I’m getting back into blogging about in-progress projects, because otherwise I hardly blog at all. Expect posts soon about the following coding projects, all at varying stages of completion:
Brief sidenote: I switched a while back to Python/Django, and I’m very glad I did. I can often get to a working prototype within only an hour or two. Back in my younger days I wanted to write everything myself from the ground up, but I see now that I was foolish. Life is short. I’d rather focus on the interesting parts — the app itself — and let the framework handle the routine grunt work.
Momentum
Momentum is the app I’d like to introduce today. It’s a web app written in Django, started back in January to help me track my goals.
More specifically, I wanted something that would help me spend more time reading scriptures and writing fiction. I don’t always have a free half-hour, though, so I needed something to track little bits of time throughout the day, and Momentum was born. I’ve been using it pretty much every single day since then.
Here’s what it looks like on my phone (with dummy data):
Some quick notes:
It currently supports tracking minutes, times, or words per day.
When I reach a particular goal, it disappears from the list for the rest of the day so I can focus on the goals I haven’t yet reached. (This is a change I made last night, actually.)
If I don’t make any progress toward a goal at all within a set time period, the goal goes stale and turns red. (There’s a system-wide stale period setting and each goal can also have its own.) I started using this staleness idea in Bookshelf (more on that in a later post) and it’s been motivating enough that I ported it to Momentum.
It supports folders. I have Projects and Health folders, where I have specific projects (stories/apps I’m working on), and things like squats and pushups.
Right now you have to add/edit goals via the Django admin. It works but isn’t as nice as something in-app. I just need to get around to doing this, since this is the main thing keeping it from being releasable.
The code is on GitHub as usual. Again, this is unreleased, in-progress code, YMMV, grain of salt, etc.
I just finished reading Life in a Medieval City, by Joseph and Frances Gies, and in the notes on page 236 I found this interesting list of occupations taken from the Paris tax list of 1292:
366 shoemakers
214 furriers
199 maidservants
197 tailors
151 barbers
131 jewelers
130 restaurateurs
121 old-clothes dealers
106 pastrycooks
104 masons
95 carpenters
86 weavers
71 chandlers
70 mercers
70 coopers
62 bakers
58 water carriers
58 scabbard makers
56 wine sellers
54 hatmakers
51 saddlers
51 chicken butchers
45 purse makers
43 laundresses
43 oil merchants
42 porters
42 meat butchers
41 fish merchants
37 beer sellers
36 buckle makers
36 plasterers
35 spice merchants
34 blacksmiths
33 painters
29 doctors
28 roofers
27 locksmiths
26 bathers
26 ropemakers
24 innkeepers
24 tanners
24 copyists
24 sculptors
24 rugmakers
24 harness makers
23 bleachers
22 hay merchants
22 cutlers
21 glovemakers
21 wood sellers
21 woodcarvers
The Society of Creative Anachronism has a more detailed page listing the French occupation names and a breakdown by gender. For example, there was one male hangman (bourriau), one female mole trapper (taupiere), four male pike-makers (piqueeur), one female tart seller (tartriere), one male log floater (atireeur de busche), etc. Fascinating stuff.
The tax list was published by Hercule Géraud in 1837 in Paris sous Philippe-le-Bel, which is conveniently on Google Books (the list itself, “Le livre de la taille de Paris pour l’an 1292,” is a bit later in the book).
I don’t know how many of you remember my Mormon Texts Project, but it’s coming along well and is in good hands.
Today I’ve got a new (but similar) project to propose: the Mormon Audiobooks Project, making old public domain Mormon books available for free in audiobook format.
It makes the most sense to do this through LibriVox, an already-established platform for free audiobooks (the equivalent of Project Gutenberg). They have a good process in place that includes book coordination and quality control. Volunteers would sign up through their system and record however many chapters they feel like doing.
It also makes sense to use the Mormon Texts Project catalog as a base. That way the source books are available to all volunteers.
These obviously would not be professionally produced audiobooks, but a free audiobook is almost always better than no audiobook. (For some of the books there are already commercial audiobooks by professional voiceover artists, of course.)
The hitch with all of this: I…don’t really listen to audiobooks. Usually they put me to sleep, and if they don’t, I get distracted after about sixty seconds and miss big chunks of the text. (The same things happen when anyone reads to me in person.)
So, I’m probably not the best person to run this. I think it’s important, and I’m willing to help with process and moving things along, but it really needs someone who loves audiobooks at the head of it. If you think you could be that person, let me know.
Also, if any of you are interested in the project, either as listeners or volunteers, leave a comment or let me know.
