Alright, so I was tinkering with this little idea the other day, something I called my “dim sum quote” project. Sounds a bit grand, maybe, but hold your horses, it’s nothing world-changing.
It all started, as these things often do, with actual dim sum. I was midway through a basket of siu mai, you know, just enjoying the moment, and it popped into my head: wouldn’t it be kinda funny to have a little widget or something that just throws out a random thought about dim sum? Like those “quote of the day” things, but specifically for the joys and minor existential crises one experiences over a bamboo steamer.
So, the first hurdle: the actual quotes. This was trickier than I thought. I mean, who’s out there philosophizing about turnip cakes? Not many, turns out. I spent a bit of time trying to find some gems online, but it was mostly just restaurant reviews or recipes. In the end, I figured, why not just make ’em up? So, I sat down and brewed some tea, and just started jotting things down. Stuff like:
- “Is it truly a dim sum meal if you don’t slightly regret your choices afterwards?”
- “The quest for the perfect har gow skin: a lifelong journey.”
- “Another cup of tea, another problem deferred until after the egg tarts.”
Yeah, not exactly Shakespeare, but it felt about right for the vibe I was going for. A bit of fun, nothing too serious.
Then came the “tech” part. And I use that term loosely. Real loosely. No fancy frameworks, no complex backend stuff. I basically just threw the quotes into a simple list. Then I wrote a tiny piece of script, the kind that probably takes a first-year student about five minutes to write, just to pick one of those quotes at random and display it. That’s it. Seriously. No databases, no APIs, no cloud-native microservices nonsense. Just a list and a random picker.
I spent an afternoon getting it to look halfway decent on a blank page. You know the drill: fiddle with the font, change the color, nudge things around a pixel at a time. Is it centered? Does it look weird on a small screen? The usual stuff when you’re just poking at something for your own amusement.
And what’s the grand result of all this effort? Well, I’ve got this little thing now that, when you load it up, it shows you a dim sum quote. That’s its entire job. It’s not going to make me rich, it’s not going to solve any big problems. But it exists. And it works.
Sometimes, I think it’s good to just build something incredibly simple. We get so caught up in these massive, complicated systems where everyone’s chasing the next big thing, and half the time, stuff just breaks or doesn’t work as advertised. This dim sum quote thing? It’s honest. It does what it says it’ll do. No fuss. And you know what? There’s a certain satisfaction in that. Just a straightforward little project, from start to finish. Kept me busy for a bit, and now I have something to chuckle at when I need a break. And it reminds me to go get more dim sum, which is always a good thing.