Author: 8bitadmin

  • Rapoo

    I’m doing tech support these days and I get to work on a lot of Microsoft Surface devices. Typically the SP7+ and SP9.

    Sometimes people come in with broken keyboards and I need to be able to type stuff anyway. Yes, I know there’s a touch screen but it’s so painful to use. Sometimes I’m setting up Windows from scratch and one weird thing about the Surface devices is that they can’t always talk to their own keyboards until after you run the software updates to get all the new drivers.

    Yes, a Microsoft manufactured Surface Pro device can’t talk to it’s own Microsoft manufactured keyboard. I don’t get it.

    Anyway, I got tired of this situation and bought a cheap Bluetooth keyboard and mouse combo that talk to the computer via a single dongle, leaving the other USB port free for … whatever.

    I bought the “Rapoo Bluetooth keyboard and mouse” combo (no I don’t have any associate links). Given that it was only $36AUD, it’s a surprisingly good setup. The keyboard far exceeded my expectations. It has a solid feel to it and the keys are nice to type on (I don’t like a lot of travel in the keys) and they aren’t noisy. It reminds me a lot of my Logi keyboard, which I note I bought almost exactly one year ago (and I still use happily at home).

    The Rapoo is smaller, and the keys are closer together, but that doesn’t seem to be much of a problem. The only thing that irks me is the position of the cursor keys, being squashed in under the right shift button, but I get that it’s because they were trying to save space.

    The Bluetooth has been great. It connects quickly and has no dropouts.

    Basically I’m very happy with this keyboard.

    What I’m not so happy with is the mouse. It really does feel cheap. The weird thing is that this keyboard/mouse combo has an underwhelming mouse, but a champion of a keyboard. I guess they balance out, and given the price, it’s a good deal. If I had to buy this again, I’d buy the keyboard separately and find a better mouse to go with it.

    On a side note, quite a few of my customers are buying the “Rapoo XK200 Bluetooth Microsoft Surface Pro Keyboard” (again, no associate links) when their Surface Pro keyboards die. This Rapoo keyboard is only compatible with Surface Pro 7+ or lower because it magnetically connects via the plugs at the bottom of the Surface device. Microsoft changed the connection style in the SP8 and above. This keyboard is Bluetooth so it doesn’t talk to the Surface device through the plugs at the bottom like the native Microsoft keyboard does. I’ve played around with them a bit when people come in with them and they seem good. It’s why I tried out the bigger keyboard that I bought. For around $60AUD, this off brand Surface Pro keyboard sure beats the Microsoft branded keyboard (Typecover?) which is around $200AUD.

    For a budget brand, I’m quite impressed with Rapoo. I can’t speak for their longevity yet, but I’m happy so far.

  • No More Scrolling Banners

    Please, can we stop with the scrolling banners?

    After having a good ROFL at this article about the overuse of Bootstrap themes, I just wanted to put it out there that the side scrolling banners on almost every site on the internet has well and truly grown old.

    I vow not to do any scrolling banners!

    Thank you.

  • Next Gen Consoles

    So I just bought an Xbox One.

    It’s been a long time since I’ve had a games console. My last one was the PS2 when it first came out.

    I’ve got two things I want to say about my new Xbox, and I think this applies to the PS4 as well so I’m going to just say it applies to next gen consoles.

    1. The Graphics
    2. Being online all the time.

    The Graphics

    Wow.

    That’s it. Just “Wow”.

    I remember spending hours playing the original Final Fantasy game on a shitty old Nintendo (the 8 bit one, I think). Man were those graphics clunky. Later, on my PS1 (and still playing Final Fantasy) I loved watching those beautifully rendered cut scenes, but then you always had to go back to the much poorer game graphics. There was a scene in one of the Final Fantasy games (7, I think) when you walk up a flight of stairs and see some city for the first time. The game used a parallax effect, moving three layers of foreground in front of the back ground and it blew my mind.

    Now, when I look at my Xbox One graphics, that old PS2 looks so hokey.

    I started playing Thief on the Xbox, and I was blown away, and as far as I can tell, that’s not even native graphics for the Xbox one. (I think) its Xbox 360 graphics unscaled for the next gen machine.

    Then I started playing Destiny. I don’t know how the graphics in that game compare to other Xbox games, but I loved them. Sometimes I’d just stand there gazing at the landscape and admiring the attention to detail. Lens flare when looking into the sunset. Motes of dust in god-rays. The Last City sprawling out in the distance. I just love it.

    But one thing that has really stood out to me is that cut scenes are no longer pre rendered. They use game graphics and are rendered live. I used to love the cut scenes in Final Fantasy because they were so beautifully rendered, and stood out from the in game graphics. But now it’s all seamless. The in game rendering is so good that the cut scenes are just part of the game.

    Its beautiful.

    Being Online

    This is a two edged sword, and some of this is personal preference, but I’ll say it just the same.

    I don’t like player vrs player gaming.

