Software requirements

Password complexity checker for big car rental company is set to insane mode
☑️ 30 char
☑️ symbols
☑️ numbers
☑️ upper & lower
❎ still 'too weak'

I like how nano not only shows you unnecessary whitespaces, it throws them in your face and and screams "YOU SEE THAT? WHAT IS THIS SHIT? DELETE THIS DISGRACE TO CLEAN INDENTED CODE!"

It's Friday!

Working From Home. Living the Dream.

And i'm just sitting here like sudo nano

Software development process

logger.info(String.Format(" User {0} changed their password from {1} to {2}", username, oldPassword, newPassword))

Production system. Plaintext log.

I am so fucking fed up with being brought into a meeting because you "understand the technology" and then no fucker actually listens when you say that their idea won't work because the tech isn't magic.

Intelligence and ability cannot be measured by education.

I have a client who asked a Master in Computer Science to develop a small system, for querying product title and their code. The guy used python, vanilla js, and... Txt file for the "database". Then my client asked me to integrated this in... WordPress.

This was in 2016. And idiot as I'm, I agreed and adapted his code to use php and a database.

April this year, my client said they are still using the python system to add new products all this time, in parallel. And wanted to update the WordPress with the data.

- No problem! - I said. Just send me the SQL file.

So the Master in CS sent me a SQL coded in ANSI. I asked for the SQL again, but with a more appropriate encoding. He took 1 month to reply back, and said it would be better if I get rid of the database and just use the txt file for querying.

This is outrageous.

I really hate people who are educated but completely useless.

"Please send us an e-mail with your name, address, e-mail address, ..."

Oh come on.

Some clients are a real patience test.

Client:
"I want to be able to edit every detail on every page of the whole website"

After site is coded, and admin page is available for page edits, they send requests like:
"please update the text on page x"

I would be in the nano row.

Barbecue tools

"Any fool can write code that a computer can understand.
Good programmers write code that humans can understand."

— Martin Fowler,
Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code

Today, one of my coworkers had to translate a bunch of pages to French ...
He did his job, committed, pushed, and asked someone to validate his branch in order to merge.
Tests didn't take long, the login screen was broken, because there was an there was an <input type="mot de passe"> ...

I prefer nano over vim

Client: Hi there, we worked together I few months ago and loved what you created for us! We have another job and would like to see if you are available?

Me (1h later): Sure! Let me know more details about this new project.

Client (15min later): Oh, sorry, since you took so long to respond, we've decided to choose another freelancer. Thank you anyways!!

Me: ...

Estimated a project would take 30h. Ended up working 110h.

😁😁....

When you just saw a devrant, and remember you have a perfect picture to add to it that you've been holding onto for years, for just this very moment to post it, so you quickly look for the picture, and then you can't find the rant again !

The rant I saw was about excessive warning signs..

Reminded me of my then local library that was relocated and the architect didn't notice the floor level between two rooms was different so when they knocked two into one, this was the result..

I did suggest they simply put a ramp in, instead of spending a small fortune on signs!

But no, they went with the signs and I heard, had regular accidents involving people falling off the step still..

You know 💩 got serious, when you type 50+ line of codes in nano editor.

A few months ago, I decided to let go some old clients with bad behavior and/or bad projects, since I noticed this was affecting my mental health (lowering my self esteem, make me feel depressed, anxious, etc).

I was exhausted of doing miracles in projects without git, build files, staging enviroments (yes... you can imagine), and receive all sort of curses when sudenly something stopped to work.

I set some requirements to work with any new project/client: 1) project needs to be under version control, 2) it must have staging enviroment, 3) I must work with build files.

As I still have contracts running, I'm communicating this to clients as soon as I finish my obligations.

Today, one of these clients told me they are leaving to work with another developer.

Reason: They said my new requirements are unreasonable and they prefer doing the old way.

Was it it with clients and wanting to restrict the height of webpages?

Client: Can you make it all fit on the screen?

Me: What this particular screen?

Client: Well all screens, some people might not realise there is more content.

Me: What if the screen is tiny?

Client: make it smaller

Me: What if you add more content to it?

Client: Hmm, your the developer.

Me: Teeny tiny text coming right up.

Git it?

There are two ways to give advice, example:

Car is parked badly:

"Hey mate, your car is parked badly."

"Hey asshole, did your mother teach you to drive or what, such shit parking, you should go and kill yourself."

Notice one is fact based and rather devoid of personal insults and emotional triggers..

Unlike the last one..

Why are so many folk, like the last example..

Finally got my new phone (from China) today.
*Opens package all excitedly*
*Backups everything to pc of old phone and gets ready to swap the simcard*
*Notices that the new phone only supports a nano sim*
*Realizes that I only have an old school simcard that you can't cut down to nano size*
*Realizes that I'll have to wait until after the weeked to receive the new simcard*

FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU.

I want to play with it now :(

It feels like 1985..

Not,1986, as in that year, we got Blitters for smooth screen scrolling ! (Though, if you knew what you was doing, you could make smooth screen scrolling before Graphic Hardware chips started doing some of the work for us..)

I drag a window across several monitor screens, why is it not smooth, why do I have to fight it like I'm wrestling an alligator !

Maybe it's my weak GTX 750Ti 4Gb graphics card, or the 3.4Ghz quad core CPU..

Instead it feels like FAST MODE on a ZX81..

You have Google Chrome installed..

Yet, constantly you open other browsers, and it asks you "Want to install Google Chrome?".

No because I've already got it installed you bloody stupid piece of software, can't you tell !

Any way of stopping that ?

Yes, thank you bash, I know Nano is the easiest and I am a pussy developer for not using Vim. Now shut up about it.

!rant
What is your editor/coding environment fashion setup?

