltr">
This has been all over the web this week, partially as it's such a simple and well executed idea. I really love this.</div>
<div dir="ltr">
<a href="http://whatcolourisit.scn9a.org/">http://whatcolourisit.scn9a.org/</a></div>
Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17170194485043447593noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1147176814488202136.post-66503143213426339372014-12-18T23:18:00.000+00:002014-12-18T23:18:09.684+00:00an evening of sorting out a meal (getting collections in meteor wrong)Not the best of evenings, I've spent the last few hours trying to add the meal part and getting dates just wrong.<br />
<br />
It's one of those things that I'll try and sort out tomorrow. The main issues were to do with adding the new parent part to the collection and then trying to sort out the date part. All this is in preparation for sorting out dependancies. I'll get there and I'm feeling quite pleased that this is the first evening that's gone badly, but I'm going to close the laptop and go to bed.<br />
<br />
I've started on the interesting Friday things part 2 but I'll get it sorted tomorrow.Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17170194485043447593noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1147176814488202136.post-60506530226763871562014-12-17T23:09:00.003+00:002014-12-17T23:09:57.825+00:00marking things as done (and not doing things!)Well it was an interrupted couple of hours but it was a couple of hours...<br />
I have added the ability to mark steps as done (or to undo said marking). I've also added some "beautification" and started to get rid of some of the css that had been given with one of the tutorials.<br />
<br />
I'm quite pleased with where I've got to, it's going to lead nicely into tomorrow's playing with dependencies (or at least hopefully tomorrow). If you want to see the new functionality it is (as ever) at <a href="http://lunch.ben.best/" target="_blank">lunch.ben.best</a> you'll need to be logged in to mark things as done / undo them. There are a few bits that I'm not really that happy with:<br />
<ul>
<li>The layout doesn't quite feel right, mostly the second part that will contain the details of the dependencies.</li>
<li>The button labels: "done" and "undo", better suggestions are more than welcome</li>
<li>Logged in / not logged in bits not quite working as I would have expected.</li>
<li>I thought I'd added a deny rule that I would have needed to change to stop me doing exactly what I've done.</li>
</ul>
Of the these it's the last one that concerns me most, however I need to do quite a bit of playing with the security and ownership bits so I'm sure it'll all come out in the wash. Overall I'm quite pleased with the progress I've made over the last couple of nights.<br />
<br />
In other news I now know what I'm cooking meat-wise for Christmas lunch - a 2 kg turkey crown and a piece of topside. The topside is being provided by my parents in law so I'll not know exactly the weight of that until they arrive on Friday.<br />
For posterity here's a screen show of the current look:<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIx5ZbfJBHMsh636efUdHPsK1K7AyhYfcvtr4EL9CbAhpJP-3ZBZZ1MQe8c6rjLqEWsQDp4Qj9Kw8N6SAkYO6438HObKgItXDXI3SMabmdzeD6BZ8SEIIdGCn2yXYf0O8q2ODhpsJ_wNPt/s1600/Screen+Shot+2014-12-17+at+22.55.49.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIx5ZbfJBHMsh636efUdHPsK1K7AyhYfcvtr4EL9CbAhpJP-3ZBZZ1MQe8c6rjLqEWsQDp4Qj9Kw8N6SAkYO6438HObKgItXDXI3SMabmdzeD6BZ8SEIIdGCn2yXYf0O8q2ODhpsJ_wNPt/s1600/Screen+Shot+2014-12-17+at+22.55.49.png" height="137" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<span id="goog_1018162009"></span><span id="goog_1018162010"></span>To the things not done, I made a deliberate decision to not write a "so you want to..." post tonight, I was in the mood for keeping going with the lunch project.Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17170194485043447593noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1147176814488202136.post-25078594687681200252014-12-16T23:29:00.002+00:002014-12-16T23:49:33.571+00:00seconds, minutes and hoursI've managed to spend a couple of hours playing with <a href="http://blog.ben.best/2014/12/the-story-so-far.html" target="_blank">my app to help me cook Christmas lunch</a>...<br />
I've now enabled editing, and instead of adding time as just seconds it is now input as seconds, minutes and hours.<br />
I'm quite pleased with this evening's progress, and I've started to veer away from <a href="http://book.discovermeteor.com/" target="_blank">the book</a>. It's been a bit of a struggle, but finally I feel as though I really am getting there.<br />
As ever if you want to see and play the app is currently here:<br />
