How I Got Started with This Online Tarot Thing
So, I was just messing around the other day, you know, feeling a bit uninspired. I really wanted a small project, something I could actually get done without it turning into a massive headache. That’s when the idea for an “online tarot one card” reading thing just sort of popped into my head. Seemed easy enough: click a button, get a card, see what it says. Famous last words, right?
Getting the Bits and Pieces Together
Alright, first things first, I needed the actual tarot cards. I mean, the images and what they all mean. I didn’t have a physical deck I could just scan, and honestly, drawing 78 cards myself? Not happening. My artistic skills are, let’s say, basic.
So, I started digging around online. I managed to find a set of public domain images for the Rider-Waite deck – that’s the classic one, pretty much everyone knows it. Cool, images sorted. Then came the meanings. That was a bit more of a slog, hunting down simple, clear interpretations for every single card, upright and reversed. Lots of copying and pasting into a big text file. It was pretty dull work, felt like I was just gathering supplies before actually building anything.
Making it Actually Do Something
Okay, so I had my pictures and my big file of text. Now, the tricky part: how to make a webpage pick one card at random and then show it to you? That was the next challenge I set for myself.
I decided to keep it simple and use some basic JavaScript. No need to overcomplicate things for a little fun project like this.
- First up, I made what they call an array – basically just a list. I chucked all the card names in there, along with where to find their pictures and their meanings.
- Then, I needed a button. Something obvious, like “Draw Your Card!” When you click it, that’s when the magic is supposed to happen.
- The “magic” itself was just a tiny bit of code to pick a random number. That number would then tell the script which card to pull from my list.
- After that, more code was needed to take that chosen card’s image and its meaning and slap them onto the page so you could actually see them.
Sounds straightforward when I lay it out like that, but trust me, getting the image to display right and the text to look halfway decent took a fair bit of fiddling. Lots of refreshing the browser and staring at things that were clearly broken.
Why Bother with This, Really?
You might be thinking, “Why even spend your time on something like this?” It’s not exactly a groundbreaking invention. To be honest, I was feeling a bit stuck around that time. Like I was just spinning my wheels on bigger, more complicated stuff that wasn’t really going anywhere fast.
This little tarot thing, though, it was something I could actually manage. Something I could finish. It was a bit like saying to myself, “Okay, the big stuff is a mess, but look! I can make this tiny thing work!” It sounds a bit silly, I know, but it genuinely helped. Gave me that little boost, that small win I really needed. It was like playing with digital building blocks when everything else felt too heavy.
Plus, I’ve always been kinda curious about tarot cards, but never really got into them seriously. This was a super low-commitment way to interact with them a bit.
The Ups and Downs (Mostly Just Me Fumbling)
There weren’t any massive disasters, thankfully, but there were definitely plenty of those small, annoying problems. Like trying to get all the card images to be the same size. Some were taller, some were wider when I first got them, who knows why. I spent ages tweaking the CSS stuff just to make them look reasonably consistent on the page.
And then there was making absolutely sure the right meaning showed up with the right card. You’d be amazed how easy it is to mix that up when you’re dealing with a long list of text. One little mistake in my list and suddenly The Fool is giving you advice meant for The Tower. Yeah, not exactly helpful.
It was a whole lot of just trying things out, seeing what broke, and then trying something else. No grand architectural plan here, just me poking at it until it did what I wanted. A bit like how some of those huge tech companies seem to operate, just patching things together until it vaguely works. But hey, this was just for me, so who cares?
So, What’s the Deal Now?
Well, I got it working in the end. It’s a really, really simple webpage. You click a button, a card pops up, and you get a little bit of text explaining it. That’s all there is to it. No fancy graphics, no user accounts, no saving your past readings or anything like that. Just a pure, basic, one-card draw.
I stuck it up on some personal webspace I have. Sometimes I click it myself if I’m bored. Sometimes I’ll send it to a friend if they’re curious. It’s not a big, important thing, but it’s my little working thing. And you know what? Sometimes, that’s all you need.
It definitely taught me that even a small, kind of pointless-seeming project can be really satisfying to complete. And that sometimes, just getting something done, anything at all, is way better than getting stuck on grand plans that never seem to move. Reminds me of an old job I had – massive projects, tons of people involved, but it often felt like nothing ever truly got finished properly. This little tarot thing was the complete opposite. Small, simple, and finished. And I did it all by myself, no endless meetings, no arguing with committees. Just me and the code. It was pretty nice, actually.
