OneMoreGoal Progress Log

[Icy]

So after spending quite a few weeks thinking about what I'm going to do I've decided to "force" myself into action. While I could have easily made thousands by now if thinking was profitable, it sadly isn't. Because of this it's time to take action to start building the best online training website for player advancement in soccer.

The lack of actions comes down a lot to my perfectionist attitude. It's kind of like, if it's not perfect why do it? I need to get this out of my head because frankly even the top companies aren't perfect and I still constantly improving. Hopefully I can get over this!

Every day I will post up a quick bit of what I updated\changed\made better on the website. For now the address (www.onemoregoal.com) leads to absolutely nothing but I hope within a week or two to get a host and then I'll have something everyone can go to and interact with. I just don't want to get hosting yet until I have atleast a few videos made to put on it.

Also as I do this I am looking for honest feedback. I could careless if it is the absolute worst thing you've even seen as long as you post why that is and how I can improve it. If you're not willing to take the time to do that then save yourself the time and not bother posting.

Thanks everyone!

[Icy]

Ha, already been two days and I've posted nothing on here. I'll just give a quick rundown of whats going on.

Two days ago: Right after posting I went to take my afternoon nap and instead of the 30 minutes or so I wanted to sleep I slept for 4 and wasted most of the day. After that I still had to practice soccer for a few hours before actual sleep and advancing in soccer is more important than the website so I accomplished nothing.

Yesterday: Had a few hours to work on it and I got a design I will actually be satisfied with and started to make some quick images that will be used on the homepage. These aren't even close to the quality that I will have once the website is done but I feel I need placeholders for now so it feels like I am getting somewhere with this.

Today: The day is still young but so far I am working on learning CSS better in order to make the layout I want for the website a reality. I plan to get that complete with the temporary images that I have made as placeholders. Assuming this goes as easy as I think it will I'll then be designing the layouts for the pages with articles\videos\etc. Perhaps I'll post back later today with a picture of how it's coming along.

I know it seems like I'm progressing slow but I do not have many hours each day to work on it. I work around 7-8 hours every day (might be cutting it down soon though), then I practice soccer 3-4 hours a day then top that off with the time of cooking, getting ready for things, etc I end up having around 4 hours or so to actually work on it. To be honest that time isn't even 100% focused because I need atleast some time to "relax" each day.

Now here me out, I'm not making excuses because I am going to make this happen no matter what. Maybe I'll have to start going with less sleep, or deal with not having a little time each day to relax but it'll be worth it in the end. Before these gets too long though I'll end it here and get back to work. Good luck with all your projects everyone!

[Icy]

Wow, it's been over a month since I've actually posted anything here. What's sad is that this past month instead of actively working on it I've just spent my time reading books, and learning. Now, this isn't necessarily bad but it's like I've used it as an excuse to not actually work on the website.

Anyways, I am done reading, I am getting the website up. If I don't know how to do something I will put it on a checklist and do it once I have atleast something presentable up. It's like something snapped these past few days and I've written out what I want the website to be like\how I want to help people\etc and now I am ready. No more excuses. Don't know if I will make a post each day of what I accomplished (usually think I'll look at one website than waste an hour) but I'll try to post some what regularly of whats going on with it.

[TC2]

Don't feel bad. As long as you are making progress. It takes times to do things right.

[Bilgefisher]

Don't feel bad. As long as you are making progress. It takes times to do things right.

Not to start an argument, but I have to respectfully disagree.

Progress with no set time line and delaying what you set out to do, is nothing more then procrastination. Write down your goals, your time frame, and steps to complete those goals. Simple enough, but most of us struggle to get that far. Do not allow yourself to say its okay to procrastinate.

Icy. I hope to see progress reported in this thread as promised. Please keep us up to date. Do so to help keep yourself on target. May determination be on your side.

[maximus20895]

Yes, keep updating this every day. Make it a habit.

[Icy]

Ok, so I've spent the past couple days just figuring out if this is what I truely want to do. While I've honestly decided the creation of the website is going to be terrible (I cannot afford to pay someone) I'll bare with it and make it. Now, the actual content part is going to be a lot of fun. I already spend a few hours a day reading message boards and helping people for free so this part will not be a problem.

I've decided to give myself 2 weeks to atleast have a website up. Yes, it will be far from perfect, but I need to get something up. I'm great at procrastinating if there isn't outside pressure, but the second someone else is on my back I work like no one else. So getting it just up is important.

