Tag: code

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Introducing StrangeLine and More RetroStrange-ness

This weekend I did some work on RetroStrange infrastructure and scheduling.

RetroStrange TV (our 24/7 streaming TV channel) which is now fully autonomous and publishes notifications to Twitter when each show or movie begins with the #RSTV hashtag. You can find my TV station code on GitHub. The current setup of two Linode 4GB servers this should provide us with enough space and power to run it basically forever at $40/month. Support via Patreon appreciated.

The next RetroStrange Movie Night is November 23rd and we’re showing film noir classic D.O.A. (1949) see the Facebook Event.

The other big RetroStrange feature is the StrangeLine. I’ve set up a phone number you can call for various RetroStrange stuff. Right now you can call to get info on the next Movie Night, or listen to the Skulking Permit by Robert Sheckley as heard on LOFI SCIFI. We’ll add and change up the content regularly, so go ahead and give ‭(814) 787-2643‬ (that’s 814-STRANGE) a call.

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I’m Featured on the Linode Craft of Code podcast this week

We talked indie web infrastructure, Troma, Ted Lasso, and the hows and whys of our public domain media empire on RetroStrange. Give the episode a listen on their website, or in your podcast app of choice.

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A Deep Dive on Z-Index Usage

How do you make sure your annoying popup is shown on top of every other element in the page, when you don’t know how many there are, who wrote them, and how bad they wanted their elements to be on top? That’s when you set your z-index to 100, or maybe 999, or maybe, just maybe 99999 to be really sure yours will win.

That, at least, is how I write my CSS. In the rest of this post, we will look at millions of z indices to see what everyone else does.

Of course, if you make websites for a living you’ll find this interesting. Like most things available here.

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Astray, a lua-based dungeon and maze generator

Works great with Love2d, and so I am using it in a new (surprise!) wrestling-based project.

Download: [astray on github](https://github.com/SiENcE/astray)

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Just in case you’re using Mailgun with Mediawiki…

The docs don’t cover this, but [the steps in this post][link] got it working for me:

1. Install composer `apt-get install composer`
2. Run `composer update` from the `extensions/Mailgun` folder
3. Run `php maintainence/rebuildLocalizationCache.php` from the main mediawiki folder.

Running your own services get you into all sorts of fun trouble like this.

[link]: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T144143 “Mailgun extension producing PHP Fatal Error about dependency Guzzle6”

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Stop using device breakpoints

[Adam Silver with some good horse sense][1]. This is a surprisingly common practice here in the Year of Luigi 2017. It’s mostly surprising because we spent so much time talking about this during the original web standards push that I’d hoped it had sunk in.

[1]: https://medium.com/simple-human/stop-using-device-breakpoints-b11a87e2625c “Stop using device breakpoints – Simple = Human – Medium”

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stochastic

“[Simple functions for simulating Poisson Processes, Brownian motion, geometric Brownian motion, discrete/continuous-time Markov chains, and normal random variables][link]” in Javascript.

[link]: http://github.com/NathanEpstein/stochastic “NathanEpstein/stochastic”

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Framer

[An application / framework platform for Mac that looks to let you got from Photoshop or Sketch to prototype in record time.][link]

[link]: http://framerjs.com/ “Framer – Innovative Prototyping”

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Phaser

[Another HTML5 2D game framework][link], built mobile-first. Supports TypeScript and JavaScript. Looks pretty fast / simple, and it’s used on the awesome [Game Mechanic Explorer][gme] site.

[link]: http://phaser.io/ “Phaser – Desktop and Mobile HTML5 game framework”
[gme]: http://gamemechanicexplorer.com “Game Mechanic Explorer”

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sql.js: A port of SQLite to JavaScript

[This is ridiculous and great][link]:

>sql.js is a port of SQLite to JavaScript, by compiling the SQLite C code with Emscripten. no C bindings or node-gyp compilation here.

Once again, via [Jesper][jesper].

[link]: https://github.com/kripken/sql.js “kripken/sql.js”
[jesper]: http://waffle.wootest.net “Jesper’s blog, Waffle”

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slick – the last carousel you’ll ever need

[A full-responsive, CSS3-enabled, touch-ready, arrow-key supporting, draggable carousel that you can instance with one line.][link]

Having built and used probably a dozen different image slider / content carousels this one looks like it covers all of the bases and with minimal markup bullshit. Color me impressed.

[link]: http://kenwheeler.github.io/slick/ “slick – the last carousel you'll ever need”

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Font-To-Width

>[Font‑To‑Width (FTW!)][link] is a script by Nick Sherman and Chris Lewis that takes advantage of large type families to fit pieces of text snugly within their containers.

Can definitely see using this for some datavis stuff. There is some FOUT (Flash of unstyled text) to deal with though.

[link]: http://font-to-width.com/ “Font-To-Width”

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MicIO.js

[This is some crazy magicks and I love it][link]:

> Use HTML5’s web audio API to create a hardware bus somewhat similar to how Square’s Credit Card readers works.

I am abuzz with ideas for this right now and this is bad because I have actual work to do. (via [Jesper][jesp])

[link]: http://colinbookman.com/2014/03/23/micio/ “MicIO.js”
[jesp]: http://waffle.wootest.net “Waffle, Jesper’s blog”

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Macaw

[The only visual HTML editor I’ve ever seen that looks legitimately useful, well-executed, and outputs good code.][link]

Let’s see if they can deliver.

[link]: http://macaw.co/ “Macaw | The code-savvy web design tool.”

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CSS Zen Garden Relaunches

[The old favorites are still there but the new example files are fully responsive.][link]

[link]: http://www.csszengarden.com/ “CSS Zen Garden: The Beauty in CSS Design”

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Learn Lua in 15 Minutes

[Where was this when I needed it 2 years ago?][link]

[link]: http://tylerneylon.com/a/learn-lua/ “Learn Lua in 15 Minutes”

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µSpeech

[A speech recognition toolkit for Arduino][link]. Fighting the urge to pair this with my robovoice speech chip and make a vocal chatbot.

[link]: http://arjo129.github.io/uSpeech/ “µSpeech”

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glsl.js

[A WebGL subset focused on making 2D and 3D game visuals more efficient / maintainable.][link] Don’t miss the [examples][ex]. Requires a browser that supports WebGL, so the current released version of Safari is a no-go for now. Try Chrome.

[link]: http://blog.greweb.fr/2013/02/glsl-js-a-javascript-glsl-library-dry-efficient/ “glsl.js, a Javascript + GLSL library = DRY & efficient • @GreWeb”
[ex]: http://greweb.fr/glsl.js/examples/balls/ “Bouncing balls glsl.js example”

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Histo

[A streaming chart library for the terminal that takes stdin and makes it pretty.][link]

[link]: https://github.com/visionmedia/histo “visionmedia/histo · GitHub”

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jsdom

[A JavaScript implementation of the W3C DOM for use with node.js.][link]

[link]: https://github.com/tmpvar/jsdom “tmpvar/jsdom · GitHub”