What is Self Compete?
On the road here, to search for the new headquarters of Self Compete in beautiful Raleigh-Durham. Well, not exactly… I am on the road, headed toward Raleigh-Durham (which is beautiful), and Self Compete is a thing but it’s not a thing that’s ready for a headquarters. So… what exactly is Self Compete? Self Compete is my entry into the wonderful world of web applications. The idea started as a personal motif - a mission for each day, to improve upon the day before. It felt good. It felt like personal growth. It improved self confidence because I was growing and able (and willing) to take on new things.
This way of living wasn’t without its drawbacks. There was the risk of overdoing it and causing myself to degrade rather than improve. Also, it was difficult keeping track of where I had already been. I want to run further than the last time… but how far did I run last time? Around the time of realizing these issues, I was also a big fan of playing games on my iPhone. I would get 2 stars on Angry Birds and think to myself, “well I will definitely get 3 stars if I break 100,000.” That was the moment of realization - these high scores were what I needed for every day life.
Self Compete is my solution to these problems. It is an application that creates a way to measure any goal, break new personal bests and even do a little bragging. Through measuring where I had been, I was able to set realistic goals that were both attainable and still an improvement. Through incremental and controlled improvement, I could get better without over doing it and risking degrading myself. Along with the ability to set goals, I gained an emotionally valuable understanding of myself.
My newest goal is to bring those things to you and to make them fun. I’ve already begun to develop and hope to have something out very soon. In the meantime sign up for early access at www.selfcompete.com and I’ll post regular updates on this site. I’ll be listening for your feedback!
Highlight Text As You Type [JavaScript]
I wrote this technique to highlight text on a webpage as you type. It is a little clunky, but may get you off on the right foot. Sorry it isn’t tabbed properly. Tumblr is not the best for posting code.
Basically: You have a form that, onKeyUp(), runs a function to change the style of text that matches text in the form field. The one problem is that it doesn’t ignore html, so it may highlight the “br” from “<br/>” or other tags.
Enable Favicons in Google Reader
Just found this setting in Google Reader that allows you to show the favicon next to your subscriptions.
Not sure when this was added. But it seems to have been done so quietly, because I’d have definitely turned it on by now if I had known. It really makes it easier to pick out feeds.