I've made out a 2 week list with what I will do each day. Many of these activities will only take a couple hours, and some less. There are a few reasons for this, some days I truely have only a few hours to work, I wanted to make it less intimidating, and also if I complete the work for the day I'm on I'll start on the next days plan anyways. So here is the list:

Day 1: Decide layout for each page (there will be unexpected ones but I know what will need to be there at first)
Day 2: Begin to program it (HTML\CSS)
Day 3: Possibly continuing on day 2 or making placeholding graphics, if not go to day 4
Day 4: Learn about SEO\Keywords\etc
Day 5: Implement what was learned on day 4
Day 6: Make graphics that flow with the design
Day 7: Set-up social aspects FB\Twitter\message board\etc
Day 8: First video: Basic ball juggling video
Day 9: Figure out products to review\make a list of different attributes to be rated on
Day 10-14: No sure yet but most likely just content\making it look more professional

This is already longer than intended so I will just leave off on one other thing I had planned. I'm considering just making a video every fews days to document how it's going. I'd do it for a couple reasons. To get criticism on how I talk (whether it's monotone, and what not) and to conquer a (slight) video anxiety.

I figure (if I do it) than people here will give constructive critism, and not just being dicks. Nothing wrong with being told I suck, as long as I'm told how I can improve. haha

[Luke12321]

Not IF you do it, but when you do it :-) Keep up the work.

[Bilgefisher]

Icy,

Rep++ for taking decisive action. Do not be ashamed for putting down to much information here. Even if no one reads it, you will still have had to put your thoughts to paper. Which means you read it. A very important step. Keep us updated on the progress.

[Icy]

Thanks to everyone that has posted. It means a lot that people actually take the time to see what I am doing when at the moment it's only an idea that's only just getting put into action.

Day 1: Only worked (I will admit I also wasted a couple hours today) on this a couple hours today. I did accomplish the plan of drawing out on paper a quick sketch of what I want the "important" pages to look like. Funny enough as I also started to implement my designs and as I got the jist of what I want it to look like I already wanted to change it some. Now, I only want to add to what is there, there will be no changing of what I have, so I will be doing it. After looking at it in the browser it feels a little too bare right now (but that can also be due to the lack of graphics since it's just mapping out the general layout right now).

It also looks like I could have even less time to work on this too. I'm really considering taking up a part time job in order to insure I'll have enough money to move to England rather than hope this makes money in a years time (that's such a short time anyways!).

To me it's more important to get to England a pursue becoming a professional soccer play than get this running. While helping people improve in soccer is something I love to do also (what the site will focus on) I know that I will regret it if I don't give everything I have in my own pursuit of pros first. I only have 5-8 years before my peak in soccer, but I will have decades to work on creating the best soccer training resource(s). To me it's an obvious choice at the moment.

Either way I will still have a few hours to work on this website each day so it's not like there won't be progress. It's just possible that it won't fly right up.

Honestly, this kind of turned into a "diary entry" like post and more about getting my thoughts out rather than inform everyone here. Typing it out actually helped with figuring a slight conflict in my head, and I'm just going to keep it to let you guys see. Frankly, I don't blame you if you don't read the rambling haha

[Icy]

So, I've been working on this following along with my plan, but I'm honestly realizing I just don't like it. Soccer to me is something I do because I enjoy it, and I want to produce content that people get for free. I don't want to think of it as a business (AT ALL!) and just want to allow people access to it to become the best they possibly can. So, I really don't think I'll continue to work on the website, but I will produce content that will be scattered over the web. Soccer is for fun; It's not a business to me.

While working on it though, I kind of evolved a side project that I believe has great potential (and I have no problem thinking of it as a business! haha). I'm keeping this a "secret" until I get to a far enough point in which I think a progress log will do it justice. So, until I reach a good point to post about on here I'll be away from the forums. Granted it may be no more than a week or two (for a basic program) because I plan to first develop it in a langauge I know well (C#) and then into java in order to work cross-platform.

[MJDeMarco]

Moving to progress-threads forum ...

[Icy]

Note: Feel free to skip to "What I've done so far" because most of the below is me rambling on about what I'm working on, and not progress.

As I had stated in my last post I've begun working on a new project. Incase you didn't see it, I cannot stand the thought of soccer being business related, only fun.

Anyways, what I'm creating is, simply put, a workout tracker. You're able to put the workout you did for the day into the program and it'll save it. A couple of the (many) benefits to this are:

-Motivating to see if you knocked a minute or two off your mile time or dropped 20 pounds in the past 8 weeks.

-If you're training for a specific event you can see how well the routine you're doing is working towards that goal. If it's working well, you continue to use it and if it's not you don't. Be seeing the a month (or many months) improvement in a second rather than calculating it on paper would be great.

Now, as you can imagine this has been done a "million" times. Frankly, I know I have ideas that'll make using it more motivational than what has been done (and I could find). I'll wait to give out more as I progress though.

What I've done so far:

I began working on this just a couple hours ago and so far I've been getting a (very basic) GUI set up for account creation a "logging in". In the first version it'll be purely offline so the information is stored in plain text files. Not bothering with encrypting ANY informtion (including the password) right now because there is no true reason at the moment (and it'd be easy to crack). While it's working all offline right now I plan to store the information in a way so it can easily be uploaded once I get a server set up for it (quite a while away atm)). There's the jist of where I'm at, but back to work. I plan to have another post up with atleast some pictures with the terrible GUI in a few days.

