"We need you to build a feature on our website to stop people taking screenshots. I can use the print screen key and then easily print out our website design. You need to make the site design harder to copy".

This is an extract from a recent client email I received. To say I'm in shock is an understatement.

I absolutely love the email protocols.

IMAP:
x1 LOGIN user@domain password
x2 LIST "" "*"
x3 SELECT Inbox
x4 LOGOUT

Because a state machine is clearly too hard to implement in server software, clients must instead do the state machine thing and therefore it must be in the IMAP protocol.

SMTP:
I should be careful with this one since there's already more than enough spam on the interwebs, and it's a good thing that the "developers" of these email bombers don't know jack shit about the protocol. But suffice it to say that much like on a real letter, you have an envelope and a letter inside. You know these envelopes with a transparent window so you can print the address information on the letter? Or the "regular" envelopes where you write it on the envelope itself?
Yeah not with SMTP. Both your envelope and your letter have them, and they can be different. That's why you can have an email in your inbox that seemingly came from yourself. The mail server only checks for the envelope headers, and as long as everything checks out domain-wise and such, it will be accepted. Then the mail client checks the headers in the letter itself, the data field as far as the mail server is concerned (and it doesn't look at it). Can be something else, can be nothing at all. Emails can even be sent in the future or the past.

Postfix' main.cf:
You have this property "mynetworks" in /etc/postfix/main.cf where you'd imagine you put your own networks in, right? I dunno, to let Postfix discover what your networks are.. like it says on the tin? Haha, nope. This is a property that defines which networks are allowed no authentication at all to the mail server, and that is exactly what makes an open relay an open relay. If any one of the addresses in your networks (such as a gateway, every network has one) is also where your SMTP traffic flows into the mail server from, congrats the whole internet can now send through your mail server without authentication. And all because it was part of "your networks".

Yeah when it comes to naming things, the protocol designers sure have room for improvement... And fuck email.

Oh, bonus one - STARTTLS:
So SMTP has this thing called STARTTLS where you can.. unlike mynetworks, actually starts a TLS connection like it says on the tin. The problem is that almost every mail server uses self-signed certificates so they're basically meaningless. You don't have a chain of trust. Also not everyone supports it *cough* government *cough*, so if you want to send email to those servers, your TLS policy must be opportunistic, not enforced. And as an icing on the cake, if anything is wrong with the TLS connection (such as an MITM attack), the protocol will actively downgrade to plain. I dunno.. isn't that exactly what the MITM attacker wants? Yeah, great design right there. Are the designers of the email protocols fucking retarded?

rant.

when you're a programmer surrounded by designer friends, it feels frustrating sometimes.

people appreciate what they do more because they can clearly see the end product: beautifully designed ui, animated splash screens, clean colorful themes. even though it probably does squat other than to print statements.

then they look at your overly simple design and cant see the beautiful underlying code within.

end rant.

Hi everyone, just discovered this wonderful community and I've got a new rant just for the occasion.

I work at a creative agency and we offer writing, design and web development.

This client wanted the whole package, so we've written a ton a copy, got it approved, sent it to translation, got it approved, designed both print and digital assets and developed a website.

Everything was looking good, files sent to the printer, website ready to be deployed...

Then we get a call and a PDF of text changes. The stuff is already printed.

The business owner's wife (not an employee) took it upon herself to make changes to the text, some of which have grammatical and spelling mistakes.

Everything has to be delayed, files have to be resent to the printer, project goes over budget, we're pissed, the printer is pissed and their director of communications is pissed.

What a shit show. I wonder who's going to get thrown under the bus for this one.

So I Bought this bio metric pad lock for my daughter. She excitedly tried to set it up without following the directions( they actually have good directions on line) first thing you do is set the "master print" she buggered that up setting her print. So when I got home I was thinking, no problem I'll just do a reset and then we cant start again.

NOPE !!! you only have one chance to set the master print! after that if you want to reset the thing you need to use the master print along with a physical key that comes with it.

What sort if Moron designs hardware / software that is unable to be reset. Imagine how much fun it would be if once you set your router admin password it was permanent unless you can long back in to change it. Yea nobody has ever forgotten a password.

