phugoid

Very nice site (diarytail.com), by the way.

Unfortunately nutritionix has only basic nutritional data as well, the sort of thing you find on a product label. Not bad but not great. Have a look at their sample data. Plus it's around 10k/year or 50k/license.

I'm thinking home cooks would get a lot of value from the tool, and reasonably good data even if they use raw instead of cooked (as an example).

I really like your suggestion. I think I will implement it.

The end goal is to get enough people interested and using the site, then introduce premium features based on the feedback they give.

Thanks for bringing this to my attention. I have no intention of spamming users or of publishing their info. I will take another look at the text when time permits.

Yes, that site does a pretty good job. At first glance the copy/paste approach is promising - in practice it's a bit more hassle and less precise than what recipelab does in my opinion, plus I'm starting from a clutter-free UI that works great on mobile devices.

Do you think a full screenshot might be interesting?

But a simple screenshot image would not work for all cases, because the calculator page renders differently on mobile devices. On the other hand, if I offer a full working version without sign-up, there would be no reason to sign up. If I show a "frozen" version of the full calculator, normal users might get the wrong idea from that as well.

Nice site!

I don't think I can offer much of an API. As I mentioned in another comment, I gave up on trying to parse a free-text recipe. I avoid a lot of headache by directing users to enter ingredients from the database list only.

That being said, I'm open to talk about it - see my HN profile for email.

For many ingredients, you have the option of selecting raw or cooked. For popular items like potatoes there are dozens of options including fried, baked, salted, etc.

Try entering "potato fried" in the search box.

Thanks, fixed.

Thanks for checking it out. In my understanding, MyFitnessPal is oriented toward the fitness crowd, with a focus on daily energy consumption.

After a lot of exploration I decided to limit the scope as much as possible and target home cooks and food bloggers, with a focus on recipes.

I spent a few weeks of my spare time trying to get the parsing of free-text recipes to work (essentially MFP's import from link). The results were decent, but I realized that if it's only 90% accurate I still need a lot of user interface functions (like MFP) to let users edit/fix the inaccurate bits. It started smelling bad so I decided to strip it down to its most basic function.

I have no plans for now to use databases of branded products - the ones I saw were quite expensive and would be more useful for sites like MyFitnessPal, perhaps less useful for recipes/cooking.

Thanks!

1) Yes, it uses a USA gov' database. But I'm curious about why it looks American to you. Could you please elaborate?

2) To be frank, this is django's registration system, off-the-shelf (least effort). If I see enough interest in the site I will add simplified login. Thanks for highlighting it.

3) You did nothing wrong. I've stripped the interface down to the most basic functions.

4) You're totally correct. Adjusting the targets for body shape and activity is a priority item. As far as pregnant + breastfeeding, the source database has data for each but not both.

Not at all. But if it turned out that Toyota was already trying three times harder than everyone else to get it right, it would be harder to argue they didn't take "reasonable" precautions.

In the talk, he did mention that the government agency that certifies vehicles does only basic checks and does not enforce any standards on software. One could easily argue that they are partially to blame, as they're leaving it up to the manufacturers.

My only criticism is that he's comparing Toyota's code and processes to a published but unenforced standard and clearly they are nowhere near that standard. It would be more relevant to compare Toyota to other manufacturers.

It seems the legal argument against Toyota is that they were not following industry standards - but if no one else was, could you really call it an industry standard?

What inspires me is fear. Fear that I'm stuck in a dead-end job that won't give me any options or marketable skills. That I won't be able to pay for my children's education, that I'll be a burden to them when I retire. And most of all, the fear that if I get hit by a bus today I leave them with nothing.

That drives me to work harder, keep improving my skills and stay on the lookout for projects that will make me valuable on the developer market and maybe bring in revenue.

I was convinced that it wouldn't work unless I dove in and did it full-time. You lose your residency visa when you quit your job here, and you have 3 months to leave the country. There are ways around it but they are too expensive if you're bootstrapping.

I left my comfortable job in Dubai, moved the family (with 2 small kids) to Toronto to build an enterprise database product, launched it at the niche's world conference, pivoted once, and spent all the money I had. That took nine months.

When it came time to look for work I got a decent job offer in the Toronto startup scene as a django dev, but I called up my old employer in Dubai and found out they had not managed to replace me. So I replaced myself! Moved the whole family back out to the Middle East.

You'd think the whole experience has turned me off startups forever, but....

I had a rough experience as a one-man-show founder of a failed startup. At the time I had two young ones aged 2 and 5.

It's not just a matter of finding the hours to put into the two roles. Fatherhood is spiritually and emotionally demanding. It doesn't come naturally to all of us. I don't think Superman could work full-throttle at a challenging startup and then have much left to give when he gets home.

That's exactly the kind of snarky douche bag comment that keeps me away from HN these days. Still, I'll assume you're trying hard to be funny.

I was asking whether there's something already built. Google searches invariably bring up big-enterprise solutions.

I touch-type quickly but poorly, and it's because of my father.

I was ten years old, writing BASIC programs on a Tandy CoCo2 that someone gave me. My father saw that between chores I was spending inordinate amounts of time with my CoCo2 hooked up to the family TV. He told several times that I should type with all of my fingers.

Then one day he walked over to the TV and turned it off. He told me that unless I use all of my fingers, I wouldn't be allowed to use the computer anymore.

