Spooky

I decided to setup a little server on my local network just to make use of a 2TB harddrive I use to store videos.

Told everyone in the house I planned to grow the library over time and that they could access it all in a browser using my system name. It's become quite a fun venture and my video library is shaping up nicely.

Using nginx on a Dell XPS 17 with Ubuntu 16.04 to host a server that just auto indexes a shared directory on my external 2TB harddrive. Kind of an embarrassing rig, but it's just a hobby activity and I do plan to upgrade shit later.

The real fun has been getting to understand a bit more about video files. They used to be magic to me, as complex as their file extension. Now I run a script on all of my torrents which checks the video and audio codecs, converting them if they aren't supported by Chrome's and Firefox's web players, and outputting mp4s using ffmpeg. I feel like I have this stuff down fairly well now. Becoming more and more automated.

Next step is to port forward so I can access it from anywhere, but we'll see about that later down the line.

I had a project where I completely suprised the client and the company within the beginning. It was silky smooth, working on multiplatform ios android,standalone. I wrote the most complex shader I ever made. Everything was great and I even got a bonus for the project.
Then one day. Videos started to stutter. Not playing, completely black on some cases and some devices.
I started to think about reasons. I tried every solution I come up with. No success.
Updated all the codecs, middleware still nothing. Tried to solve the problem for a week. It was a total diaaster and I even thought I a dont deserve to be a developer.

We encoded the videos a few times. Decided to export the original video again, boom! It worked. Theres no particular reason why it worked. But it worked. I guess I am a good developer. Not the best but, eh.

Built a Media server using emby and then realized that one of my old TV shows with only 5 seasons was taking 129GB of storage space and I would need to transcode them, did my research and decided to use VP9 for the codec (YouTube, native browser support, etc.) found that it reduced my shows size to 51GB with great quality still. And then found out that emby doesn't allow direct play of VP9 on browsers and it's transcoding back to H264 Everytime I watch it. Submitted a issues, we'll see what happens now.

Spent an entire day just compiling a kernel with audio codecs for my cherrytrail laptop, first on my server for 9ish hours, then on my laptop, ended up deleting it all and starting over, because the final folder was 20+ gigs big (without modules) and the next instruction was to transfer all those files to what is a 32gb laptop, so I thought I fucked up, now searching more, it seems I just need the vmlinuz file once it compiled, I guess I'll compile it all again...

Look here sir. If I have raised 12 defects on the feature you were working on its not a personal attack... I am not trying to publicly humilate you or doubting your ninja coding skills. We are on the same team. Just trying to make a better product that's my job as qa. So chill out with passive aggressive comments on the tickets.

You don't hear me making a peep when you take my name and say I missed the issue if someone higher up points out the same defects.

Me to university: You taught us C++, java, DS Algo and PHP only right?

University: Yes

Me: So our college project must be around these only?

University: Yes... But No, here are your only options for our college project

1. MEAN/MERN Stack Website
2. Machine Learning
3. Data Science
4. IOT
5. Android App

Me: WTF?

My arguments about Apple:
- "iPhone 12 camera can be better than anything else because it's more advanced, it has LiDAR and 10-bit codecs"
- "I can copy on my iPhone and paste on my MacBook and vice versa out of the box"
- "My Beats can seamlessly switch from playing from my MacBook to my iPhone to my Apple Watch. I can be exercising with only my Apple Watch and my Beats, no need for iPhone"
- "2K screen with nice colors in a 900g laptop is rare if you consider the price. Apple one is the cheapest one with that characteristics"
- "Apple Pay is convenient"
- "Fingerprint scanners fail with wet fingers no matter if it's ultrasonic or optical, LiDAR Face ID is objectively more secure than any camera-based unlock mechanism"
- "Stainless steel frame feels better than aluminum one"

I'm not saying Apple is the best. I'm not saying that Google Pay doesn't exist or that Apple Pay is better. I'm not saying that Apple has no downsides.

