Repos / hi.imnhan.com / 1b71d1a2ee
commit 1b71d1a2ee448c8ccdaad6486d3dcf6eda82c02a
Author: nhanb <thanhnhan483@gmail.com>
Date: Sat Jan 25 10:16:09 2014 +0700
last revision of "built anything cool"
diff --git a/content/have-you-built-anything-cool-.md b/content/have-you-built-anything-cool-.md
index b38686e..0fc4ec9 100644
--- a/content/have-you-built-anything-cool-.md
+++ b/content/have-you-built-anything-cool-.md
@@ -3,7 +3,7 @@
Date: 2013-12-04 08:55:44
Status: draft
-So yesterday I went to a *networking event* - something I have never liked or been good at. I'm
+So recently I went to a *networking event* - something I have never liked or been good at. I'm
not sure if I'm one of those introverts or if I'm just socially awkward, but the very idea of
going around trying to converse with total strangers just to exchange business cards is not at all
appealing to me. Anyway, that's another story. Right now I want to write about something a guy
@@ -17,7 +17,7 @@
[pytaku](https://pytaku-legacy.appspot.com) - does and why it is awesome for me. He seemed to be
disinterested halfway through so I decided to shut up anyway.
-Sure, I have done stuff every now and then, be it assignment work or something I decided to create
+Sure, I have done stuff now and then, be it assignment work or something I decided to create
for my own amusement. It is just funny how I have already stepped into to my final year without
taking a proper look back at what I have done in these past 2 years, so I'm going to do just that.
@@ -25,28 +25,32 @@
answers:
### Have you built anything?
-Yes, I have done desktop and Android games, a movie ticket sales program, a desktop manga
+Yes, I have made desktop and Android games, a movie ticket sales program, a desktop manga
grabber, a web version of it that talks to dropbox, and several small shell scripts / web
-utilities.
+utilities.
### So, nothing cool?
-If you're neither a tech geek nor an otaku (which I assume you're probably not) then no,
-there's probably nothing I've done that you would find interesting.
+If you're neither a tech geek nor an otaku (which I assume you're not) then no, there's probably
+nothing I've done that you would find interesting.
+
+## Nerd alert!
+The rest of this post is aimed at the <del>nerdier</del> more tech-savvy audience. You have been
+warned ;)
## First year - Welcome to the web, and the GUI programming disillusionment
I had touched *web stuff* before in high school: a vBulletin forum that I created (unofficially)
for students in my middle school. However, I only properly learned PHP and JS when I started the
Web Programming course here. With (moderately) great power came great desires, so I set out to
-build a basic PHP site to scrape a view page's HTML to get direct video links (not working anymore
-since a recent youtube update)
+build a basic PHP site to scrape a youtube view page's HTML to get direct video links (not working
+anymore since a recent youtube update)
That was my first touch on jQueryUI and regular expressions; I also learned how RMIT's mekong
server sucked to the point that it didn't allow `get_file_contents()`.
-About school assignments? Nothing interesting: standard barebones LAMP CMS with jQuery glitter
+About school assignments? Nothing interesting: standard minimal LAMP CMS with jQuery glitter
sprinkled on top. Not a bad experience but meh.
I also learned about MVC and GUI programming with Java swing. I did write a movie ticket program
@@ -57,11 +61,11 @@ ## First year - Welcome to the web, and the GUI programming disillusionment
-Then it occurred to me that programming GUI interfaces for desktop programs is much more tedius
+Then it occurred to me that programming GUI interfaces for desktop programs was much more tedious
than doing it for the web, especially when working with the now-not-favored Swing toolkit.
Nightmarish days...
-Another lession learned the hard way was that "MVC" is not even a concrete thing, and there is
+Another lesson learned the hard way was that "MVC" is not even a concrete thing, and there is
hardly any obvious "one true way" to implement that. I spent much more time planning for plumbing
code than I the time I spent actually writing "feature" code. And the result, now looking back, was
not even that good. And yeah, there was no such thing as "separation of concerns" in my code back
@@ -72,15 +76,15 @@ ## First year - Welcome to the web, and the GUI programming disillusionment
environment other than OS X and Windows. Font rendering was painful to look at, and the only way to
make it *a little bit* more acceptable was using a
[forked version of OpenJDK](http://www.webupd8.org/2013/06/install-openjdk-patched-with-font-fixes.html).
-WTF guys? And that's not the only problem; let's talk Look And Feel. The built-in
+WTF guys? And that's not the only problem; let's talk Look And Feel. Java's built-in
getSystemLookAndFeel() could only detect GNOME's. When developing `ajmg` I discovered that and had
-to wrote my own method that extended the thing to detect more DEs, but soon after that I thought
+to write my own method that extended the thing to detect more DEs, but soon after that I thought
"What the hell, why do I even have to do this?" and decided that Swing was dead to me (or any
desktop Linux user for that matter).