Here is mine and I am very proud of it:

Termite terminal + dvtm (like tmux) + Nano with semi-custom syntax files.

Left language is C, right top C2 (c2lang.org), right bottom my build-system

I hate people who don't value transparent and assertive communication. I'm saying this thinking about an specific client.

This client is a boss of Web agency, and has some contractors working on their projects. I worked for them for a year, doing Web projects from scratch and also maintenance.

Then, one week, the communication stopped. No answers, no feedback, nothing. For months. They ghosted me.

I tried contact a few times with no luck. After 3 months, they started to remove me from slack, git, base camp.

And that's it. I was discarded and it seems I don't even deserved a message to be aware of that.

I don't mind to end business relationship anytime, for any reason. There are lot of reasons a working relationship would not work, and that's OK. We should have partners that are a great fit for us.

But at least say it. Ghosting is something ridiculous and unethical.

"Can you do X today?"

Listen, there are 62 items on the development list, if you want me to do X today, all of those will have to wait !

Do you still want me to do X today ?

"Yes"

FX [ Times passes . . . ]

"Why haven't you done all of those 62 items on your development list yet ?"

Grrrrr !

Even at one a week, it is going to take me like over a year to get them all done !

X isn't needed for at least a year, so it can be slotted into place after Y and Z have been done, because it will make it easier to do X then.

Doing X now, just makes it harder to do Y and Z afterwards !

Every time a distro defaults my editor to nano, I lose a brain cell. Why, why this crappy abomination of an editor? Distro maintainers, default to proper vim for an editor like real men! Fucking hell!

So I just received an email from a developer, saying my client hired him to take care of their website from now on. This client counted on me since 2012, so I felt a little... Betrayed. Even though this client was not big and a little difficult.

It's weird. I am trying to transition to something better in my professional life, but I'm not feeling confident of what I'm doing. Sometimes I feel my professional life is ruining. Uncertainty sucks.

Additionally, my desktop decided to stop working today and won't turn on. Oh well.

alias vi="nano"

End of the war.

alias vi='nano'
alias vim='nano'

Today a potential client contacted me after seeing my works and said they were really interested in having me work on their project. Then, they demanded that I scheduled a call with them, using their calendar app. I did, just to them cancel it a few hours later. Without any explanation.

Deal with people is so discouraging sometimes.

My tribe..

Your tribe..

Mine is better than yours !

Why ?

Whatever the group, logical thinking, science, all goes out of the window, as each group says their view of the world is 100% correct and not at all wrong.

The other group, says different..

Neither group listen to each other, or learn, or change.

If you disagree within the group, they don't want you any more !

Humans, pah !

Just dumb animals dressed up to think they can think, but just like to throw shit at each other and shout a lot to be leader of the pack.

I just had my cell phone cloned yesterday. End of the day, my phone lost signal suddenly. I thought it was a problem with my chip, so I decided to check that on a store and buy a new one next day.

Today, after I recover my chip and number, I started to see the mess. Someone used my number to send message to all my contacts on whatsapp, asking for money. Also, I had some contact info changed on the bank broker, which is really serious. I do not know what else is compromised, and I'm truly worried about it.

Someone has some good tips for improving security while using cellphones?

3 hours making this beautiful circuit to test stepper motors.
Arduino nano + L293D + pot
Fucking bitch has a short circuit somewhere and can't find it out...
Made the same project in a breadboard in 15 minutes and it's working.
Fuck hardware bugs.
Cutted in the middle of all connections, took out excess solder... Nothing.
Fuck it, moving to the next ideia

I hate doing estimates, but I had to adapt. Since I work remotely and under contract, I'm used to track my time and estimate by hours.

I did a lot of mistakes before, which means I worked for free to wrap up fixed price projects.

Today, the method that is working best for me is:
1) positive estimate
2) most likely estimate
3) worst case estimate
Sum up and divide by 3.
I do this for every task.
Also, for Web projects, I like to divide tasks in categories like: HTML / CSS, UX, programming, testing.

Bloody slow Facebook !

If you ever try typing a long message, it slows down to a crawl !

Is that because they are sending your entire message every time you type a character to Facebook/etc. ?

It's like typing something on a 1980's computer.

No wait, its even slower than that !

I just decided to take some time off from work, and use my savings to survive next months. I have been dealing with work related problems for a few years now, and since last year I was sure I needed time to recover my health and improve my skills, to get better job opportunities.

I was trying to balance my life and my time, working a bit less, trying to rest, study, and so on. I was hopeful I could achieve my goals just fine with some adjustments. But now... I just don't care.

Last Thursday my mother was diagnosed with cancer.
Two weeks ago, my only brother lost his job.
The same happened with my bf, few months ago, and he needed to move to another state to get a new job.

There is so much going on... Sometimes I just feel like panicking.

It's sad to fear the future, and deal with so much uncertainty.

It's hard to deal with work and money issues. It's even harder to deal with serious health issues.

I hope things will get better somehow, but I needed to vent this. Sometimes life can be a bitch.

Weak AI example:

Me = "Alexa turn the light on"

Alexa = "Which light do you want me to turn on?"

Me = "The one in this room !"

Alexa "I do not understand.."

Strong AI that doesn't really exist yet..

Me = "Alexa turn the light on"

FX [ Light in room turns on.. ]

When project is finished, everything is according specs, and on final review the client says: "everything looks nice! But I would like to change just a few small details. I would like a different design and functionality".

Seriously?!

Was office SharePoint bitch at one point. This guy wanted me to build a workflow for him that would enforce insane checks on his (peer) colleagues. Asked if his manager approved and obviously they hadn't. So this guy started telling me he would build his own application from scratch and host it on his home server if I didn't help him. Pointing out the business might object to their confidential data being put on his home server didn't put him off. Getting laid off a few months later for gross incompetence did however.

