Projects!

[mdlbear]

It's been just short of a year since I retired, and I don't have a whole lot to show for it in the way of programming, apart from a little work on MakeStuff. OK, a fair amount. And it has an actual user now. But still.

Somewhere around the New Year I started making a(nother) list of potential projects that I wanted to work on in my retirement. As these things do, it got out of hand -- at last count there were 86 unfinished items in it. Time to start something.

There are a few constraints. I can't start any of the woodworking projects yet, because the contents of the garage are in storage waiting for the remodeling to get finished; that includes all of the woodworking tools. So there's that. Same for the recording projects -- my good microphones have either been boxed, or vanished altogether in the last move.

More than half the "projects" on the list are ideas for articles or blog posts -- there are forty or so of those. I should start picking them off, one or two every week, but they're not really projects.

What remains is mostly software: programs (the young people call them "apps" these days) and work on my websites. These are also areas where I have a lot to learn, and where I can develop skills that will be useful if I want -- or need -- to do some consulting. And there's another factor: there's really no difference between a web app and a mobile app! Not any more: with React Native and Electron, one can now build stand-alone cross-platform applications using web front-end frameworks -- they basically bundle a stripped-down browser and a trivial server with your web"site", which is often just a Single-Page Application (SPA). And with languages like Elm that compile into Javascript,...

I can haz apps

One app I want to write will be for managing checklists. (There's an existing app called Checkmate -- my first choice for a name; grumble -- that looks worth mining for ideas.) Beyond being able to have multiple, named lists, I want timing information so that one can ask questions like "how long ago did I last take my pain medication, and is it safe to take another dose?" That needs to work for both scheduled items, and "as-needed", floating items that can start their timer going at any time. More like a combination checklist and reminder system. I'd also like to be able to track the time it takes to go through a checklist, both so that I know when to start if I'm getting ready for something, and so that I know how much I'm improving with practice. Eventually it would be nice to link this to both a website and an Alexa skill -- the website will be easy, since almost the entire app will be usable as the front end.

It would be nice to have a combined lyrics viewer and a setlist planner. (I used to have a setlist planner, but it was in Perl and kept its state in the HTTP query string - bad news for caching and sort of search-engine pessimization.) There would be some overlap with the checklist app, since they both involve going through a list of things in sequence, with associated times. It would be especially useful on a tablet for performances, but it would be most effective combined with a website that hosts lyrics and music, which brings us to...

What a mangled web

Another thing I've been looking at is "Responsive Web Design" -- making websites that adjust smoothly between tiny mobile devices and large-screen desktops. This has long been a design requirement of mine anyway -- almost all my sites do this, but they do it by simply not having much of a layout, and they look bad both on very large screens and very small ones. It's time to take this to the next level by adding responsive CSS and mobile.

There are several websites that need work: lookingglassfolk.com, steve.savitzky.net, Stephen.Savitzky.net, and hyperspace-express.com at least. The first one is by far the simplest; just songs, concerts, (proposed) albums, and a gig schedule. steve.savitzky.net adds writing and software projects, but there's still a lot of overlap.

It would make sense to do the others using different responsive design frameworks, just to get experience with a few of the options. Stephen.Savitzky.net, in particular, is my "portfolio" site; it's also the only one that has a sidebar at the moment. It might be a good idea to turn into a GitHub Pages site. hyperspace-express.com is my "commercial" site, and it would make sense to use a CMS like Joomla or Drupal for it.

(I have some other sites, e.g. rainbows-end.net and thestarport.org, but they're simple enough to simply copy the CSS from one of the others. The Interesting.Places sub-site would be worth some attention.)

Now, here's my plan...

The underlying reason for picking this particular set of projects is to market myself as a blogger, consultant, and developer, in hopes of making a little money on the side. That suggests that I should start with the checklist app, and probably start the site makeovers by moving Stephen.Savitzky.net to a GitHub site (which would give me an obvious home for projects like MakeStuff and my development-focussed blogging). On the other hand, making over steve.savitzky.net would probably teach me more about responsive design, especially if I make S.S.net into a GitHub site. It might make more sense to keep S.S.net as a separate site, and build the GitHub site from scratch.

In any case, my main blogging site will remain here on Dreamwidth; most likely I'll just cross-post development-related blog entries to S.S.net (and GitHub, if it's separate). Or would it make more sense to keep all of the blogging concentrated here?

Comments? Ideas? Suggestions? Over to you folks.

Comments

[we_are_spc]

If you need accessibility people, we'd be willing to help (And I'd preobably be the one writing the funneled information for clarity purposes-you've seen the way the others right. xd) Especially for that checklist/reminder ap.

Although the viewer and setlist app...I wish there'd be a way to make that accessible. He.

As far as the blogging goes-so long as you don't get tired of having to copypaste same entries, I don't see a problem with bloging in multiple places.

-Fallon~

[mdlbear]

Thank you! Yes, accessibility is another design requirement.

Setlists are basically just playlists, and lyrics are web pages (though they also come in PDF for printing). The websites should work fine with a screen reader, including saved setlists; it's definitely something to verify. I don't know how easy it would be to make the apps accessible, but it ought to be possible somehow.

Hmm. Yes, it is. Here's a talk on making elm-based apps accessible: "Accessibility with Elm" by Tessa Kelly - YouTube

[we_are_spc]

Oooh, I will have to keep around this comment. :d

(QWe're serious, too; if you need to run the apps by us and any other accessibility minded physical peeps, go for it. :d)

I didn't realize there were talks up on elm-accessibility. Winsauce.

-Fallon~:)

[mdlbear]

I assumed you were serious -- that's not an offer to be taken lightly, and I'll definitely be seeking test users.

If cross-posting isn't automatic, it won't happen. It will be tag-based, if I do it.

