Category: Programming

Creating a Web-Based Management Tool

Posted on | by WebLuke | Leave a Comment on Creating a Web-Based Management Tool

About a year and a half ago, I was given an idea for a web-based management tool. I probably should have started building it back then when I was in contact with the person asking for it daily, but other things came up, and I just made a note of it after putting some thought into how to build it.

Come to now, and I have all the time to build the tool but not sure if there is still interest in the tool. I would expect the person asking about it, still needs something, and if they were correct in thinking, others would also be interested. If I were to get it built this fall and out asking people to use it in the spring and summer, it should have some return on time spent creating it.

Another dilemma is that I am working on several projects slowly right now, but time may be running out, and I will need to find real employment if none of these becomes full income before winter. I do not think this project would be something people who would use it are going to be asking to spend money on in the winter. But I hope it means I could have it built in the winter.

This project should not be too hard to get the basics started and working. I want to do it in ASP.net Core so it would be easy to make and API and later a Xamarin App. But I do not have the most experience working in that set of tools. I also expect that some of the features will take some work to put together as they are not just your standard data types.

These projects I have plans for, do not seem too bad, but it seems hard to get going, especially when I do not always feel the greatest. But I think if I can get it to the point that I have something people want to use, it will get me more motivated to put the time in even when there are so many other things I spend time on.

If you have not figured it out, these writing sessions are to help me think about my projects.  I don’t want to put too many details out of this project because every time in the past, I would talk to someone about an idea, a few months or years later, I would see the same thing out of no ware taking off or being advertised. One example was an e-ink meeting room display and an online booking system for offices, then a year later, I would get an ad every day for that idea someone else had made. That is just one idea.

I will contact the person looking for this tool and see what they think. Either way, it is something I could get working and provide as a service within a few months if I were to start working on it.

Create Custom Sites or Live with Tools That Do The Job Kind of Like You Want?

Posted on | by WebLuke | Leave a Comment on Create Custom Sites or Live with Tools That Do The Job Kind of Like You Want?

Right now, I have a few sites that I want to build out. These sites could be made with custom code and all kinds of custom backends to make them work how I want them to. But that would take a lot of work, and in some cases, using something like WordPress may be enough to get it working. But that is about as far as it would go, just enough, not really what I want.

Some prebuilt tools have the advantage of having other people help build them, and this makes them do all kinds of things without me having to come up with a way to make it work. But they don’t do exactly what I want, and in most cases, add a lot of extra junk / HTML I don’t need. Just this page has so much additional trash code thrown in to support things nothing to do with blogs, but it makes it so you can make a store or page with a WordPress site.

I think I will have to suck it up and put in the work to make what I want. There will not be a plugin or way I can make a site builder do what I want. Two of my projects are like this, and I need to chose what one I think can become something that starts to make me some money first. I may have to get some parttime development work soon anyway, but both of these would be good to push out into something more.

One thing I will need to figure out for both is how I want to produce the content. One requires a lot of me creating the content, and the other requires me to do a lot of me researching and monitoring the content. I am not even sure if other people want my stuff, either. But this is some of my ideas, and I don’t have a good set of software I could sell yet, so that is also off the table. I also expect both sites would need ads and donation’s to pay for them, but I’m not too fond of ads and feel strange getting money from people.

Then I have some video projects, and I want to make a site to store them separately from YouTube. There seem to be some ways I could have my videos on a WordPress site, but then I would again be dependent on others rather than my own site. Let’s get some videos out before I put too much thought into it.

To finish it up, I will need to create a site for one of the projects to make it work how I want it to. The other can start as a page builder, but I should use it to create a system for it that I control soon. It may even be a good piece of content for that site going over building a custom website.

New Keyboard Test Post

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So I got a new keyboard, so far its working great. It’s a Corsair K70 LUX RGB with Cherry MX Brown switches. I was thinking what should I do to test out typing, and boom here is a blog post.

I did some gaming on it earlier and it was great, and I was doing great in the game. The RGB lighting is kind of cool but if you’re not doing something that takes a lot of paying attention to the screen you end up noticing a rainbow of colors over the keys. I know I can switch it to all kinds of things but this was fun for the first night.

When typing so far I have done good at hitting the correct keys and the feeling of pushing down the keys is good, I almost need to have a lighter touch. There is a good amount of that mechanical sound that you know when you are typing. But not so much its annoying. If it was in an office and you did typing or coding next to people it could be a problem. I would also guess because of the frequency of the sound a phone or VOIP call would pick up every key stroke.

I plan on using this one in my home office where I don’t care about sound so much. I had a Dell Alienware keyboard that was not as noise, but had decent switches. They don’t give you a brand so who knows what they are, the only thing I could find was they were like the Brown switches by Cherry MX. Because that keyboard isn’t that loud and I want something better for typing and coding at work I will take it in and use it there.

Other than the normal spelling mistakes I have been able to type out things fast and with good accuracy in this post. If you do lots of typing a good keyboard could improve productivity and just make it nicer to type. There are quieter keys, and other companies who make keyboards with these switches, so if you wanted something more “professional” you could get one of those for less because the RGB is not something you really need. ~600 Words in about 10 minutes with some time to think and look at the other keyboard is quite good.

Writing Code

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At this point in my degree I have finished all my Computer Science course and am just left with some math and science classes, so close to the end yet a little bit left. I would consider myself a well-rounded coder with experience writing simple console apps, to websites, to complex website content management systems, to Windows apps that use databases. I have participated in robot challenges, startup competitions, added and worked existing code for production applications, converted vital databases, and worked as a group to develop web applications.

All that being said I find the act of writing code for an application fun and exciting at times. You have to figure out the problem, find ways to deal with data, and then output something useful. This can be a challenge at times because there is never any two problems the same, yes there are things you can reuse but almost never has someone written code to do exactly what you are doing. I think that’s part of the reason I enjoy it.

But some times you have to be in the right place to really let things come out, environment can have an effect on distractions, comfort, availability of resources, alertness, and even mood. Another thing that seems to drive some coding is truly having something you want to work on, I have had lots of things that were interesting to me, but I didn’t have the drive to work on them when given the opportunity. I have also found I want to work on something but don’t because other things come up. This doesn’t mean when I need to get things done because I have responsibilities to get it done or there is intensive to do so that I can’t or don’t always find a way to get what I need to do done.

I guess what I am saying there is times when it is easier because I am really interested in something or I want to solve a problem, and I can buckle down and get lots done in a short amount of time. Writing code is a real mental process, you have to think about logic, how things are given to you, the users, the task to solve, and how to get it all done. You can get stuck in your mind working on the problem and it will stick with you night and day until you solve it by writing the code. Sometimes it seems like your avoiding the problem but it will be stirring around in your mind.

Starting to ramble now, I guess what I am saying is that I have found something that can really drive my brain to solve problems, and keep me interested. I just now have to finish up classes and see what opportunities come my way to give me a place to use my abilities and enjoy doing it. I think it is closer than I even know but that wait is what makes it hard. Every thing I get involved with I do see some value in helping me see more of the world both in code and with others. That’s all for now, I shouldn’t blog so late at night…

PS: WOW my number of visitors has dropped over the past year, Handbreak must have passes its usefulness and I really haven’t been adding much content but once every 6 months. I should (like I always say) add more posts, guess I should actually try that with code blog posts.