500 Foods Blog

A new entry for CRUDE was added to the Watchlist and also included in the home page Watchlist. This is intended to be the current global price for crude oil, as reported by Yahoo! Financials' CL=F ticker symbol. It is of particular interest of late because of the recent start of the war between Ukraine and Russia and the reports by the US President that this is impacting the price of oil. Whether or not this is actually the case is perhaps not as a clear cut. Perhaps raising its visibility will bring a little more clarity to this topic over time.

Some other minor tweaks were made to the Watchlist, primarily around changing the sort order of the elements at the end of the list.

Watchlist Update: APHA > TLRY

Andrew Simard — Mon, 10 May 2021 20:14:38 +0000

Watchlist Update: APHA > TLRY Andrew Simard 2021-May-10 Mon 13:14

Watchlist Update: APHA > TLRY

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Tilray's acquisition of Aphria completed on May 3rd, so the APHA stock is no longer listed. TLRY wasn't previously included in the Watchlist, so it has replaced APHA.

Watchlist Update: Bitcoin added

Andrew Simard — Sun, 11 Apr 2021 03:43:13 +0000

Watchlist Update: Bitcoin added Andrew Simard 2021-Apr-10 Sat 20:43

Watchlist Update: Bitcoin added

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Bitcoin

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Bitcoin has been added to the Watchlist views, with both the USD and CAD variants listed.

These are a little different than the other Watchlist items in that there is no 'market' opening for trades with Bitcoin - trading happens 24/7/365. So some extra steps were taken to ensure that these entries are updated continually as well.

Also, be mindful that the discrepancy between the USD and CAD variants listed is due to the current exchange rates. So it is possible, and perhaps even frequently occurring, that the USD Bitcoin variant will show a gain while the CAD Bitcoin variant will show a loss, or the reverse, if there is only a small change in the Bitcoin value relative to the change in the USD-CAD exchange rates.

Website Update: November 2020

Andrew Simard — Fri, 04 Dec 2020 01:16:27 +0000

Website Update: November 2020 Andrew Simard 2020-Dec-03 Thu 17:16

Website Update: November 2020

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Notifications

Some effort has been put into settting up a suitable notifications system for content published on the 500 Foods website. While not new to the site, the Digest and Subscription options have been cleaned up considerably, particularly in terms of the formatting of emails that are sent out. Both of these notification systems make heavy use of HTML-enabled e-mail to format the content in a manner that is reflective of the overall theme of the 500 Foods website.

HTML-Enabled Apps Released as Oasis Web

Andrew Simard — Wed, 18 Nov 2020 06:10:44 +0000

HTML-Enabled Apps Released as Oasis Web Andrew Simard 2020-Nov-17 Tue 22:10

HTML-Enabled Apps Released as Oasis Web

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2020-Nov-17 Tue 22:10

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Oasis Web is now available.

Cybele Software's Thinfinity VirtualUI has been deployed to provide HTML-enabled versions of some of our key applications, effectively turning our traditional Windows-based apps into fully functional HTML5-compliant web-based apps compatible with all the latest browsers and platforms. Firefox, Chrome, and Safari browsers have been tested, as well as Windows, Mac and Linux desktops. Mobile support for iOS and Android has also been tested. It is expected that many additional HTML5-compliant browsers and platforms will work just as well. Please do let us know if you encounter any problems with your particular browser environment.

For more information, please refer to the Oasis Web page.

Website Case Study

Andrew Simard — Sat, 07 Nov 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Website Case Study Andrew Simard 2020-Nov-06 Fri 16:00

Website Case Study

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Website Case Study

If you wanted to know a little more about how the 500 Foods website has been put together, checkout a case study that we wrote for Drupal.Org. Drupal is the underlying software that was used to create the website.

Website Update: October 2020

Andrew Simard — Tue, 03 Nov 2020 23:27:38 +0000

Website Update: October 2020 Andrew Simard 2020-Nov-03 Tue 15:27

Website Update: October 2020

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Website Performance

While there are currently very few visitors, website performance is still important for a few reasons. First, Google uses (according to some) performance as one of its metrics when rating sites. Better performing sites provide a better overall user experience, the theory goes, so they are deserving of a bump in the rankings. Seems plausible, albeit anecdotal at best. Second, while there are few users now, things can change quickly at which point having an optimized site will allow a bit more time to address the issue, should we be fortunate enough to have it. Load balancers and higher performing VPS infrastructure is not hard to come by technically, but is not cheap so spending time optimizing now could save a bundle down the road. Third, when a site is performing poorly, it is likely indicative of something that is wrong or misconfigured.

Website Update: September 2020

Andrew Simard — Tue, 06 Oct 2020 00:18:00 +0000

Website Update: September 2020 Andrew Simard 2020-Oct-05 Mon 17:18

Website Update: September 2020

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Ongoing Maintenance

More cleanup and general performance improvements this month. Google has many tools for gauging how well a site is performing. Things like Google PageSpeed Insights,Google Search Console, Google AdSense among others. Firefox and Chrome also include tools for troubleshooting problems and behind-the-scenes issues that impact performance but that might not be visible to visitors. While this is very much a diminishing returns effort, much progress has been made in terms of meeting or exceeding targets set (often arbitrarily) by these tools. Always on the lookout for other ways to make the site faster, more secure or easier to use, so while this may not be at the top of the priorities list, it will continue to be an item of interest.

Website Update: August 2020

Andrew Simard — Sat, 29 Aug 2020 22:19:42 +0000

Website Update: August 2020 Andrew Simard 2020-Aug-29 Sat 15:19

Website Update: August 2020

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Maintenance Update

As with any website, some maintenance occurs on a pretty regular basis. The 500 Foods website is no exception of course. Here are some things that have recently been updated or improved upon. As this has been the first full month with the relaunched site, there have been many behind-the-scenes improvements all around, but things have settled down considerably feature-wise as compared to last month.

New Artwork

New banner artwork (sourced from Shutterstock) has been added to the site. More is coming, along with more content to go with it. The new artwork hopefully rounds out and completes the overall look of the site. No further changes are planned in terms of structure or navigation. All the pieces are in place. Now the focus is on content for the most part.