Well they are about to learn a valuable financial lesson about how user friendly design will influence your bottom line. people (me) will just return the lock to the store where they bought it, and it will have to be shipped back to the factory and will be very expensive for them paying for all of the shipping to and from and resetting and repackaging of the locks and finally shipping again to another store. Meanwhile I'll keep getting new locks until at no cost until she gets it right.

poor design

Manager 1: "We're going to hold a small meeting because of a new project."

Me: "Okay, cool. What project is it about?"

Manager 1: "Project X".

ME: "Right. What's the domain name?"

Manager 2: "Well there's this design but it's entirely made up. Just a concept."

Manager 1: "Wait, there's no more toner."

Manager 1 and 2 take 20 minutes to fix the printer, so manager 1 can print out an e-mail. They both return to their seats. No meeting happens. I roll a smoke and go outside to flip through LinkedIn for the nth time this week.

Designer ranting about designer.
Most graphic designer in switzerland have no clue on how to build a proper InDesign document. The design looks astonishing but when they want their design printed, they get roasted everytime.
No I can't print this ultra vibrant rgb color. This image has only 72ppi I need 300ppi in order to print this! WTF? What is this color setting? Japanese ICC color profiles? Are you retarded? No this layer composition is horrendous and unusable. WTF? a 60 page business report and no paragraph format presets? How I'm supposed to typeset this shit next year? No I can't print this fucktard, how long have been a graphic designer? 15 years? And you've still produce this crap? .... Every single time.

Thank goodness I don't work in print anymore.

So, this is probably somewhat esoteric but...

While studying at university I had a "programming paradigms" module, dunno why they called it that, it was more like "introduction to functional programming".

So, it's kinda mind bending, we'd only really started to get our heads around classical object oriented programming and they throw functional programming at us.

It's worse than that though, for do they use an established language, like lisp/scheme, functional Python, or even given Haskell?

No, of course they didn't. They taught us Oz.

You probably won't have heard of it, but this language is burned into the back of my brain, along with a vague understanding of the n-queens problem we had to solve graphically (using qTk, which I dunno if someone took qt and tk and blended them, I stopped asking questions after a while).

To top it off did this language (at the time) have a stand alone interpreter? Did it buggery! It was coupled to the Mozart programming system, which is just Emacs (which has a bloody lisp built into it,so close, yet so far 😭).

It gets worse, though, oh does it get worse, for pause dear reader and consider, have you ever heard of Mozart/oz before, I'd put money on most of you had not heard of it until today.

For, you see, I believe at the time of writing, one, yes, ONE text book exists on this language. When I was doing my assignment there was merely some published conference notes and language design documents.

That's not all, I was not the only one experiencing difficulties with this language, someone in the class ended up pouring through the mailing lists and found the very tutor teaching the class struggling at first to understand the language.

I had to repeat that year. The functional programming class was one semester.

When I retook that year, it was a whole year long. However, halfway through the year, original tutor was fired and a new tutor was hired to teach the language.

He was, understandably, just as confused as we were.

There was a Starbucks and a pub equidistant from the lecture hall, though in opposite directions. From lecture to lecture we had no idea which one we'd end up in.

I have reason to believe Mozart/Oz it some sort of otherworldly abomination designed to give students the occasional nightmare flashback, long after they've left.

My room had post it notes, sheets of paper, print outs, diagrams, doodles and pens, just stuck to the wall, I looked like a raving lunatic three hours away from being institutionalised. There was string connecting one diagram to the next and images of a chess queen all over. As I attempted to solve the n-queens problem.

Madmans knowledge, I call it. I can never unlearn all that, in fact it seeps into much of the code I write. Such information was not meant for the minds of a simple country bumpkin such as myself...

Mozart/Oz... I wouldn't be the programmer I am today without it, and that's frankly terrifying...

My first job. Hired as a designer. It was me and a backend dev (PHP). Company wanted us to build their e-commerce website, but the backend dev had no eye for design or front end chops, fell onto me, so I learned it on the spot.

I also did the mistake of trying to prove myself too hard and ended up doing IT, network and user support, user training, phone sales and helping the print team on designs, on top of my already taxing responsibilities, for 18k/year.

