#Finally done with the first automation script!!!

[floating-potatoes]

I HAVE ARCHIVED THE EMAILS

[sadoeuphemist]

Terrible Ideas for Video Games:

—visual novel that's just an actual novel, greatly abridged; the choices you make determine which parts get edited out. You can consciously have Anna Karenina avoid all unpleasantness with Vronsky, in which case the last scene of their relationship is them embracing, planning their trip out to the country. You can choose to have her throw herself under the train, or not; if not, all mention of suicide is omitted and she simply falls beneath the wheels out of nowhere in a tragic twist ending. You could, instead, play as Levin, and ignore Anna's story completely. By playing through the game enough times, you might eventually reconstruct the original text.

—intricately-branching storygame where the gameplay is the most generic first-person shooter imaginable, funneling you down perfectly linear corridors to mow down wave after wave of foes. You are never given the explicit opportunity to make a choice, instead the plot plays out based on a host of invisibly-tracked statistics: your accuracy, most-used weapons, damage taken, whether or not you happened to be looking in the right direction when a scripted sequence was triggered, etc. The consequences of your actions are distant and obscured, some real butterfly effect bullshit. For example: an injured comrade ends up dying, convalescing, or making a full recovery, depending on how many medkits you ended up using three missions prior. The game tells you none of this, it just plays the relevant cutscene and then plunks you down in the next mission. Two players could experience two entirely different stories, without having the slightest inkling that there was any other way the game could have gone.

—colony management sim where you have to control each colonist individually, a impossible feat of micromanagement with a population of hundreds. The moment you stop controlling someone they will immediately wander off to do their own thing, based on their own semi-randomly generated skills and traits. The thing is: every colonist wants the colony to succeed, and so if left to their own devices they are guaranteed to build a basic functioning colony. How long it lasts is up to RNG. You can switch instantly from character to character, interfering in their lives, choosing where and when to intervene with your god-like perspective, and whether the colony survives or thrives or fails completely may or may not have anything to do with you at all.

—game where leveling up means greater automation. You start out with QWOP-style controls, having to flail your character around wildly just to throw a punch. The control scheme gradually refines until you can reliably throw a punch through a series of commands, and eventually you unlock a dedicated punch button. You unlock combos, then hotkeys and macros, then autocast on cooldown. Your character technically never gets any more powerful - you could do all of this from the beginning, given enough skill - it just becomes easier to execute. The final level is an autobattler, where you just sit back and watch it happen. (Maybe this idea would be better done in reverse, not sure.)

[systemadministratorclu]

Anonymously pester my muse meme: I write an automated script to send HAL a spam email about cryptocurrency every 15 minutes

It takes a while, but these emails finally get Hal to utter the first swears he's ever done without his brothers encouraging him to. And what a glorious outburst it is.

"THIS DAMN MOTHERFUCKING BITCHASS DICKSHIT JIZZCOCK HELLBASTARD!!"

For once, even H and Moebius are stunned into silence. Very proud and impressed silence.

[firespirited]

Long post. Press j to skip.

I AM SICK OF THE STUPID AI DEBATES, does it imagine, is it based on copyrightable material, are my patterns in there?

That's not the point.

I briefly got into website design freelancing (less than 3 months) before burn out.

The main reason was that automation had begun for generating stylesheets in somewhat tasteful palettes, for automatically making html/xml (they really haven't learned to simplify and tidy code though, they just load 50 divs instead of one), for batch colourising design elements to match and savvy designers weren't building graphics from scratch and to spec unless it was their day job.

Custom php and database design died with the free bundled CMS packages that come with your host with massive mostly empty unused values.

No-one has talked about the previous waves of people automated out of work by website design generators, code generators, the fiverr atomisation of what would have been a designers job into 1 logo and a swatch inserted into a CMS by an unpaid intern. Reviews, tutorials, explanations and articles are generated by stealing youtube video captions, scraping fan sites and putting them on a webpage. Digitally processing images got automated with scripts stolen from fan creators who shared. Screencaps went from curated processed images made by a person to machine produced once half a second and uploaded indiscriminately. Media recaps get run into google translate and back which is why they often read as a little odd when you look up the first results.

This was people's work, some of it done out of love, some done for pay. It's all automated and any paid work is immediately copied/co-opted for 20 different half baked articles on sites with more traffic now. Another area of expertise I'd cultivated was deep dive research, poring over scans of magazines and analysing papers, fact checking. I manually checked people's code for errors or simplifications, you can get generators to do that too, even for php. I used to be an english-french translator.

The generators got renamed AI and slightly better at picture making and writing but it's the same concept.

The artists that designed the web templates are obscured, paid a flat fee by the CMS developpers, the CMS coders are obscured, paid for their code often in flat fees by a company that owns all copyright over the code and all the design elements that go with. That would have been me if I hadn't had further health issues, hiding a layer in one of the graphics or a joke in the code that may or may not make it through to the final product. Or I could be a proof reader and fact checker for articles that get barely enough traffic while they run as "multi snippets" in other publications.

The problem isn't that the machines got smarter, it's that they now encroach on a new much larger area of workers. I'd like to ask why the text to speech folks got a flat fee for their work for example: it's mass usage it should be residual based. So many coders and artists and writers got screwed into flat fee gigs instead of jobs that pay a minimum and more if it gets mass use.

The people willing to pay an artist for a rendition of their pet in the artist's style are the same willing to pay for me to rewrite a machine translation to have the same nuances as the original text. The same people who want free are going to push forward so they keep free if a little less special cats and translations. They're the same people who make clocks that last 5 years instead of the ones my great uncle made that outlived him. The same computer chips my aunt assembled in the UK for a basic wage are made with a lot more damaged tossed chips in a factory far away that you live in with suicide nets on the stairs.

There is so much more to 'AI' than the narrow snake oil you are being sold: it is the classic and ancient automation of work by replacing a human with a limited machine. Robot from serf (forced work for a small living)

It's a large scale generator just like ye olde glitter text generators except that threw a few pennies at the coders who made the generator and glitter text only matters when a human with a spark of imagination knows when to deploy it to funny effect. The issue is that artists and writers are being forced to gig already. We have already toppled into precariousness. We are already half way down the slippery slope if you can get paid a flat fee of $300 for something that could make 300k for the company. The generators are the big threat keeping folks afraid and looking at the *wrong* thing.

We need art and companies can afford to pay you for art. Gig work for artists isn't a safe stable living. The fact that they want to make machines to take that pittance isn't the point. There is money, lots of money. It's not being sent to the people who make art. It's not supporting artists to mess around and create something new. It's not a fight between you and a machine, it's a fight to have artists and artisans valued as deserving a living wage not surviving between gigs.

