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Idea #3 & #4 Inspiration from Christmas : Secret santa & Gifts.

By on January 25, 2022

#3 Secret Santa Generator

With Christmas and the holidays just around the corner, it’s the time of the year to buy presents and I had a few ideas around this that popped up a while ago.

After your parents met your girlfriend and it’s been going steady a question arose just before Christmas. Will she be there for Christmas and what gift can we buy her? Now multiply that with your number of siblings and an idea arose, why don’t we do a secret Santa instead of buying gifts for everyone.

For those who don’t know how secret Santa works here how it usually goes: You write each name on a piece of paper, then all the names go into a bowl. From there each participant picks a name in the bowl, if you pick your name you pick another or we restart.

Note that this method has its flaw (Explained here in this numberphile video) and there are other ways to pick, usually using an app.
That was where the first idea came about, why not make an app that does this for you.
Instead of writing your name and putting it into a bowl, you write your email on the site or give it to the organizer, enter all the email in the app. The app can prevent you from getting yourself and send an email of the person they have to buy a gift too.

Source of revenue: ads, can build a newsletter with the email (if the user consent), amazon affiliate by linking their wishlist to their profile.


Note: something similar already exist http://www.secretsantagenerator.net

#4 Wish list with a secret Santa Generator

While a secret Santa is a neat idea, it probably doesn’t have that much revenue potential. However, if you combine it with a wish list app it has way more opportunity to make money. Basically you create the list of things you want, you could even rank them and your secret Santa has access to the list of things that you want. The app could send affiliate links of what your secret Santa wants and it makes it easier to target ads of what you selected in your lists. It could integrate with various vendors and social networks.

Note that all of this is already done by a site called Elfster.

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Idea #2: A alarm clock that take account location and time zone.

By on January 18, 2022

I’m not travelling much, but when I do I hate it when my alarm goes off when it doesn’t need to. This idea came about when I was looking to try some android development and tried a multitude of alarm apps. Most of them were ok, some had ads, some had timezone and most were better than the default at the time. However, none would use the location data to determine if the alarm will go off or not.

There are two points to the idea of an alarm clock (and calendar) taking account location.

First, if you’re not home do you really need that alarm and second if you need that alarm do you need it in your local time or your current time zone. In the first case, let’s say you’re on vacation, well you don’t need to wake up at 5h30 to skip traffic do you ? In the second case, you might have an important meeting or a call to do precisely at that time but in your local time, not in the time whatever time zone you’re in.

These two features would be pretty useful in a calendar and task tracking software (like Omnifocus) too. CGP Grey even talked about it on his podcast Cortex with Mike.

I haven’t done research yet, but I’m pretty sure something like this exists.

Since nowadays I don’t travel much (especially in the last two years…), I don’t have a need for it anymore.

Related:

20 Vetted Tools and Tips for Managing Time Zone Differences

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Idea #1: A way to turn a old Ipad/Iphone/Android phone kids friendly

By on January 11, 2022

I got this idea when I switched phone and my kids were playing with it,

This idea is somewhat a recent one, but has been there since the internet was the internet and there are multiple layers to it.

  • Protecting your child from harmful content:
  • Controlling what kind of content your kids have access 
  • Limiting your kid device time and when they have access to it
  • Re-purposing your old device  

Protecting your child from harmful content:

This has been a problem since the dawn of the internet, they are nasty pictures we want to hide from our kids’ uncorrupted eyes. There have been numerous ways to do it with net nanny in the 90s to this magnificent list, nowadays that do more than just block harmful content. In the past, I used a router that could you could set a black list of websites you want to block and you could even block keywords. It wasn’t perfect, it sometimes blocked sites that shouldn’t be blocked.

Controlling what kind of content your kids have access 

This is the hardest one because most apps are to click away from harmful content. YouTube in particular was notoriously bad at this, it’s algorithm was recommending adult parody cartoons after watching genuine kids content, it is somewhat better now and YouTube kids kind of address the issues. But YouTube kids have other issues like preferring content in english even though the last video was in french, it doesn’t have access to all the kids content even if the channel my kids want to watch label has kids content. I could probably make a post on how bad YouTube is and how YouTube doesn’t allow kid friendly features like no recommendation at the end, only recommendations from specific channels I choose, etc.

