#programblr

[chiseld]

I FINISHED IT :D :D :D

Yessssss I finally got my fCC JavaScript developer certification :')

Of course they decided to go ahead and release a whole new curriculum a few days before I wrapped this up, thus making this previous version now somewhat obsolete (great timing, folks), but I don't really mind – I was only doing it to learn the skills in any case.

In my final project I got to work with APIs again, which I hadn't done in ages and always enjoy, and I got some practice with asynchronous programming.

I'm so glad to have this DONE and finally be able to move on! Now the only question is, should I keep working my way through the old certifications or try out the new full-stack curriculum? I think I'll probably stick with the old individual certifications for now, because it looks like the new curriculum would take me back over HTML, CSS, and JS for the umpteenth time, and I am sick to death of them and would really prefer to move on to backend ASAP.

[bunnydevs]

Struggling with keeping things organized while simultaneously enjoying coding and game dev is like walking into a house of mirrors. You just keep smacking into shit and can't find things you need half the time.

Oh let me grab that character sprite *smacks into wall* hey what was the color of that heading? *confidently walks into mirror* let me just fix this part, I think it was supposed to be-- *runs into small gremlin like being*

[cosmogyros]

Someone on Quora asked the question "Why do developers use React.js instead of HTML, CSS, and Bootstrap?" and

um

one of the highest-voted answers was this:

I genuinely can't tell if it's a joke or not. I have so many questions:

Is this person... trying to channel Trump?

Why has no one else commented on this answer with some sort of observation about how weird it is? (the only comment is one suggesting Angular instead of React)

Just what?

What?

...what?

[tap-tap-tap-im-in]

Vogon Media Server v0.43a

So I decided I did want to deal with the PDF problem.

I didn't resolve the large memory footprint problem yet, but I think today's work puts me closer to a solution. I've written a new custom PDF reader on top of the PDF.js library from Mozilla. This reader is much more simple than the full one built into Firefox browsers, but it utilizes the same underlying rendering libraries so it should be relatively accurate (for desktop users). The big benefit this brings is that it's a match for the existing CBZ reader controls and behavior, unifying the application and bringing in additional convenience features like history tracking and auto link to next issue/book when you reach the end of the current one.

The history tracking on the PDFs is a big win, in my opinion, as I have a lot of comics in PDF form that I can now throw into series and read.

Word of warning. PDFs bigger than a few MB can completely overload mobile browsers, resulting in poor rendering with completely missing elements, or a full browser crash. I'm betting the limit has a lot to do with your device's RAM, but I don't have enough familiarity to know for sure. These limitations are almost the same as the limits for the Mozilla written reader, so I think it has more to do with storing that much binary data in a browser session than how I am navigating around their APIs.

As far as addressing that problem, I suspect that if I can get TCPDF to read the meta data (i.e. the number of pages), I can use the library to write single page PDF files to memory and serve those instead of the full file. I'm already serving the PDF as a base64 encoded binary glob rather than from the file system directly. It doesn't solve the problem of in-document links, but since I provide the full Mozilla reader as a backup (accessible by clicking the new "Switch Reader" button), you can always swap readers if you need that.

As noted earlier today, the install script is still not working correctly so unless you have a working install already you'll have to wait until I get my VMs set up to be able to test and fix that. Good news on that front, the new media server builds much much faster than the old PI, so fast iteration should be very doable.

But, if you want to look at the code: https://github.com/stephentkennedy/vogon_media_server

[aridotdash]

Jewish programblr (or CS jumblr):

Anyone else understand modulo* as "Oh yeah like the Omer"?

*like division but with the remainder instead of a fraction.

So 10/3 = 3.3333...

But 10%3 = 1, because 3 goes into 10 three times with 1 remaining

[chiseld]

30 days of Python: 1/30

To kick off this impromptu project (thanks to @cel-studies-stuff for the inspiration!), I am diving into the first of Lynn Root’s five project-based python tutorials available at newcoder.io. Project #1 is a data visualization tutorial, and it has been a somewhat challenging journey to get my computer set up right for this. Python 2.7 vs 3, virtual environments, symlinks, and cloned repos, oh my!

I’m still on Part 1 of the project, reading through very carefully line by line to make sure I understand everything. Cool discovery of the day: python’s zip() function :D

[chiseld]

I’M A GENIUSSSSSSSS

Desperately needed self-appreciation ahead – you have been warned!

I’m working my way through the fCC intermediate algorithms, and I just solved one SO fast and easy! It felt especially great because just a couple of days ago, I was stuck on one of the challenges for over 24 hours and didn’t really understand it even when I had completed it. But this one just makes so much sense to me!

It’s the challenge called “Missing Letters” and the very first thing I tried, worked! I honestly hadn’t even expected that. Normally I have to click “Run Tests” multiple times, interpret the error messages and try something else and add console.log() statements to test my code and so on. But this time I just slammed out that nice neat solution like it weren’t no thang. Didn’t even have to glance at the forums. I need to bask in this moment during an otherwise shitty month :]

And that’s not all: I also found an error in the challenge itself! Or rather, not so much an error as a fringe case they forgot to test for. I posted a question in the forums to make sure, but if someone confirms that it’s an oversight in the exercise, I’m going to make a pull request and hope they accept the new assertion test I wrote to improve the exercise :))))

[chiseld]

Back to Colt Steele’s “Web Developer Bootcamp”. It’s been too long. He’s the only teacher who can make me kind of enjoy web design, lol. Learning about Bootstrap 4 now, and I can definitely appreciate Bootstrap more than the last time I went through this section.

(I mean I’m still a coding snob who’s obsessed with creating everything from scratch myself, but I can understand its purpose and admit that it fulfills it damn well.)