Basically what I made was a drag and drop tool you could use to make store windows that people could shop off of. I feel like it’s ok that I write about this now given that I found a press release about their upcoming launch that says pretty much the same thing.

Under the assumption that I’d be the one building this site after the Blueprinting phase, I made my prototype with reusable code. I loved the product, so I tested the heck out of that prototype because I was constantly playing with it. It was really fun.

And here is where the bubble bursts. We did not get the go ahead to build the site. Originally we were going to give them a site which they could look at, and use to show investors, but not my actual prototype code. The logic being that this was usable code and they paid for a prototype. Well then Amazon went down and lost EVERYTHING. One of the members on our team zipped up my code and send it on over to the client, or ex-client, whatever. It was already pretty much over at that point.

Last week I got a DM from a coworker at Optaros about the startup’s new agency and their little press release about how awesome the product is and how they totally just build this super awesome window creation experience. They also linked another project similar that was affiliated with the startup.

Sooo… yeah they used my code. The HTML, the Javascript, all of it was there, comments and all. Even the comments that said “This is a total hack, do not go live with this” were there. I know that as soon as it was passed off, it belonged to the client and they could do whatever they wished with it. So they gave it to the next guy, and the next guy used it all and stamped their name on it.

Honestly, I kinda felt dirty. Here is this agency I have zero affiliation with taking credit for something I made. What was worse was that I made the whole thing in 2 weeks, I tried my best to make it beautiful and when I looked at the code they added, it was about 500 lines of shit that could have been done in one. I AM NOT EXAGGERATING WHEN I SAY THAT. There is actually a chunk of code in that file that is well over half the document, that could have been done in one line of code. Which leads me to believe the agency doesn’t have the team savvy enough to build a tool like that. Also the rest of the site was pretty much an HTTP request nightmare.

The silver lining is YAY SOMETHING I MADE IS LIVE NOW! I can be happy about that. It was a good prototype, but that doesn’t change the fact that it was just a prototype. There was a lot of it that needed to be changed before going live and I never got to do it. It’s not as beautiful as I would have done it if we got the chance to make it.

I think it’s funny that when I help build a prototype hoping that the client will use the code, they don’t (Finishline) and when I build a prototype where I wouldn’t want the client to use my code, they do. It just could have been so much better and more polished.

CHECK THE VERSION OF JQUERY.

Bam. I just saved you an hour of OMGWTFBBQ.

This might be duuuh for most, but was doing everything as private functions and the type was getting lost in scope so nothing happened. It was super annoying. Adam saved the day.

At first I found it irritating. You have to run a watcher in terminal so every time you update the scss file, it updates the corresponding css file. I would not put in proper tabbing or a space and it would error. A week of dealing with that and now I am conditioned to perfect tabbing.

I am using SCSS syntax which has brackets. I love it because it comes out looking like this:

/*SCSS HERE - FAR MORE AWESOME. HAS NESTING*/
table.hl {
margin: 2em 0;
td.ln {
text-align: right;
}
}

li {
font: {
family: serif;
weight: bold;
size: 1.2em;
}
}


Which equates to this in CSS:

/*CSS HERE*/
table.hl {
margin: 2em 0;
}
table.hl td.ln {
text-align: right;
}

li {
font-family: serif;
font-weight: bold;
font-size: 1.2em;
}


This has made it much easier to organize and find code.

You can also declare variables in SCSS, things like color, padding, margins, rounded corners, boxshadows, AKA shit you retype over and over and over, and will have to edit on a billion elements should the design change.


$blue: #3bbfce;
$margin: 16px;

.border {
padding: $margin / 2;
margin: $margin / 2;
border-color: $blue;
}


That is awesome. Right now I am using it on a prototype web application and it’s just me on the team so I am now sure how great this is when it comes to working in a group. I forsee a lot of having to convert css files to scss files every time I update. I am worried that if I can’t get my team to use sass there might be some issues with format and organization. I guess I’ll find out all that during Build Phase. Dah well.

So far my dealings with SCSS is A+++++++ would recommend to all.

They have also included a friendly FU to Microsoft.

Can we just make this opensource so there are 50 mirrors?

After consulting friends and acting as a telephone in a 3 way argument about the best method for installing MYSQL, I ended up using Homebrew. [other options: mysql disk img, macports]

First: Go to terminal and install homebrew by typing in:
ruby -e "$(curl -fsSLk https://gist.github.com/raw/323731/install_homebrew.rb)"

Next: Install Xcode. This is easy, you just need to sign up to be a mac developer.

