I plan to write a bit about that when I finish (Dec 27 will mark one year from when I started). Here are a couple things I noticed:
1) This was my big goal for the year. One book a week that I've never read, instead of getting in better shape, learning a new hobby, etc. Judging from prior experience, it felt difficult, but doable.
2) It was mostly about time management. This was either accomplished with reading incrementally (infrequent) or bingeing over a weekend (frequent). I think if I was going to do it over, I would shift most of the reading into the first couple months of the year where the weather is dreary and not conducive to being outside.
3) Cheating. I've had books (like GEB) on the list the whole year that I haven't gotten to because I knew that they would slow me down and ruin the average. When I would read something that I couldn't get through quickly, I would make up for that by reading books I knew I would plow through quickly. You can see that more towards the end of the year.
4) I truly enjoy reading, and it's something I'd rather do than many other forms of entertainment. This helps immensely when deciding to devote a large amount of time to it.
My list lines up with a lot of books that people have recommended here, so I'll try to add a few favorites that haven't been mentioned so far.
Fiction:
1. Ubik - I read a bunch of Philip K. Dick this year, but this was my favorite. It's delightfully mind bending and left me thinking about it long after the book was done.
2. All the Pretty Horses - Beautifully written. McCarthy has an uncanny ability to paint with words.
3. Cannery Row - Short, witty, and full of interesting characters.
Nonfiction:
1. The Idea Factory - A dive into how Bell Labs became such an innovation powerhouse and gives a rounded picture of the figureheads that brought it so much fame.
2. Moonwalking with Einstein - A fun read about a journalist who took researching a memory competition a bit too seriously.
3. Countdown to Zero Day - A fascinating look at the development and deployment of Stuxnet -- the virus built to set Iran's nuclear program back.
As others have mentioned, zip codes might not have any geometry at all (point zips), and they are frequently updated/changed. In addition, zips do not follow standard constraints that other defined region types do. For instance, counties are entirely contained by their parent state, but that is not the case for zip codes, as they frequently cross county and state borders.
This is very cool. I had a nearly identical idea a few months ago (and somehow missed your post the first time around) based around feature detection in images, and this is way cooler than what I had envisioned.
In the payment processing section, you mention billing the customer back for the processing fees. I was under the impression that credit card companies do not allow you to pass surcharges onto the customer. Is that not the case when using Stripe, or is it considered a "convenience fee?"
Have you considered using overlays from route360 (https://developers.route360.net)? They are doing some really interesting stuff with multiple transit types (bicycle, car, mass transit, walking) as well as accounting for elevation changes and incorporating GTFS data where applicable.
Interesting, I hadn't really considered the market outside of restaurants. Typically the price of organic, locally grown (although it doesn't have to be limited to just organic) produce is higher per pound than similar produce found at supermarkets. Do you think that community groups would be interested in paying more, or would have the budget to pay more?
I thought the same thing when I was trying to flesh this idea out a bit more, but the more I've spoken with farmers, the less I think this is the right way to go. The downside to doing this approach is that for many small farmers contract farming is all but assured. What if it doesn't rain when it needs to? What if you have an odd cold snap that wipes a crop? What if your planned delivery date of particular produce is delayed because things aren't growing as well as they should?
These are all things that happen with a fair amount of regularity on small farms, and things that many good restaurants would be flexible enough to accommodate, but it would sort of negate the benefits of planning out menus at the beginning of a season.
I would ideally love to see this idea extend to foragers as well. It would be kind of amazing to have local foragers post their pounds of morels and fiddlehead ferns and see local chefs snap them up.
1) An application that connects restaurant chefs and managers to local farmers. Local farmers could upload their goods for the week on a marketplace board, and chefs could find things that they would like to cook with for the week and buy them. Typically chefs meet local purveyors at farmer's markets, but for small enough producers, it would save them time and money to just have their goods bought directly without having to go to a central market and run a stand. Chefs would be able to order local goods similar to the way they order through Sysco or FSA.
2) A dribble-like site for artisans. A site to showcase and upvote artisan work and hopefully drive business to them. Baked goods, building airplanes, cedar strip canoe building, kinetic sculptures, etc.
Exactly, especially considering that tipped positions are payed drastically different depending on what state you're in. You shouldn't have to know the employee compensation laws of the state to know whether someone is making a decent wage by serving you.
Service charges can be adequately split between all employees, whereas an increase to the price of a dish will typically just result in a larger tip to the server that is not split to other parts of the restaurant. Tipping in general relies on a lot of "good actors," between customers determining what they really want to pay for a meal to servers correctly reporting what they receive and tipping out accordingly. A better model is to tell you directly what you're going to pay, and you shouldn't feel compelled to pay any more than that amount.
This story makes me smile. My father retired a few years ago, and immediately went to work on a kit airplane he and a friend bought together. He flies it semi-weekly, depending on the weather, and is working on building another plane on days he can't fly. I fear the day he stops doing "stuff" will be the day he dies, but I don't think that day is coming any time soon.
PBS did an interesting, long documentary filming the build and certification process for the 777. It's broken into 5 different, hour long parts that can be found on Youtube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oyWZjdXxlw - First part). The last part goes into detail about what they did to meet FAA regulations in a short amount of time.
1) This was my big goal for the year. One book a week that I've never read, instead of getting in better shape, learning a new hobby, etc. Judging from prior experience, it felt difficult, but doable.
2) It was mostly about time management. This was either accomplished with reading incrementally (infrequent) or bingeing over a weekend (frequent). I think if I was going to do it over, I would shift most of the reading into the first couple months of the year where the weather is dreary and not conducive to being outside.
3) Cheating. I've had books (like GEB) on the list the whole year that I haven't gotten to because I knew that they would slow me down and ruin the average. When I would read something that I couldn't get through quickly, I would make up for that by reading books I knew I would plow through quickly. You can see that more towards the end of the year.
4) I truly enjoy reading, and it's something I'd rather do than many other forms of entertainment. This helps immensely when deciding to devote a large amount of time to it.