(no subject)

[serene]

For me, "antisocial" doesn't mean I feel hostile to people -- it just
means I don't want them around. So yeah. Antisocial lately.

I came in a half hour early so that I could work without people around for
a while, but it didn't help enough: when they started showing up, I still
wanted to ask them to please go away.

Winter. I really do love it. I just love it *alone*.

(Yummy dinner last night: Smoky potato-leek soup and jicama-carrot salad,
along with a variation on eeyore_grrl's peanut-butter cookies --
I rolled them in crushed almonds. I'm experimenting with BigOven, and the
recipes for dinner are at http://www.bigoven.com/~serenevannoy -- I don't
think I'm going to like the BigOven software, but I'm giving it a whirl.
It cuts off my ingredient lines (it's a known bug) without *notifying* me.
That's unacceptable. I think I'm gonna have to use my nascent PHP skills
and make my own recipe database that does what I want it to do.)

Comments

[skywhisperer.livejournal.com]

Take a look at mine: http://recipes.tripacerdriver.com. It's PHP/Smarty, and I'll be happy to share the code with you.

[(Anonymous)]

Wow, cool. How do you input recipes? Do you put them directly into an SQL database, or...?

[skywhisperer.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm a big MasterCook fan, so I actually input them using MasterCook, and then once every few weeks export them and upload the files via ftp. There's another php script that actually does the import from those files into the database.

However, in the database, they're stored as individual pieces ('ingredients', 'directions', and so on), so you could put them in the database any way you preferred.

Drop me an email (tina@tripacerdriver.com), and I'll get you the source.

[serenejournal.livejournal.com]

My problem is that Mastercook doesn't want to work on Vista. I've heard there are tweaks I can do to get it to work on Vista, but if I did, I guess I wouldn't need anything else.

BigOven claims to work on Vista, but it's got bugs that are big and important to me, like cutting off ingredient lines if they're too long (like, say, if I want to add qualifiers to an ingredient).

I'll shoot you an email. Thank you so much for helping me out!

[eeyore-grrl.livejournal.com]

i love that you love that recipe! :D particularly cuz i learned it from a for kids cookbook when i was in, maybe, third grade and happened to put it to memory.

:D :D :D

Known bug? Happy to help

[(Anonymous)]

Hi SereneJournal,

Thanks for trying out BigOven.

I'm the founder/ceo of BigOven and noticed your post -- you mention the fact that it's cutting off ingredient lines and that it's a a "known bug"... can you clarify?

I'm not exactly sure what you're talking about. We'll be happy to look into this further.

- Steve

Re: Known bug? Happy to help

[serenejournal.livejournal.com]

Hey, Steve,

My friend *told* me you were Mr. Customer-Service guy, and she was right. ;-) She said that if I emailed you, you would be sure to answer me right away, and I didn't even have to do that. (I was asking her if the forums were a good place to find out about the bugs I've encountered.)

I asked my friend (who was a beta-tester and LOVES the software; she's been using it something like 5 years) about having ingredients lines cut off if they were long, and she said that that's one of the things she's written to your company about. It sounds like some people think it's a minor thing, but I absolutely can't use the software if it's going to do this (I didn't find out about the bug until I'd already paid for the software; I wouldn't have if I'd known.)

My recipes, and some of the ones I find online, often have information at the end of some of the ingredient lines, and if I'm going to have to check each recipe I upload to make sure it's not been altered, I won't bother.

Other things that are irritating me:

1) When I go into an ingredient line to edit it, if my finger slips a little, often the ingredient will be replaced with something on the drop-down menu, and I can't get mine back without typing it in again.

2) When I upload a recipe to the bigoven.com site, about 50% of the time, it doesn't include my notes.

I love the *idea* of the software, but the execution isn't working out for me. I especially love the connection with community that being on the site offers.

Here's the email I wrote to my friend:

> So far, I'm not hating it, but having some issues with it. It cut off
> the length of some of my lines, and it sometimes changes things
> without my consent. Also, the searches don't seem all that robust. I
> really *love* the idea of importing and posting recipes from/to the
> website (I don't have a hangup about copyright -- if I want to write
> a cookbook, I'll develop more recipes), but even that seems kind of
> buggy. For example, the cutting-off-line-lengths thing, and not
> posting my notes so that I had to make them part of the instructions.
> I'm sure I'll get used to it, but it's making me kind of want to
> write my own program instead. (But that wouldn't interact with the
> website as well, and I do kind of like the website.)
>
> Is there a user group for this software like there is for MasterCook?
> Do you like the web forums?

Re: Known bug? Happy to help

[(Anonymous)]

[speaking of cutting things off -- I just wrote a lengthy reply on this blog, pressed "post" and apparently it didn't post... retrying :-)]

If you can give us an example recipe or two (email to support at bigoven.com) that has ingredient lines so long as to be cut off, we'll be happy to take a look. We always have to be careful in allocating server space particularly in ingredient lines, since each byte we allocate gets potentially spread across 160,000+ recipes, and it adds up. But you're right, it shouldn't cut things off.

Also, make sure you're entering the ingredient lines spreading them across the qty, unit, itemname and prepnotes fields. Each of these fields has a size limit, but put together, they can lead to some very long ingredient lines as-is.

We do have a 30-day money back guarantee and if it's a showstopper for you, just email us and we'll be happy to issue a full refund. BigOven isn't for everyone, and if it's not, you certainly shouldn't have to pay for it.

As for searching, have you discovered the advanced search on the Find button on toolbar? Click "More >>" and you'll see options to filter by ingredients (up to 5), string in title, string in instructions, tags (categories), main ingredient, cuisine, and more. Also note that result sets on BigOven.com can also be filtered further by adding arbitrary keywords to any search result set (look in the left hand column of the result set, and add any "including/excluding" keyword. We realize it's not a complete list of searching power, but it's already better than many out there.

The best place to go for detailed tips and info on the software is our Product Message board at http://www.bigoven.com/cs/forums.

Thanks!