[technoshaman]

I would keep the main blogging here. It's a good engine, you already have a decent audience, and DW's crossposting engine is pretty good. I don't think it's smart enough to do "auto-crosspost this only if it has tag X" but I could be wrong (AND DW is open-source, so if it ain't there, and the suggestion board likes the idea, *you could do it yourself*... (offering to do the coding for it may help get it past the suggestion board :) )

I do know that blanket crossposting can be on or off by default (unsure of per-site), and all it takes to toggle it for a given post is a ticky-box. And if you forget to crosspost, you can come back, ticky the box, save the post, and it will crosspost. (Dunno if you have to make a trivial change or not to trigger that, I don't *think* so...)

So, yeah. Stay here with the blogging, it'll be easier.

[mdlbear]

DW's crossposting capability is limited to LJ and its clones; that would be yet another project, though it might be an interesting one.

No, if I cross-post, it will be by extending my current homebrew blog "client" -- from there I can post anywhere I can write a script for, and the passwords (if any -- I'd rather post via ssh) stay on my own machine.

[technoshaman]

DW has a neat thing. If you upload your GPG public key, then send an email to username+PGP@post.dreamwidth.org that is signed with that key, it will post the message for you. FAQ entry with links to relevant topics

So you could post to your homebrew blog, and have the DW hook for crossposting prompt you for your passphrase (git hooks, anyone?), build an email message, and call sendmail -t... if you do it with popen() the signed text never has to hit disk... :)

[mdlbear]

That would be an improvement over my current method. I'd probably count on using the agent rather than entering my passphrase.

Posting is done with make recipes rather than git hooks -- it sends the post, then commits it with the date and filename in the commit message. I could do crossposts with a git hook, depending on what order I wanted to do things in.

I should write that up, shouldn't I?

[technoshaman]

Documentation is always good.

[mdlbear]

Documentation is now present: README for MakeStuff/blogging

Probably worth a blog entry at some point, which would be somewhat recursive and maybe redundant.

[texxgadget]

I want to help test your list app.
You have identified several shortcomings of ALL the list apps out there.

On the song thing, playlist, current lyrics, and maybe current chords.

Having hit the big six oh myself, I get my own share of "senior moments".
If I was on stage instead of behind it, I would probably have more of them.

Towards the end, Sinatra was singing with teleprompter.
I found a recording he made where he completely screwed up "New York, New York"
but everyone let it slide because, after all, he was Sinatra.

[stardreamer]

May I suggest an app I've been wanting for decades? Desktop or mobile version either one.

ORGANIZE MY FILK

For each song, I want to enter title, artist, album (may be a live con tape, so some way to indicate that), style if applicable*, song it's a parody of if applicable, and up to 5 categories**. Then it gets Interesting.

I want to be able to search by title, and see how many versions of it I have, who did them, and what albums they're on.

I want to be able to search by category and see which songs I have in that category.

I want to be able to enter a pop song title and see if I have any parodies of it.

I think there used to be more things I wanted, but I'm blanking. If I remember any of them, I'll reply to this comment.


* Style -- most filk falls into the very broad style of folk music. But for things like the Bohnhoff's rock, or a C&W style, or something that's jazz-based, I want to indicate that.

* Categories are things like Computers, Fannish Life, Pop Parody, Politics & History, Literary, etc. Many filk songs fall into multiple categories.

[mdlbear]

Sounds useful. There was a filk database at one point, back in the days of Usenet and Fido. Don't remember who built it, and no idea whether it's still maintained.

You can get a lot of this from the tags in audio files you've already ripped. You should be able to either add your own tags, or download metadata from somewhere else -- preferably the artist's own website.

There's no reason to limit tags to five. I hate arbitrary limits; they go back to 80-column punched cards, and I don't put them in my software. I don't remember who said it, but there are only three sizes you have to support: one, two, and unlimited. And I have my doubts about two.

[technoshaman]

*laughter* this reminds me of counting in Lapine (from Richard Adams' Watership Down. Rabbits have three toes on their front paws. There are five logical numbers in Lapine: Zero, one, two, three, and hrair, or "many".

But, yes, while sometimes it is useful to have a triple-throw switch ("off", "on", and "automatic" come to mind, hardware or software), after that? Hrair.

[mdlbear]

Yup.

(One of the writing projects on my queue isn a series on "Understanding Ursine".)

[madfilkentist]

There was a project I was working on a couple of years ago, to organize sound clips from cons and let users crowdsource information about who made the recording and what the song is. I gave it up because the feature list kept getting longer while no one was interested in testing what I had done.

If you want to try reviving it, get in touch with Merav or Spencer. I might be talked into jumping back on it if I'm not the only person working on it.

Interesting

[mdlbear]

Don't think I want to dive into that right now, but maybe someday.

It could be interesting as an upload target for someone like me whose recordings already have metadata.

[danceswithlife]

As much as I like tech (most of my sweeties have been programmers (I am only now moving from a flip phone to a smart phone, and only because the smart phone I have is good for my audiobooks and music. I don't even have texts enabled on my flip phone, tho I am going to turn them on on the smartphone unless I get sick of it. At home, by strong preference, I use a large screen and a full size keyboard run off a laptop. Why am I telling you all this? Because way too many website aren't configured for desktops anymore, and I often have a hard time reading them on my desktop. So I'm all behind your idea of website that work well on both. And at my last three jobs the apps I use to do my work can't be increased in size, which is a strong accessibility issue. It's even worse in training, or video conferencing when they can't be seen on the video screen.I don't have the foggiest idea what not being able to increase the size of text in a work app is about.

So I like your list of projects. I'm going to be very busy the next couple of months, but I may be able to do some testing for you after that. --Lola

[mdlbear]

Thanks!