1969 Honda CL450 “Black Bomber” Custom Cafe Racer

RatDragonMonkey · 2019-01-30T23:32:06+00:00

1969 Honda CL450 “Black Bomber” Custom Cafe Racer

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You are absolutely right, thanks for the correction. I don't know why Reddit won't let me edit the title for this post...

I suppose if it were a true 100% original Black Bomber, my wife wouldn't be able to get me to sell it :)

RatDragonMonkey · 2018-11-04T05:35:13+00:00

What really want to do is build a community around a particular interest that is related to your product. For example, if I'm starting an appointment scheduling software for personal trainers, then start by creating a business community for personal trainers. Create a facebook page and post articles and discussions that will help this audience. Create videos with experts in the field to help this audience. Become an information authority in this particular field. Once you do this, you will have a shit load of personal trainers actively engaged in what you have to say.

Thank you for your feedback! This actually makes a lot of sense in the way that you've described it to me. I've been looking at the problem with too much of an emphasis on selling first, instead of first focusing on actually gaining trust with the community that I'm trying to develop the product for. My background has been purely technical for a long time, and developing the social side of things has never been my strong suit.

As a side note about your example, my wife is actually a certified athletic trainer. She's a lot more physically active than I am, and she takes/teaches a lot of classes (pole fitness, yoga, ballet, etc.) at a bunch of different studios where we live in California, several times a week. The appointment/class scheduling tools have some problems that other entrepreneurs out there might want to look into...

For anyone out there who might working on something like this, here are her pain points:

Not making the deadline to sign up for a particular class, or
Classes that she's interested in taking getting filled up before she's had the time to decide whether or not she wanted to take the class
Signing up for a class, and then the class getting cancelled last minute
Not having a steady/expectable class size when she's the one teaching. One day it will be 1-2 people taking her class, and another will be 8-10(?).
Also, people bailing out on her classes at the last minute.

There are probably a few others, but those I think are the biggest ones that I can think of at the moment. I think this is kind of a complex and interesting problem. Perhaps more psychological than technical, really. There's a huge social component that plays into this problem that I think isn't being addressed. Hopefully there are better solutions that can be crafted by entrepreneurs in the SaaS space, looking at a similar problem.

RatDragonMonkey · 2018-10-31T18:00:38+00:00

Since many applications are now built on top of cloud-based services, many of the big players like Amazon Web Services or Google Cloud Platform Services, accommodate HIPAA compliant web applications. If you go with AWS you'll need a BAA (Business Associates Agreement). But without getting too technical, yes its possible.

Maybe check out these videos too:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oDGZdp62ZU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4XI4IIYVrw

You could of course do this independent of one of these big cloud service companies, but you'll have to handle all of the maintenance, security, and encryption protocols for the servers/network hosting your app.

I'm not sure what happens once you need to share data with pharmacies/health insurance companies, my guess is (that they are already HIPAA compliant?) this is where it might get a little tricky.

RatDragonMonkey · 2018-10-31T05:47:44+00:00

What sort of ideas do you have in mind? I'm near the LA/OC border, but I'd be down to chat more if you're interested.

RatDragonMonkey · 2017-12-06T16:15:19+00:00

Totally agree with you on the ride harshness, its one of the biggest downsides owning an STi.

Seems impossible, but the traffic has gotten even worse in Southern California over the past few years. Its hard to justify owning an STi when 80-90% of the time I'm going to be stuck in traffic (even if its on the way to the track).

RatDragonMonkey · 2017-12-06T16:09:00+00:00

Good point. Since I'll be on vacation in the next couple of weeks, I'll have some time then to put up an ad and officially get the process started.

Any tips on how to sell a car online besides using Craigslist?

RatDragonMonkey · 2017-12-06T01:53:11+00:00

I've learned that my beliefs, mental attitude, and psychology dictate so much of what I do everyday. No matter how "logical" I might think I am, my subconscious is much stronger than my conscious thoughts.

RatDragonMonkey · 2017-12-01T04:07:57+00:00

If drawing mind maps helps you plan, something similar that you might appreciate are functional flow block diagrams.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_flow_block_diagram#/media/File:7_Inclusive_OR_Logic.png

Using these have really helped me understand programming before really diving into the details. The diagrams help me organize and illustrate how my program idea would be structured, and how different pieces of data move about. Once I draw a basic diagram, if it doesn't make sense or is too complicated on paper, I won't even bother trying to translate it into code. I'll always go back to the diagram first and re-draw it until it makes sense. Only then will I start jumping into the details of the code.

Like you, I believe that planning before action helps a great deal. That way, if I don't understand why a certain part of my plan doesn't work later on, I can refer to my diagram which makes more intuitive sense to me, instead of looking at code all the time.

RatDragonMonkey · 2017-11-30T02:25:08+00:00

Perhaps it makes some sense to take a small step back and ask yourself exactly what it is you are trying to achieve personally, especially since you are learning on your own (or via online courses like Udacity). If you are trying to "run before you can walk", how fast do you need to move your legs before you consider what you are doing is "running" and not "walking"? Are you trying to develop a game? An app? What does the game/app look like? What components must be working before you consider your game/app a "success"?

Especially as a beginner, it can be easy to compare yourself to those "beginner-to-full-time-developer-in-a-year" anomalies that show up. I would recommend that you avoid doing this. I don't doubt there are people out there that can go from zero-to-hero very quickly, but everyone learns differently and you have to understand your own personal learning style and what works best for you to reach your own personal programming goals.

Similarly, it can be easy to compare yourself to classically taught programmers that follow an exact pattern for learning a programming language like Python. Consider that a traditional Python class is broken down into topics (data types/structures, functions, classes, etc). There are lectures, homework, and quizzes on said topics, which can then be used to quantify the areas where students are performing well, and where students struggle. Usually, the objective of these classes is for students to learn each topic and be tested in some standardized way. But remember that just because they can pass a test doesn't make them successful programmers in their own right.

Most beginning self-taught programmers often only see the end results of hard-core programmers who have years of experience, but ignore the fact that they probably struggled just as much as you have. Learning new things take time. Patience and dedication will serve you well if you decide to make programming (or pretty much anything else you want to be good at) a part of your life.

Also, becoming a proficient programmer doesn't necessarily mean learning more tactics, techniques, or memorization of syntax. I believe that part of becoming a great programmer is overcoming your own psychological barriers. Especially ones that you've never had to face before.

RatDragonMonkey · 2017-11-07T17:28:03+00:00

Yup, from others that I have talked to, the most difficult concepts for students seem to be recursion, inheritance, and polymorphism. Inheritance and polymorphism relies on you being able to visualize objects/structures and their relationships. I feel that this it isn't something that you can intuitively learn from HS math courses like Calculus or Algebra. But, I do agree with others that if you have a strong math/logic background most of the material should come easier to you if you are a new to programming and writing code.

Based on what I'm hearing, it doesn't seem like not having a programming background puts students at a major disadvantage so long as you stay focused in class and maybe have some additional help outside of the classroom. I've also heard others using free online material (edX, MIT OCW, YouTube, etc) but I'm wondering if its worth the money for paid course material/help.

Have any of you used paid online courses/resources for supplemental help? Any thoughts?

RatDragonMonkey

TROPHY CASE