| web | https://www.better-simple.com/ |
|---|---|
| Author | Tim Schilling |
March 19, 2023 » Better Simple » [Archived Version]
As of this week, I’ve completed my first project that was submitted on this site. It was for a friend who has been learning to program to be more efficient at his job. He asked me to help him parse out some information from an image on a web page. At first I thought he meant some typical web scraping, but then found out that he wanted to determine what numbers were printed on rendered charts. It was a bit daunting at first, so I told him that I may not have a solution for him. Then I started s…
Read MoreMarch 19, 2023 » Better Simple » [Archived Version]
Over the past few weeks I’ve been doing a lot of self reflection. One thing that came out of it was the realization that I am currently operating without any goals. I had to-do lists for clients and projects, but no real goals to help myself grow. To rectify this, I decided that I should create daily and weekly goals. Daily Goals: Help someone on the #django channel Solve one Project Euler question Make one commit to public project Come up with one app or business idea Make Emily s…
Read MoreMarch 19, 2023 » Better Simple » [Archived Version]
Some potential clients may be scared by the uncertainty of how a software project is completed. This is completely understandable. We don’t expect clients to know this nor do we require them to fully understand it either. Better Simple’s process is (unsurprisingly) simple. At the core of it, it’s about managing expectations. If you’re surprised at the end of a project, then we’ve failed. The process itself should be methodical and consistent. Better Simple’s process breaks down into the followi…
Read MoreMarch 19, 2023 » Better Simple » [Archived Version]
The problem the client was having was that she had to spend around an hour every night to collect all the day’s order information, format it into a CSV and then send it over to her drop shipment company. Since she wasn’t familiar with SQL nor did she have a reasonable administration view to her data, she was collecting all of this information through emails. In the end, I was able to automate this process for her along with sending out an extra notification for her. Now every night, the syste…
Read MoreMarch 19, 2023 » Better Simple » [Archived Version]
Since starting Better Simple, I have integrated a few web applications with Google Calendar. They all required the system to import events from Google Calendar into the web application and then export the appointments from the web application into the users’ Google Calendars. The benefit of this was that it allowed the users to manage their calendars via their phone. It also potentially allowed the web applications to integrate with other web applications by using Google Calendar as the medium …
Read MoreMarch 19, 2023 » Better Simple » [Archived Version]
As I mentioned in another post, I use Craigslist for finding some of my work. This post explains what I’ve done to make my project searches more efficient. I look at three sections on an individual cities Craigslist page, “software / qa / dba”, “web / info design” under jobs and “computer” under gigs. I chose these because they are where I have found most of my projects. I used to check “internet engineers,” but found that my target market didn’t post under that section often. And if there wer…
Read MoreMarch 19, 2023 » Better Simple » [Archived Version]
Like a classic developer’s blog, I’m back after a multi-year hiatus. Hopefully this time I’ll keep this up to date more frequently. Somethings that I’d like to discuss in the future are: My history as a freelancer. How to breakdown work. What I call “Unsung Developer Thoughts”, the internal questions and considerations senior developers run through for new work. My experience at DjangoConUS 2022. Breaking down my Django Debugging Tutorial into particular posts. If you’d like to he…
Read MoreMarch 19, 2023 » Better Simple » [Archived Version]
There are resources for how to have a positive experience at a DjangoCon as a first time attendee. The difference with this one is that I’m writing it as a part of my first DjangoCon experience. Before I get into, here’s my current background. I mention it because it influences my decision making, risk analysis and goals. I’m 32, male, white, married, happily employed, well paid, childless, an irregular open source committer and responsive on the Django forum and discord. You, the reader, m…
Read MoreMarch 19, 2023 » Better Simple » [Archived Version]
First things first. Here’s the code. Enjoy! from django.contrib import admin from django.core.paginator import Paginator, Page from django.db.models import Count, Exists, OuterRef from myapp.models import MyModel, OtherModel class AnnotatedPaginator(Paginator): """ Apply a dictionary of annotations to the page for the paginator. """ def __init__(self, *args, annotations=None, **kwargs): self.annotations = annotations super().__init__(*args, **kwargs) …
Read MoreMarch 19, 2023 » Better Simple » [Archived Version]
This post will go over my tutorial from DjangoCon US 2022. You can read more about my experience at DjangoCon here. For those of you who prefer to get straight to the fun stuff, browse to the GitHub repo: github.com/tim-schilling/debug-tutorial/. If you’d like to test your mettle, I encourage you to clone the repo and work through it. The documentation includes questions and walk-throughs on how I would solve it. Most of the solutions are implemented in the main branch except for those that …
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