#adm codes

[adigitalmagician]

I'm learning unity. One of the tutorials in my course is a text based game.

I hosted it, so how about trying it?

[adigitalmagician]

Sitting in the front, live tweeting a talk is probably one of the more enjoyable things I do at this conference.

[adigitalmagician]

Cool code

Okay, so my current workload, I have to modify a string (Actually a SQL Query) based on the context we’re running the format in. The current code looks something like this:

def func(context="after"): query = """ SELECT * FROM table WHERE state = 1 AND context = {context:s} """ query.format(context=context) results = query.execute() return results

What we need to be able to do is format that 1 to be 0 or 1 depending on the context field.

The solution I wrote first is this:

def func(context="after"): state = context == "before" query = """ SELECT * FROM table WHERE state = {state:d} AND context = {context:s} """ query.format(context=context, state=state) results = query.execute() return results

For now, assume this works.

So explanation of what's going on:

Most people who use python expect formatting the Python Booleans to get you string representations, and digit formatting to fail. It's how most things like it work. For example:

>>> "{:d}".format(None) Traceback (most recent call last): File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module> ValueError: Unknown format code 'd' for object of type 'str'

You can't turn None into a digit. It converts to a string, then fails.

The catch is, the Python Booleans inherit some old school style, and are actually represented in the background as Integers, 0 and 1. So:

>>> True == 1 True >>> False == 0 True

But if you format either to a string, you get their names:

>>> "{}".format(False) 'False'

But, because they're ints, you can format them as digits, and get their numerical value.

>>> "{:d}".format(False) '0'

So there, my cool elegant solution, that is getting replaced with a ternary because maintainability and readability is more important than me being clever.

[adigitalmagician]

I swear to god if I get another recruiter tapping me for Java or a position that is asking for 10+ years of experience, I might just break fingers.

[adigitalmagician]

I get into the office today, and the client has added notes to one of my tasks. Notes that don’t make any sense in context of the task.

I begin asking questions, and basically, they want an entirely different feature than the one on the card.

*Scream eternally.*

[adigitalmagician]

TIL

There are two interesting scripts in Unix:

true and false

true has evolved over the years, but the original source was

exit 0

In other words the script true simply returns a true value.

At some point, AT&T in their infinite wisdom, added a copyright notice.

After that, someone figured out that an empty shell script also returns true.

So now we have the script true whose entirety is an AT&T copyright notice.

At some point, it became a compiled binary because it’s “faster,” but the copyright notice and the software signature are still in this script.

I am dying of laughter.

[adigitalmagician]

This might sound weird, but I wanted to show you something I found in my town. Look up g-ewebdesign and look at the two web pages they have and read all of it. It's just one of the weirder web-designer for hire site that I've seen (and is $750 for geocity-like pages really that reasonable?)

I’m not totally sure what you’re wanting from me (Besides your last question), but I figure might as well link this for the glory that it is and talk about it a bit.

G and E Webdesign

So if you’re using a relatively modern browser, you all can follow along as I talk about this travesty. Just right click in the window, and Inspect Element or View Source. I’ll point out what you’re looking for.

You asked if $750 is reasonable. I’m going to save the answer for the end, but I feel like my appraisal will demonstrate my answer.

Let’s start with this landing page. UX design is specifically about encouraging certain behaviors. The behavior this person is looking for is “contact me to build you a website!”

We have this ‘memed’ headline and a long article about American Pride and the great lie of Obama. At the very end of the article we have a button to “enter site”. At the top of the page we have a business name and some advertising language. At the bottom a POW stamp about the size of the enter site button.

Landing pages should do one of two things: Entice you further into the site, or get the desired action. Hopefully both: Try to close the desired action, and, failing that, pull you deeper.

Let’s imagine you’re a person in their target market (I know, more or less, what they’re targeting because I’ve gone deeper into the site already): You’re a small business owner, probably ex-military, and you don’t know a thing about running or building web sites. Because of this, you’re also older, I’m going to be generous and say 55-65.

 This is our optimal target.

Now imagine most people you know that fit this qualifier.

