

Show HN:  My weekend project - minimotivation.com - tim_church
http://minimotivation.com

======
tim_church
FYI - I created this simple site for myself. I use it as my homepage to get a
little motivational reminder every time I open a new tab.

I thought it might be useful for startup founders, entrepreneurs, freelancers,
or anyone who works alone.

~~~
vrotaru
Looks like fortune for the web. Are you using fortune as a backend, or for
quotes?

~~~
tim_church
No, I had actually never heard of fortune, but I will look into it now :)

I am currently just hand selecting the content and storing it in a database.
Nothing fancy.

~~~
vrotaru
> I had actually never heard of fortune

A long, long time ago in this galaxy, this was the first program to run when a
user logged in/opened a new terminal. Not on every system of course.

~~~
JeremyChase
Still does on all my systems.

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jmonegro
Make it so that I can click the content instead of scrolling down to click a
small link lost in a corner.

~~~
Pistos2
Funny, I didn't even notice that link until several F5s later. Nevertheless,
yours is a good suggestion.

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wildmXranat
Reminded me of fortune , so I typed it into a terminal and got:

Q: What's the difference between an Irish wedding and an Irish wake?

A: One less drunk.

On St. Patrick's day of all days :)

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kristofferR
Awesome site, I absolutely love it. The only problem is that there isn't
enough quotes, I think you should add a lot more.

I collect quotes and have quite a collection of good ones. Here are my
favorite quotes, a lot of them would fit great on minimotivation.com:

<http://kristofferr.com/sitater.html>

~~~
tim_church
Great list! I will be adding several of those to minimotivation.com. Thanks.

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mrduncan
Looks great! Would be really fun to add this to a monitor or picture-frame
which would auto-refresh every so often.

One suggestion: Add attribution to the XKCD images and don't steal their
bandwidth. I got this one as a motivation earlier:
<http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/dreams.png>

~~~
tim_church
Added the attribution and link to XKCD.

I don't consider it "stealing their bandwidth" though, as XKCD explicitly
allows hotlinking - <http://xkcd.com/license.html>

~~~
mrduncan
Awesome, I had no idea that XKCD encouraged people to do that - major props to
them!

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andrewdavey
I like it. Thanks! A way to link to a specific quote/video/etc would be great
for sharing with others.

~~~
tim_church
I was thinking about adding a permalink. I'll do that now. Thanks.

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arnorhs
I wrote a similar thing into our project management system here at work.
Whenever we receive notifications about a project or something, a little small
quote like the ones you're publishing are added to the end of the e-mail...

It would have been nice to add that feature by using your site and grabbing a
quote instead of having to find the quotes myself and creating the code (even
though it was just roughly an hour).

So maybe make an API for it with one command: "Get". You could return a json
object or xml or whatever. {"quote":"blablabla", "author": "Henry the Third"}

It seems like an overkill, though :-)

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richardburton
This video just came up:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDnrLv6z-mM&feature=playe...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDnrLv6z-mM&feature=player_embedded)

It blew me away.

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secos
Nice! Is there a way to suggest quotes?

~~~
tim_church
Not yet, but I'd like to add it.

Until then, feel free to post suggestions here!

~~~
bgraves
I've always been a fan of Seneca, the Roman philosopher and Stoic.

Here's a great collection of quotes:
<http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Seneca>

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paraschopra
Great, don't take any suggestions from here. The app looks perfect, but it
would have been fantastic if you had an API interface :)

No seriously, the app is minimalistic and well-done.

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jmhobbs
Cool, looks similar to something I made last month :-)

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1128574>
<http://github.com/jmhobbs/consume-less-create-more>
<http://www.consumelesscreatemore.com/>

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NEPatriot
have you thought about automatically updating the quotes every 10-15 seconds?

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aw3c2
The text is way too big for me to easily read it.

~~~
arnorhs
It would be great to be able to adjust the font size...?

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tim_church
Probably not the solution you are looking for, but you can always use your
browser to zoom out or make the text smaller.

~~~
arnorhs
You're right, I forgot that firefox remembers the zoom level for each page and
when I go to another page/link in the same tab, the zoom level goes normal
again. Good job FF.

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empire29
Nice concept and i like the simple execution.

the font size does require me to "move my eyes" a lot to read longer phrases.
i like how completely simple and to the point it is though.

it would be neat to let users submit their own inspirational nuggets - though
you would probably have to review them to avoid misuse.

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ankit_
Love the simple, clean design without any distractions. Great idea too. Are
you manually adding the quotes/vidoes?

If it's possible to do it in a very subtle manner (footer?), maybe a small
tweet icon would be nice (for quotes add the quote to tweet, for videos add
the video link)

~~~
tim_church
Yes, I am manually adding the content.

I like the idea of integrating with twitter, facebook, buzz, etc. I will be
looking into it.

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chanux
Nice. And added to my little inspiration collection :)

<http://inspiry.tumblr.com/post/454443506/minimotivation>

And of course thanks to HN for most the content there.

~~~
tim_church
Thanks! And nice collection.

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sw1205
This is just brilliant! Great work! I think you should be able to click the
quote to go to the next one rather than having to go to the bottom of the page
and click refresh. Other than that I loved it!

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ananthrk
Cool. Mind sharing the list of quotes you use as a single file? :)

~~~
tim_church
You can see all the quotes here - <http://www.minimotivation.com/quotes.php>

Would you like to see it in a different format?

~~~
bgraves
How about a simple voting mechanism which will display more popular quotes
more frequently?

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malloreon
I like the idea of voting to show how much people like a certain item, but if
you use it to influence the rotation, in the long run you'll keep seeing the
same content over and over.

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dzlobin
I like the site, nice and simple.

My only question is where do the quotes come from? I hit f5 too fast before
noticing one of the quotes was by "Heywood Jablowme"

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mikecane
Is there any possibility of having a distinct URL for each quote, so I could
pass it along? Of course, if you plan to tie into Twitter, etc, you'd want
that, no?

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arnorhs
Good job!

I've set it as my startup page in FF. It's a good way to start work/browsing.

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Lorin
Make this into a chrome extension as an addition to the default "new tab" page
:)

~~~
Lorin
annd you've inspired me towards a new idea, hooray!

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raluxgaza
Yes, simple and straight to the point. Good going matey

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shin_lao
I like it. What about Star Trek quotes ? :p

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passthesalt
Hey good job, really like it!

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faramarz
Thanks! My new homepage :)

~~~
faramarz
Also, please don't stop adding to the collection. I'm a serious fan.

~~~
tim_church
Thanks! I really appreciate the encouragement. I plan to keep adding to the
collection. If you have any suggestions, feel free to post them here. Cheers.

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csomar
Refresh the page? Why not use jQuery Ajax function to call the server side
script.

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jmonegro
Let users submit their own quotes.

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dugmartin
Nice.

------
known
+1

