For no good reason other than Ted Cruz has a stupid face, here is a picture of Ted Cruz’s stupid face.
Thanks to http://tedcruzhasastupidface.tumblr.com/ and Reuters.
Why is they always problems?
So I was minding my own business peacefully putting together this little website. Nothing all that complicated even to me even though I hadn’t built a site in a while.
Though there was this one feature powered by waypoints.js and jquery.counterup.js that kept going wrong.
We had this little bit of animation in place to make 2 sets of numbers count up to the actual stats we wanted to display. The counter action should trigger whenever the div was in view: by scrolling down the page to the stats div, the numbers should start “counting up” and then stop on the right number. And it should fire more than once. Go back to the top and scroll down again no matter how many times the numbers should count and stop on the right numbers. It worked OK until around the 5th or 6th time you scrolled down. Then line 62 of jquery.counterup.js would throw an error: Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property ‘shift’ of null. Stats would still animate but the final numbers would be the wrong ones.
CounterUp is in GitHub https://github.com/bfintal/Counter-Up and I tried digsite’s fork . This fork fixes the problem when jquery.counterup.js is used with the more current versions of waypoints.js. But then it only allows the stats animation to trigger once. We wanted it to be triggered any time the stats div came into view. Then I want back to the original and found this issue: https://github.com/bfintal/Counter-Up/issues/23 which was fixed around a week ago – just when I needed to wrap up my little web project! A web miracle! The same error (Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property ‘shift’ of null) is logged in Console but the stats numbers stay correct each time the animation is triggered and then stops, thanks to the fix by https://github.com/zxl9171.
Music Whackamole
I had Grooveshark. I loved Grooveshark! I spent a lot of time looking for artists, looking for obscure music, making playlists, favorite-ing songs. I installed their app. I paid money to have an upgraded, “pro” account even though I didn’t have to but I wanted to support them. That is how much I loved Grooveshark. You think you love your apps but do you actually give them any money? No you do not. Then Grooveshark turned out to be in violation of I don’t know how many laws (music rights are complicated!) that they had to shut down. I was shocked! One day they were just gone with a simple we are gone now, here is our apology for what we did wrong, thanks for everything message on their website.
So then I found Rdio. I loved Rdio! I spent a lot of time looking for artists that I had already found on Grooveshark, re-creating my playlists (OK, I did not re-create all of them but I tried) and favorite-ing the same songs I had favorite-ed on Grooveshark. I installed their app on my desktop and my iPad and even ended up paying for 2 subscriptions even though it was a mistake and Rdio helped me figure out what went wrong and why it was not good to have two subscriptions (and we had a bit of a laugh about it). But now Pandora might have swallowed Rdio. Now I will have to go to Pandora?! I don’t like how Pandora works! I don’t like music “neighborhoods” or whatever the fuck they call their algorithm of getting songs to me that I might like because I like The The so damned much.
And I will have to do all those playlists again? Do you even know how much time I spent on theQuietus and NME and Rate Your Music looking up names of the songs that I only knew a few lines of so I could track them down in Grooveshark and Rdio & add them to a playlist or just listen to them? It was a lot of work yo.
I already have Soundcloud and even though I do not really like it I also have Spotify. But what I’d really like to do is find yet another little music app/site to join and devote another few weeks getting my songs and stuff sussed out in it then find out after a wild and crazy and very torrid affair of love a few months later that they have also been shut down by the gov’ment or swallowed up by a larger competitor and are shutting down also.
UPDATE – after I hit publish I Googled “how do I export my Rdio playlists” and maybe yes, cocaine is a hell of a drug because would you not know it there’s already this and this that will do that. By this and this I mean they will export your playlists to Spotify. I used this: http://www.spotificator.com.br/
Downsides & general objections to change of any kind:
- exporter had to split my playlists into two parts. Now I have dumb looking playlists like 1980 -1990 Part 1 and 1980 – 1990 Part 2. Yes I know I can rename them!
- not every one of my songs can be played in Spotify. Apparently Give it Up by KC and the Sunshine Band is such a rare and precious jewel that Spotify just cannot have it.
- oh drag and drop doesn’t work to re-order my tracks? Lovely.
- dang it! I’m on Spotify.
Where You Been?
If you visited my site in the last couple of years you would have noticed that I hadn’t added anything new since 2013. The reason for that was I’d taken a real job type job, working 9am to 5pm Monday to Friday for a web development company not based in NYC. I was excited to be able to work with a team. Also, after attempting to describe my work to my friends and relatives I thought it would be nice to be able to talk web dev shop talk with other people who would maybe know what I was talking about. And having a regular paycheck seemed like a nice thing too.
So, instead of giving a long list of the gory details ( who really cares anyway) here is a story of my time working with that company, told in the form of famous quotes:
Work is the refuge of people who have nothing better to do – Oscar Wilde
Abandon all hope, ye who enter here – Dante
You can’t fire me, slaves have to be sold – unknown
The End Is Extremely Effing Nigh – 28 Weeks Later
Yeah, I came back and censored the f-bomb.
When you come to a fork in the road, take it – Yogi Berra
Now take a look at these people with crazy eyebrows!