In the end, the company moved offices and I was tasked with finding and installing a new server, IP phone system, and organising the desks following a carefully crafted and approved plan. Spent the weekend doing that (had some friends that didn't even work for the company join as they knew of my struggle) only for the bosses to arrive on Monday, decide they didn't like it, and just said "change it", ignoring the plan entirely. I then left without having another job lined up and never looked back.

My two cent: Java is fucking terrible for computer science. Why the fuck would you teach somebody such a verbose language with so many unwritten rules?

If you really want your students to learn about computer, why not C? Java has no pointer, no passed by reference, no memory management, a lots of obscure classes structure and design pattern, this shit is garbage. The student will almost never has contact with the compiler, many don't even know of existence of a compiler.

Java is so enterprise focused and just fucked up for educating purpose. And I say it as somebody who (still) uses it as main language.

If you want your students to be productive and learn about software engineering, why not Python? Things are simple in Python can can be done way easier without students becoming code monkeys (assuming they don't use for each task a whole library). I mean java takes who god damn class and an explicitly declared entry point which is btw. fucking verbose to print something into the console.

Fuck Java.

I had a wonderful run-in with corporate security at a credit card processing company last year (I won't name them this time).
I was asked design an application that allowed users in a secure room to receive instructions for putting gift cards into envelopes, print labels and send the envelopes to the post. There were all sorts of rules about what combinations of cards could go in which envelopes etc etc, but that wasn't the hard part.
These folks had a dedicated label printer for printing the address labels, in their secure room.
The address data was in a database in the server room.
On separate networks.
And there was absolutely no way that the corporate security folks would let an application that had access to a printer that was on a different network also have access to the address data.
So I took a look at the legacy application to see what they did, to hopefully use as a precedent.
They had an unsecured web page (no, not an API, a web page) that listed the addresses to be printed. And a Windows application running on the users' PC that was quietly scraping that page to print the labels.
Luckily, it ceased to be an issue for me, as the whole IT department suddenly got outsourced to India, so it became some Indian's problem to solve.

Designer: Can you turn a design into HTML/CSS for me?

Me: Sure just send me the design.

//Hands over 300dpi PDF created in InDesign...

Conversion rates and shipping make it awfully expensive to get official t-shirts here in India, so I decided to experiment with t-shirt printing till the time I can earn enough to donate directly to open source foundations.

I call this design "FUCK YOU, AUTODESK!!"

(Yes it's literally just the logo. Yes I'm not a graphic designer)

Not too bad, but the print could've been better. Time to start tweaking things.

(not really dev related, but a rant nonetheless)

I just got a new 3D printer, and all of a sudden, people are giving me print requests. I don't think that they realize that I don't just tell the printer that I want whatever, but that I have to either find the model online or design it myself.

Also, I have more friends now. Yay?

oh yes, i'm a print designer and stuying UX / Interaction Design. And on every interview for a digital designer job they expect some kind of messiahs who will save them into the world of digital design. They want that I do print & digital design and slowley replace their outsourced dev team of 40 people. With solid knowledge of Wordpress, Typo3, php and js.

good luck finding somebody who can do that fucktards

TIL that our creative design team that produces our web designs/layouts are all print designers. They were stumped when I gave them a wireframe mock up as the base for a website design for the first time, with no defined pixel measurements.

Print("Hello World")

When people design a brand new Postgresql schema (case sensitive) using a mix of upper and lower case letters.
Only to then proceed and escape every single table and column name in every single query.

Just got a request to print the new Tesla truck.

I think it wasn't that hard for the Designer to implement the low pol. Design for the 3d print :')

designrant / As a prepress media designer who study part time interaction design on fridays, I'm fucked. Every agency in switzerland is searching like crazy for Senior UX Interaction Designer. Because of that, they wont hire me as junior, until i have my degree as interaction designer. And printshops won't hire me because of my study. They say I'm overqualified as a prepress operator. fml! :-/

Sometimes I feel like I was born to code.
So I like making design, print and wear them.
Stay Safe Folks.
And Happy Coding

"The control which designers know in the print medium, and often desire in the web medium, is simply a function of the limitation of the printed page. We should embrace the fact that the web doesn’t have the same constraints, and design for this flexibility. But first, we must 'accept the ebb and flow of things.'" - John Allsopp

Thought I'd print a useful article on JS design patterns....
Looks like I'll be messing with the CSS for a while!