    I suck at PvP, but that’s not the only reason I don’t like it. Sure it’s no fun getting my ass kicked all the time in PvP. I just don’t have the time or the inclination to get good at that. But I like a good story and PvP does no contribute one bit to the story. Maybe I’ve played to much Final Fantasy and the RPG style of gaming in too deep in me, but if the story isn’t engaging, then I start losing interest.

    I bought a car driving game (Forza Horizon) for the kids, and they love it. I played it a little and it was kinda fun, and the graphics (again with the graphics) are awesome. But there is ZERO story, and thus I have no interest in playing it.

    So I enjoyed Destiny right up to the part where the story ended. Then it lost it’s appeal. (As I write this, the first expansion has gone live and I’ll probably download that to get a bit more play out of this game.).

    But once the story ran out, I felt there was little left to the game for me. I flat out don’t play PvP (Crucible) in Destiny.

     

  • A response to “A Baseline for Front-End Developers”

    I read a great article: A Baseline for Front-End Developers (article no longer available 🙁 )

    But one of the comments in particular summed it up for me:

    “Ease up, fella. This post feels borderline religious.”

    And that’s what it is. It’s born again religion. It’s somebody who’s just seen the light and wants to evangelise. And there’s nothing wrong with that. And it shows me that we, the web industry, are still suffering growing pains.

    We might not be infants any more. But we are a long way from a mature adult. Perhaps we’re stuck in an angsty teenage? Struggling with our identity?

    The baseline article sounds like somebody who is self taught in web,  learning software development. I studied web development at university, and the course was taught by old school software developers who were trying to get their heads around web. Everyone is coming at it from a different direction.

    If there’s anything I’ve learned about the web it’s that it is something new. It is not old school software development. It’s not the horrible table based layouts and crappy javascript that every self taught web guru in the ’90s and early 2000’s cut their teeth on. It’s none of those things, nor is it entirely removed from them.

    Anyway, here’s my comments on the specific points in the article…

    Javascript

    Right on.

    Nothing illustrates my point about the webs growing pains for me better than Javascript itself. Javascript’s coming of age mirrors the growing up of the web itself.

    Old school software developers poo poo’d JS because it’s “wasn’t a real programming language”. My message to them?

    Get over yourselves!

    Learn Javascript.

    Not only is it a real programming language, but it’s a darn good one.

    Git

    This should be titled “version control”.

    Version control is critical to any development project, big or small. Even the tiny ones. But Git? Seriously? I know it’s cool to love Git, but it’s not like it’s the only versioning system out there. We use Mercurial at work, and I’ve kinda grown fond of it, but if I’m honest, we could be using SVN just as easily and with no loss of quality. And the only reason CSV wouldn’t work for us is because we work as a team and CSV doesn’t do teams so good.

    Most of us would love to think we are the next Linus Torvalds working on a mind numbingly complicated software project that will earn us a Nobel Prize. But we aren’t. Really.

    Modularity.

    Well this is just old school software development. And I’m glad web developers have discovered it.

    In Browser Developer Tools

    Yes, yes. Yes!

    Actually I’m surprised they need to be mentioned at all. I can’t imagine a developer worth the title not using the built in tools. But if we are mentioning them, then why not plug Firebug* for Firefox, which showed all the other browsers how it should be done.

    * Firebug isn’t a thing anymore since developer tools are now integrated into all modern browsers which is a fantastic thing 🙂

    The Command Line

    Now here’s a funny one. This is old old school.

    It surprised me recently when I was looking for help on a command line interface (CLI) command I was having trouble with. All the Linux documentation gave examples of how to fix it using GUI widgets. Why? Because graphic interfaces rock! And even the Linux world has got behind them. So I’m surprised to see this article being so enthusiastic about the command line.

    Sure the command line has it’s place. It’s phenomenally powerful. But with great power, comes great responsibility. If you are going to use the command line, do it with caution*.

    But first, check to see if there isn’t a GUI app that will do the job for you in one mouse click, rather than 250 key strokes.

    * I speak from experience having once blown away an entire production web site with a typo in the CLI. Luckily the IT guys had backups, but they didn’t let me forget how stupid I’d been.

    Client Side Templating

    I’ll be honest. I need to look into this more.

    When you say templates, I think of smarty. And then I need pain killers. I hope these new templates are a whole lot better than the old. For so many projects, it’s actually easier just to ditch the templates and DIY.

    CSS Preprocessors

    Hmm. Bandaid.

    Treating the symptom, not the cause.

    I love CSS, but preprocessors and frameworks are only making a bitter pill slightly easier to swallow. What we need is a whole new take on styling the web. But it’s not going to happen any time soon. I’m not even aware of any likely successors (I’d love to hear about them if they exist). In the mean time, embrace the preprocessor!

    Testing

    More honesty time. This is something I need to spend time with and get better at. As much as I love the web and the new things it presents, a part of me is still stuck in my old ways. And not for any good reason. I just need to get over myself and get with the testing.

    Process automation + Code quality

    More old school goodness, now coming to a web near you.

    The fine manual

    Had a little LOL at this one.

    Actually I don’t prefix searches with “mdn”. I just go straight to the MDN and search there. Or search on Stack Overflow.

    Google is so passe.