<a href="http://lunch.ben.best/" target="_blank">lunch.ben.best</a><br />
And the latest github commits here:<br />
<a href="https://github.com/benjimouse/lunch/commit/c3474cd53bdfde23ec27db1ba5ac4d8a965b7d6e" target="_blank">https://github.com/benjimouse/lunch/commit/c3474cd53bdfde23ec27db1ba5ac4d8a965b7d6e</a><br />
Of course anything could happen when next I pick up the laptop...<br />
<h4>
My next few of steps are:</h4>
<br />
<ul>
<li>Be able to mark steps as done or not</li>
<li>Have steps belong to a "meal"</li>
<li>Determine the start time based on a provided final time</li>
<li>Have steps depend on other steps</li>
</ul>
<div>
After that we get into the real fun of making it pretty. I suspect that due to taking some nights off and spending time last night playing with <a href="http://blog.ben.best/2014/12/sorry.html">adsense</a> (which it appears is still waiting for a second verification). I'll not quite hit my target of tomorrow night for everything being "working but not pretty", but I'll be close (provided I get to play tomorrow night). Oh and I still haven't decided what "so you want to" topic I'll choose for tomorrow, I'll probably go with "so you want to build a website..."</div>
Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17170194485043447593noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1147176814488202136.post-47089633880129569952014-12-16T08:56:00.003+00:002014-12-16T08:56:49.284+00:00sorryI mentioned that I was thinking of adding google's adsense ads to the blog, which I've now done (and you should be seeing).<br />
<br />
I've worked with the internet for a large number of years and although most of it appears to be funded today by ads, it's not an area I've ever touched on. I'm not really expecting to make much (any) money off of these, it was partially an exercise in learning what happens and how they work. It's been interesting so far (and was the reason I played with and then messed up my dns).<br />
<br />
The how to in the setting up area is really quite good and it's very quick from submitting a request to getting a response (both positive and negative). Interestingly I don't see the ads in a browser that I'm signed into but it seems to imply that I have some limited control over what gets shown so it could all get interesting.Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17170194485043447593noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1147176814488202136.post-20921000345584249522014-12-15T16:18:00.001+00:002014-12-15T17:49:50.730+00:00the story so far...It appears that I'm starting to fall into a pattern, I get lots done at the start of the week and then Thursday appears and life stuff gets in the way. This was the case last week with two trips to the theatre and a Christmas party meaning that I've done nothing on "<a href="http://lunch.ben.bat/" target="_blank">lunch</a>" since last Wednesday.<br />
I've decided to look at where I am, what I've done and what I'm hoping to do in the next week.<br />
<h4>
What I've done</h4>
<div>
<ul>
<li>I've decided to make <a href="http://blog.ben.best/2014/11/christmas-dinner.html" target="">an app</a> to aid in the cooking of Christmas dinner</li>
<li>I've created <a href="http://blog.ben.best/2014/11/starting-on-christmas.html" target="">wireframes</a></li>
<li>I've started to build <a href="http://lunch.ben.best/" target="_blank">the app</a></li>
<li>I've broken the dns for <a href="http://blog.ben.best/2014/12/i-broke-world.html">ben.best</a></li>
</ul>
</div>
<h4>
Where I am</h4>
<div>
<ul>
<li>You can now see steps and add new ones to <a href="http://blog.ben.best/2014/12/javascript-really-really-really-isnt.html">the app</a></li>
<li>I've fixed the dns for <a href="http://ben.best/" target="_blank">ben.best</a> (so that it ends up here you may need to clear some caches if you've already tried this)</li>
</ul>
<h4>
What I'm hoping to do</h4>
</div>
<br />
<ul>
<li>By next Monday</li>
<ul>
<li>Editing steps</li>
<li>Sorting out the timings so that given a serve time the start times display correctly</li>
</ul>
<li>On Wednesday (17-12-2014)</li>
<ul>
<li>Write a how to post similar to the <a href="http://blog.ben.best/2014/12/managing-mailing-list.html">how to set up a mailing list one</a></li>
</ul>
<li>On Friday (19-12-2014)</li>
<ul>
<li>Write "friday's interesting things II" based on "<a href="http://blog.ben.best/2014/12/fridays-interesting-things-i.html">friday's interesting things I</a>"</li>
</ul>
<li>On next Monday (22-12-2014)</li>
<ul>
<li>Write another "story so far post" admitting what I didn't get done from the above list.</li>
</ul>
<br />
</ul>
Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17170194485043447593noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1147176814488202136.post-78534120582813110212014-12-12T00:14:00.002+00:002014-12-12T00:14:42.881+00:00friday's interesting things IEach Friday morning (and this one is very early in the morning) I'm going to attempt to post a group of things I've found interesting, realistically they'll probably be from my rss feeds but I'll try to stay eclectic and hopefully these won't just be a list of things that I want to re-read, but if that's what it turns out to be then it's not a bad thing.<br />
<br />
<h4>
<a href="https://plus.google.com/115133653231679625609/posts/GiYvVxZ3a5A" target="_blank">EcmaScript 6 Classes</a></h4>
Following my "issues" with javascript classes I found this so I'll have a play with it (at some point in time). I suspect however when I do get time to play with this EcmaScript 6 will be well out and I'll be used to it. Ahh to have more free hours in the day to play with everything I would like to.<br />
<a href="https://plus.google.com/115133653231679625609/posts/GiYvVxZ3a5A">https://plus.google.com/115133653231679625609/posts/GiYvVxZ3a5A</a><br />
<br />
<h4>
<a href="https://developers.google.com/web/starter-kit/" target="_blank">Google's web starter-kit</a></h4>
<div>
A sort of not really competitor to bootstrap, maybe ish? It's a tool for helping to get websites working and looking the "Google way". I'm a little nervous about this, but I'll no doubt have a play a bit later when I decide I don't like that everything looks a bit "bootstrappy".</div>
<a href="https://developers.google.com/web/starter-kit/">https://developers.google.com/web/starter-kit/</a><br />
<br />
<h4>
<a href="https://www.discovermeteor.com/blog/text-editors-meteor-development/" target="_blank">A rundown of text editors for meteor</a></h4>
After reading this I'm starting to think that it might be time to switch away from brackets (probably to atom). Changing text editors is always a bit of a wrench so I might put that off a little.<br />
<a href="https://www.discovermeteor.com/blog/text-editors-meteor-development/" target="_blank">https://www.discovermeteor.com/blog/text-editors-meteor-development/</a><br />
<br />
<h4>
<a href="http://blog.izs.me/post/104685388058/io-js" target="_blank">Node got forked</a></h4>
I'd heard a fair bit about this but it wasn't until I read this post that I felt I had a better handle on it. It's going to be interesting to watch. I have to admit my favourite part of the article was learning that <a href="https://docs.npmjs.com/misc/faq#if-npm-is-an-acronym-why-is-it-never-capitalized-" target="_blank">"npm is not an acronym"</a>.<br />
<a href="http://blog.izs.me/post/104685388058/io-js" target="_blank">http://blog.izs.me/post/104685388058/io-js</a><br />
<br />
<h4>
<a href="http://closure-compiler.appspot.com/home" target="_blank">Closure Compiler</a></h4>
This is an interesting tool from Google, I've had a bit of a play with it and though I love what it's doing with the whitespace and simple settings I've yet to spend the time to get the advanced working. It has highlighted some changes that I want to make already. It's definitely something I want to play with some more, it's also definitely something I'm not going to play with for a little while. It also lead me to the <a href="https://developers.google.com/closure/utilities/" target="_blank">closure linter</a> which I need to add to the tools that I'd like to play with.<br />
<a href="http://closure-compiler.appspot.com/home">http://closure-compiler.appspot.com/home</a><br />
<br />
<h4>
<a href="http://getsiteinfo.appspot.com/" target="_blank">Get site info</a></h4>
<div>
This was a tool I played with a number of years ago it displays a lot of things that I could re-do but it works, it's also a great example of why this developer should not be used as a designer . When I created it at $job-1 we were having problems because looking at our clients websites from our own location wasn't for a variety of dull reasons (or at least reasons I can't now recall but shudder at some of the options). Also Google had just started their app engine and I wanted to play with it. I put together a quick app with it, it's still the only Python code I've ever written and it needs a lot of polishing (completely re-writing), however when I needed something like that the other day I couldn't remember the url. I'm adding it to this list so that I have that url to hand. Fell free to take a look and play, criticism is welcome, but pointless as I'm really not that fussed with picking this up again.</div>
<div>
<a href="http://getsiteinfo.appspot.com/" target="_blank">http://getsiteinfo.appspot.com/</a></div>
Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17170194485043447593noreply@blogger.com0