Add Silverlight

I've decided to do the project in Silverlight, partially to learn it, partially because it'll look flash but mainly to avoid doing horrible horrible AJAX.  Because I'm so new to it I feel like I'm starting from scratch in many ways which makes it frustrating to prototype something quickly.  For simple things like a bound list view I have to learn a few new concepts (like a service using Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) and ObservableList<>).  Here's a screen of my first attempt:

I know.  It's really really ugly.  I might use Blend to have a go at making it neater at a later stage but for now I'll concentrate on functionality... that's my excuse anyways.

From a bit more research I've found that the idea of nyomnyom isn't all that crazy; a San Fran company called Cooking Capsules won an award from Google for developing on their Android O/S, and also I found a social network site created with Ning for recipe videos called FoodTube.  It would be cool to partner with them if the ideas all overlap so much but at the moment for them it would be like partnering with Bernie from Weekend at Bernie's.

<rant>

I should have said thanks in the last post to the guy who owned this blogspot URL in the first place.  I wanted the blog URL to somewhat match the .com I had already bought, he wasn't using the blog so kindly let me have it.  I'm fairly new to blogging but I've found out since that I could have just hosted it on the .com I have... oops all that hassle for nothing.

Part of the reason nyomnyom is called nyomnyom is because of a load of other (not so nonsensical) .com domains are taken.  It's fair enough if someone got there first to do their project, but one thing I really hate is sitting sites.  People who buy a bunch of .com domain names just so they can sell them on for a profit.  I think it's why a lot of sites have quirky names (like maybe why flickr doesn't have an e).  A friend of mine wanted to use a .com domain name for his charity-based business, he came up with perfect name but the .com was taken and the owner (who didn't use it) wouldn't sell for anything less than $20,000.

Part of the reason that the Internet is so full of innovation, information and diverse ideas is the low-barrier of entry, sitting sites just inflate the price and don't add anything useful.  Same goes for people who make money off of misspellings of popular sites (I wonder how many people goggle or googgle and don't realise the difference).

I keep putting off doing work for nyomnyom (by incoherently ranting) - so I'm just as guilty at the moment.  That reminds me of another thing I hate: hypocrites!

</rant>

First!!!!!!

Hey, this is the development blog of nyomnyom. I'm doing it for the same selfish reasons as I do my other blog: just so that I keep track of my progress and actually do some work on the project by some magical feeling of obligation to update the blog.

So what's nyomnyom anyways?  Years ago I had an idea for a gadget-type thing that would monitor what's in your fridge (scanner on the fridge), what you use up (scanner on the bin) and would generate a shopping list for you & order it automatically online.  I never did anything about it as it seemed like a crap idea at the time, but since then people have developed gadgets just like it.  They were horrible failures...  I was talking to a few friends about it and some of the other ideas which stemmed from the original and they encouraged me to give it a go.  One of my mates coerced me into buying a .com address just so I'd guilt myself into working on it.  To be perfectly honest I'm not 100% convinced of the merits of the ideas myself or whether my friends were being genuinely helpful or just plotting against me to laugh at my downfall.

So I'll stay away from the failed gadget area and stick to web 2.0ish stuff to implement my ideas.  My first goal is to create a development area for people to enter, share and combine recipes.  Hopefully from this, a wikipedia-type resource of food information will automagically appear...