Limiting your kid device time and when they have access to it

We currently have a solution with this one by using our internet provider using xFi Gateways. It allows you to group devices for a profile where a profile is either a person or purpose (work, education).

You can then put a limited amount of time for each profile to access the internet and block the internet for a certain period of the day in the week. This is great! It allowed me to block internet in the morning preventing the kids from watching dumb YouTube show. You can even set the amount of allowed time and I can differ between the weekdays and the weekend.

However, it doesn’t limit the amount of time on the device, so any game that doesn’t require an internet connection to be played can be played and there is nothing you can do except either removing the device or taking the phone or device away.

Repurposing your old device  

Like old computers, these old phones cost a lot when we bought them and it breaks my heart to give them back for nothing or close to nothing. Nonetheless, at some point usually the screen break, you run out of space, the battery last only one hour, your charging port is broken or your phone is no longer updated and can’t support the lasted version of your app (thanks Apple)

My old phone has an IR blaster (not sure if it the right name) that can be used as a remote control for anything that use IR has long you have the apps for it, so I keep it for that.

An old iPad mini that can’t run Netflix anymore because apple won’t let us update it, it’s now uses for Skype (yes that still a thing when your parents don’t want to be on FB or iPhone) and watch YouTube kids, which has a built-in timer. I’ve read that some people like to use their old device for beermoney site since some have per device reward, but the rewards per time are so low so I’m not sure it’s worth the time.

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I’ll do it tomorrow

By on January 2, 2022

 

January 1st

That new year’s resolution, I’ll start it tomorrow. I’m way too hungover to do anything. 

January 2nd & 3rd  

Can’t work on a week-end, I’ll do it tomorrow. 

January 4th 

Not feeling well, I’ll do it tomorrow. 

January 11th 

Completely forgot about that, but I’m busy now, I’ll do it tomorrow.

It not a priority now

I’m feeling sick I can’t do it

Kids are sick I can’t do right now

To much work maybe next week

The whole situation is not right at the moment to start

April 1st

Broke my foot maybe in a month

I just had a fight with my partner, I will deal with that tomorrow

There that new show I need to watch first 

There that game I need to finish first

My friend are playing a new online game I can’t say no

May 15th

My team playing tonight against their bitter rival, I need to watch it live

I don’t want to today

I don’t have enough time.

I haven’t got time

I’m not inspired.

June 9th

It’s not original enough.

I got my expectations too high just thinking about it…

I can’t overcome the inertia.

It’s not the right moment to do it.

I have to plan everything first.

I haven’t finished planning yet

The idea isn’t polished enough yet.

My idea isn’t original enough

It’s not perfect enough

July 4th

It’s a holiday it’s not the time to work on this

I need a vacation right now

I’m too busy with something else

Life is complicated at the moment

I’ve got too many urgent things to do

I haven’t got [the thing] I need

It’s too risky

I’m not smart enough to do this

September 12th

Bob said it wouldn’t work

Nick tried that and it didn’t work out for them

I’m worried about what Joe will say about it

I’m too tired – I deserve a break

I don’t know the right people to do it 

I’m afraid it will be another failure.

I need to do market research before starting

My family is my top priority, I can’t do this right now

I need to focus on my career, this will have to wait

I’m afraid of the competition.

I’m fine how i am

December 5th

Oh crap! I completly forgot about this. I’ll just wait for the new year to make a new resolution.

January 1st

Here we go again…

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Old ideas never die but they should at least be shared

By on September 28, 2021

Back when I started using google doc (2008?) I made a doc of ideas that pop into my heads that either would be cool to try or at least see the light of day. In 2014, I think I’ve stopped updating it because I’ve reached more than 365 ideas and later made a part two that included cool shit I’ve found on reddit or HackerNews. Then in 2016 I started another one, but didn’t took off like the other one. Turn out not sleeping because your kids have trouble sleeping, doesn’t help you find news ideas.

Some of them are silly, others not suitable to be published or just story ideas for fiction, but some were almost ahead of their time. Well not really, but profitable apps (and non profitable app too) have popped up after I’ve written the idea. Sometimes, I just didn’t know the service existed.