Happily agree to help colleague with 'a quick problem' on their pet project. Realise a few seconds in that they can't actually see a difference between JS and JSON.

Every time I stop playing a game, W10 helpfully says:

---
Your notifications will remain quiet here in Action Centre whilst you're gaming.

Only see notifications from your important people and apps.
---

It's not important to tell me every bloody time !

There is a button labelled:

---
Turn Off Now.
---

But what does it turn off..

The last time I saw someone press a button like that, it took me 3 days to find out how to turn something really quite important back on again !

I just found out an old friend of mine managed to get himself into a girls only school !

I wonder how he managed that ?

2019 goals:

- finish my masters
- improve my code quality
- build at least 3 personal projects
- learn 2 new technologies
- find better clients or a good job

anyone else use nano over vim?

Looking for job opportunities, one grabbed my attention and I decided to apply. First, I had to fill a form with 40 questions, explaining and justifying development processes, best practices and overall knowledge. Ok, no problem. Form submitted, and I see a step 2. Now I have to build a single page site from scratch, and send another form with code, link, and more justifications regarding development. After that, my application will be sent.

Then I found this observation, saying the position was for a freelancer, that will receive work occasionally. Not a full time position as I thought.

Sometimes cleaning bathrooms sounds a better option.

I worked two months for free, 15h per day, including weekends, due a contract trap. On top of that, client was emotionally blackmailing me and I was feeling threatened and helpless.

I even lost weight, skipping meals to save time and money. One day, my body collapsed. I ended up in bed for 10 days, feeling stiffness, pain, weakness, and shakiness. I even had to ask for help to brush my teeth.

I abandoned the project, and didn't receive any payment. The client went crazy and made me feel the worst person in the world for being sick and unable to work. But didn't put his menaces in execution.

I still remember the joy I felt when I was able to walk again.

That was the worst burnout I had, and also one of the biggest lessons about limits and evil people.

4 days without internet..

One of those, I'll just change ISP's time to save money with one costing 50% less than current one.

Phone support:

"Yes router was sent to you 3 weeks ago, and computer says internet is working.."

No router, internet not working..

4 days later, internet working.

No sign of router still.. (Though did get a SMS/TXT message to say it had been posted 3 days ago!)

Why in the world IT work is so stressful?
I never been like that since I start developing code professionally, 8 years ago.
Since then, I had many health problems due stress, and some were really scaring (heart problem).

I'm trying to adapt to a healthier way of work, but I'm starting to doubt if that is possible.

Work in technology seems cruel and soulless sometimes. The constant pressure to learn new things all the time, to specialize in a lot of skills, simultaneously. The urgency nature of ALL tasks - even a simple form field slightly out of place seems to be an issue of life and death for clients.

Easy and quick communication made some people lost boundaries and respect. Many times I received calls and messages after midnight, about things like elements alignment.

And the worst is when clients blame you about their business problems. If they are not selling well this week, it's fault of the website you did ( which they are using for months now).

This actually happened to me today, first thing in the morning. After I slept just 3h, because I worked until late yesterday (oh yeah many more of these life/death updates).

What happens in this industry? Will this ever be different some day?

Windows OS..

Shutdown PC..

Start PC..

Minutes of your life lost..

Hey, lets use that hibernate option !

Hibernate PC..

Start PC..

So much faster !

Lets do that again..

And again...

And again..

And, oh dear it hangs..

Damn !

Not sure why, maybe because I left a video running, or I've too many icons on my desktop ?

After months, years, still don't know why it does that !

So far best answer is, after about a dozen hibernates, do a restart !

Answers on a postcard..

Still, I suppose we have to be thankful it even works in W10, as going way way back since it was ever created, I couldn't even get it to work properly, let alone repeatedly..

Maybe Windows 11 it will work perfectly..

The joy of running your own experiments.

So, after several decades I can report the following about Asthma..

Or at least, the form I've got, as many decades ago I read a book about how there are different forms, and some apparently respond to exercise.

So, I regularly exercised, it went away.

Tried not regular exercising, its come back..

So, I'll try regular exercise again, and see if it goes away !

This has been a public service announcement.

Note: I've no idea how you tell the different types apart, perhaps someone else knows the answer to that one !

Bhramari Pranayama.

"Adding more people to a late software project will make it later." - Fred Brooks

Lets try Snapchat..

Download..

Install..

Create new account..

"There was a problem connecting to the server. Please try again."

I'll just check on the internet for solutions, oh look, lots of people having the same issue..

I'll just try a few dozen solutions..

None work..

Well, its probably no good anyway, even if I could get it to work !

Be just like KiK..

Door knobs !

Don't you hate how they attack your sleeves, your pockets, and your belt loops!

No more, just replace them with one of these, and you too can now brush up against doors with no more fears or concerns about side tummy jabs either.

Whose stole the ++ ?

Browser login, I'm sure it was there yesterday, and now its vanished !

-- is there..

FX [ Sits in bed, watches 32" TV.. ]

FX [ Peers at screen, can't read programme details as screen is too small... ]

FX [ Buys a bigger screen.. (43") ]

FX [ Peers at screen, can't read programme details as screen is still too small... ]

FX [ Buys a bigger screen.. (50") ]

FX [ Peers at screen, can't read programme details as relative font size now means its smaller than previous screen! ]

What idiot designs the software for a 50" screen so it's so small you can't read it unless you are 1ft away !

FX [ Dreams of having a 65" screen... ]

FX [ Realises will need a bigger house as the walls get in the way.. ]

Whinny monitors..

Well, any equipment really, for those with super levels of hearing.

Then you spend hours trying to find the perfect spot to wedge something to stop it humming at you.