-## Second and third year: enough of this <del>bull</del> school crap. I'm making stuff for myself!
+## Second year: enough of this <del>bull</del> school crap. I'm making stuff for myself!
-To be fair, the next 2 years have offered a number of new stuff: C/C++ programming, a taste of the
+To be fair, the following year has offered a number of new stuff: C/C++ programming, a taste of the
M$ .NET C# stack (still impressed by Visual Studio's vi mode plugin), more Java,
[Android app programming](http://truongtx.me/2013/05/02/agent-069-game/), and some neat security
tricks. However, none of those intrigued me much, so I decided to start making things for my own:
@@ -90,21 +94,21 @@ ### Shell scripts
If you have taken a look at my [dotfiles](https://github.com/nhanb/dotfiles), you'll notice that I
do write a bunch of shell scripts to automate stuff I do often. The one I'm currently proudest of
is [rmiproxy_silent](https://github.com/nhanb/dotfiles/blob/master/scripts/rmitproxy_silent), a
-script that automatically dectects whether I am using RMIT's network and set/clear the appropriate
+script that automatically detects whether I am using RMIT's network and set/clear the appropriate
proxy settings. Another one that I can't live without is
[install.sh](https://github.com/nhanb/dotfiles/blob/master/install.sh), a script that helps install
all my dotfiles, sets up zsh and various things. It saved me *a lot* of time whenever I reinstall
my system.
-Obligatory mention of [oh-my-zsh](https://github.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh/), greatest invention
-since sliced bread!
+Obligatory shout-out to [oh-my-zsh](https://github.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh/), greatest invention
+since sliced bread! Those guys are awesome!
### AJMG, then Pytaku, then... who knows?
The original idea was actually creating a Java Swing program that helps download manga. It was born
-out of spite of [DomDomSoft](http://blog.domdomsoft.com/), a manga downloader that requires
+out of frustration of [DomDomSoft](http://blog.domdomsoft.com/), a manga downloader that requires
"donation" to unlock full functionalities. "I could do that, and I'll open source the crap out of
-it, because open source is awesome", I thought. Spent some time and got the minimal program
+it, because open source is awesome", I thought. Then I spent some time and got the minimal program
working program:
@@ -117,22 +121,22 @@ ### AJMG, then Pytaku, then... who knows?
Then came [Pytaku](https://pytaku-legacy.appspot.com), ajmg's spiritual successor. At this point I
knew enough of python and wanted to try out Google App Engine, so I decided to make a web version
-of AJMG, with the difference that instead of downloading directly, it forwards it to the user's
-Dropbox folder. Why not Google Drive you ask? Because they haven't even bothered to release an
-official Linux client for it. Shame on you, Google!
+of AJMG, with the difference that instead of downloading directly, it forwards everything to the
+user's Dropbox folder. Why not Google Drive you ask? Because they haven't even bothered to release
+an official Linux client for it. Shame on you, Google!
-Loads of exciting things were learned along the way: how URL handling works in
-webapp2 and in other web frameworks in general, proper templating (can't believe I ever wrote
-`<?php echo $title; ?>`... not cool!), OAuth2 (more than a few "Aha!" moments working with this
-little guy...), Google's Datastore and NoSQL in general, and of course, Twitter Bootstrap - saving
-clueless non-designer developers since its inception.
+Loads of exciting things were learned along the way: how URL handling works in webapp2 and in other
+web frameworks in general, proper templating (can't believe I ever wrote `<title><?php echo $title;
+?></title>`... not cool!), OAuth2 (more than a few "Aha!" moments working with this little guy...),
+Google's Datastore and NoSQL in general, and of course, Twitter Bootstrap - saving clueless
+non-designer developers since its inception.
And now, I'm rewriting it from scratch, this time trying out TDD, making use of
[travis-ci](https://travis-ci.org/nhanb/pytaku), which will be especially helpful to periodically
-test if a manga site has changed its page layout and screwed up Pytaku's scraping code. Have
+test if a manga site has changed its page layout and screwed up Pytaku's scraping code. I have
encountered a number of quirks when trying to set up the correct testing boilerplate for a Google
App Engine project, but it seems everything will be smooth from now on. This holiday season I plan
-to at least roll out an alpha version for testing. Stay tuned if you're interested!
+to at least roll out an alpha version to show off. Stay tuned if you're interested!
## To sum it up...
@@ -150,4 +154,5 @@ ## To sum it up...
Year Resolution", I guess mine is that one year from now, I will have a satisfying answer to this
question. Watch out world, I'm coming!
-So, have *you* built anything cool recently?
+If you managed to get here, you are probably a tech geek like me. So, have *you* built anything
+cool recently?