Category: Development

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The One a Day project I mentioned before was my second attempt at using ChatGPT to do something useful. I can’t talk about the first attempt, please don’t ask, very hush hush.

I’m happy to report it cranked out code not unlike what I would have if left to my own search + copy + paste devices. So, I understand why software professionals are skeptical. In its defense, it actually suggested using flask in the first iteration, but I asked dumb it down a bit. It gave me something simple, and I modified it a bit. In the end, I’d say ChatGPT cut the time in half on this tiny project. It’s on github if you care to judge.

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Yesterday, I launched One a Day wherein I will post one photo per day for a year. There is only one rule: The photo needs to have been taken that day–no stockpiling. You may think that you’ve seen this done before, but assure you that this is a totally original idea.

Now, launch makes it sound like I spent more than an hour knocking together a rudimentary, barely usable site. Sure, I could go the easy route and post on one of the many social networks on which I already have an account. But, in the words of Tina Turner: We never, ever do nothing nice and easy. Besides, we all know, the hard part isn’t making a site or uploading an image–its taking a picture day after day after day.

Why bother? Well, I was inspired by two things recently. First was a large collection of black & white images a friend showed me. His father had taken them in the 70s and 80s. While the subject matter was mostly day-to-day life in East Berlin, they were fascinating.

Second was A London Inheritance where, in a similar vein, he has a large collection of London photos from 1946-54 taken by his father. In a recent post he said “…the normal, everyday things that we take for granted, and are the things that will disappear and are worth a photo.”

This struck me because I take a lot for granted and tend to move through portions of my day with sort of tunnel vision. My hope is that this little project will help me broaden my field of vision a bit.

Wish me luck…

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This is a very specific, technical post. However, I can’t be the only person that has struggled with calculating New York sales tax on clothing with Woocommerce Shipping & Tax. So, I’m going to post the solution that worked for me.

If you’re not working on a Woocommerce store selling clothing in New York and having trouble accurately calculating sales tax, you’ll probably want to move on. If you are, keep reading…

Continue reading →

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This video showcases a US Postal Service system that was developed in the 90s; it’s still going strong:

It’s easy to find all sorts of problems with this system. Users need to undergo weeks of training (many of which won’t make the cut). It’s also not the most delightful UI to look at all day. However, one of the top comments on the video from a former user provides a different view:

…once you learn the rules, applying them becomes automatic and extremely fast. It’s a fun job for the right person.

Farrah Upson

So, while there’s plenty of room for improvement here, but it works pretty well. Something to remember for those of us charged with replacing and improving on these types of systems that were developed 20 or 30 years ago. Don’t assume it’s all terrible by judging the UI based on today’s standards, make sure the good parts aren’t missing from the new and improved system.

via Core77