Of course, no one else can hear it !

The problem I have with atom, vscode, sublime, and notepad++ is that none are available on the command line over SSH, inside tmux. And that's where I do the vast majority of my text editing.

The first text editor I used on the command line was pico, the technological successor of which is nano. I used it because when I was in college in the late '90s, we used pine for our email, and pico was the default editor for pine.

When I got my first job out of college in 2000, I found out about vi, and very quickly fell in love with it, and its technological successor: vim.

The only reason I've never gotten into emacs is because I've never wanted for more than vi/vim. And also because as a system administrator, I'm logging into dozens, of not hundreds of servers a day. While vi or vim is guaranteed to be on all of them, emacs is not.

So, for me, the use of a desktop text editor like the ones I mentioned at the beginning of this post, just doesn't make sense to me. I almost never edit files that live on the computer where I'm sitting, and I'm not interested in doing a commit/push every single time I want to rerun a script.

I got a rejection email today. No feedback. And that's it.

Worst part of rejection is not knowing the reasons.

after solving 156 problems at w3resource straight, i found out my nano editor does save progress with ctrl+s 😑
that's 8hrs of ctrl+o and ctrl+x i'm never getting back😞

Question = What is it like living in Oceania ?

Answer = I'm not allowed to tell you . . .

New project, sent a 7 page contract to the client. First day of work and client begins to ask things outside scope and terms.

I explained what is written in contract and he interrupted me saying "I READ THE CONTRACT".

One minute later, he starts asking the same things again.

Look, nano, I love you more than you could imagine but the fact that you make these shortcuts do what they do can fuck off...

CTRL+C = cursor position
CTRL+X = exit nano
CTRL+V = next page

I meant... *Sigh*... I don't fucking know anymore man...

Client wanted a site for the 100th anniversary of an important local musician. They wanted to show calendar of events, biography, store, and more. We started the work 8 months before the commemorative date, and after 4 months, the site was 99% complete and waiting final review and approvement. 2 weeks of silence has passed, when I got an email saying their deleted the site from server and all backups, and now they wanted all the work back.

With luck, I could restore a partial backup, and the client didn't want to pay for redo the rest of the work.

10 months later (yes, after all the events has started and the site being off) they contact me again, asking to continue the work.

I was happy to say no.

cAN YOU GUESS THE PROBLEM..

YES THat's right, one moment lowercASE THE NEXT UPPERCase..

windows`10 mACHINE, SO, WHat's up with it Z¬!

it just stARTED after edge browser went crAzy WITH 200 Tabs opening..

AND COPY and pASTE NOW DOESN'T WORK..

SO Far ANSWERS ON GOOGLE SUGGEST a fresh os reinstALL, BUT thAT IS Rather A SLEDGEHammer APPROach ZI'd like to AVOID z¬!

After 7 long long years, today I reach the stage of being solvent !

Hurray !

A few more months and I'll be totally out of debt.

Lesson there = don't get into debt..

"Do you want me to remember your password?"

"Click here"

FX [ Clicks.. ]

FX [ Time Passes . . . ]
(Bonus points to anyone that gets that reference..)

"Please enter your password"

Grrrrr !!!

Why is it so hard for some applications/etc. to do this, whilst others I've had the same password remembered for over a decade !

Even worse..

"Check email for password verfication."

That'll be the, it takes 4 hours for the email to arrive email server..

Or the email server will be down at that moment.

Or so full of unread messages it takes you half an hour to find the one you want..

Or they just don't send the email. :-)

I just wanna log in !

Sometimes its just something like a game, you know, not a national priceless treasure that needs protecting by a dozen layers of security.

Whatever happens to a desktop short that just loads the game and plays it..

But no, we have to have an internet enabled game to cut down piracy (Even though you can download it someplace with that bit disabled..), and when the company goes out of business, or stops selling that game, oh dear it doesn't work anymore, even though you paid for it !

Grrrr !

I shall not judge a developer's skill by their choice to use nano ...

I was reminded of people's posts about preferred text editors in another post, so I thought I'd do the same, but also add some super old technology that I used along the way.

The first text editor I consistently used was pico. I used it to write my first webpage at school.edu/~username. It was a natural choice, because the it was the default text editor in pine, which is what we would all use for our email after opening a serial connection to the college's Digital Unix server. Or if we were the lucky ones who had a computer in a wired dorm, telnet. My dorm was not wired until my sophomore year.

I got my first job in tech in 2001, working as a night shift tier-one support technician. By this time, most people were using web based email, or POP3, but I wanted to keep using pine (or elm, or mutt) because I was totally in love with the command line by this time, and had been playing with Linux for two or three years by now. I arranged a handshake deal with a guy in my home town who had a couple well-connected NetBSD servers, to let me have an account on one for email and web hosting (a relatively new idea at the time).

I recall telnetting into my shared hosting account from the HP-UX workstations we had in the control room. I would look at webpages on HTML conventions and standards, and I kept seeing references to this thing called vi. I looked into it more deeply, and found that it was a text editor, and was the reason I always had to CTRL-Z out of elm. I was already finding pico to be lacking, so I found a modern implementation of vi called vim that was already installed on the aforementioned NetBSD server, and read through vimtutor on it. I was hooked instantly. The modality massively appealed to me, and I found editing files to be an absolute delight, compared to pico, and its nascent open source offspring/successor, nano.

My position on that hasn't changed in the years that have passed since then.

What's your text editor origin story?

Deep in my heart I hate css

Newer is better right..

Lets see, did this ever happen to you and your Hard Disk connector when it was PATA instead of SATA..

Question, does RAM speed effect computer game lag effects on client machines ?

Just I've upgraded from double to triple channel RAM and I swear I can tell a small difference !