Now question one: This person has found you looking for someone to make them a website. They’ve decided nephews, nieces, grandchildren, anyone young enough that knowing how to do this is more or less what they grew up with, aren’t a good fit for any reason. Maybe they didn’t even ask. You want a web designer. You think this is it, but the first thing you see is this article.

If you’re not ex military or an arch conservative, do you even make it through the article?

Probably not. If you’re a business owner, and you actually need a website done, you aren’t wasting your time reading this article. Back to google.

So you decide to read the article, do you enter the site? Do you even really get what that means?

I’ll admit, most business owners are smart people, I hope they get what “enter the site” means. But there’s a design decision here I told hold well to: The enter site button is the same size as the POW banner. Part of UX is using size and spacing to leader people to the thing you want them to press. The only UX trick being used here is flashing arrows. I could talk about some of what’s happened in the last five years of web design, but no thanks. There are concepts this designer simply doesn’t know, but I assume their target market doesn’t know it either.

Let’s step into the next page.

First thing: shitty header banner again.

Then we have a music player. This is a place where the design breaks down again. What is the purpose of the music player on this page? Besides that, look at the layout, for a useless/aesthetic element, it’s just not pleasing to look at or use.

Remember our optimal user?

This person just insulted them. I don’t know a small business owner who doesn’t know you need to spend time researching things to keep from getting robbed. You need to study at least enough web design to know someone is competent, or someone who can put you at ease they know what they’re talking about. (Look, half of sales is straight up con artistry. You need to inspire confidence, and much of that confidence is half truths. Way of the world.)

Skipping from this really rough opening, this person starts working the copy. This is rough, inelegant copy, but it’s covering the bases. Notice the word “coach” in there. 

So their sales are clumsy, but I assume effective. So let’s get to that pricing model and the technology.

So, I charge give or take 1000 bucks to set up a website.

Not a 5 page website. A full website with tools to expand as necessary. Remarkably, that’s a thing we can do now that this “designer” doesn’t realize.

So, why are they charging 750 for 5 pages? Well because they’re hand coding five pages.

Okay, that’s unfair, let’s talk about what I mean. Remember how I told you to view the source or inspect element?

Go all the way to the top and check out the meta tags inside the head. (If anyone reading along doesn’t know what the head tag is, it’s angle brackets around the word head.)

The first meta tag I expect, it’s just content language.

The second one is where I start chuckling.

This house is using FrontPage. FrontPage is a microsoft product discontinued in 2003. It’s WYSIWYG. Anon’s comparison to geocities isn’t too far off.

So this person is hand placing elements on this page. And pretty damn poorly.

I’m astounded there’s a stylesheet at all on this thing. It’s of course only styling the scroll bar, because of course it is.

There’s style tags. Because Microsoft is awful and that’s actually how they think styling should be done. (I could do a long talk about the weird hybrid styling in Word. Just. . . yeah, no.)

So, the TL;DR: This person is building websites on tech over ten years old, doesn’t know the first thing about modern UX or web design, and is charging an exorbitant rate for these “skills.”

Like, I’m tired and kind of pissed off because they’re targeting people who this is a huge rip off for. They might be honestly out of touch with how much they don’t know, but I don’t need to like that they’re charging people for these things.

If they were charging 200 for what they do, maybe. 750 is highway robbery for their service, but it’s pretty much the low end of reality.

Also, now that I’ve talked about all this stuff, you can go tear this website a new ass. That’s one of mine. Write about how I did, or didn’t, take advantage of what I was working with. What’s the goal of the website? Can you figure it out?

[adigitalmagician]

So, because I'm like most people I know in my generation, once I learned to code, I started designing games. Mostly crappy top down shooters, because they're easy, but hey, I learn shit, and that's the important part!

My latest one is basically my previous game project but built much, much better. For those curious, I'm writing in Python using the Pygame SDL library.

Right now, I'm using a white circle for the player and green circles for the enemies (I call them zombies. Might as well, right?), and little blue circles for the bullets.

The vision is a sort of survival/shooter hybrid with a random map that you can explore more than one screen of and persists even after you leave. I want a handful of weapon types, ammo, probably food, and of course basic life. Enemies right now I'm sticking to zombies and a trick or two.

Figure I should just start writing about the project and maybe people will be interested. I plan on making it into a Windows binary and sharing the source when it's more than a shitty project.