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Category Archives: News
Climbing the Roller Coaster
November 8, 2010 – 4:37 am
We all know the feeling. The dread and excitement in those big moments. You can hear the clink of the chain that is steadily pulling you up that first big hill of a roller coaster. The ride is only just beginning and you have only a vague idea what you are in for.
So I’ve done it. At the end of last week, I officially handed in my resignation as it were at the school where I work. This morning they had a potential replacement in to interview, so it looks like I will be free with in a matter of days. In a few short weeks, I will be headed home to the states. My relatives have agreed to give me living expenses while I throw myself into Fridge to Food. At least for a few months, after which I’ll either be looking for additional funding or trying to make Fridge to Food self-supporting.
Michelle, my girlfriend who provided much of the inspiration for the site, will be staying in Thailand. Traveling abroad and living in foreign cultures has been her dream since she was a kid. My dream has always involved starting a software startup and living on a farm. Don’t ask me how those two go together, I haven’t completely figured it out yet. But I’d say Fridge to Food is a great start in the right direction, wouldn’t you? Shel and I are going to try to do the long distance thing. That’s how people do it these days, right? We’ll take it a day at a time and see how it goes. Hopefully Skype, Google chat and e-mail will make a half a world of distance feel like much less.
I’ll most likely be living at home, working out of my mom’s house. At least in the beginning. Living the stereotype. Oh yeah. I don’t know how fast I’ll be able to work once I can truly devote my full effort, energy and time to the site. Hopefully faster than it has been on part time. There’s going to be about a two week period where I’ll be working on it sporadically while I finish up the job here and get ready to head home. Followed by a week or two of traveling to find my way back to my childhood home in Indiana. Wish me luck, here goes nothing.
The Return of Title Search and Entrance of Notifications
November 4, 2010 – 5:00 am
Title search returns! I managed to get it done in day and it is working once more. There was some snafu with the update and the site was down for a couple of minutes, but it has returned in full force. Also added with this update was notifications! If you login you’ll notice a little letter icon next to your username. It will take you to the notifications page where you can see reputation gained, ribbons earned and comments on any of your recipes since your last visit. You can also see your gains in the last day, week, month and year. Careful with the year one, it doesn’t page yet. I’ll work on the whole paging thing. Hopefully this’ll make it easier to notice when someone posts a comment to one of your recipes or votes you up. You can see exactly where it came from with out having to search through everything.
There were a couple of other small bug fixes in the last update. Too small for me to remember what they were at the moment. Keep on catching them. Thanks to everyone who has posted feedback or an idea. I’m keeping them on the todo list and you’ll hopefully see them show up in not too long a time. Keep em coming.
Happy eats!
Known Bug: Title Search Lacking
November 3, 2010 – 10:05 am
I’m just striking out all over the place today. Someone very helpfully reminded me that I’d forgotten to rewrite the title search when I performed the transition to CakePHP. I can’t quite believe its taken this long for someone to point that out to me. I can’t quite believe I didn’t notice this before now. This is what I get for doing double duty.
It performs an ingredient search when you attempt to perform a title search. I’m working on fixing that now. But I’m pretty tired. It’ll probably be a few days before it gets done. So just be aware, title search doesn’t work right now. To the wonderful user who did some testing and spotted it, thank you!
Back to Work
November 3, 2010 – 12:23 am
Didn’t get the funding. Well, back to work with me. I’ll find another way.
Out with the old and in with the new (bugs)
November 2, 2010 – 10:06 am
So today’s update included a number of bug fixes. Unfortunately it also included a couple of bug additions. Oh well, win some, lose some. Two steps forward, one step back. I’m pretty sure the additions were less than the subtractions, so the net result was positive. Err.. never mind.
Yeah, I’m pretty tired. Working an 8+ hour day teaching and then coming home to 4 to 6 more hours of start up work is starting to wear me a little thin. To alleviate some of the pain, I’ve applied for seed funding. The hope is to raise enough money to allow me to quit my job as a teacher and work full time on Fridge to Food. Not that I don’t enjoy teaching, I do!
But I was working on Fridge to Food before I came here, with the hope of making it my full time job some day. I didn’t think the chance to do that would come so soon. But it has. Funny thing to, because it feels like it couldn’t come sooner. The more Fridge to Food gradually becomes a real, live website, the more work I have to do on it. And the more work I have to do on it, the more I want and need to be able to focus whole heartedly on it so that it has a chance at succeeding and becoming the excellent cooking tool and community that I envisioned when I started it. Anyway, I hear back whether I get to interview for the funding tomorrow.
In the mean time, this update includes a couple of neat features in addition to the bug fixes.
- Tag browsing has been updated to allow you to browse only tags of a certain type (general, allergen, course, cuisine, or diet). More types may come if people suggest them.
- You may now browse the ingredients that exist on this site. If you click on one, you will see a list of recipes that use it.
The final thing the update includes are some design updates. The footer has been updated with some new information and links. I added a new welcome box that shows on login. The box provides social media links to help spread the site. Finally, I added some social media links (Facebook and Twitter) to the recipe view pages, to make it easier to share recipes that you like to social media.
The tag and ingredient browsing updates are leading into something that is in development, but that I hope will eventually be key for the site. When you gain a certain reputation, you will gain the ability to edit and organize the tags and ingredients on the site. Exactly how much reputation will lead to how much power hasn’t been determined yet. The powers gained will be to merge, mark as synonyms, or declare relations between. The idea is to give the community as much power to shape Fridge to Food as a tool as possible. Together we can build a far more effective tool for sharing and finding great recipes than I ever could alone. There will be more on this to come.
Also in the works, but not ready for this update, are import recipes from html or xml formatted files. I’m looking at implementing hRecipe import, but first I’m going to write a homegrown F2FML import. I made some progress on this, but it wasn’t ready for prime time yet. Also in the works are more ribbons and the ability, as requested, to browse the available ribbons that may be earned as well as see who has earned each ribbon.
Anyway, I’m going to sign off and hit the sack early tonight. Wish me luck tomorrow! As always, if you spot any bugs don’t hesitate to post them. And if you have any ideas, don’t hesitate to share them.
Happy eats!