Last: In terminal go to your user/local folder
cd /usr/local

Then install MYSQL with homebrew
brew install mysql

Wait forever until it’s done installing. You now have MYSQL on your mac.

Life update:

I got a new job! Starting TOMORROW, I am working for Optaros.

At some point in December I decided I wanted to look around at what was out there in the world of Agencies and Consulting. I hadn’t interviewed since I got my job at Molecular (now Isobar) over three years ago and I was terrified. I was worried about rejection. I was worried that I wasn’t good enough. I was just worried about change in general. After sending my resume out on a sunday and getting called back Monday morning by every place I applied, I quickly got over all of my fears.

This is what I learned from the experience of interviewing: I am not a moron. Not only am I good at being a front end developer, I even made it through the tech interview for a software development company for a senior level position. Talking to people during interviews about what I do for a living is the easiest thing in the world, because I LOVE developing. Not once did I feel like I was BSing the interviewer. I genuinely knew all the answers to the tech questions. Closures, classical vs Prototypal Inheritance, performance testing, cross browser testing, posting/getting, synchronous/asynchronous, etc- I knew how to explain it. After each interview I would buzz around in circles wondering when the hell did I learn all this stuff. This is all stuff you just do, you don’t talk about it. No client cares about if you are using closures. It’s amazing that in a little over 3 years I have learned so much.

Ironically, the company I picked had one of the lighter tech interviews. This isn’t a bad thing because their overall process and company structure was my ideal place to work. I am really excited about my first day tomorrow. The only bummer I have about working for Optaros is that they don’t have cubicals, so I don’t have a place for all the posters I just took home. I don’t know how long I should wait before I bring in a ton of action figures… I’m thinking not until February.

Leaving Isobar was bittersweet. I love everyone I’d worked with there and there had been some amazing projects. There had been some evil, wake up in cold sweat, projects as well, but I’m sure those happen at all agencies. I had given 4 weeks notice and through the four weeks I was getting more and more anxious about leaving. I have no doubt that I am going to hang out with my isobar friends outside of work and that’s all I want. I would be distraught if I didn’t think I would see Dave or Rob or Emile or Bobby again. On Friday I thought I might start crying hysterically when I left, but I had to work late to finish up some stuff and I was completely dry eyed. It wasn’t very sad and it just didn’t feel as in the good parts were over. The best thing about Isobar is the people who work there and I can hang out with them outside of work.

Tech Stuff
So far I’ve had a pretty lazy new year. I learned about Qunit which I hope to start using on whatever personal or company project I work on next. I’ve had a couple breakthroughs with managing event bubbling in jQuery while trying to make the most ridiculous form ever designed. One might say it “over-designed.” And lastly, I have been using a lot of CSS to manage state, in the OOCSS inheritance sense.

Art Stuff
I’ve been drawing every day. I have started both a tumblr and a DA account.

I am reading Drawn to Life: 20 Golden Years of Disney Masters which is freaking amazing! It’s like taking an illustration class.

I was told I got a lot better after drawing this:

I love me some formulaic television. Every season of Murder She Wrote is on Netflix. This show was made for drinking games.

OK seriously. Why does this have to be so hard. Why do I have to call about 5 methods to do one fucking thing? I hate you java. I hate your stupid strongly typed face.

So I tried it again, and again, I got the dreaded error:

An exception occurred while communicating with the ATM
java.net.ConnectException: Connection refused
at java.net.PlainSocketImpl.socketConnect(Native Method)
at java.net.PlainSocketImpl.doConnect(PlainSocketImpl.java:333)
at java.net.PlainSocketImpl.connectToAddress(PlainSocketImpl.java:195)
at java.net.PlainSocketImpl.connect(PlainSocketImpl.java:182)
at java.net.SocksSocketImpl.connect(SocksSocketImpl.java:433)
at java.net.Socket.connect(Socket.java:529)
at java.net.Socket.connect(Socket.java:477)
at java.net.Socket.(Socket.java:374)
at java.net.Socket.(Socket.java:187)
at cscie160.hw6.ATMProxy.(ATMProxy.java:19)
at cscie160.hw6.Client.main(Client.java:12)


About here I am seriously losing my mind and falling deeper into a pit of despair and insanity. Why the hell does my server not work?

Today, Dave comes in and I learn about Telnet. THIS WORKS:

Go to the “bin” folder of my java project and start my server.

java cscie160.hw6.Server 7777


Then after it declares “Accepting clients” hit COMMAND+t (I am on a mac) and type in:

telnet localhost 7777


Rejoice as I finally see:

Trying 127.0.0.1...
Connected to localhost.


Thank. Freaking. God. My ATM works fine now.