The misanthrope in me has almost completely taken over when dealing with incoming sales calls, and I've almost completely abandoned the idea that anyone calling me to sell anything is worthy of the "humanity" label.
The moment it's clear they are selling something (it's usually pretty quick) the reply is "fuck off, never call this number again, and go fuck yourself" then I hang up and block the number. I only wish I could be vengeful in response and actually retaliate in some meaningful way to those that are particularly annoying or persistent.
The same applies to door-to-door sales people, moreso to door-to-door missionaries.
It is indeed very websockety. While it is a server-side rendering framework, it relies heavily on javascript and websockets (or fallback to ajax, if websockets aren't available).
However, there isn't a built-in mechanism to handle a client who simply doesn't have javascript enabled at all. Interfaces could be built with traditional HTML forms, but I understand that's not the same thing.
Honestly, only tangentially (at best). Nitrogen is fundamentally an Erlang web framework, however the OTP skills learned should be universal. but we don't dive too deeply into OTP. We introduce gen_servers and supervisors and leave it at that. Most of the book is spent with the specifics of Nitrogen.
That said, the demos[1] on the Nitrogen homepage can give you a pretty good sampling of how the framework works.
Thank you! You're right, the leanpub listing should have a link to the project's homepage, and a link to the Github.
And I had removed the "Fork me on Github" banner thing from the nitrogenproject.com homepage, and forgot to re-add a proper link to the github. I've rectified both of these.
I just want to say thank you to Stripe for being amazing.
I'm just now dealing with canceling service with a traditional merchant account (I switched completely over to Stripe back in August), and the experience has been terrible and stupid.
Around 2003 or 2004, I was working on my first startup. I signed up for an authorize.net account through a merchant account called Capital Merchant Systems (later acquired by EVO Payments). At the time, the process required filling out a pile of paperwork, including writing an actual cover letter to get approved.
Things were fine until recent years, business for this particular service had slowly dropped to the point where it was no longer feasible to run through authorize.net. So I decided to finally make the switch over to Stripe (which I'd used for a number of years on another project).
Signing up for Stripe is so painlessly easy, straightforward, and friendly.
After switching my system over, I called and emailed my merchant account to cancel (this was in August). Then I called and emailed again in November. Then I called and emailed again in January.
All the while, they've been withdrawing from my checking account.
Then I emailed again in April, and filed reports with the BBB and FTC. Only then have I heard back from them, and they're claiming my January request is the first request.
So the short of it is, use Stripe. They are amazing, open, and transparent, their API is a joy to work with, and their dashboard is great. I wish Stripe was around 16 years ago when I first got started processing payments.
And DO NOT, under any circumstances, use EVO Payments. Cancelling with them is like cancelling a shitty gym membership - at the end of the day, you'll have to file complaints with every 3-letter organization you can think of, and file transaction disputes to cancel your account.
Screensavers are great. I spent endless hours watching Screen Antics (aka Johnny Castaway)[1], and the silly things he did.
But I also watched countless hours watching this art screensaver that came with my Canon printer (I think it was Canon). It just animated the painting process. I think it was called something like Canon Creative, but I'm not sure. I'd love to find that screensaver again - That'd instantly take me back 20 years.
I have one major use-case for (very cheap) inkjet printers: on the beach. I run a non-trivial number of beach volleyball tournaments[1], and the beach is not a terribly hospitable place for electronics.
So I carry with me a cheap printer that's light to carry. If it takes a fast-moving ball that breaks off a part, or it gets overloaded with sand, dust, destroyed by rain, whatever, it's no skin off my back, since it was just $30.
So far the same crappy printer has been serving me for about 4 years in this capacity.
Toting around a laser printer would be a huge pain in the ass.
Otherwise, I'm completely onboard with the overarching sentiment: there's not a lot of reason to own an inkjet printer.
[1] My flagship product (http://bracketpal.com) is a tournament management system, and beach volleyball is the niche I focus primarily on.
Surely sometimes when you glance over a patch that even without actually working through the code, you get a vibe that something doesn't seem quite right. I know I've gotten patches like this before, and my code isn't nearly as mission-critical and complicated as the SSL libraries used by basically everyone on the planet.
In the show House M.D, Dr. House explained his desire to become a doctor as based on an experience as a kid with the Japanese caste system:
"When I was 14 my father was stationed in Japan. I went rock climbing with this kid from school. He fell, got injured and I had to bring him to the hospital. We came in through the wrong entrance and passed this guy in the hall. It was a janitor. My friend came down with an infection and the doctors didn't know what to do. So they brought in the janitor. He was a doctor. And a Buraku. One of Japan's untouchables. His ancestors had been slaughterers, grave diggers. And this guy, he knew that he wasn't accepted by the staff, he didn't even try. He didn't dress well. He didn't pretend to be one of them. The people that ran that place, they didn't think that he had anything they wanted. Except when they needed him. Because he was right. Which meant that nothing else mattered. And they had to listen to him."
The moment it's clear they are selling something (it's usually pretty quick) the reply is "fuck off, never call this number again, and go fuck yourself" then I hang up and block the number. I only wish I could be vengeful in response and actually retaliate in some meaningful way to those that are particularly annoying or persistent.
The same applies to door-to-door sales people, moreso to door-to-door missionaries.