They say ideas are cheap so I’ve decided to give them to you for free. Since most of them are already implemented elsewhere or stupid so it’s not that big of a gift but I’ll try to do some research to see if they already exist and how it came to be.

So join me on this journey and let’s see what will come out of it. Maybe you can tell me about your idea along the way.

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The no streak streak

By on August 7, 2021

Jerry Seinfeld popularized the “don’t break the chain” (streak) productivity hack. In an interview, Jerry explained how he came up with his joke. By writing a joke every day and by keeping a streak of how many days he did.

“Just keep at it and the chain will grow longer every day. You’ll like seeing that chain, especially when you get a few weeks under your belt. Your only job is to not break the chain.”

Productivity guru went bonkers on the tips and now many suggest it. There are even daily tracking sites that are built around this idea (like joesgoals.com & tdp). And Seth Godin mentions it in his latest book The Practice.

As I’m writing today I’m on day two of a chain of writing for 10 minutes every day. I previously broke a chain two days ago of 67 days. This tip is a good one considering the number of people recommending it. Yet, there is a dark cousin to this tip that we should be worried about, the no streak streak or the chain of doing nothing.

The common mistake when you stop a chain is to not pick up a new chain. You see, you’re most likely going to give up or become inconsistent after breaking a pattern that you’ve been doing for so long. If seeing all those X on the calendar excites you, not seeing any should be a cue to do something about it, not let it slide.

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#The100DayProject

By on July 31, 2021

I’ve talked about the law of 100 in recently. The #The100DayProject take it to the next level by including a consistency and an accountability component. What is the 100 day project?

The 100 Day Project is a free creative project that takes place online. Every end of January, thousands of people all around the world commit to 100 days of exploring their creativity. The idea is simple: choose a project, do it every day for 100 days, and share your process on Instagram with the hashtag #The100DayProject.

While there is no hard required accountability, having to share it every day create an expectation from your peers and if you miss a day everyone will see it. It also helps you by being consistent. We all know that being consistent can bring wonderful things to the world. Take for example Seth Godin, who is blogging every day since he started his blog.

Here some example of creators that took this project and their wonderful creation.

The concept of this project really ring a bell with me because it everything you need to get yourself going. It gives you a reason to do it every day, public accountability, a tribes different from your own to share your art, small incremental step toward a bigger goal. I haven’t tried it yet since I found it harder to apply to what I do (writing and coding), but I’m sure I’ll join eventually.

You don’t have to wait for the project to start to do something similar. It is a great template to create your own. Challenge some friend to do a similar change with you. You can use app like Beeminder, StickK or HabitShare to follow through on your goal.

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Law of 100

By on July 25, 2021

I recently watched a youtube video of Noah Kagan about an interesting idea he call the law of 100.

The name of the law is self-descriptive, you need to do something one hundred times to know if it worth it or if it will get traction. Doing it a 100 time give you the opportunity to experiment more, learn from your mistake and get better with time.
And if you’re doing it every day its remove the decision, you got to do it 100 times before you can think of stopping.
Depending on how you phrase it can provide you with a tangible goal to reach that not out of your control (doing 100 video vs making 100 bitcoin)

Noah explain 9 step to make it work.
1-Pick your time (day)

There is an old saying if it’s not on the calendar it’s ain’t happening. In the video, he talks about a day, but I would push to at what time you will do it. In the morning? At 8h?


2-Reduce the friction

Want to shoot a youtube video? Have your camera ready so you don’t worry about it.
Want to play more guitar? Have your guitar out in your living room.
I remember Ramit talking in one of his post or interview how he made it easier to go to the gym every day by having his gym cloth ready for the next day.

“I realized I needed to put my gym clothes right near the floor with the shoes right there, so when I got out of bed my feet hit the shoes. Once I did that, my gym attendance went up.”


3-Have accomptability buddy/partner

Having someone that can call you out on your shit is great, you can even put a bet on it with beeminder or stick it.

4-Join a community

Having a community of like minded people is great. It motivate you and you can talk to other that have or had the same issue you’re having. You can check the 100days project (LINK), which is a project where creative must post a creation on their instagram every day for 100 days. If your goal is more business oriented checkout Noah group at okdork/group.

