http://blog.sojoodi.com Thu, 20 Dec 2007 01:59:29 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en I was busy (read bootcamp!) preparing for and writing the GMAT over the past two weeks. That's why I haven't written much lately, but I thought I'd share with you my fun experience with the GMAT! First thing, this was a really quick decision. I had thought of writing this test ... http://blog.sojoodi.com/2007/12/19/my-gmat-experience/ While reading P. Barrow's The Best-Laid Business Plans, I came across an interesting argument he had against giving discounts as a small business. The reason for writing this post was to inspect the simple but condensed table of data he provided ("Pricing Ready Reckoner") which in the space of ... http://blog.sojoodi.com/2007/12/02/should-a-small-business-give-discounts/ I meant to make this post much earlier, but all the start-up fun kept me from doing it. The first part of the post was published on Oct 17 (Simple Search Feature) and covered my Do It Yourself solution for the catalog search feature in Giftify. The problem with the ... http://blog.sojoodi.com/2007/12/02/simple-search-feature-in-railsmysql-part-2/ Here's a little brainteaser to think about while commuting to work on the Greyhound bus! (that's another story maybe for another post). If you go to x-rates.com or Yahoo Currency Converter you can obtain a table of exchange rates for world's major currencies. Here's a sample: USD U.K. £ CAD Euro AU $ USD 1.00000 2.05639 1.01142 1.48250 0.87440 U.K. £ 0.48629 1.00000 0.49184 0.72092 0.42521 CAD 0.98870 2.03316 1.00000 1.46574 0.86452 Euro 0.67454 1.38711 0.68225 1.00000 0.58981 AU $ 1.14364 2.35177 1.15671 1.69544 1.00000 * ... http://blog.sojoodi.com/2007/11/23/exchange-rate-arbiterage-detection/ Last week, I spent a bit of time on sales coupons for Giftify. Since I have no formal marketing education, I had to rely on common-sense and intuition. Please, feel free to give me feedback on this. I'm really interested to know what other ... http://blog.sojoodi.com/2007/11/21/coupon-codes/ Hello, After many days of last minute code clean-ups, and gift description touch-ups (don't even get me started on horrible it was, but at least I automated the spell-checking and price-checking) we are launching Giftify tonight. http://apps.facebook.com/giftify/ It's a really exciting and really scary moment. The fun begins now. Sahand http://blog.sojoodi.com/2007/10/31/giftify-launch/ So, I don't remember if I mentioned my hardware engineering background before moving to the softer field. Anyhow, the low-level person inside me came up with this data model, inspired by the one-hot coding scheme of a state machine. Assuming that we are trying to keep track of the moods ... http://blog.sojoodi.com/2007/10/23/one-hot-coded-statuses-in-mysql/ Inspired by Peter Norvig's genius article, while learning Ruby back in August, I wrote this piece of code. Writing it made me realize how powerful (at least for prototyping) and intuitive Ruby is. I hope you enjoy it. #this is a script that reads a text file, makes a ... http://blog.sojoodi.com/2007/10/21/ruby-spell-checker/ Today, we decided that searching was a desirable feature for Giftify. So, I promised that we will have a search engine by the end of the day. I was able to get it done much faster, which is why I have time to make a post now. One thing ... http://blog.sojoodi.com/2007/10/17/simple-search-feature-in-railsmysql/ Today, while integrating PayPal payments with our website, I was introduced to the world of OpenSSL. Actually, this admission is a little embarrassing, given that I have actually worked at a Cryptography company before (Certicom)! But it was a long time ago and I was working on ... http://blog.sojoodi.com/2007/09/19/secure-paypal-buttons-with-openssl/