My name is Wilson Hui, a web developer based in Calgary, Alberta in Canada and I created HCal in my spare time as a way to keep current on the latest and greatest in the web development world. Specifically, I wanted to see what things needed to change to migrate from PHP 5 to PHP 7. A lot had changed and MySQL is no longer available in CentOS by default and MariaDB looks to be the defacto replacement. Escape string is now a bit more elegant and sophisticated than just stripslashes() everywhere. Password hashing is well beyond just a simple MD5 hash. Mobile web development has matured and stabilized somewhat and there are now accepted conventions expected by users when they visit a website on their mobile device. e.g., how a top nav should behave. Now that things have settled, it seemed like a good time to tinker in that area again and HCal was started as a test bed for new and current web programming methods. So, you'll see a mix of things being done in PHP, Javascript, CSS, etc. And other emergent technologies that pique my interest.
I find that I learn best and quickest when I have "something to do" and since 2015, I've been more involved in the test and measurement / instrumentation calibration side of things while still working on the web development side as the Calgary calibration lab got established. After a few years of working with customers with a large amount of test equipment, I saw a few patterns emerge and thought it'd be a great idea to make something useful that would make both their lives and my own life easier. I have calibration standards that need to be sent out for factory calibration and also a rental fleet of equipment that requires calibration. It can be quite a challenge keeping track of when equipment is due for calibration. Especially when there are multiple items with staggered calibration dates to keep as spares when items are sent out.
My background is in Computer Science and earned my BSc. in Computer Science from the University of Calgary in 2004. After that, I spent 5 years working at a small Fluke distributor as their Senior Web Developer. While there, I got more involved in business processes and customer service doing technical sales suggesting possible solutions after listening to customer applications. My favorite part of software development had always been requirements gathering and the practical application of software in solving people's problems. With my current role being a mix of calibration and software development, it was natural that my focus is on software surrounding calibration. Fluke does a great job with their MET/TEAM and MET/CAL software, but that's really for the calibration labs. I wanted something that end users can have and control that allows them to manage their own fleet of equipment. I wanted it to be vendor-neutral, because where you send a multimeter is different from where you send high voltage gloves from where you send gas monitors from where where you send calipers. And so, HCal was born, a place for end users to keep all their equipment organized in one place. My customers have been very good to me over the years and so this is a little something from me to them. It's currently a dozens of dollars expense per year. But as it grows and require more bandwidth, storage, etc, it'll likely require more expensive hosting. I intend for the calibration reminder portion to remain free to use for as long as I can afford (I hope dozens of dollars or even hundreds of dollars a year shouldn't be a problem haha).
Enjoy! W. |