However, these are responses I get:
"But Apple IS crapple, immutably"
"Why are you even looking at apple crap if you want something good"

If you want to bash Apple, bash it for something real like that butterfly keyboard fails, unconventional AirPods shape that makes most people's ears hurt, screen coating fails on MacBooks, App Store commissions.

if(night){
sleep(12*60*1000);
}else{
//TODO update when you get a job
sleep(12*60*1000);
}

It happened with a company that makes the audio Codecs for Apple (you guessed it right).
It was supposed to be the most pleasant interview ever but not exactly. Here's the thing, the interview went so well that the HR explained all the benefits for its employees and handed me a copy of a leaflet containing so. In the end, as they were walking me to the door, the HR lady told me "you are staying here, you don't have to look anymore" as they were walking me to the door.

Well, everything I did from my end was perfect. Thank you emails and follow-ups blah blah. But not a single answer from their end regarding any decision.
This was the worst feeling to me.

Sometimes I feel.... my compiler judges me.

A designer who doesn't have taste of it.

QT Creator and openframeworks on Windows 10 fucking suck!

- Qt creator keeps getting issues with the system. Missing DLLs etc. Fuck you, Qt Creator! They aren't missing. I double checked them. Redownloaded them and installed them.

- Besides of that your inbuilt compiler sucks big time. It takes me a fucking minute to see a complete program with a simple text on a GUI.

Now back to openframeworks.

- OF doesn't use the pre-installed codecs on Windows. You have to install K-Lite codecs to play mp4 n shit.

- If you want to embed a video or an image on the GUI, you keep getting a layer on top of the canvas. Yellow colors turn blue etc. Fucking weird.

- OF isn't a fan of Windows. Tried to install and run OF on VS 2019. It is not supported.

How about we follow the documentation of OF and install it their way? Great. Let's do it.
It says install VS 2017.
Ok, let's try it on VS 2017. Doesn't work.

I realize that they use VS 2015 in the video of their documentation.
Geez. Ok, let us try it with VS 2015.
Tries to download it, but with no success. Microsoft isn't supporting it anymore. Thus no way to download it from the official website.

- How about OF on Code::Blocks?
Not supported. Doesn't work.

I reinstalled everything. Made a Windows update. Rebooted it. Still a big nope.

To both dev teams: Get your fucking shit together, you bloody morons!

WHY THE FUCK ARE CODECS STILL A THING?

Have we as a society not moved on and found like the 4/5 "good enough" movie formats. Fucking bullshit needing me to download VLC for the first time in years -.-

AND WHY THE FUCK ARE CODECS ON SALE ON MICROSOFT STORE???? WHAT?

Whatever Google has done wrong, I am nonetheless thankful for them releasing the patentless open-source VP9 and AV1 video codecs.

The world needs modern open-source video formats and Google has filled that void.

I know, OGG Theora exists, but that is two decades old and inefficient. VP9 is the counterpart that can compete with H.265.

Life of an tech lead.
Hire a candidate with little to no experience in relevant technology - > train said resource - > resource becomes productive - > plan enhancements as work load can be shared. - > resource switches projects or firm - > goto step 1 and overtime to complete enhancements. FML

Me: hey, I noticed we are doing this weird stuff in 'platform A' can we file a story to fix this.

Dev: It must be legacy code or library implementation before my time. By the way it's the same in platform B.

Me: yeah, we will need to fix that too.

Dev: tell you what. For now let's keep our platforms uniform we will fix it when platform B is fixed.

Welcome everyone... to the new chicken egg problem. Where even bugs are needed to be uniform across platforms.

Java

Why? It would be fun they said. Java is sooo forgiving to new Learners they said.

Irony - (noun) Switching to a new framework to do more with less code. Spending obscene amount of time and LOC to retrofit rest of the code to work with the said framework.

Google's "alliance for open media" which created nice video codecs appears to be far more "open" than the "open handset alliance" that has locked down Android OS file management and task management severely.