Done

After more than seven years, countless posts, and thousands of photos, this blog is done. It will remain online for reference purposes but all new content will be going to my new blog. Thanks to all who have stopped on by here over the years, and a special thanks to those that took the time to leave a comment (r.i.p. Betty and thanks Skoge).

If you wish to continue following my life after Idaho, visit my new blog, https://oldmanjim.com/

Thank you, Bus Driver Jim…

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Tifits

Last Friday I got up from a nap after taking the afternoon off and getting the shopping done with Steph and as I was taking a leak I remembered some things I forgot in the store and the acronym started rolling around in my brain and a new program was conceived: Tifits.com

So, I did what I always do, check to see if the domain was available and sure enough, so I bought it. Here it is Monday night and it’s all coded up and ready…

It’s dead simple to use: Click the big Add button to Add a Store, click the Store name to add an Item. You can then delete Items and Stores with the Delete buttons.

There is no signup involved, no BS, just a nice little app to use on your phone or tablet to keep track of things you forgot in the store. It uses Local Storage so there’s no Cloud involved and your list is as private as your device. Click the image to check it out!

Update: I added an auto-sort feature so everything is sorted, you know, automatically…

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Blog Status

I started this blog six and a half years ago, in June 2011, and it blows my mind that I’ve kept it going this long. My entire life during that time is now on the internet for anyone to see. So are some of my deepest thoughts but you would have to dig down to find them.

Let me present a link that you probably wouldn’t click on normally. It shows every post in alphabetical sequence and it’s kind of stunning: Click Here.

Scroll down and explore and when your done find the Hot Pussy post in the second column, click on it and see how it works. You know you want to…

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Old Coder

In the seventies and eighties I was one hell of a coder and as I look back on those times I realize I didn’t know how really good I was. My life was just a blur of creativity fueled by booze and drugs, the results were amazing, and I just stumbled along…

Over the last few years I’ve been keeping up quite well with the state of the art in web development. I mastered all the tools and developed some great code. I kept buying cool domain names and stuffed them with ground-breaking apps, hoping that by throwing them up on the wall of the internet, something would stick.

Nothing ever really did. I suppose it’s because I’m a coder not a marketer and profit was never the objective. I did place second in that Sunshine nation-wide government app contest but all I got out of that was a trip to Phoenix and a few bucks.

Just recently I lost pretty much all of the major code I’ve developed over the last decade. My HSP BlueHost let me down with a malware attack they weren’t willing to fix, and I failed to grab the MySql data in time.

I have accepted that. All I have left is this blog and the apps within it. I’ve moved to a new HSP and busdriverjim.com is the host for everything remaining.

I told Steph the other day that I was done writing code. I would just focus on this blog and post things for my viewers that hopefully they would find interesting. Today, so much for that…

I managed to recover a .csv file from my hard drive that contained my city database, so I rebuilt it on the new server. Then I wrote an app today that generates a random U.S. City. Old coders never die and if they say they do, they’re full of shit.

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Recovery

I lost more than ten years worth of database development during the recent event with my previous HSP, BlueHost. Many of my programs were based on carefully crafted MySql tables ranging from U.S. Cities and Counties down to local businesses.

I’m going to be on the phone today to see if they can be recovered from an old BlueHost system backup, but in the meantime I’ve removed the database requirements from a couple of local apps and you can run them here if you like.

• Weather

• Distance (needs some tweaking on mobile devices)

• Street View

Oh, and it’s snowing:

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Whew…

This blog, hosted on BlueHost, was infected with malware and they wanted big bucks to clean it up so I had no choice but to bail on them. It’s been down for a couple of days but I’ve managed to bring it back to life on another host, sort of.

PHP is not working internally so some functions won’t work. I’ll be going through and trimming the thing down to eliminate it. In the meanwhile, whew…

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TPDca

My new tool TPDca is done. It’s the latest member of the family of apps built around my eclipse program TetonPath. The Dca stands for Distance calculator and it contains some cool polyline geometry to play with around Teton Valley.

I also determined that our backyard is just 5.57 miles from the direct epicenter of the Path of Totality. How sweet is that!

