From a Broken Charger to a Geofenced Reality: Why I’m Building Mark Me
We’ve all seen it. The lecture ends, and suddenly there’s a stampede.
I remember one specific afternoon at GCTU. The room was packed, and the poor assistant course rep was practically being mobbed. Everyone was overcrowding her, pushing and shoving just to sign a piece of paper so they could beat the traffic and get home. In the middle of that chaos, someone stepped on her charger. Snap. Just like that, her property was ruined because our attendance system belongs in the 1990s.
That was my "Enough is Enough" moment. I realized: If we can order food to our exact door with a pin, why are we still fighting over a pen and paper to prove we’re in a lecture hall?
The Solo Build: More Than Just Code
Building Mark Me solo as a student hasn't been a "clean" journey. It’s been messy.
The geofencing logic was a beast. Optimizing it took countless late nights, and more than once, I woke up at 3:00 AM with my face imprinted on my keyboard.
But the real "Final Boss" wasn't even the coding—it was the deployment. I’ve literally slept behind my laptop twice this week just because Cloudinary and WhiteNoise decided to go to war. Seeing your CSS break on a live server while your local version looks perfect is a special kind of pain.
The Vision: One Tap, No Crowds
I’m building Mark Me for that course rep with the broken charger. I’m building it for the student who is actually in the room but can't reach the paper.
The goal is simple: Phone out. One tap. Done. By anchoring the attendance to a geofence, we eliminate "proxy signing" and we eliminate the stampede. You’re in the zone? You’re marked. No shoving, no broken chargers, no lies.
What’s Next?
Mark Me is moving from a hostel-room idea to a live platform. I’m currently refining the reporting engine (Excel/PDF exports for the reps) and hardening the security.
I’ve been through a lot to get this live, but seeing that "Live" status on Render make it all worth it. We’re moving from GCTU to the world.
Attendance shouldn’t feel like a stampede.