Am I imagining it, or would it really make a bit of a difference ?

Got informed that there is a bug in production that needs to be addressed on top priority.

Me opens Android studio to check.

Android studio: chill bro

Oh look, X dating site says person so and so is only 44km away.

Wait a minute, they are on dating site Y, and it says they are currently 69km away..

Both statements can't be true !

Perhaps they are putting more effort into stopping us triangulate someones position !

Doesn't help when you are trying to find someone local..

Firefox browser..

"Whoops closed the wrong tab there by mistake."

"I'll just look at the history and.."

Oh look, "show history" and "clear history" are right next to each other..

What could possibly go wrong..

Oh I'm sure there is one of those 'Are you sure you want to ?" dialogue boxes..

No..

So, now you can't go back to that tab, because its not in the history anymore, and neither is anything else !

Undo command perhaps...

Ebay being unhelpful..

Oh look, that looks nice it says:

"It's almost sold out, so buy it now before you miss it. "

But it also says:

"This item is out of stock."

And it also says:

"Postage: Doesn't post to XXXXX"

So, its not in stock, and wouldn't sell it to me anyhow, but Ebay thinks I should know about it all the same..

Kinda like when you get a catalogue in the post from a company whose items you can't afford, and don't deliver to your location !

Lets take this now spare HD and put it in the backup PC, shouldn't take 5 minutes..

First off, backup PC is the wrong way around in its enclosure, so I have to take the whole thing out to take the side off..

So far so good..

One empty drive bay, great. :-)

Oh wait, cables in the way..

Unplug cables (Remember to put them back in the right places..) and viola, HD in place.

Only access to one side for screws though, oh well, three screws on one side should be enough..

Slight torture to plug the cables back in, as everything else wants to get in the way..

Oh look, one cable has popped out..

No wait, its the connector on the motherboard has come lose..

I'll just push that back on..

Oh wait, one of the pins bent..

FX [ Time Passes . . . ]

Straight pins.

Put it all back together again. (You know what that means don't you..)

Click, click, click goes something inside..

Boot HD not seen..

Joyful..

But at least the new backup blank HD is seen !

So, now I just have to reinstall both backup OS's on the backup PC before I can use it as a backup PC..

Boot HD seems ill, click, click click.. :-(

FX [ Several hours pass.. ]

That was the condensed version.

I missed out the part where the monitor wasn't plugged in at first..

No problem, its plumbed into the sharing unit, oh wait, the sharing unit doesn't seem to be working now..

Bypass that..

Oh wait, the cable isn't quite long enough...

Reconfigure top shelf..

Or the, where did I put those PC HD screws I had the other week, which draw are they in..

Now, where did I put a copy of all those really hard to find drivers for the backup PC..

Favourite place to code with a pad of paper, a pencil, a sharpener, and a rubber.

A cherry orchard, then when you are hungry, you can just take a moment to pick something to eat and get back to work.

Windows Update..

1803 I think..

Lost my graphic drivers again..

Great, 4 monitors and only one is working !

I always used / preferred Nano over Vi(m) for its simplicity.

But fuck, just because of the simplicity for Vi to be able to find a string and replace it by another via ':%s/string1/string2', I'm feeling like installing Vi everywhere from now on...

Fly...

CRT monitor = wack fly with newspaper = dead fly.

Modern flimsy big screen monitor = can't wack fly with newspaper or monitor breaks !

Keep your game collection safe with 'Origin'..

Been busy as of late, not much time for games, so haven't used it..

It just sits there, icon on the desktop, waiting for me to click on it..

I haven't updated it for a while, let me just do that at least..

Oh look, the, remember my password thing is, again, not clicked..

FX [ Logs in... ]

No games listed..

WTF !

When I'm too tired and just want to get rid of obligations:
I write down 3 to 5 most important things I need to get done. Then I put myself on autopilot.

Windows copy & paste bug.

Will they fix it with W11 I wonder..

Hasn't it been with us since about W98SE..

Write something, copy it, paste it, fine.

Write something else, copy that, paste it, oh no it pastes the previous copied item !

Grrrrr !!!

Hold the copy button for several seconds, its fine..

Remind me, why am I using a computer like its 1984 and expecting it to be slow when it can do 32 billion instructions per second, and can't quite keep up with whether I've pressed a key or not in the last 2 seconds..

Just read about the leap second being added at the exact moment of going in to New Year (31/12/16 23:59:60!!!!!). I can't be the only one thinking what the fucking fuck are they thinking and why am i hearing about this for the first time 24 hours before it's happening.

Thanks to my socialist government giving me some free money to help the poor, I'm now no longer poor, but only poverty stricken !

Interestingly, they only give money to the poor, not the real poor, who are below me..

Anyhow, this means technically, I am able to date !

Though only for 3 months in every year, then the money runs out, and no doubt so will my date !

Anyhow, I get to change my dating profile next weekend to show I've now some disposable income !

Then I reckon I'll get one relationship per year, so we'll see if that is true or not !

So happy days, and hurray for socialist governments putting up taxes so poor folk like me can get some free money ! ($300 USD in case you was thinking it was thousands!)

That was slight sarcasm..

And in 3 months time, if all goes to plan, I'll be out of debt !

My new exercise regime is paying off, I can see some muscles getting bigger.

Though marks out of 10 wise, I'm only about a 1.8 so not very attractive, still, I reckon it is now possible, where as before, I reckoned not.

Of course, I kept trying to disprove this, but I wasn't proved wrong !

Now lets see if I'm proved right..

As long as I don't move in the next year of course..

Which is always a possibility. :-(

When I say move, I really mean, end up homeless and have to move to another area where I know no one/etc.

Not that I know anyone here and I've been here 3+ years..