[rosieuv]

2024 is almost over

(I originally posted this on Newgrounds so that's why most of the collab stuff is Newgrounds stuff)

I did the same thing last year and I think this is going to be some kind of annual thing in December now. I started this trying to make a 3D model to try it out as I wanted to try 3D animation, and ending with me being about 3/4 away from finishing my first album with vocals. I tried doing a crap ton this year which is why I haven't really done much as turns out that leads to something called "burnout" which I'm running for my life to avoid but I keep slowing down because "oooooo cool collab on the NGAP discord server!".

A list of every collab/jam that I did this year:

Pixel Day (did last year)

Sketch Collab (done since 2022)

Secret Santa (done since 2021)

Itch Godot Game Jam

Itch Pixel Game Jam

Itch Lospec Jam

Wii Art Collab

Halloween competition

The Nemgrounds Brainrot Scam Ad Collab that's still not out

Battle Of The Bands

NGAP Megacollab

Radio Collab

Art Inspired Music Competition

Pride Month Collab

Black And Orange Collab that's not out yet

Sandwich Collab

Voice Acting thing for UnculteredMutt from the NGP Discord Server that's not out yet

Voice Acting thing for BoiledMilkz

Voice Acting thing for a fanganronpa I found on Discord (not sure if I got a role yet though)

Voice Acting thing that I'm doing later today

The NGAP Cinematic Collab that I haven't started yet

The NGAP Terraria Collab that I haven't started yet but I'm doing the windy one

...Y'know...I'm starting to see why I think I'm on the edge of getting burnt out because on top of that I was doing my GCSEs (very important British exams), the album that I stated earlier and work on the DDLC fangame I mentioned in the 2023 post that I haven't worked on properly for a few months now as I got sidetracked. I was also trying to make stuff earlier this year for Redbubble and I kinda forgot about that.

The most notable thing I did online this year was probably changing my username from "PearlHikara" to "RosieUV" as I made that name when I was 13 and it's a version based of a name of my old YouTube channel I made when I was 12 and it's cringe so I came up with the much cooler "Rosie Ultraviolett" that people at my college call me in real life because that was my name on Snapchat :'). I also changed my icon and logo and basically did a whole changing thing to look cooler.

In terms of improvement stuff: I finally moved onto Godot 4 and figured out how Dialogic 2 works (it's so much better than 1) and I made my first 3D game (that wasn't a Roblox game), I found out what EQ and automation tracks are, figured out the power of line widths, moved onto OpenToonz, uhhhhh other stuff. I want to go pirate FL Studio once I finish my album as LMMS is starting to feel limiting, especially in comparison to Logic Pro, which is what I've been using in my music tech BTEC class.

I also started uploading all my old art onto Cara, moved my website from carrd.co to neocities.org so I could make it from scratch with HTML and not have to rely on boring templates. I'm currently re-making the website from scratch to look all cool and stuff and that's my main focus currently as I want to make a 2025 channel trailer for my YouTube and I mentioned it in the script. I've been trying to take YouTube more seriously, especially now a bunch of people from my college have subscribed and I'm at 86 or something ridiculous like that. I have plans to put dev logs and other not really animation stuff on there. I made a Bluesky earlier this year after I heard about all the Newgrounds people migrating from Twitter to that website.

So yeah that's basically it. I suspect I'll spend 2025 making that DDLC fangame and releasing my album, and then 2026 will be that fanganronpa I came up with earlier this year but still don't have all the details for each chapter sorted out (mainly because I don't write anything down and I really should). I'm trying to do less collab stuff for a while so I have more time to focus on personal projects, but I know that's bullshit and the 2025 recap post is going to be twice as long as this with a sarcastic introduction.

At least I pretty much have reached endgame with my setup. Almost 5 years ago I was drawing on an iPhone 5C with crappy earphones mics and now I have this cool new desk from my bedroom redesign that can fit this 5:4 monitor I got off Ebay for 30 quid (it's some Dell monitor from 2008 that works great as a secondary screen), and these cool Audio-Technica wired headphones I got for Christmas. He doesn't know my socials so he probably won't see this, but thanks dad!

[priyasinghi]

Top Shopify Customization Services to Grow Your Store | Boost E-Commerce Success

Are you ready to take your online store to the next level? With Shopify, the possibilities are endless. Customizing your Shopify store is not just a trend; it’s a necessity for anyone looking to grow their e-commerce business, especially in bustling cities like Bangalore, Chennai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Pune and Ahmedabad. In this article, I’ll share the top Shopify customization services that can help you optimize your store for success. Let’s dive in!

Table of Contents

Why Customization Matters

Custom Shopify Theme Development

Shopify App Integrations

SEO Optimization

Mobile Responsiveness

Enhanced User Experience

Ongoing Support and Maintenance

Conclusion

Why Customization Matters

When I talk about customization, I mean tailoring your store to meet the specific needs of your business and customers. A one-size-fits-all approach simply doesn’t cut it in today’s competitive market. Here are some reasons why customization is essential for your Shopify store:

Unique Branding: Stand out from the competition with a personalized design.

Improved Functionality: Tailor features to meet your business needs.

Enhanced User Experience: Create a seamless shopping journey for your customers.

1. Custom Shopify Theme Development

Your store’s theme is the first thing customers notice. A custom Shopify theme can significantly impact how users perceive your brand. Here’s what you can expect:

Unique Branding: A tailored theme reflects your brand’s identity.

Responsive Design: Ensures your store looks great on all devices.

Fast Load Times: Custom themes can be optimized for speed, improving user experience.

Investing in custom Shopify theme development can set you apart and draw customers in from the get-go.

2. Shopify App Integrations

Are you tired of juggling multiple tools for your business? Shopify app integrations can streamline your operations. Some popular options include:

Inventory Management Apps: Keep track of stock effortlessly.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM): Manage customer interactions efficiently.

Email Marketing Integrations: Automate your marketing efforts.

By choosing the right apps, you can enhance functionality and automate processes, saving you time and effort.

3. SEO Optimization

If you want your store to be found, SEO optimization is a must. You may have a beautiful store, but it won’t matter if no one can find it. Here’s how to boost your store’s SEO:

Keyword Research: Target high-intent keywords relevant to your products.

On-Page Optimization: Optimize titles, meta descriptions, and alt tags for images.

Content Creation: Create valuable content that draws traffic to your store.

By focusing on SEO, you increase your chances of appearing in search results, ultimately driving more traffic to your online store.

4. Mobile Responsiveness

Did you know that more than half of all online shopping is done on mobile devices? That’s why ensuring your store is mobile responsive is crucial. Here’s what you can do:

Responsive Design: Ensure your site adapts to different screen sizes.

Easy Navigation: Make it easy for customers to find what they’re looking for.

Fast Load Speeds: Optimize images and scripts for quicker loading times.

By investing in mobile responsiveness, you create a better shopping experience for your customers, which can lead to higher conversion rates.

5. Enhanced User Experience

Creating an excellent user experience is key to retaining customers. Here are some tips for enhancing the user experience on your Shopify store:

Simple Navigation: Organize your site logically to make it easy for users to browse.

Clear Call-to-Action: Use compelling buttons and prompts to guide users.