[Icy]

I suppose I'll release a bit more information on the project I'm now working on. The new project is a workout log but it will have many features that'll benefit the person using this program.

Topic Today: Exercise Search

Surely most people here have looked online or in a magazine to get the "summer beach body" you've always wanted. The problem arose though when this routine was giving you all sorts of crazy exercises to do like a hindu squat, diverbomber pushup, among other things. Thing is, instead of going to the internet and finding out what each of this weirdly named exercises were you either closed the browser or magazine.

This is where my current project will step in. Let's say you find a routine through the program the you'd like to try but it still gives you all sorts of crazy exercises. Instead of having to go online and search through endless websites to find the one with a video description, information is only a click away. When you download a routine, you will at the same time be downloading the information for each exercise in the routine. So when you see on day one a list like this (hypothetical of course!):

Day 1:
Diverbomber push-ups - 3 sets of 10 reps
Sit ups - 3 sets up 10 reps
Hindu Squats 3 sets of 10 reps

Instead of having to open up a browser and going to google, you'll be able to simply click on the name to view information about the exercise, including a video.

I'll leave off right here. I believe this gives enough information to get a basic understanding of what I'm up to at the moment. Any questions, or critism? Post it, but please give feedback, not something like "Terrible idea" if you don't like it!

[Icy]

So I now have it so you can now search exercise, workouts, or whatever. I've seen a lot of times where people will want certain to do a workout with a certain type of exercise and now you can search (what will be a big collection) of workouts quickly. Instead of having to search around the internet you can type in one or two exercises (Ex: pushup, situp) and then get a list of a lot of workouts involving those exercises.

The great thing about this is that it's also painless to search the description of workouts\routines also. So lets say you're looking to increase your strength without much care for condition you could type in something like:

"increase strength"

And it'll look through descriptions and find you a bunch of routines that you can look through and then you're able to select which you'll do. Then each day the program will tell you what to do and you're set for the day. (Perhaps I should allow a printing feature for those that cannot get around the computer every day?)

Theres a short blurb of the nonsense I was talking about last time.

[Icy]

Figured I'd give this a bump since I have an idea I'm developing and not convincing myself it's a 'bad idea' within a week.

I haven't re-read my old posts, but I know they were geared towards the area of sports\fitness like this one.

I don't want to discuss the idea too much, yet, because I'd rather show you once I get something more presentable.

I'm throwing together a rough prototype to get an idea of what it all entails. Even this mock-up is making me refine things that would just take far too long planning it all out on paper.

I'm really pushing to get a prototype of basic functionality put together in the next few days\week. It certainly won't scale\be secure enough to put online, but perhaps I can post a video.

Regardless of if I post a video once it starts to become more presentable I definitely will be posting to get (constructive) criticism.

P.S. Anyone that is a coach\trains groups of people for fitness\sport will need this.

[Icy]

Suppose I'll post a quick update about this.

I'm currently working on something that wasn't the intent, because it'll allow a much larger test base.

At it's core it'll be pretty much the same thing. The valuable part of this is a different take on how to track workouts on the computer. Every program I see tends to just look like a spreadsheet, or you can just track a run\swim\cycling session. These tends to just be simply by miles, or time.

There are entire communities of people though that cannot track their workouts on such a simple premiss (I know, I'm part of some!). A workout like:

5 dumbell swings each arm
5 dumbell snatches each arm
10 burpees
repeat 5 rounds for time

It's a very short workout, but I personally haven't seen something that could effectively track that, unless it's one of those spreadsheets. Now, what if we add some type of finisher, lets say a core workout.

30 seconds sit ups
1 minute plank
30 seconds turkish get-ups each arm
repeat 3 rounds - no rest

Now instead of rep based it's time based. Again, something workout trackers I haven't seen don't take into account. Not only that, but this addition should be considered part of the workout, but kind of considered a 'sub-workout' in the workout. It shouldn't just be thrown onto a list acting as though the first workout, and this are meant to be together. There are many ways you can utilize this, lets say for example an individual morning workout, and a practice for a team you play on.

I'll end it here for now. I want to just keep typing, and typing about it, because knowing what I'm adding feels like I'm just leaving you guys hanging (which I probably am :P).

For the entire vision of this I'm quickly seeing how it will probably be too much for one person. So, for now I'm trying to create something, to even just be able to demonstrate the true vision (which is going well!). Then, from that point either find people with the skills willing to work for "free"(equity), or an investor who is interested in the idea and help fund it.

Still a lot to go though! I'll probably post another update in a couple weeks. Who knows maybe I'll have something I'll be willing to let a few people test certainly not for the public yet though haha.