What technical websites do you follow to stay updated?

As an introvert, this is a big challenge. A few years ago, I buried my social life to be focused on my work. But after some years, I realized this was doing more harm than good to me.
Since then I try to dedicate more time to friends, social events, and family. It's not easy to keep in touch, invite to a coffee, joining a class/activity and meet new people. Everyone's life is so busy today. But it's worth.
I always feel so much better after have a good conversation, sharing experiences and ideas.

This week has not been fun. I worked 12-14h everyday, slept 4h, felt like a zombie. It's 3pm and I still have 8 tasks to go.

I'm going to be passive aggressive.

No I'm not..

Don't be afraid that pair programming will show up your inexperience, embrace it as the quickest way to build that experience!

IoT device endpoint: public fixed IP, raw TCP socket, no auth at all

I had so much fun working on my side projects this weekend that now I'm sad to spend next 5 days on client projects.

Steam..

Every time I log in, it wants to know if I've changed my email address or not..

And then, just to be extra annoying, on the dialogue box the close icon is almost not reachable, hiding away in the corner..

Why, every bloody time does it need to ask me !

Is there a switch / hack to turn off this annoying feature.. ?

Alexa works perfectly..

Two Powercuts later . . .

Alexa won't connect reliably to wifi..

This is why I don't like wifi !

I like cables..

There is no search..

Well, not a real search, it only appears to search for tags.

Now how am I going to find that thing I vaguely remember someone talking about a year ago !

Can't we have a full 100% text search function ?

Or is there one hidden away someplace I don't now about..

FX [ Change ISP... ]

"We'll send you a new router before the change over!"

Nothing in the post today..

Changeover is tomorrow..

So, its going to arrive tomorrow then.. ?

(Password/etc. is in the box with the new router..)

Oh, well. Work on bad projects with bad clients/managers, for the sake of the money, it's a life sucker. At first I thought it was not a big deal. I was collaborating to someone's elses business and doing the best work I could.

I was tired, depressed, sleepless, having allergic rhitinis every two weeks, frustrated without any opportunity to grow intellectually, fearing clients calls and emails, and... in denial.

Since last year, I decided to stop working on some kind of project and for some kind of people. As the remaining contracts and projects were being wrapped up, I started to feel relieved, despite of all anxienty of let go long term clients and see income lowering.

Then I started to use my free time and savings to futher my education, send cvs and work on side projects. It's not an easy transition. I'll still need to keep working on not-so-good projects to pay the bills, however, I've been selecting more.

Slowly I'm recovering my life, health and enthusiasm for cs again.
I'm learning to not give a fuck and it really helps.

Test...

Rant.

It's really frustrating and confusing when switching the context from Java to js and vice versa.

"Don't worry, we'll email you when we see product X for sale."

What they really mean is:

"Don't worry, we'll email you at least 12 hours after we see product X for sale and someone else has brought it.."

Good thing I was bloody checking "Just in case" !

Feels like I'm in a MMORPG with rare items in the AH..

A bit of an ethical dilemma here.

If I write the software I want to, which is super efficient, it helps rich people, but not poor people..

So, what do I do ?

Not write it ?

Or create a crippled version so it helps poor people and not rich people..

Groups..

Let me just check the groups I'm in for any that take my fancy to look at..

Now, who designs the front end so about what, 5% of the screen space is actually the space devoted to your group list !!!

It's the little red edged square..

I'm still here, even if you don't see me post much for the next 3 years.

Stumbled across a way that I might be able to retire in only 3 years time !

As such, exploring that, but it will take up half my time, leaving me squeezed for that resource, as such, unless its really really important, I won't be doing it.

119 hour work week here I come !

If I die from overwork, you can all tell everyone else, you said so and not to copy me !

After 3.5 terms, I still see people running Linux in a vm && writing C code in nano.
Should I be concerned if that really freaks me out?
Usually I'd say use whatever floats your boat but I just don't get why they don't dual boot, they'll need Linux in pretty much every term...

You know you've been using nano to much when you press Ctrl+O to save in VS Code

Just when you think everything is working fine, after installing a new better router, it starts to stop working..

Then you start googling the error messages in its logs..

And find out loads of other people having the same problem !

Why didn't I hear about this when everyone was telling me how much better this new router was than my old one !

Focus control.

Eg. Imagine you have two monitors, you are playing your game on monitor A, and monitor B has a copy of the instructions on it.

Often in games you can't move the mouse outside of the game window / monitor..

But not to worry, that B monitor is a touchscreen, so you touch to scroll it and what happen.. focus changes to that monitor, and your game window minimises..

But you don't want that to happen !

How do you stop that happening by the way ?

At first I thought, damn there is something wrong with my phone, it sounds odd.

No I think one of my ears has stopped working. :-(

Damn ageing !

Was fine last night before I went to sleep..

Maybe a reboot tonight might make it magically work fine tomorrow..

I miss stereo..

This will degrade my performance in 3D shooters if I can't figure out where that bullet which just missed me came from !

Also makes it harder to code games with sound too..

Damn it, log into PC, open Firefox, *ALL* extensions have been disabled for not meeting Firefox Standards !

FX [ Swear mode activated. ]

So… I prefer nano over other terminal editors (Mainly because I don’t understand how to use others properly) and I wasn’t really aware of the VISUAL and EDITOR environment variables. So on my Arch machine most things would default to vi. Vi to me is like an annoying pop-up that really doesn’t want you to close it (Tho, one thing I did learn eventually was how to close it ). So at some point I quickly wanted to edit crontab as root and I just couldn't manage to get crontab to use nano. So what did I do?

sudo pacman -R vi

ln -s /usr/bin/nano /usr/bin/vi

I symlinked nano to vi and it finally worked. I know that there are probably countless ways this could’ve been done better but in that case I wouldn't have posted it here under wk81 ;)

Why is the fashion today for shorter hair..