Customer Reviews and Ratings: Build trust by showcasing customer feedback.

Focusing on user experience not only keeps customers happy but also encourages them to return to your store.

6. Ongoing Support and Maintenance

Finally, the work doesn’t end once your store is live. You need ongoing support and maintenance to keep everything running smoothly. This includes:

Regular Updates: Keep your themes and apps updated to avoid security issues.

Performance Monitoring: Regularly check site performance and fix any issues.

Customer Support: Provide prompt assistance for any customer queries.

Investing in ongoing support ensures that your store remains functional and efficient, which is critical for long-term success.

Conclusion

Customizing your Shopify store is one of the best ways to ensure its success. From custom theme development to SEO optimization, each service plays a vital role in enhancing your online store's functionality and appeal. By implementing these Shopify customization services, you’re setting your e-commerce business up for growth and success, whether you’re located in Bangalore, Ahmedabad, or any other city.

[labdeck123]

Getting Started with Virtual Instrumentation for Data Acquisition in MatDeck

Engineering life today is fast-paced and gathering, analyzing, and visualizing data in an efficient manner has become crucial. Data acquisition systems are coming into increasingly significant roles when it is concerned with the process of monitoring and control operations in many complex processes by engineers and technicians. Virtual instrumentation-a hybrid of DAQ and digital interfaces-revolutionized the manner in which data was related to the expert, by forming intuitive dashboards in real time to enhance decision-making. Data acquisition can be streamlined for the savvy professional wanting to develop any custom virtual instrumentation panel with minimal coding via MatDeck.

You will learn the basics of virtual instrumentation in data acquisition with MatDeck, including its advantages and features as well as practical steps for starting your own virtual instrument creation.

What is Virtual Instrumentation in Data Acquisition? Virtual instrumentation is essentially the manipulation of software in place of physical instruments like gauges, meters, oscilloscopes, and other controls. Users can design, visualize, and control DAQ systems by dragging and dropping a variety of components on an electronic panel. Rather than requiring an expensive set of physical instruments, virtual instrumentation applications, such as Virtument from MatDeck, enable users to reconstruct these tools on a computer and add value through data logging, automation, or integration with other systems.

In MatDeck, virtual instrumentation integrates DAQ processes and visualization into a real-time interface whereby one can control devices, see trends in their data, or set alerts. Its drag-and-drop interface allows users to develop custom DAQ panels without needing to code; however, the platform also supports advanced scripting for those wishing to add more specific functionalities.

Why Virtual Instrumentation in MatDeck? Some of the advantages of data acquisition systems with virtual instrumentation for use in MatDeck applications are as follows:

Real-time monitoring and control in real time using MatDeck virtual instrumentation. Data can be viewed at acquisition time, while devices can be controlled in real time. Such applications include industrial automation, environmental monitoring, and quality control for critical systems, which entail superior accuracy and reliability.

Customization and Flexibility: The library of instruments that comes with MatDeck is very large, including meters, sliders, tanks, and gauges, which can be customized to the specific needs of your project. This helps engineers design oddball interfaces that are needed by their processes.

Cost-Effectiveness: What's more, the traditional instrumentation configurations are also quite expensive and enormous. Virtualizing instrumentation saves hardware costs as well as accommodates a much more streamlined setup.

No Code Required: Using a no-code drag-drop interface, the new user requires no programming knowledge to develop complete DAQ systems with ease and at a rapid pace.

Power User Feature-set using Python and MD Script: For users familiar with coding, MatDeck extends toward integration with Python as well as its proprietary MD Script, allowing more complicated systems to be designed, analysis to be automated and custom functions implemented.

Introduction to Virtual Instrumentation in MatDeck Let's now walk through the process of configuring a virtual instrumentation panel in MatDeck-from initial configuration to adding instruments and finally, layout customization.

Step 1: Installation and Configuration of MatDeck First things first, download MatDeck to your computer. Once that is done, you start the software, create a new project file and set up. Using the MatDeck interface, you add and place virtual instruments on your dashboard and configure them. You can connect to it at this juncture if you have DAQ compatible hardware like Advantech or ICP DAS devices since at this point, MatDeck may well detect it and cause the device to appear on your workspace.

Step 2: Create a New Virtual Instrumentation Panel This is the setup of the software in order for you to get ready for making your new virtual instrumentation panel, Virtument within MatDeck. You can drag from a library and then drop into the workspace from within Virtument some of these virtual instruments including: Digital Meters for numerical read-out Gauges and Sliders to the user's parameters for adjustment Tanks and Thermometers to give some visual indicator of states within the process. Simply select the instrument from the drop-down menu and drag it to the panel. The no-code interface of MatDeck simply means that you have to place every instrument, configure its properties, and it's ready.

Step 3: Instrument Properties Setup Each device in MatDeck can be configured to display one or more specific data points or control functions of a device. For example, a digital meter may be set up to display real time voltage or temperature. To configure an instrument right click over the instrument and open the properties, there you select the source of data for the instrument, for example reading an analog input from a DAQ device.

You'll also love the setting of alarm thresholds, indicators, or actions that must be taken based on the readings of the instrument, say, alarm when a value breaks a set limit.

Step 4: Adding Data Acquisition Devices MatDeck has had DAQ hardware compatibility with a wide range of devices. The SCADA system from MatDeck can be used to set up and administer data acquisition from devices, such as Advantech, ICP DAS, or LabJack. The SCADA Toolbox in MatDeck provides an interface for remote monitoring and configuring a device or streaming data.

You may then allocate channels to various instruments in the panel. For instance, you can attach a temperature sensor to a gauge and display the results in real time.

Step 5: Configure and Save Your Panel Using MatDeck, much more panel layout and style can be customized. You resize your instruments, group them, and organize them to your needful end. Having created your panel, save your project. You could share an application among other members of your team or perhaps a client by generating a standalone application.

Advanced Features: Enriching DAQ Panels with Python and MD Script MatDeck integrates support with more advanced applications, such as developing custom functions, creating automation sequences, or analytics in the platform. For example, you can write a Python script that checks the data of the device at regular time intervals, logs automatically, or sends notifications if some conditions occur.

These advanced capabilities of scripting make the virtual instrumentation of MatDeck a very potent tool in creating sophisticated DAQ systems that go beyond simple conventional instrumentation capabilities.

Conclusion: A Versatile Solution for Data Acquisition Virtual instrumentation in MatDeck is that wondrous technological key available to anyone concerned with the acquisition of data-to engineers, researchers, etc. MatDeck offers an intuitive interface, compatibility with a wide range of devices, and customizable instruments for a strong and accessible realization of creating real-time DAQ dashboards and control panels. So, whether you monitor an environment, deal with the flow of industrial processes, or conduct lab-based research, MatDeck simplifies the acquisition of data and lets one focus more on the analysis and decision-making instead of settings and coding.

