Ok…this is a little off-topic but I have a host of unfinished
Ok…this is a little off-topic but I have a host of unfinished, barely working projects so I thought I’d start talking about them to finish them.
Somewhere out there on IG there’s a clock made out of wood with an e-ink screen that shows a Bible verse that corresponds with the time of day. I thought it looked really cool, clicked on the link to buy because how much can a simple clock cost anyway?
It was $250. 😳
Two hundred and fifty DOLLARS. 🤯💀🪦
I noticed a couple of other things; they were exclusively targeting ads on IG and Facebook, they weren’t responding to ANY comments (what does it show at the hour like 4:00? or what about times of day that no verses correspond with?) and there wasn’t any human information about it at all which made me think, “this might be some drop-shipped/white label garbage from China.
I could be wrong, I hope I’m wrong and I’ll update if so.
Anyway, I’m a mildly competent developer so I set out to make a proof of concept instead of…you know…paying $250.
Here’s the process I went through; I downloaded a complete KJV bible in JSON format from GitHub. I wrote a ruby script that went through and converted the verse format into something that was easier to query and stuck the whole thing in a SQLite database. I wrote a single query that’ll grab a random verse, threw together a php script as a rudimentary api that’ll return a verse on the web and another php page with a timer to grab a new verse every minute. Proof of concept done.
My plan was to wire together a PICO with an e-ink screen and 3D print a case for it but I’m not there yet. Too many other projects to finish first. 🤦🏻♂️
So anyway, if want to visit a page that’ll give you a random verse that corresponds with the time of day (bugs and all) head over to:
I’m not a designer so I find keeping things really simple helps. I’m totally open to your suggestions though; what do you think would make it better?