5-Take a break

This one is a bit counter-intuitive. If you’re not feeling it, maybe you just need to take a break go for a walk, take a nap and come back refresh to work on your task. I would push it a little and plan for a break. Sure someday you feel like going forever, but doing that every time without any break you will eventually burnout from what you’re trying to accomplish.


6-Notice what working

Notice what doing well and do more of that. That feeling of making progress will motivate you even more.

7-Have a clear why

Remind yourself daily of why you’re doing this, maybe your learning a language to impress someone or meet a special someone.


8-Make it fun

If it’s not fun, take a step back to see what part aren’t fun and what part are. Focus more on the part of what you’re doing that are fun or change a bit the not fun part to make it fun. Can you outsource the part you don’t like? Can you change the time of day you’re doing it to make it more interesting? Can you track something that might give you a sense of progression to motivate you?


9-Reward yourself

Have a reward at the end of you 100 to look forward too, it can be a trip, in can be going out. Something that will give that extra motivation to keep going forward.

Doing it 100 days consecutively touch another point: Consistency is king, one prime example of that is marketing legend Seth Godin. He writes a blog post at least every day since he started is blog. While Seth was already known when he started it, its helped him reach a bigger audience that he could ever imagine. 

I’m trying a mini law of one hundred, which is to write something, anything, for 100 days. The goal is to at some point take it to another 100 posts on this blog. Next step would probably to publish one a day for 100 days, but let not get too much ahead of ourselves.

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Reading 100 books before 40

By on July 8, 2021

Awhile ago, I’ve decided to read 100 books before I hit forty. I’ve already read about 34 books in the last two years when I’ve decided to do this challenge and I think four years were remaining before the dreaded forty. Now that I have forty I just wanted to post the list out there 😀

Why read more books why not something else. I think reading is great to help structure your mind, discovers new word, and expand your imagination. I’m not the only one, look at Ryan Holiday on how and why you should read more or at Ramit Seti saying book being the best investment. I think reading make you a better reader too, you read faster, retain the information faster. Personally, I tend to read more non-fiction that fiction and read fiction faster. I managed to reach the fated 100 book before forty and even read a few more.

Here is the list of book from when I’ve started this to when I’ve finished it:

  1. Don’t make me think
  2. 4 hour work week 2st edition
  3. Art of start
  4. Nudge
  5. Sway
  6. I will teach you to be rich
  7. 100$ startup
  8. Montley Fool: The million dollars portfolio
  9. Back of a napkin
  10. The dip
  11. Getting things done
  12. 59 seconds
  13. Linchpin
  14. Rework
  15. Game frame
  16. Smart couple finish rich
  17. Travailler sans y laisser sa peau
  18. L’art de negocier
  19. Les bon couples font les bon comptes
  20. Influence
  21. Predictably Irrational
  22. How to win friend and influence people
  23. Le grand voyage 1er partie 
  24. Crowdsourcing
  25. The game (neil strauss)
  26. Game of throne (audio)
  27. Clash of Kings (audio)
  28. A storm of sword (audio)
  29. A feast for crows (audio)
  30. A Dance with dragons (audio)
  31. 48 laws of power
  32. Les Chevaliers de L’emeraudes: Feu dans le ciel
  33. Choose yourself
  34. Hunger games I

Prior 2015 (34 books 8 fictions 26 non fictions)

 (I realized here the in the last year or 2 I’ve read 34 book so I decided to make the push to 100)

2015 (26 books 13 fictions 12 non fictions) 

  1. Hunger games III
  2. Brave new world
  3. 1984
  4. The first 20h
  5. L’or ménager
  6. How Children succeed
  7. Hitchhiker guide to the galaxy
  8. CE – Les dragons de l’empereur noir
  9. Lean Startup
  10. Bird by bird
  11. Restaurant à la fin du monde
  12. La nuit des temps
  13. The Flinch
  14. Mastery
  15. World war Z (audio)
  16. Divergent
  17. The martian (audio)
  18. Geisha
  19. Letter to a fiction writer
  20. A la recherche du mouton sauvage
  21. Principle 80/20
  22. La vie, l’univers et le reste
  23. The art of seduction (audio)
  24. Moonwalking with Einstein
  25. Warren Buffett, l’homme le plus riche du monde
  26. Salut et merci pour le poisson

2016 (12 books, 4 fictions, 8 non-fictions)

