Granular Collection

Granular CollectionI am currently returning to my PHP MVC application project. It is a collection of objects. The idea is to build a super granular item database / search tool. My particular implementation of it is wrist watches. I can do a pretty good search for watches on sites like Chrono24 and the gray market site Jomashop. But these have definite limitations.

For example, I like watches that are categorized as dress watches. I also like watches that do not have a date complication. With this app users can search for watches with a specified case size, lug width, date or no date and many other attributes that other sites cannot search on.

I am very new to this particular framework, however, so it'll be interesting to see how I can pull it off. I am using categories and a linking table for them, as well as an attribute table and a linking table for them. The attributes will drive the search page so it can be expanded as needed. The idea is to build a framework for collections of any number of items, not just watches.

As I make progress on this I will post the project's URL.

Oh the Memories

The next month or so, at work, will be mostly one project and one language ...

VB6

It is so weird coding in the first desktop language I ever learned. I remember back when I was just learning HTML and a little bit of CSS. I knew just enough to put up pages of info and horrible GIFs. I wanted to build desktop applications so I installed Visual Studio and began laying out forms etc. At the time I had no idea how to actually make it do anything, but my neat looking forms would display when I ran my creations.

Now I have nearly two decades of coding in various languages, project types, and platforms under my belt. It's interesting dealing with VB6's quirks and 'features'.

Most notable, it seems that IF statements consider every check in them, even if the first check(s) fail. At least that is how it was behaving. I had to break up the IF I was working on, nesting the second check inside the other - then it behaved as I expected. I am still able to web search any questions I have and there are plenty of topics and articles still out there. That's a good thing.

I'm guessing I'll have plenty more to say in the coming weeks and months.

Android Takes Something Else Away

Ah security. We have to use clear purses for our own safety. We can't carry backpacks, bags, etc in some places, for our own safety. We have to endure body scans, metal detectors, pat downs, for our own protection.

And now, thanks to changes in Android 10, we have to give up clipboard managers - a tool I use ALL the time EVERY single day. A clipboard manager is one of the first apps I tracked down and installed. Now, instead of allowing users to grant clipboard access like other permissions, Android has simply rendered all clipboard managers useless.

It appears that using developer tools, permissions can be granted via console on a computer (I do not yet know if this requires rooting). But I don't yet have a USB-C to USB conversion cable, so I'm stuck for now.

The feature removal trend continues. Ugh.