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2025.03.13.1 aka Fiddling with Time

Aside from building out this website, I'm currently working on a web app called Bmore Today.

Bmore Today

Bmore Today started because I wanted an easier way to see the day's events. Baltimore has so much to offer, but finding events across multiple sources takes time. In December, I developed a habit of checking Baltimore Magazine, BaltShowPlace, Enoch Pratt Library, Eventbrite, Meetup, and r/baltimore every morning. The problem? It could easily take an hour to comb through everything, only to sometimes find that there weren’t any events I was interested in.

So, I figured I could combine all these sources into one web app/dashboard.

In its current state, I'm aggregating events from:

  • Baltimore Beat
  • Baltimore Magazine
  • BaltShowPlace
  • Enoch Pratt Library

The next source I hope to integrate is BmoreArt.

Current Features

Each event is represented by a card displaying:

  • Title
  • Location
  • Cost
  • Time/Timeframe
  • Link to the original source

Filters & User Preferences

Users can:

  • Filter by source
  • Sort events (Alphabetically A-Z, Z-A, and Chronologically)
  • Toggle between Celsius/Fahrenheit for weather
  • Toggle between 12-hour & 24-hour time formats

Today's Work: Standardizing Event Time Data

Today, I continued work on standardizing event data. Each source formats time differently: 6 PM, 6 p.m., 6pm, etc. To unify everything, I used the luxon library so that all times are now displayed as either:

  • 12-hour format (09:00 PM)
  • 24-hour format (21:00)

Steps Taken:

  • Added startTime and endTime columns to the PostgreSQL database
  • Updated scripts for each source to extract and standardize time
  • Refactored regexes to handle different formats
  • Updated queries and repopulated the database

Now, all events share a consistent time format, making it easier to scan event cards and implement sorting.

Future Goals

Next, I plan to standardize price data. Right now, prices vary:

  • A single amount ($10)
  • Free
  • 0
  • Not provided
  • A range ($15 - $30)

By applying similar standardization, it'll be easier to scan event cards at a glance.

Final Thoughts

This was a productive day! Standardizing time was a huge step toward making Bmore Today more polished and user-friendly. Now onto pricing.