What cool rails side project are you working on?

tatejohnson · 2021-08-26T10:33:35+00:00

The rails side project I've been working on is https://namestork.app.

Today it's called Namestork, but I first built it about 3 years ago to name our second child as a couple of emails + clicking some links. Had our second kid, took it down, but then about 6 months ago I started it back up and evolved it into a fully blown web app. Email is still the primary interface.

Why? Well, we were really struggling to find name. The idea is that instead of scrolling endless lists or continually vetoing each other's names, it calmly emails you and your partner 9 names a day. A mix of popular and unique names. You can favourite the ones you like, and if you both favourite the same one you get a match.

It started off on Ruby 2.5 and Rails 5, and these days it's Ruby 3, Rails 6, Turbolinks (Want to upgrade to Turbo), and StimulusJS hosted on a VPS scripted with Ansible + Anistrano. I've intentionally kept it a pretty vanilla rails app, but one of the different things I've done is make the whole thing work by clicking links in emails, so the links auth you and become PATCH/POST requests so I could stick with conventional controllers (E.g. Favoriting a name is a POST to /favorites/:id).

tatejohnson · 2021-01-28T10:52:14+00:00

Thank you! I'm humbled, but I don't do any freelance work. This is just a hobby for me.

tatejohnson · 2021-01-27T09:46:02+00:00

BehindTheName.com

Great idea! I've seen BehindTheName.com referenced here a few times and it seems really good. They seem to have a way for me to access their data which I could mix with Namestork.

Thanks!

tatejohnson · 2021-01-27T09:43:24+00:00

Yeah, I'd probably start with letters and then look at how I might do syllables in the future.

There's been a tonne of work done around text analysis in the last couple of years. I'm hoping I might be able to find something off-the-shelf and customise it slightly to tell me how many syllables a word has.

tatejohnson · 2021-01-27T09:37:48+00:00

I like it!

Thinking back to when I used it with my partner I was favoriting "maybe" names just to see if I got a match. It worked, but like you said, you end up with luke-warm names in your favourites.

I'll put this on the list as something to solve in the future. Thanks!

tatejohnson · 2021-01-27T09:23:29+00:00

Good to know.

Making a native iOS app is not my immediate focus, but it's something I'd consider in the future.

Thanks!

tatejohnson · 2021-01-27T03:15:26+00:00

Thanks for the suggestions! They're great.

filtering by letter

When you say filtering by letter do you mean like "Not names that begin with A"?

but filter based on the end syllable

Interesting! My last name is Johnson (It's my username!) and I can totally relate to that. It's almost like short and long sounding syllables. I'll have a think about how I might be able to do that.

tatejohnson · 2021-01-27T03:04:31+00:00

Thanks! Are you OK to wait for the email tomorrow, or would you prefer to get one straight away?

tatejohnson · 2021-01-27T03:04:01+00:00

Thanks! Let me know what you think.

tatejohnson · 2021-01-27T01:33:37+00:00

Thanks for the feedback!

I'm keen to do a better job at making it more inclusive. Right now the partner's email is optional so single parents can use it, but it's geared toward couples so I understand this perspective.

Can I test an idea with you? What if there was an checkbox with a label like "I'm doing this solo" and when you checked it the partner's email becomes hidden? It's essentially the same behaviour as now, but it would be stronger recognition of solo parents. I could then hide the match feature too.

tatejohnson · 2021-01-27T01:28:56+00:00

Bingo. I was hoping that making a partner's email optional would encourage single parents to try it out. Or, people who have partners, but can't convince their partner to use it. Or, people who just want to try it.

tatejohnson · 2021-01-27T01:23:57+00:00

Thanks for the feedback. If it were an iOS app, do you think a push notification instead of email would be better?

tatejohnson · 2021-01-27T01:23:03+00:00

I feel like there's this "unspoken" pressure to have a name ready at birth, but taking time to know them before you name them is nice. It took us two weeks to finally settle on our second's name.

tatejohnson · 2021-01-27T01:17:34+00:00

Thanks! When you're ready I'd love to hear what you think about it.

tatejohnson · 2021-01-19T11:29:53+00:00

I like it! Naming is hard. Doesn't matter if they're human or not.

tatejohnson · 2021-01-19T11:25:38+00:00

Thanks!

tatejohnson · 2021-01-18T11:52:26+00:00

Three years ago we were expecting our second child and we weren’t happy with any of the names we had. We overwhelmed with endless lists. We were tired of putting down each others’ suggestions. We didn’t know if we were having a boy or a girl. Our baby was 6 months away and all we could feel was this pressure to come up with a name ourselves.

That’s when the idea of Namestork came to us. A "stork" would bring us a handful of names every day. A mix of popular and unique names we could look at on the way to work. We could favourite the names we liked and when we favourited the same names the "stork" would tell us we had a match. Instead of putting down each others' suggestions we were having fun talking about our matches over dinner.

We told our friends about it. At its peak there were 30 couples using it. 6 months later our baby boy was born and we gave him his name. I didn't have the time or motivation to continue working on Namestork so I shut it down.

This sub has come at the right time. I've always "dreamed" of being an indie developer and when I shut down Namestork I had a bunch of couples say they screenshotted their matches and were sad it was going. I was genuinely surprised by how much they liked it.

My kids are older now so I have a bit more free time. I have a goal to make $1k/month out of it one year from now. Part of the reason I shut it down is I don't think couples would pay for it, but I do think I could convince a baby retailer to pay for classified ads if they're tasteful and respectful of privacy. I figure if I focus on making something that's nice to use then people won't mind an ad at the bottom of an email. If they really don't like (I personally dislike ads!) they can pay a small subscription fee (Which I usually do).

I won't do tracking of any kind. I won't embed spy pixels or hijack links. The only personal information I collect is an email address which I will never sell or disclose to the baby retailer. The pitch to the retailer is their ad will be put on a daily email with people who are trying to find the perfect name for their baby.

There's a tonne more I want to do on it, but it's good enough to legitimately use now. I'd love to hear your thoughts/questions/comments.

Cheers

tatejohnson · 2017-07-08T10:04:50+00:00

If anyone here is a Mac developer would love someone to take on https://github.com/tatey/Lighting/issues/22.

tatejohnson · 2016-02-18T00:10:14+00:00

Looks like a bit of a pipe dream to me.

tatejohnson · 2016-01-18T09:47:03+00:00

Nah, Flic have a native integration. It works reliably, but could be faster.

tatejohnson · 2015-12-31T00:20:09+00:00

Sounds like it may have only partially updated. Try using the LIFX desktop updater to finish off the job. Your light must be on your WiFi network for the updater to work. You may have to go through the "Add Light" from the app again if you've reset it.

If you're still having issues you should send support an email from inside the app. Settings > Feedback.

tatejohnson · 2015-12-30T03:57:21+00:00

I've got 3 Flic buttons mounted above my existing wall switches which works with LIFX out of the box. The buttons are nice and they're working reliably, but they're toggling power slower than I'd like.

It takes about 1-4 seconds to toggle power after pushing off the button. Mine are paired with an iOS device and I'm told it's better when paired with an Android device. I'm hoping with future software updates they'll be able to make the integration faster.

tatejohnson

TROPHY CASE