[dashawfrostart]

This Week In "Time & Again" #22: AUTOMATION 101 Because I Said So [Techy!] [And Other Ideas] 😎

I was thoughtful, so I did some simple math for the reason of mere curiosity and statistics. I counted the number of panels per chapter, just to see clearer what lies past and ahead of me, and to entertain myself. It turns out, the average number of the panels in every chapter for the chapters 1 to 4 is 92. Counting Chapters 3.1 and 3.2 as separate entities, just because they're basically two books anyway. It was a double chapter. ... Which means that for every more or less normal sized chapter I make I draw 92 separate little artworks, most of which have backgrounds and somewhat advanced, non-simplistic shading (although my latest art philosophy intends to go the opposite direction... but it only intends to do it, it does not necessarily do that very well yet, lol). Not just stick people. And here's the good part: Chapter 5 contains whooping 187 panels. The simple math tells you it's roughly double the original amount. Mostly because I needed to show the maniacal changes in Lothar's expression, the gradual changes, the agony. I hope those pretty numbers serve you well and answer the ultimate question of where the heck I disappear so frequently. And how much work it is. For one person. (and yet, I honestly think I do quite well regardless) Obviously, I disappear into "Time & Again". That is the right answer. That's how it's supposed to be for an artist working on something that is incredibly important to them 😁

But enough numbers, here are some exciting (and also facially hilarious) snippets from the storyboard! (of course, includes censorship by The Author, because Lothar never stops cursing)

With the page by page script fully storyboarded by now, I took a small detour on my road to Chapter 6.

Within the last few days, I set to work on the two important tasks, one of which is already accomplished by now.

The first task - the one that's done - was to mass process a tremendous amount of older artworks for the grand reupload (larger than the number of the panels in Chapter 5 - and that's sayin' something! 😱). I had 138 older artworks that I needed to resize and reapply a watermark on top; plus additional 77 to perform the same very task on afterwards. Why that is needed is a secret for now. But it will definitely see the light of day soon-ish (hopefully). ... As you can already guess, doing all of that manually would've been yet another nightmare - especially since my memories of going through pain and real hell of adding full bleed to "Time & Again" are still fresh in my mind, and hot like cakes straight from the oven... Also, of course, I didn't feel like dedicating a whole bloody month doing just that either, when I have Chapter 6 on the go as well as a transformation of Chapter 4 (more on the matter is just below). That's why I urgently needed automation of sorts. I'm a little surprised to discover that in my older post about how I prepared "Time & Again" for paper printing I totally skipped talking about an incredibly useful plugin for Krita that's called Krita Batch Exporter, made by GDQuest (whose videos I actually watched a few years back when I still worked on my game about the sleepy knight... but alas, as you might guess, the game never happened. oh well). Even though the plugin originally is aimed at indie game devs, it proved to be useful to me when I was working on full bleed areas for my chapters and when I needed to match them to the final print size. TL;DR: I simply opened all the pages of my graphic narrative as multiple layers, mass resized them all, and then batch exported layer by layer with the help of that very plugin. Simple and fast. Thank you so very much, GDQuest! 🌻 But alas, with the task that was ahead of me this time, with the supermassive number of random artworks that varied in size and aspect ratio GREATLY, that trick most likely wouldn't have worked. Instead, I braved learning the usage of ImageMagick command line utility. I was thinking about using it to batch edit and import "Time & Again" for printing, too, but back then I was not brave enough and didn't want to bother. This time, I urgently needed to learn. For a tech savvy person such as myself - who is a hardcore Doom nerdist who practiced modding not once but twice and thrice (and still does it 😁), a person with a lot of experience making older programs work on newer Windows, it was not very difficult. Yet, it still required some dancing with a tambourine around a table before everything started to work like a charm, and, of course, asking my Editor-In-Chef for guidance. I will even share my incredibly simple batch file code:

magick mogrify -filter Lanczos -resize "1200x1200>" *.png magick mogrify -filter Lanczos -resize "1200x1200>" *.jpg pause

to batch resize (and override!) all the PNG and JPG files to 1200 pixels wide or high depending on the original aspect ratio (unless they're already smaller), using Lanczos scaling method that proved very useful for downsizing the larger pieces to produce clean result. Afterwards, I needed to take my signature watermark and stamp it on top of all the downscaled artworks. I started working on the code for the image overlay in ImageMagick... And then, working on something totally different, I found out that IrfanView can do that for me. And unlike ImageMagick, IrfanView has UI (whatever will you do?.. I am indeed a person who has to see things in front of me, even though I'm not scared of CMD 😁). IrfanView is simply fantastic. It reads lots of different file types, it saves the watermark settings, and it works very fast. Adding my watermark to all those files was super easy and quick. And I only spent, like, one day doing all of that instead of a month of work manually 😁 Whooohoooo! I cannot verbally describe how rejoiced I am! (And I think I also used IrfanView to work on my Doom mod... that's why I installed that nice piece of software. Peanut Butter Jelly Time!.. Aaah, memories)

So that is done! Now you just gotta wait for all these 138 + 77 = 215 artworks to reappear in the internet sometime this year for everyone's happiness 😉

I am also glad that earlier this year I have discovered that Inkscape now supports batch export of layers natively - which is INCREDIBLY useful for my project (because I always start from arranging text and speech bubbles on multiple layers in Inkscape before porting everything to Krita for further work).

The second task bears a huge importance: I am polishing and slightly expanding Chapter 4 for the "Clean Cut Edition". The feedback on the chapter I have received earlier from my early access readers indicated a certain lack of hints... It was actually meant to be fairly vague to begin with. However, Chapter 4 was the only chapter for now that had a few outtakes from the script I wrote. I figured that I could fill in the gaps and make it easier to understand via the addition of a small (by my standards, lol) passage of text, aside from adding "Notes, Hints & Commentary" section. Ironically or not, all things considered, I simply decided to restore the cut content that was originally present - the content that I excluded for a truly naïve and dumb reason of keeping the page count intact (and, as we could see as of lately and thanks to my math above, Chapter 5 broke all those limitations and standards of yore anyways). Now I'm sad that I dissected my script without a weighty reason back then. But good news! I'm restoring all of that for the Clean Cut Edition! AND now with commentaries 😁 As for now, all the text and panel placement is decided on, and the only thing I have to do is to draw extra faces of Lothar and [redacted for the reason of spoilers for those who haven't yet read it] to portray a proper conversation between the two. And I think that the extra pages fit in quite nicely, too.

And aside from that, I also worked on a random artwork featuring Lothar. Here's the teaser; the full version will be uploaded soon.