1. I agree. I need to improve that. I think I just don't have the distance from the project anymore to properly articulate it to someone seeing it for the first time - I'll work on this.

3. I've built a similar system for a previous employer, where I iterated the design of the software for seven years! I have a really good grasp of the domain, and when I saw what else was available in this market I knew I could build a better product.

Colleagues of mine who work in maintenance love this new system (though they're not the ones who would purchase it), and I've got one potential customer (maintenance manager) who really wants to start using it; they're waiting for corporate approval. But that's limited feedback I admit.

4. Absolutely agree. Tailoring the message to the managers is something I need to work on.

5. I'm targeting more specific things than CMMS: I tried a lot of keyword phrases and found that half a dozen of them like "Web Maintenance Software" had decent click through rates of say 2% and higher. I'm absolutely new to that game...

6. Thanks for your very down to earth and focused advice. It's unfortunate that the people I'm targeting don't have a big web presence. I'll keep trying!

This is my solo founder startup.

It's a maintenance management system for people who maintain equipment, facilities, or installations (from golf courses to oil rigs to buildings). All these people need to schedule maintenance tasks, track repairs and modifications, and keep an inventory of parts. My system is simple, and easier to use than anything else out there.

I'm looking for any feedback at all, about the design, the idea, the execution so far.

I'm struggling to get my first customers, which is unexpectedly difficult. I know that it was a mistake to go this far without lining up a decent number of potential customers. I've had some feedback and done one big pivot and a few iterations; maintenance people who have seen it really like it; but that's not enough to get the snowball rolling yet.

I've been focused on web marketing, particularly with Adwords. I'm quite shocked and dismayed that it's costing me 4$ a click to drive traffic to the site; I have to find another way. My focus right now is on improving organic search ranking; once I make some improvements there I plan to start cold calling...

I'm in a similar situation (quit high-paying job, following startup dream).

May I ask how you broke into dev/design consulting? I'll have to go that way too, and soon. But I'm still a bit mystified about where one finds consulting gigs... Places like ODesk/Elancer?

SEEKING WORK - Toronto or remote

Web Developement: my strength is in back-end programming, but I've built (and launched) a SaaS from start to finish including subscription billing and graphic design:

http://stratossystems.com/

back-end: django, python, mysql, linux, bash

front-end: html, css, javascript, jquery, sass

Engineering: I also have an aerospace engineering background and a fetish for low-level programming.

FORTRAN, C, C++, real-time systems, mechatronics, flight simulation, aerodynamics, modeling physics.

github: https://github.com/phugoid

linkedin: http://ca.linkedin.com/pub/daniel-romaniuk/14/1b3/524

I'd love to hear from you; see my profile for the email address.

Unless you actually want to turn some other type of iterator into a list, why wouldn't you use python's generic copy?

  from copy import copy
  b = copy(a)

This has the advantage of being advertised as a shallow copy, so the intent of the operation and its effects are clear and well-documented.

I've been working with Python for a year now, and I don't claim to have swum its depths.

It's a real shame that teachers are not being compensated better.

I'm not in the habit of confronting people, teachers least of all. I don't think it's productive most of the time. My point was simply about priorities. My son is a gorgeous, brilliant, quick-witted, hard-headed and strong-willed story-teller, liar, teller of jokes and fan of Pokemon. He's 4 years old. I love him more than myself, and I will do what I can to make his childhood fantastic. That imperative eclipses any concerns about the authority and sentiments of the education professionals in whose case I entrust him.

My son had his very first day of school today, and this article irks me. Everyone who works for a living could write a similar article about how great it would be to have unbounded trust, power and authority to carry out one's job. But that's not the way it works.

My job as a parent is to protect my kids. At all costs. Riling the feathers of a self-important teacher is of no concern. This is my blood that we're talking about.

I appreciate you sharing this; it was sweet. But there's something disturbing in the way you're framing it.

Have we lost perspective to the point where even the basic notions of how to live one's life have to be seen through the lens of a hacker working on a startup?

I say this as a hacker, working on a startup. When I'm done with my IE7 hacks, and I figure out why my production server isn't behaving like my dev server, I might take a moment to re-read that article and play some Queen, so I can fix my mind's eye on that beautiful human being who died too young.

I have founded it important mostly as a confidence builder.

To use and program a computer without having at least seen how it all works at a lower level felt wrong to me. I felt like I had no foundation to really understand what I was doing. I'm not claiming that I know which opcodes are being executed as I run my django dev server - that's not the point. But it's about having a clue.

Some day, if I have to dig down that deeply into my machine, I will not fear. I have seen what it looks like down there and I know which tools to bring with me.

At the risk of arguing with Robert Pirsig, I have a mechanical engineering degree, and I can assure you that no amount of curiosity could motivate someone to get through that curriculum.

For instance, your curiosity about boundary value problems will likely be sated around the second lecture.

I can assure you that he's not.

The biggest shock I had when I moved into an all-male work environment, being male myself, was that people farted and belched all day long and left half-empty pizza boxes lying around.

Needless to say, the gaseous emissions were temporarily suspended when a female voice was heard from down the hall.

Well, since this question dropped below the radar, let me answer it myself for completeness.

I emailed ARINC through their contact form, and a gentleman replied within one day that ARINC didn't have a problem if I just state that my product is ARINC compliant (consistent with that standard).