I really like long hair on someone.

But you can't ask someone for longer hair, its illegal to do so now !

Last week I received an invitation to lead the development of a e-commerce redesign, replatforming and data migration. I was excited to work on it, and started the analysis and planning, glad to spend time focusing on quality. But Murphy's law is never asleep - this Monday, I was asked to speed things up and reduce a 4 month project to 1 week.

Why is command line \ and web URL's / ?

Wouldn't it be better if we had the same for both..

Linux is wonderful..

Boots up PC..

"Software Updater"
"Failed to download repository information"

Great..

Now what !

<-- Linux Newbie.

IBM Notes. Ultimate example of developers each working on their own bits of functionality with zero thought to how the whole thing fits together. Just need to look at the preferences page see what a mess it is.

That old classic..

You leave a folder copying whilst you go to sleep, only to wake up and read:

"The filename(s) would be too long for the destination folder. You can shorten the filename and try again, or try a location that has a shorter path."

And folk say:

"Thank goodness we don't have 8.3 character limits on filenames anymore.."

Note, there are lower folder number limits on things like USB memory sticks than HD's..

Now, I wonder about PCMCIA RAM cards..

Hey can you just install Magento and this theme for me? .... Today is going to be a bad day.

11/13 questions..

If I create a product, lets say a new toaster.

Naturally I have a .com website for that..

So far so good..

Next I create a support forum for the site.

From my limited understanding, no one would be allowed to do the following:

Post a URL to say, a website about a competitors toaster with a picture of said toaster.

Upload a picture of a competing brand of toaster from another site.

Say anything that was copyrighted such as, a christmas poem, or a famous quote from history.

Upload quotes from posted content anywhere else on the internet, or from a book, newspaper, written diary..

But forum users could do the the following ?

They would be allowed to upload a picture of themselves holding a competitors toaster..

Or upload their own words.

So, some questions:

How do you check uploaded content against the zillion TB of copyright data out there ?

Will every message/picture have to be moderator approved before being allowed to be posted ?

Possible loopholes...

Could you have your forum hosted in another country without that law, or would you still be liable ?

I guess one could just do telephone support like the shit companies do already..

"New computer game out"
*support only available via phone between the hours of 1pm and 2pm on a Tuesday..*

But if I put my support forums on say, a site like Facebook, then its entirely their problem to deal with ?

Or will the moderator of a group have any legal responsibility ?

Does this only apply to open public groups that anyone can join, or will this also effect private member only clubs ? (eg. closed non-public viewing forums.)

Suddenly I feel less and less like making and trying to sell anything if I can't support my customers easily and cheaply. (Read affordable..)

FX [ Checks outdoor CCTV..]

"Oh my god, its a nuclear winter !"

Picture is frozen..

FX [ Checks wiring, camera, server, switch, etc.. ]

FX [ Checks CCTV server.. notices picture not frozen.. ]

FX [ Checks CCTV client, notices 'status' Icon not displaying, clicks on Icon, it says "Paused".. ]

So, not a nuclear winter after all !

I was noticing in a MMORPG a problem and solution that can apply to the real world.

In MMORPG land, to get the best gear, you need to work in teams.

But to get invited into a team, you need the best gear..

Kinda like, to get a job, you need experience in the job first..

As such, one solution employed in the MMORPG world is to start your own team, hiding the fact you have shitty gear and only hiring folk with good gear to help carry you !

So, I guess in the real world, the similar answer is to start a business when you have no experience and hire people who do !

Then later one, if your business ever goes bust, you will at least then have experience to get a job. :-)

Is it weird that I'm actually starting to like regular expressions?

What is the best time to update a dating site so its incompatible with Firefox..

How about, a few hours before Valentine's day..

Me - "Mmm.. must be busy, I'll wait.."

Me + 24 hours = "Mmm.. maybe something broken, lets try another browser like say Chrome, oh it magically works!"

You know how it is, you are doing ok with your tatty made from salvaged spaceship dodging the pirates and doing a spot of mining.

When you start asking for advice..

How could I do things better ?

Well, everyone and their dog says what a rubbish setup you got and how you should get a top of the line model Tesla or something.

So, after much research about how much better those are, and listening to everyone else, you trade in your old model for a newer one..

Then you find out what a piece of junk it is !

It's 10 times more complicated to use, not really fun anymore..

It isn't quite as good, you worry it is going to break every time you park and bump the side of the parking bay..

Too late now, you traded in your old piece of junk that you loved..

It's just not the same..

It looks prettier I guess..

Perhaps that is a metaphor for relationships. :-)

After like 15 odd years using MySQL I'm about to delve into the world of document orientated databases ... Wish me luck :)

tumblr pages that are so massive, they eat up all my RAM..

Zero client complaints today.
Life seems worth living again.

we(Friends) discovered this yesterday.

Steps:
1. created a file.js and added a console.
2. renamed the file.js to file.java
3. ran that file.java through node

result: displayed in that image.

Javascript running .java .....seriously?
js how many hidden surprises you have for me. it was even running in .txt, .php etc

Okay let's come to actual point .

I tried to research on this. however, i couldn't find any links related to it.

Well, I tried the same with casperjs and python.It behaved the same.
is this behaviour because it is a scripting language?
Please do share your thoughts on this

I didn't rest this weekend and it's Monday already.

Any former freelancers who decided to move to traditional employment?

I have been doing freelance since I finished University. 8 years now. I really liked the flexibility and opportunity to work on different projects and people, but my enthusiasm is wearing thin. I'm currently updating my cv and setting up my LinkedIn profile, but it's hard to "prove" my experience, and many projects I worked on are private.