  1. Globalement inoffensif
  2. Né pour gagner – Zig Ziglar
  3. Déclin de la république romaine
  4. Thirty million word
  5. AC Underworld 
  6. Just do the work
  7. Ego is the enemy
  8. Je suis ton père
  9. Zero to one
  10. Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance
  11. The obstacle is the way
  12. The war of art

2017 (20 books, 4 fictions, 16 non-fiction)

  1. Deep work
  2. Whole brain child
  3. The subtle art of not giving a fuck 
  4. Fahrenheit 451 
  5. Nobody read your shit
  6. Dale Carnegie – the 5 essential people skills
  7. Instinct de survie
  8. La mort d’Ivan Illitch
  9. This will make you smarter (audio)
  10. How to talk so kids will listen …
  11. Money, master the game
  12. Your first dollar
  13. The daily stoic
  14. Peaceful Parent, Happy kids
  15. Barking up the wrong tree
  16. Le horla
  17. Your move 
  18. Celtes et gaulois
  19. Vercingétorix
  20. La véritable histoire de Marc-Aurèle

2018 (12 books, 3 fictions, 9 non-fictions)

  1. Sapien
  2. Digital Fortress
  3. Essentialism
  4. Ready player one
  5. Unshakeable
  6. No drama discipline
  7. Da Vinci Code (FR)
  8. Recession Proof Graduate
  9. Love yourself (59 pages)
  10. Perennial Seller: The Art of Making and Marketing Work that Lasts
  11. Principle by Ray Dalio
  12. Factfulness

 Total: 104 books, 32 fictions, 72 non-fiction

All these 104 books were read cover to cover. 

These following were just skim and taken on out of curiosity: 

  1. L’affiliation (Affiliate Marketing book)
  2. How to web comic
  3. Power of habit
  4. The now habit (I don’t remember reading it)
  5. Dangerous women (Only read GRRM story)
  6. 4 hour body
  7. 4 hour chef
  8. Play for a living
  9. SPQR
  10. Tools of titan

Programming and Software engineering

I didn’t include programming and software engineering book since I usually jump around the book to read stuff I want to improve.

  1. Effective java 
  2. Hardcore java (prog)
  3. Hibernate recipe (prog)
  4. Clean code (prog) (Note: I did read it cover to cover, twice…) 
  5. Clean coder
  6. Code Complete
  7. Web analytics (fr)
  8. Google analytic (3rd edition)

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To go faster we must first go slower

By on July 1, 2021

Sometimes the deadline is yesterday or sometimes your boss wants the change now. Maybe the clients have an important feature that he thought he could do without dev but realised one day before the big marketing splash what he wanted to do is not working.

"ASAP" is not a deadline

These changes are easy, no problem. I will do it in a flash. By now you probably know the story, it’s not easy to simply go fast, we forget basic things or completely forget (or even worse forgo) testing a critical part of the system that change might have an impact on.

Fast forward today I relived that exact situation and honestly it’s not my first time, but I get caught every time. Recently I made a simple script that updates some content in the db. Easy peasy, worked fine in my local db. I put up the PR and then fixed for some part the others have commented on and then merged on the main branch. Once the service was pushed to dev, it was in a crashloopback. It was because the dev db had way more data to process than my local db. The script would still be running when the health probe would check if the service was running and would stop the service since it wasn’t responding. 

I made the fix then pushed it after running around to find someone to approve off-hour. Once the fix was pushed, it crashed again, but this time because the dev db had some corrupted data that would stop the script. I fixed the script to cover that edge case to then released it again. Beyond and behold, someone else merged right after so the server restarted before finishing the script. I’ve republished the script and finally, after three days, it was running and working on dev environment.

Notice that if I had backup the dev db and restored it on my local one I would probably have found all these problems. Perhaps in the initial pull request if I waited a bit for more dev to review it the problem would have been noticed earlier and fixed beforehand. If I’ve checked if other pull requests for the same service are ongoing there wouldn’t be a merge right after the script is merged.

That’s why when you need to go faster you must first go slower. You want to quickly deliver that api to the client, give them an example of the expected json first before starting any code. Do pull requests with only the change in the swagger file so others can review if everything makes sense. The time you take before will be time you save later down the line. 

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