And down below there's a bit more stuff I'd like to share today (even though I started writing it a few days ago, so idea simply accumulated in my head), in a form of expanded theses:

Since I don't want to stretch it all out as it sometimes happens with my endeavours, and there's no actually useful AI that might help me speed up the process, I think I'm going to try something peculiar this time, and it might sound... well... a bit crazy. I've been thinking about that for a while already (quite certainly, since the times I used to be an active DeviantArt user, which makes it approximately... 15 years by now?! wowza!!!), but never really had a chance to try out that approach. I was thinking about dropping the sketching phase completely. Earlier I've mentioned that, when I work on the comic pages in digital workspace once the approximate sketching and paneling on paper is all done, normally I work "in stages", outlining the panels in Inkscape first, then gradually working my way from sketches to lineart and, finally, to colouring, in segments. So I'm thinking about skipping the sketching part completely and doing the final lineart right away - simply because it will save me time. And quite possibly, a lot of time. AND time is a precious resource - so said Winston, and they were right. I understand that that might not be a good idea - but the student must learn sometime and through intense practice, right? And since I wished for that since a near immeasurable time ago, but then never ended up doing that for a reason unbeknownst even to myself - then it's probably the time to do it. Well, I'm looking forward to an adventure. I promise there will be no eyes on different height or any other fancy-schmansy stuff, and no extra fingers. With my demands to the quality it's near impossible - of course, unless intended. 😁 (I will still do simple sketches first for the complex views and angles. Otherwise everything will look crooked. Come on. I'm not that proficient yet.)

Ever since the development of Chapter 6 has been started, and its plot was in the stage of an embryo, my research lead me to a fairly solid conclusion that Lothar is a sociopath. He passes the test quite well and complies with numerous criteria wonderfully, I don't even have to doubt that. Heck, I don't even know if I like Lothar anymore... That Ar*****ch has done some very questionable stuff in Chapter 5. I just want him to put himself together and finally move on, preferably in a somewhat positive direction. This is also one of the reasons why I want to finish "Time & Again" - to help Lothar redeem himself. Come on, dude. Get in the effing robot... Eeeerrrr... Please don't take that too far though; that was just a figure of speech.

That's enough for today. See you soon 😁

[whoknoo]

Reporters are trained to develop a sixth sense, a nose for when a story smells fishy. And something about this one wasn’t right. First of all, there was no well-defined premise. What were we talking about? How “good of a guy” this previously anonymous benefactor of the city police department was? How he’s such a friendly genius full of the hilariously topical, yet witty quips about his “bratty little noise machines” and how his wife’s “always nagging him about this or that irrelevant thing?

“What is that? Why are you inquiring about past affiliations? Sure, we all have those old friends who got tangled up in rough crowds. Real shame, what the criminal elements will do to you. And you know how they get you? Dope! That’s why I’m investing in our local law enforcement, because blah blah blah—“ you know the rest. Like I said, sixth sense, commonly referred to as “common.”

Of all the people in our western headquarters, completely ignoring the only slightly smaller group of desperate individuals literally begging for this assignment, our top editor selected me for this vanity piece. I had a reputation, a spine. And that could be useful in a big publication like this, for all the credibility you could wring out of it.

If you’re reading this, odds are you can imagine my chagrin at the request. If not, well, take this as a first warning, I guess: don’t waste your time reading this. I didn’t waste my time writing for you anyway.

But yeah, I was pretty tiffed, to put it lightly. Imagine a work email, full of reserved, simple, and direct syntax, diction, the works, crafted for an entire work day, to say one simple message: No.

Now, imagine the reddening pressure of all the veins in and around my skull when the response came back, flowery, indulgent, verbose, circuitous and a complete denial of reality. “We’re so excited you’ve accepted this assignment! If you have any questions, please call __________ ext.#___.” Yes, the line was blank. Yet another sign of how nobody here seemed to believe in the good of sharing necessary information.

There was, however, the digital equivalent of a scrawled sticky note at the bottom: a post script, from my boss, and an automated addendum:

“Questions? Concerns? meet @11:30, conference 13b.

-sent from my iPhone.”

It was in a different font from the form-letter-body, an ornate, flowery script—the sort that you find at weddings with assigned seating. And me? I resembled the self-important uncle with tiny spectacles, who wouldn’t find his seat until he’d had his scene with some service worker who wasn’t paid enough. Looking down my nose, I mumbled the words for a seventh or eight time, ruminating. The message had been sent to several other writers as well. Was this all for the same assignment? I shook in my little cubicle, wondering why me, until she came to speak in person in conference room 13b, at 11:30.

We stood in line, myself, and several other staff members, starting as early as 11. She sauntered in with some foreign coffee at 11:38, and at about 12:17, I finally got my one chance for direct advice. I’m not sure what I had expected. “Be kind,” she expressly stated, “keep the convo where the subject wants it.” Clear enough.

“And besides,” she riposted my meek appeals, “people like you, they like Mr. Clommel, and what he’s done for our city. Fit that narrative, and you’ll have integrity, to them. To us, you’ll have your standard staff fees.” And I just sighed, knowing that I was going to write this. Like I said, sixth sense.

[guyfmpyear2]

Evaluation:

AO1:

I chose to do this project as I wanted to better specialise in the UI development and Data Management aspects of game design, i had previously explored those avenues of game design in my witch game i did last term.

My specialist considerations were probably first and foremost out of everything, Data management and UI design is something that I recently found out I was not only good at but also find fun (somehow). I wanted to use this term to better explore methods and techniques in those fields.

As far as the ethics of dating simulator games go, it's socially questionable, although the fictional setting of Greek gods makes it far removed from reality or human ethics, aside from that it was just josh's use of swearing in some dialogue options, though it was certainly not excessive or offensive.

Being a game about Greek mythology it is an inherently rooted culture. I had no hand in the artistic choices, though i made sure josh properly researched and explored the source material we were basing this on, as to not be culturally incentive about the source material

I don't know if our game relates whatsoever to sustainability. outside of the plot where you are saving the world from the gods, by romancing them.

Blog Post

AO2:

We chose the subject of dating sim because it would allow me to better specialise in data management and UI work, and when josh said he could do all the art that sounded like a perfect combo, i do all the coding stuff then add all his art and script

I was mostly putting into practice things that I learnt last term. But I also learnt a lot about UI, making the cell phone in game was a challenge and a half considering how many different moving parts it involved

The original intention was to make a Greek god dating simulator. To begin we had much grander expectations of what was possible for us to accomplish, but otherwise it mostly stuck to plan. There was a period where Josh wanted me to make a minigame to go along with Dionysus but that fell through, given time constraints.

My speciality is in the code/ data bits of the final outcome which is the game

Proposal Bog

Previous projects

A03:

Initial research played a crucial role in this project. I hadn’t really played visual novels until this project but having a play through and picking up on standards of the genre, interesting ways the genre has been combined with others. My game would probably be lacking a lot if not for this research.

Further research of methods and ideas came in the form of UI design inspiration, structuring inspiration and much more.

These ideas supported the planning, idea generation and polish of the game. I wouldn't have storyboarded the UI flow if not for researching Specialists in the field I was interested in or the UI design.

This is all demonstrated by the research I also did for a concept of an idle/ rng game that I was going to make before coming up with the idea for the dating sim.

I had also done some brief research into the project i wanted to do previously, before pivoting to do the dating sim. 