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TPVue²

Just finished up my recent app TPVue. Added a help section and the ability to create custom permalink views. Drag the heading and pitch around to your liking, click the PermaLink icon and then do what you wish with the link in your address bar.

Here’s an example for you: Broulims. How about the entrance to Huntsman Springs?

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TPVue

I’ve created a very cool new app this weekend called TPVue. It was initially conceived as a utility for TetonPath but works great as a standalone app. It’s function is to show Google Maps Street Views of Teton Valley so that the millions of visitors showing up for the eclipse will be able to cruise around town before they arrive.

You can drag the PegMan around the top portion of the page and the streetview is shown below, from which you can adjust the heading and pitch as normal. If you click or drag on the upper map it will move to the nearest available streetview within 150 feet.

The Down button, upper left, will slide in the TetonPath database and present all of the current locations, from which you can click on any one to take you to that spot. Pretty cool huh! Click the Down button again to close the location box or click the Reset button next to it to reset the whole thing.

The heading will default to 0 (North) when you drag or click the map. I really wanted the heading to spin around and face a local business when you selected it, so I developed an algorithm to do just that. Sometimes my brain blows my own mind…

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The List

I just realized that I have more new code that I haven’t shared with the world yet. I call it The List and it offers a live interface to TetonPath, along with the ability to edit the database if you know the password.

The main categories (like Banking and Dining) launch right into the specific Category set of TetonPath while the individual links go right to the business as a map with info display.

The categories not highlighted just mean that there’s nothing there yet but as soon as there is, the listings will appear.

There’s lots to see in this app and I encourage you to check it out. Just click on the image to the right here, to open it up. Enjoy!

btw: Here’s what the New Record screen looks like, along with a small map that you can drag around to plug in lat/lngs automatically.

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Pahth

This is my latest Eclipse tool, Pahth. Yea, another cool little five character domain name, with some great code backing up a functional site. Just another day’s work, keeps my brain as healthy as my body…

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TetonPath

My latest app TetonPath is ready for viewing. It appears to have stirred up some interest here amongst the local Eclipse folks and may end up getting promoted by them.

It’s a good one, designed to assist the millions of people who flood into our Valley come Aug, 21. Ok, maybe 10’s of thousands, but more than enough to stress our little community to the limit. Hopefully my little contribution here will make a difference.

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Eclipse App

You know when the Posts are few and far between here, I must be writing code :-) In case you didn’t know, our Teton Valley lies right smack dab in the sweet zone of the upcoming Total Eclipse in August and tens of thousands of visitors are expected.

In the spirit of community service to the place I call home I did some research and gathered up some data from NASA and mapped that thing down to the second as it rolls across Highway 33 just south of 4000 S. Actually, it’s a geojson polyline that stretches from the Oregon Coast to South Carolina, but I’m just focusing on our neck of the Rockies.

I just fired off an email to the local folks that have taken enough interest in how this event will affect us, to develop a website and start having meetings.
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Hello! My name is Jim and I live and work here in the Valley, in fact, I've been your local TRPTA bus driver for the last decade.

I was a software developer in my past life and I continue that passion to this day, lately focusing on mapping applications.

The Eclipse has captured my imagination, as it obviously has yours, and you folks appear to be the primary energy around this event here in the Valley. Thanks for stepping up and I'm sorry I havn't made any of your events yet.

I've been developing some interesting map applications lately and I realized that the concepts would be a perfect match for an Eclipse app focused on Teton Valley, so I wrote one. It's based on an open-source JavaScript library called Leaflet and it uses a couple of top shelf base maps from a company called HERE.

I should say at this point that the work I do is non-commercial and not for profit. I do it to benefit my neighbors and my brain.

I would like to share this new app with you if you like. If you ultimately ended up promoting it along with your efforts, that would be fine. It's 95% complete and just open to final suggestions at this point so if you could keep it among your close associates, I would appreciate it.

Also, The local business listings are expandable, modifiable and open to new categories.

So, here's the link: ........

I look forward to your thoughts!
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Obviously it’s not time to share it here yet, but I sure will when it is.

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GLHip

Here’s my latest app: GLHip (pronounced glip). Check it out if you like…

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