Sep
I was on my way back to Atlanta from my friend’s wedding in Ohio, tired and worn out from a whole weekend of eating, drinking, and partying. Despite my mentally drained state, sometime during the flight home, the idea just came to me. I get new ideas all the time. One or two a month … at least. Most of them are written off quickly as too hard, too silly, or too expensive … so I let this idea soak for a while.
Hours later, I’m at home in bed. It’s 4:00am. My brain won’t turn off.
I slide out of bed and into my computer chair. A few clicks later, and I’m whipping out my credit card to register a handful of domains at GoDaddy. “Fantastically simple, but this could be huge!” I think to myself. With the comfort in knowing that my domain names are secure, I get back into bed and sleep soundly ‘till noon.
I’ve been working diligently on my build-your-own-social-network startup, Wamily for quite a while now. We’re weeks away from a public release. Did I really want to divert my already sporadic attention to something totally new at this point in the game? Was this mini-startup worth giving up precious development time? Is my co-founder gonna be pissed at me for putting Wamily on the back burner? Am I crazy?
After careful consideration, the answer to all of these is yes. I gave myself one weekend to hack something out, then I have to get back to Wamily. Hell, it’ll be fun.
Three days later (ok, fine … a long weekend) and it’s up. Using the Google Maps API and Ruby on Rails, I hacked together a neat little search tool to find biodiesel filling stations around the world. Yeah, I didn’t expect you to get it right away. But just wait a couple years, this alternative fuel thing is going to be huge.
So, am I glad that I did it? Well, yes and no. But mostly yes. This little mini-project has given me the opportunity to work with a couple of tools that I hadn’t had the chance to learn before. In one short weekend, I created a cool and useful website, and also got to:
- play with the Google Maps API and the YM4R Ruby plugin
- implement the MaxMind GeoLite City database to detect your site vistors’ city and country from their IP address
- deploy a production application on Edge Rails
- open up my first Google Adsense account
- help save the world by making alternative fuel more accessible
- hedge my bets on Wamily
The only downside, really, is that I find myself wanting to spend more time on Find Biodiesel, when I really should be getting Wamily ready to go. Oh well. What’s another weekend in the big scheme of things?
I like the idea.
It’s broken right now though.