Complete Idea generation blog post

Initial investigation of theme

AO4:

I used a variety of techniques, (using child widgets, data tables in conjunction with physical actors and UI widgets), making the entire cell phone system was a chore on its own, let alone integrating a messenger system, achievement system, options and more into it, adapting my crossroad dialogue branch technique to work across the normal dialogue and the text messenger. Messenger Dev, More messenger Dev.

I was most interested in using data tables as a method of automating different aspects of the game. That's why initially I wanted to make an RNG/ Idle game. Instead i used the processes in a similar way to how i did the game for last term which i continued work on to submit for a bafta this term

Considering I had the core systems working within a week or two, then spent weeks adding all the content into the data table structures I had done a pretty good job of getting the system to ‘work for itself’ (where it was just processing the information I fed it). The only slip ups i made were on the UX front which i admittedly didn't leave too much time for

AO5:

Key aspects of my work were probably the core dialogue system, where I incorporated all the text that displayed names, dialogue. The character sprite system to get the characters sprites to show up (blog post), and be able to pick the locations of them, as well as change all of that from one sentence to the next. Then add the animations to the UI and Sprites. Failures were more in the creation of the cell phone, and more specifically the messenger. That took me a week to figure out, in between adapting the crossroad system to work in the phone, Getting the UI to properly display itself in the Text message format (which was way harder than it should be and took multiple iterations and methods to finally settle on one that worked). Contacts Dev, ,, 

The factors that most influenced my ability to problem solve would probably be the basic yet easily applicable nature of widgets, a lot of it is managing information that is stored. Making most things possible as long as I found a way to input the data I wanted, and output it to where it needed to go. I would probably say that a big culprit for my data table habits, are my knowledge of SQL coding that I learnt a few years back, the logic and theory behind SQL carries over pretty well to UE Data tables

AO6:

My thought processes on creating this game was that I wanted to demonstrate what is possible with data tables, to the fullest extent, which ment using them to display a 4000 word script, dozens of drawn character variations and backgrounds, and UI. it was truly something for me and josh to perfectly work hand in hand on something. When putting those ideas into practice it certainly ended up much more finicky on my end, matched with josh's last minute work ethic it meant that i had to add all his work he had done in much less time than i would've liked but it worked out.

When conceptualising this project, it was actually mainly the fault of my friends. I knew I wanted to better hone my abilities in UI and Data management, then at night my friend Olivia joked that we should make a dating sim. So from the very get go this project was being made with an audience in mind. She has been a pretty key component of developing with being able to pitch ideas, or get feedback from her.

AO7:

I chose to present my project and final outcome in a manner that would demonstrate primarily my coding and planning abilities, i tried to focus heavily on thinking ahead on this project and establishing early on what the necessary features, methods and precautions should be. So I looked to industry specialists in my chosen field. One of my faults with the endless runner project was that I didn't plan ahead whatsoever to account for UI. So when it came to incorporating, it was a mess. Planning ahead slightly with the UI flow chart (even if it is quite primitive) as well as the trello board, gave me structure and direction to my work. This methodology will help with my professional practice. As to their effectiveness in communication of ideas, the drawn plans show my initial ideas and concepts before I followed through with R&D giving not only my blog work structure and professional merit but also the resulting work.

AO8:

The aim at the start of this project was much more ambitious than possible (as per usual), with the plan being a few dates, each date having a dedicated (‘feat of-’) minigame. Whilst it ended being an intro segment with barely one date. Given it has a lot of branching possibilities but one central win ending. It probably equals about 15 minutes of playtime, which isn't bad, and from my perspective, it's not how much content it's what that content is. I could have spent 10X more time just adding more dialogue, art and whatnot that Josh did. And it would probably be the same game, but 10X longer. What I was focused on demonstrating is the core systems I had to plan out, design and adapt. I couldn't have done much more work on this aside from finishing touches and minigames for the dates.

[mobiledatascrape]

How to Effectively Do iOS App Scraping - A Comprehensive Guide

How to Effectively Do iOS App Scraping – A Comprehensive Guide

Aug 19, 2023

iOS app scraping is the process of extracting data from an iOS app. This can be done for a variety of purposes, such as market research, competitive analysis, and fraud detection.

There are a few different ways to do iOS app scraping. One way is to use a mobile app scraping tool. However, this is not always possible, as many iOS apps do not have a public app interface.

Another way to do iOS app scraping is to use a mobile automation tool. These tools allow you to interact with an iOS app programmatically, which can be used to extract data from the app.

Finally, it is also possible to do iOS app scraping by reverse engineering the app. This involves decompiling the app's code and extracting the data from the source code.

Scraping IOS Apps With A Mobile App Scraping Tool

If the iOS app has a public app interface, you can use a mobile app scraping tool to extract data from the app. There are many different mobile app scraping tools available, both free and paid.

To use a mobile app scraping tool to scrape an iOS app, you will need to first find the URL of the app's interface. Once you have the URL, you can use the mobile app scraping tool to extract the data from the app.

For example, the Burger King food delivery app in Spain has a public app interface. The URL of the app interface is https://www.burgerking.es/delivery/menu. You can use a mobile app scraping tool to extract the item names and prices from the app interface.

Scraping IOS Apps With A Mobile Automation Tool

If the iOS app does not have a public app interface, you can use a mobile automation tool to scrape the app. There are many different mobile automation tools available, both free and paid. Some popular mobile automation tools include Appium and Calabash.

To use a mobile automation tool to scrape an iOS app, you will need to first install the tool on your computer. Once the tool is installed, you will need to create a script that tells the tool how to interact with the app.

The script will typically include the following steps:

Launch the app.

Navigate to the screen that contains the data you want to scrape.

Extract the data from the screen.

Save the data to a file.

Scraping IOS Apps By Reverse Engineering

If you cannot scrape an iOS app using a mobile app scraping tool or a mobile automation tool, you can try to reverse engineer the app. This involves decompiling the app's code and extracting the data from the source code.

Reverse engineering is a complex process and requires some technical knowledge. However, it can be a useful way to scrape data from apps that cannot be scraped using other methods.

Conclusion

This blog post has discussed how to do iOS app scraping. There are a few different ways to do iOS app scraping, and the best method will depend on the specific app. If you are interested in scraping data from an iOS app, we recommend to use iOS app scraping services from Mobile App Scraping. Contact us to know more!

Know More: https://www.mobileappscraping.com/effectively-ios-app-scraping-comprehensive-guide.php

[mobileapp14]

How to Effectively Do iOS App Scraping - A Comprehensive Guide

How to Effectively Do iOS App Scraping – A Comprehensive Guide

Aug 19, 2023

iOS app scraping is the process of extracting data from an iOS app. This can be done for a variety of purposes, such as market research, competitive analysis, and fraud detection.

There are a few different ways to do iOS app scraping. One way is to use a mobile app scraping tool. However, this is not always possible, as many iOS apps do not have a public app interface.

Another way to do iOS app scraping is to use a mobile automation tool. These tools allow you to interact with an iOS app programmatically, which can be used to extract data from the app.

