Originally Posted by
Matt69
I have written a Windows/MySQL application called RazorBase for straight razor users, which I'm offering free to everyone here. It allows you to record and view info on your razors, shaves and honings, and allows this data to be sorted and presented much more easily than if it was in a word processor document. (I was keeping notes this way but it wasn't very easy to find collections of related info.)
It is probably more useful to beginners at shaving or honing who are more likely to keep notes of this kind of thing, which is why it's in this part of the forum.
The latest version is on a page of my blog, here:
RazorBase download page
The complete install package (application, manual, setup instructions, example database) and the manual alone are available as separate downloads.
If you have an earlier version, this will need to be uninstalled first (using the control panel > add/remove programs). Any data already in your database is unaffected by uninstalling/re-installing.
This is free software, not a time-limited trial or a cut-down version of a commercial app. I wrote it for my own use, but would like to think other people benefit from it too.
If you have problems setting it up, questions not covered in the documentation, or wish to tell me that I'm a geek, either comment on this thread or PM me. I'd very much appreciate details of any bugs in the program.
Here is a more detailed overview:
RazorBase is a system to record details of razors, shaving and honing, in a way that allows the user to quickly find useful information such as: When was a razor last honed? What was the next shave with it like? Collections of related data such as all shaves with a certain razor, its honing history, and all shaves with a particular soap or brush can be extracted and presented easily.
The data is organised as records of razors, shaves, honings, and miscellaneous notes, and relationships between notes are maintained in the database without user involvement. Common ways of using the data are available at a single click, and there is also a search system, which allows the user to find related notes - all honing notes containing 'pyramid' or 'coticule', or all shaving notes containing 'scything' or 'chin' for example. A section for miscellaneous notes, tagged by user-defined category, allows recording of data that doesn't fit in elsewhere, such as dates of acquiring shaving equipment, or 'to do' notes for maintenance, and can be searched in the same way as the other record types.
Although RazorBase allows each shave and razor to be described with a considerable amount of data, it does not require it. A razor can be saved in the database with just blade width and name, and a shave can be saved as just a razor and a date. Other fields can be filled in or left blank at the user's choice.
RazorBase is a front-end application that uses the MySQL database for storage and retrieval of data. I have tried to keep the installation process as simple as possible, but it is necessary to install and set up a MySQL server, and to run a script (provided in the installation package) using the MySQL command line, Navicat, MySQL Workbench, Query Browser or similar front-end application. Details of how to do this are in the 'readme.txt' file which is in the RazorBase directory.
RazorBase only runs on Windows systems. It has been tested on Windows XP, Vista, and Windows 7. It requires the .NET 3.5 framework, and is written in C#.
