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smhanov's comments

smhanov | 9 months ago | on: Mermaid: Generation of diagrams like flowcharts or sequence diagrams from text

I wish WebSequenceDiagrams was further up your list. I guess I have some work to do.

When I made it, nothing like mermaid, plantUML，lucid charts existed. The syntax of most tools was based on Java or graphviz and overly verbose. I was writing an email to a colleague at BlackBerry and wrote out the sequence diagrams as text. I spent the next week making a script to convert it to an image and put it online. Many other tools have since adopted the syntax and I'm happy it has become so widespread.

smhanov | 4 years ago | on: SQLite the only database you will ever need in most cases

This happened to me. I never did figure out the cause. One day customers of www.websequencediagrams.com started emailing me saying they couldn't access their files. Turns out it was corrupted and would just error when accessing certain records. Also, for mysterious reasons, there was a single open transaction that had been accepting all the data for several days, so I had to be very careful when restarting the app...

Coincidentally, the backups had stopped working a couple of months ago.

Fortunately I was able to copy the data to my machine, write some python to try to retrieve each customer's data individually, verify its consistency and merge with the older backup so most people didn't notice.

Afterwards I upgraded to the latest sqlite, as the one I had been using was six years old, and I have not had a problem since.

smhanov | 5 years ago | on: Ask HN: Show me your half baked project

https://languagenow.app

I created an HTML app to help you learn Mandarin or German. It's flashcards for vocabulary and writing. I was very excited about it a couple of years ago but then I stopped and now I'm the only one using it.

It's written in go and postgresql and Vue, and right now its just running inside of a "screen" session in a terminal on Linode.

smhanov | 11 years ago | on: Those making $1,000+/month on side projects – what did you make?

I have three side projects that together became my "full-time" job. I'm able to spend a lot of time with my kids since I can work fewer hours. I'm tired all the time due to a 4 month old baby, so I'm not doing a lot of things I should.

My method is simple and has only four steps. 1. Write something cool and put it online for free. 2. Wait 4 to 5 years. 3. Gather all the emails asking if they can license it or pay you to adapt it. 4. Then slap on a price/marketing page emphasizing what everybody asked for.

http://websequencediagrams.com is my SAAS business. When I was working on 3GPP at RIM we had to spend hours in Visio moving boxes around, and pasting the results into word documents. It was a challenging layout problem. By 2007 I made a python script that did sequence diagrams automatically and put it online. I began to get emails from companies saying they wanted to license it, so I obliged. After I left RIM, I converted it into a freemium product. I have about 400 users paying $9 to $15/month.

http://zwibbler.com gets about 70 visits a day. It's a javascript drawing library with full-service from me. Again, it started as a free HTML demo, and I began to get emails requesting me to adapt it for pay. Instead, I created the front page that offers a complete solution for $1500. By answering emails and talking on the phone, I can get 3 or 4 clients a month without even trying. I figure out what they want and reposition the buttons to do it.

My favourite is http://rhymebrain.com because I don't have to do anything. Google just transfers $1-2K into my account every month for Adsense.

smhanov | 12 years ago | on: Fired? Speak No Evil

In Canada, at tech startup seminars, the lawyers remind us that the government has a "Ministry of Labour", and it is NOT called the "Ministry of Employers" for a reason. Lawyers advice employers to make the employee happy, or risk costly battles due to a complaint to the Ministry. As far as I know, you are legally entitled to either termination pay or advance notice, and holding it ransom as coercion to sign some agreement would be very risky.

Apparently some companies still download employment agreements off the web that have the "at will" clause but this makes them invalid.

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