I am not sure if I can mention the companies I worked for, or how do to it... Feeling lost and doomed to keep freelancing.

Anyone made this transition before? How did you do it?

Alright Windows 10, what have you done with my D:..

FX [ Tries turning it off and on again.. ]

First allocate all day..

W10 Update time !

Then, watch as your multi-monitor setup loses its drivers and only 2 of your 4 monitors are working..

Meanwhile, still not done all the updates, and CPU is running wild doing some kind of indexing..

Joyful..

A bit like playing wack a mole as you try and guess which monitor Windows is going to boot to this time around..

Oh look, its gone for the portrait one, this time in landscape mode, good thing I can tilt my head enough..

Also a good thing I have one of those icon position restore apps, or they would be all over the place again once I get things back to where they should be..

Have you done your updates . . .

Can you get black lightbulbs that give out a black light ?

I recently updated all the stuffs on my Raspberry Pi 3.
Now nano* occasionally NULs out files I edit 🤔

*best CLI editor ever, change my mind

After I took some time off from work, I decided to accept the offer for maintenance of two projects. Those are from two old clients, so I think I will not stress too much, since I know what to expect most of the time.

The issue is, sometimes I have a hard time to keep concentration. In the past, I could work for 3h straight, totally focused, would pause for 20min for stretch, and then come back to work. Now I can only focus for 30min or 1h, and after a pause, it's hard to concentrate again.

There is a lot going on in my life right now, and I know the worry is probably distracting me. I'm trying to listen instrumental music, drinking coffee... But that's not enough. Somebody has any tip?

I really hate when I have to work on something wrong. I mean, the client wants to embedded a third party service on their website, using iframe. Then, they want us to change the layout and behavior of the embedded page. And well, no matter what, I have to do what they want. Great job.

Where did that image come from ?

Let me use google images to search..

I'll just save the image to desktop..

And drag it to the browser window to drop it into the search box..

FX [ PC Hiccup.. ]

No wait, it will instead try to drop it into the browser, and Firefox crashes, taking all of my open tabs with it..

And now it wants to do an update..
(Is that why it crashed ?)

At least its opening the closed tabs, and running all those paused videos for me..

There, several minutes of my life wasted, just because I thought it wouldn't take me a moment to check something..

Just been cleaning out an old cupboard and found the book that really helped me to understand OOP ... Python for absolute beginners .. Before I picked it up, I was having a hard time getting my head around it all. Good times, good book :)

Old app = DOS, keyboard only, shortcut keys..

Newer app = WIMP, keyboard mouse, lots of RSI issues as the mouse track from side to side of the screen all the time..

Modern apps = designed for mobile devices where you scrolls the window with a flick and it dashes past 10 windows at a time before it comes to a stop..

Whilst, do that on a PC with a mouse scroll wheel, takes forever to get to up or down huge 100 page sites/apps !

I'm reminded of devRant here..

Solutions = Options !

Everyone loves keyboard shortcuts..

Everyone loves alternative layout options..

Otherwise my fingers are going to wear out !

Are people using Vim doing it for the sake of it? Is there such a thing as a Vim hipster?

I mean, nano is just nicer 😇

I'll just get that pretty video and convert it to a gif before posting it on Facebook..

Mm.. quite large at 40Mb for a gif..

I'll just make it smaller..

FX [ Googles gif compressor websites.. ]

"Sorry, max size 35Mb.."

"Sorry, max size 15Mb.."

Maybe I'll just try uploading it to Facebook as 40Mb and see if it works..

FX [ Adds another HD to PC.. ]

FX [ Boots into Window 7.. ]

"Serial number no longer valid, hardware change.."

No problem, I'll just check my serial number, oh wait, its vanished from the machine !

Thanks windows..

FX [ Time Passes . . . ]

After searching my paperwork, I think I find the right W7 serial..

Now its asking me if I want to buy another, phone up, or put another one in and try activation online..

Well, lets try giving it what I think is the old previous one it had, and see if its happy.

And its happy !

Until the next time I 'radically' change the hardware..

Meanwhile, same PC, under W10, doesn't get upset about the issue !

Question:

I once read that 95% of people on diets, never succeed and just put the weight back on.

So, what is special about the 5% ?

How do you know in advance if you are a 5% or a 95% person ?

There seems little information on this issue..

I did once study alcoholics, but I couldn't spot any statistical pattern on why some recovered and others didn't.

Not did anyone really offer any clues.

But, now we are in the internet age, so I can ask the world !

If its genetics, then does that mean they will always succeed at a diet, and not fail repeatedly ?

I've failed several times to diet..

Yet, as a kid, I was underweight for decades !

But maybe that was because food was expensive, or my mums cooking. :-)

So, what might help determine success or failure ?

More hard work ?

Or something else ?

Finally, I have a night free of work today. It is the first time this month. I'm so happy to have some time to read and rest.

Life can be insane.

Enjoy the little things in life, because one day you will look back and realize they were the big things.

When you have 300+ browser tabs open and you can't remember where that particular tab is you want..

Isn't that what computers are supposed to be useful for "Alexa take me to that DevRant tab I left open the other day!"

I guess if I had 300 monitors I could leave each one on a different page..

FX [ Gets idea for new bedroom layout.. ]

If only I could afford the electricity bill..

My face hurts from all the facepalming during code review

Typical, someone asks in a technical forum for advice about Alexa can do to help their mum and mentions she is going blind.

I post a link to an experimental treatment, and its deleted by the admin !

Well, excuse me for trying to help someone not go blind !

I'll just check my messages in *Insert name of Android message app"..

Have to update to latest version first..

FX [ 10 Minutes later . . . ]

Remind me, why is this faster than SMS...