Goal for 2019

- finish project I started in Q4 2018 and launch website with it
- maybe find some non invasive way to monetize this and earn some money

If I got time and power left :

- learn more autodesk fusion,
- design robotic arm using above tool
- print it in 3d
- program it with ROS arduino/rpi
- put it on some wheels
- make it driving around my flat
- make it pick up stuff for me

So many changes over the past few months. Transitioning from a freelance logo / print / packaging designer. Going full stack web developer. Even switched from adobe CC to Sketch for my design needs. What a ride. Everything I come across is new territory. I’m like a newborn baby. The struggle.

Make sure that you've got an umbrella

So I was asked to design a database physical model using an old CASE tool installed on one of my institution computers (which runs windows) and after three hours of work, when I pressed the "print" button, it crashed. Didn't print. Didn't save.
I'm too used to Atom's auto-save function.
I hate windows

How to Create Beautiful and Durable Pie Boxes

Whether you are looking for a unique gift to give, or you are looking to protect the delicate items you hold, there are many ways to do so with the right pie boxes. By using a custom designed box, you can capture the essence of the delicacies you are storing and protect them for a longer period of time.

Protect delicate items
Using pie boxes is a good way to protect delicate items such as pies, cakes and desserts. However, you need to be sure that the box is the right size and shape to ensure that your item is safely packed. If you don't pack your delicate products properly, they could suffer from moisture and change in temperature.

Before you begin packing your goods, consider whether you should use bubble wrap or paper. While bubble wrap provides an extra layer of protection, it can also leave your product vulnerable to scratching. Choose paper to wrap your items, as it will prevent scratches and will keep them from shifting during transport.

When wrapping fragile items, you need to use a lot of packing tape to secure your package. You should also fill any empty space in the box. You can do this by using bubble wrap, or by adding extra padding. Make sure to mark your box as fragile and to place a label with your name and delivery address on all sides of the box.

Once you've completed the packaging process, you need to seal the box and place it in the shipping box. Besides bubble wrap, you may also want to include ice packs to add extra protection. A cushioned ice pack is another option for additional protection.

You should also use quality packing tape, and make sure to cover all the openings of your box. You can also use zip-up bags to help you keep your things in place.

It is important to know the best way to protect delicate items, so you can prevent them from damage during the shipping process. There are many ways to do this, but you should use the right tools for the job. Purchasing a box that is the right size and shape for your items is the most effective way to do it.

When you use custom pie boxes, you can rest assured that your pies, chocolate pies and other edibles will be safe. They're manufactured with modern equipment and environmentally friendly printing techniques.

Make a gift
Whether you are giving a pie for a birthday, wedding, or as a thank you gift, you can make pie boxes that are beautiful and durable. Several pie box designs are available online, but you can also create your own. Here are some simple instructions to make a simple, yet elegant box.

The first step is to print out a template of a pie box. You can use a piece of scrap paper or decorative paper for your design. If you are using decorative paper, cut out a rectangle the size of your box. If you are using colored cardstock, you will need to cut out a pie filling layer. Once you have a pie filling layer, copy it for several boxes. You can also add other designs or embellishments to your boxes.

Next, place your colored cardstock on your cutting mat. With your x-acto knife, cut out a rectangle that is as large as your box. You will need to fold it on the dotted line. If you are using an x-acto knife, it will be easier to fold the box. Alternatively, you can use a scoring stylus. If you have a Cricut, you can score the cardstock to make a scalloped box top. You can also use burlap ribbon or twine to wrap your box.

Once you have the box finished, you can decorate it with other decorations or embellishments. You can even use calligraphy or other techniques to make the box more special. To close the box, you will need a sticker or piece of tape. You can decorate the lid with patterned paper and a clear plastic screen. This will allow you to see the contents of your pie. You can also use embellishments such as ribbon, glitter, or other materials to make the box more fun.

If you are giving a pie for a holiday or party, you can decorate your box with a festive theme. For example, you can have a holiday tree on the front of your box. Or, you can dress it up for a tailgate party.