My shiny new blog is up! =]

I could totally go for some of this right now.

Last night I fell asleep thinking, why did I even bother with Ruby on Rails for my last app? No really? Whyyy? It’s not like there was any need to store any of the information on a database. Ruby on Rails made more sense for my very first draft, when I wanted to link city names to their tax rates, but for my last app, there wasn’t any need for that. So due to my natural tendency to make things more difficult than they need to be, I woke up today determined to gain a better understanding of Javascript and I made a tipping calculator from just HTML/CSS and Javascript/jQuery. I even made it all iPhone web app friendly.

Check it out here: karenling.net/tipcalculator.html

So I spent some time designing a prettier interface for the tip calculator I wrote about yesterday. But I also basically redid the entire code to make it a bit more concise…well…as concise as a beginner dabbler in programming can be. 

I’m not a graphics designer, nor a UX designer, nor a programmer, or anything that would make me remotely knowledgeable about any of this. But this was essentially my workflow:

[1] Yesterday I completed the draft of my tip calculator, which took a few hours for me. But I wasn’t completely happy with it and I didn’t have any idea how I wanted it to look. It was good practice at least.

[2] Then I started thinking about how I would actually want it it work and how it would look. I carried over some of the same ideas from before, but I wanted something with more a calculator feel to it. So I did a simple sketch on some scratch paper. 

[3] Then I started working on the design in Photoshop since it’s a lot easier to move things around, change colors, and visualize in PS (obviously).

[4] Then wrote the mock up in HTML/CSS and Javascript/jQuery to make sure everything would look the way I wanted it to look in the final project. I definitely didn’t want to use any graphics (jpg/png/gif/etc) because I wanted the final project to look clean and sharp at any resolution so everything was styled with CSS.

[5] Then I finally worked on the Ruby on Rails part and applied the styling on my application. I had to tweak a few of the classes and IDs, but overall, putting the Rails part together with the HTML/CSS was fairly uncomplicated.  

Again, I have no idea what the proper workflow for any of this should be like, but this is what I did. 

Anyway, check it out here: karenlingtipcalculator.herokuapp.com. It does work on my iPhone, but I really do hope one day I’ll learn how to make native iOS apps.

Whipped this tip calculator up last night and fixed a few things this morning. Gosh, I’m seriously bored, but at least now I have some Ruby on Rails knowledge to keep me entertained every few hours. I didn’t do anything decorative with this…mainly because I don’t know when I would ever actually use this. But hey, it kept me occupied for a few hours. 

Anyway, I inputed a few cities with their tax rate. You just have to type in the subtotal, and it’ll return all the the tips for 15%, 18%, 20%. And I know some people calculate their tips before tax, so that’s what the “tip of subtotal” and “total = amount + tip of subtotal” rows are for. And then there are people who calculate the tips after tax, and that’s what the last two rows are for. 

I know making apps like this is child’s play for most people, but I’m hoping that the more practice I get, the better I’ll get at this. And maybe one day I’ll be able to make something super duper awesome.

I’m in the process of designing a fully functional blog using Ruby on Rails right now, but that’s been trickier. I have most of the graphic and illustrative design down (and it’s way cute and very me), but I don’t know if I’ll ever get it up. I don’t trust my knowledge in Ruby on Rails enough to use it for anything serious…like blogging. Yes. I take blogging very seriously.

Yay! I’m so excited I finally made/wrote something in Ruby on Rails. For all you super awesome coders out there, please don’t judge harshly. I know it’s not great and there are a bunch of loop holes, but I’m kind of proud of what I did, especially considering that I’ve never studied or played with any programming languages before. (I majored in molecular and cell biology!). 

So I recently had to go to the hospital for something and I wanted a way to keep track of the drugs I was taking so I wouldn’t take them too late or too soon (or you know…OD myself somehow!) Yes, this is what I spent my time doing because I really couldn’t do anything!

Do I really use it? No. Because I don’t really like to take drugs so I just haven’t been taking any.

There is a new users form but since it’s not really a great app or anything, I didn’t put that public since it’s probably not something anyone will ever need. But if anyone is curious in playing with it, feel free to log in here with the following credentials: 

email: random@random.com
password: 0000

I used to think vapor trails were magical.

My throat really hurts. =[ Sick.

On repeat: Stay - Rihanna ft. Mikky Ekko.

Breakfast. Yeah, I burnt my bagel. =[

A typical weekday lunch for me. Added some fakon (fake + bacon). I’m not a vegetarian, but I prefer fake meat.