Finally, it is also possible to do iOS app scraping by reverse engineering the app. This involves decompiling the app's code and extracting the data from the source code.

Scraping IOS Apps With A Mobile App Scraping Tool

If the iOS app has a public app interface, you can use a mobile app scraping tool to extract data from the app. There are many different mobile app scraping tools available, both free and paid.

To use a mobile app scraping tool to scrape an iOS app, you will need to first find the URL of the app's interface. Once you have the URL, you can use the mobile app scraping tool to extract the data from the app.

For example, the Burger King food delivery app in Spain has a public app interface. The URL of the app interface is https://www.burgerking.es/delivery/menu. You can use a mobile app scraping tool to extract the item names and prices from the app interface.

Scraping IOS Apps With A Mobile Automation Tool

If the iOS app does not have a public app interface, you can use a mobile automation tool to scrape the app. There are many different mobile automation tools available, both free and paid. Some popular mobile automation tools include Appium and Calabash.

To use a mobile automation tool to scrape an iOS app, you will need to first install the tool on your computer. Once the tool is installed, you will need to create a script that tells the tool how to interact with the app.

The script will typically include the following steps:

Launch the app.

Navigate to the screen that contains the data you want to scrape.

Extract the data from the screen.

Save the data to a file.

Scraping IOS Apps By Reverse Engineering

If you cannot scrape an iOS app using a mobile app scraping tool or a mobile automation tool, you can try to reverse engineer the app. This involves decompiling the app's code and extracting the data from the source code.

Reverse engineering is a complex process and requires some technical knowledge. However, it can be a useful way to scrape data from apps that cannot be scraped using other methods.

Conclusion

This blog post has discussed how to do iOS app scraping. There are a few different ways to do iOS app scraping, and the best method will depend on the specific app. If you are interested in scraping data from an iOS app, we recommend to use iOS app scraping services from Mobile App Scraping. Contact us to know more!

know more: https://www.mobileappscraping.com/effectively-ios-app-scraping-comprehensive-guide.php

[iwebdatascrape]

How To Perform Web Scraping Of Google Jobs Organic Results With Nodejs?

Web scraping is the data extraction process from websites. The web scraping software access the World Wide Web directly using the Hypertext Transfer Protocol or a web browser. Although software users perform web scraping manually, it is an automated process run using a bot or web scraper. Nowadays, scraping plays a significant role in Web APIs design and more.

Basic Steps Included in Web Scraping

Create a request to the web page for scraping data.

Extract the web page body.

Understand the tags or elements structure to extract from the webpage and make changes in the code to link accordingly.

Why use Node.js?

Node.js, an open-source project, is a popular runtime environment with collective features for easy-to-develop stuff. Within a web browser, manipulating the DOM is something that JavaScript & libraries like jQuery perform well. Hence, writing web scraping scripts in Node.js is better, as it gives enough options for DOM manipulations.

Web scraping of Google Jobs Organic Results with Nodejs

First of all, we will install google-search-results-nodejs

The complete code will look like this.npm i google-search-results-node.js

Explanation of Code

Here, we will brief you on the web scraping of Google Jobs with Nodejs.

After running the getResults function and printing all the necessary information in the console, using a console.dr process, it allows using an object with the necessary parameters.

Output

Preparation

First, create the Node.js project and then add npm packages, including a puppeteer, puppeteer-extra, and puppeteer-extra-plugin-stealth for controlling Chrome or Firefox.

To perform this, open the command line and enter npm init -y , and then npm i puppeteer puppeteer-extra puppeteer-extra-plugin-stealth

Process

Explanation of the Code

In this function, first, we require ScrollContainer height. Then, we will use a while loop to scroll down, wait for 2 seconds, and get a new ScrollContainer height.

In this function, first, we will define a browser using puppeteer.launch method with current options. It includes headless: false and args: ["--no-sandbox", "--disable-setuid-sendbox"]>

We will now launch the parser:

Output

The output result will appear like this:

Conclusion: Finally, we have done web scraping of the Google jobs organic results with Nodejs. It will give complete detail on the type of jobs, company name, location of the company, etc.

For more information, get in touch with iWeb Data Scraping now! You can also reach us for all your web scraping service and mobile app data scraping service requirements.

[2023-512rubymatthews]

Week 10 Class

Making Kinetic Typography - working with sequencing files

Because I was absent from our week 9 class, I've had a look on Canvas at the class activities we did and the SDL (To continue working on our type animation), and also the presentation slides uploaded to teams.

Stop Motion

This week focused on moving image sequences for stop-frame animation and time-lapse photography. 'In computing and non-computing contexts, a file sequence is a well-ordered, (infinite) collection of files, usually related to each other in some way'.

Three outcomes for this week:

Form a basic understanding of File Sequencing 

Continue to develop individual kinetic-type projects

Keep process work up to date on blogs

since my kinetic-type animation won't be using the method of stop motion, I will spend less time on this blog and more on completing my animation. But, it is still important for me to understand this process for the future, so I've done some external research plus taken notes from the presentation slides which I will paste here.

Basics of stop motion animation

Stop-motion animation is a simple way of making animated films. By gradually moving objects against a backdrop, and taking photos at each stage, you can create the illusion of continuous motion.

Finalise the script and/or storyboard. Get together all the necessary props, backdrops and equipment (camera, tripod, lights). Darken the room so you’re completely independent of natural light. Ensure you can transfer the pictures of your camera to your editing software. Pick a quiet space – a room, a car, or anywhere else that isn’t exposed to noise – where you can record any sounds and voice-overs you might need.

The two main styles of stop-motion animation: 2D cut-out style and 3D style. The 2D cut-out style involves using paper and includes steps such as writing the storyboard, drawing and cutting out the backdrop and figures, and taking photos. On the other hand, the 3D style requires creating figures, props, and the film set using materials like modelling clay. It mentions that shooting a 3D stop-motion film is generally more time-consuming compared to a cut-out animation.

Anima Vision - vision school online (basics of stop motion animation)

File Sequencing and its Importance:

Taking a photograph every 10 seconds over a period of 2 hours will give you a playback clip of 30 seconds at 24fps and comprise 240 photographs. (canvas link to timelapse calculator https://www.photopills.com/calculators/timelapseLinks to an external site.)

* Tip: Take your photographs as jpg’s (not RAW files).

Taking photographs for stop motion:

The number of photos needed for a successful stop-frame animation or time-lapse moving image will vary. A smoother final product will be produced if more photos are taken in a shorter amount of time. Keep in mind that a tripod is a necessity for your camera, and it must always be kept still. Use the cable release function when shooting a stop-frame animation sequence to prevent touching the camera and creating a camera shake. The camera needs to support an automated time-lapse function if you're taking time-lapse pictures. These can be set to take pictures automatically at a specific time.

After a new after-affects file has been set up:

in order for the sequence to work all photographs must be saved into one folder

in after effects choose 'file-import-file'

Select the first file from the list. Do not select any other files, just the first file.

Make sure that Import JPG Sequence is selected and click open.

Into your composition, drag the sequence file. You might need to resize your photo to fit the format, depending on the size of the original file.

Re-sized to fit composition window 1920 x 1080p

[niladri123]

ClickAgencyAI Review - Run an Entire Video Lead Generation Agency!

What is ClickAgencyAI?

ClickAgencyAI is a full-service artificial intelligence assistant that operates a lead generating agency on your behalf. In this ClickAgencyAI Review, we will go over all its features and benefits to make you understand how effective this tool is to create an automated lead generation agency. So, read this article carefully before you purchase ClickAgencyAI.

Auto-create congruent lead campaigns for customers with A.I. content, pages, videos, graphics, lead magnets auto-submission, and more in a single click. With this first-ever all-in-one AI solution, you can also auto-create, utilize, and sell unique marketing materials.

A.I. will soon produce many millionaires while simultaneously destroying many people. So, how about 'future-proofing' yourself with a done-for-you A.I. video lead marketing agency?

According to HubSpot, the number one issue of most small businesses is lead acquisition. And you'd be providing customers with something they understand and really need right now.

With ClickAgencyAI, an all-in-one A.I. technology, you can now construct totally consistent lead campaigns to sell to customers or utilize in a click.

Just input a keyword and let AI produce whole marketing campaigns or individual materials for you, including A.I. writing, lead pages, leadmagnets, videos, AI pictures, ad auto submission, and more.

Vendor:

Name – Abhi Dwivedi.

He has extensive experience as a web marketer, product designer, and software developer. The vendor's previous successful products include Koincart, AppOwls, Thumbreel advanced, Reputor,  Agencyreel advanced, Storyreel – bronze, Storyreel – diamond, Scriptreel – commercial, Spycom – multi, etc.

Four simple steps to work with ClickAgencyAI:

Type your keyword:

Input a keyword, and ClickagencyA.I. will get to work for you, developing a high-converting lead campaign and beautiful marketing materials.

Preview and personalize your completed campaign:

Finally, go over all of the marketing materials that ClickAgencyAI developed for you. The artificial intelligence assistant develops video lead campaigns and marketing materials for businesses in any area.

If you want, you can customize it:

Using drag-and-drop technology, everything the A.I. makes is completely customizable.

Auto-submit and be paid:

In a single click, submit any lead campaign to Facebook or Adwords ads manager.

ClickAgencyAI Review; Features:

AI video lead generation campaigns for offline and online customers.

AI Agency lead generating campaigns to land clients.

Automatic Adwords and Facebook Ads manager submission.

AI creates high-converting landing pages based on a keyword.

Landing page templates with drag and drop editing.

AI Advertising with a high conversion rate.

DFY AI Ads editing.

AI Picture creation engine - Create images using keywords.

AI copyright persuasion - Including GPT4 video script capability.

VSL and lead video creation.

Cloud lead video editor.

Artificial lead magnets that work.

Add customers, social media, and autoresponders.

Integration of agency client technology.

PPC training.

Quick page load time.

Fully cloud-based

24-7 Support & knowledge-base

Ultra-fast 3 second page loading

Autoresponder & webinar integration

Create individual marketing materials

In-App training

Frequent updates included

Amazing results

Add retargeting & pixel codes

READ MORE

[rednecknerdguy]

Okay, so I'm a developer for a company now and a lot of what I work on is internal tools used at the company, Nothing outward facing for the general public. Many of the tools I used are hand-tailored for our organization due to some unique constraints that we have and what we work with as an organization (aka non-defense government contractor stuff).

First, developers are lazy as hell. We will do anything to avoid having to put in real work to something. Never underestimate a developer's ability to find a way to be lazy about something, even if we have to spend 10 hours writing, debugging, testing, doing quality assurance on, and pushing to production a tool that will allow us to be even more lazy than we already are. I learned a whole scripting language for the express purpose of automating a task that I otherwise could have done in half the time.

Second, the shareholders, stakeholder and morons at the C-suite level only care about one thing: Money. They need to keep an upper-hand on their opponents, therefore they have a strong desire to NOT release their code to the public. They want to avoid anyone seeing it or even gleaning into what it could be doing. Third, yes upper management at companies want to do horrible shit. and they can easily hide bad things they want done with something as innocuous as "general bug-fix" or "fixed error with cycle count system." Vagueness is key if you want to hide something in plain sight. companies used to hide all sorts of things in EULAs until folks started catching on and telling the whole world about it. They still do, but its much harder to get away with. If you don't have to tell the whole world, then why would you? Fourth, while I enjoy reading through detailed patch notes and git logs, most (read. normal) people don't. They aren't as *unusual* as me or folks like me. So "bugfix and general minor behavior tweaks" it is. At least where I work and the customers (the other departments at my organization) I write code for do care. They need to know and will require that I tell them exactly what it was that I changed, why I changed it, and what the impacts are. This means that I move more slowly, but in the end I get a better product.

Finally, companies have long been choosing to "move fast and break shit now and fix it when we finally become profitable later" and of course we've seen what a disaster that has been for everyone involved. And it has been most prevalent in those who are doing to menial task of actually writing out and planning the projects, while VPs, presidents and department heads, and C-suite folks tend to get off scott free. Part of this is those up top do want to move as fast as possible and in doing so don't have time or care for bug-fixing reporting. It's one more task in a long, boring sprint, and the poor saps have about 2 other stand-ups to attend, and about 4 more scrum meetings with at least 3 or 4 story points to worry about and "oh jesus I have that other feature they really, really want me to put out (dear god why), so that we can have a 'killer feature' against our competition and oh shit I have to do my patch notes, I guess I'll put something quick-."

And thus we see. We see that bug-fixing becomes a daily grind where time is precious, the people doing it are lazy, and companies need to be solvent as of 3 quarters ago, so please just put something and move on. It's not a great thing, its not even a good thing, but I hope this provides some insight as to why tech companies do this.

I am not happy that very few of the apps on my phone make proper use of the changelog feature. When a developer chooses to write a changelog that says: "Bug fixes and performance improvements" instead of actually explaining their work, it comes across to me as lazy and condescending do their userbase. Because I know that internally, the developers are keeping detailed records through Git messages. It begs the question: "Are we not smart or worthy enough to know what is going on inside the programs we permit onto our devices?"

But I think something less sinister, and more depressing, is driving this trend. It's not that the devs are sneering at you, or (necessarily) that they're hiding predatory updates from you, or even that the developers are exceptionally lazy.

I think that software companies only care about new features, and simply do not value bug fixing and maintenance. As an organization, most of these dev teams will prioritize new features and will assume that their users do as well. The most profitable companies want to constantly optimize for efficiency. It might be considered a waste of employee hours to have even one PM look through the Git logs, find all of the little bugs, and create a copy-pasted detailed changelog bespoke for each update release on the Google Play Store.