When Canon released the EOS M as its first mirrorless camera, it hasn't gone down well in many reviews as it's a slow performer[0]. Now, this has actually been addressed in a later firmware upgrade, but at that point the damage had already been done. After that, Canon basically dumped this camera on the market at very low prices.
Good thing for us is that this little camera can now be bought very cheap second hand (got mine last year at around $100)
Once you load up ML, you get a fantastic fun little camera! I'm not very experienced with shooting video but for photography, it's a wonderful experience. Focus peeking, magic zoom, interval photography, all for free.
As mentioned in the article, over here in the Netherlands we've had these for quite some time now (called the 'dwarsligger'). It probably won't change the way we read, but it's a nice form factor for reading during transit or travel for those who prefer to read from paper.
We've had them here in Belgium as well for quite some time. (Not that surprising, we can share translations :P).
Personally I'm not a fan of it. Even in transit, I often have a backpack with me and can read the paperback books I have just fine.
Plus, what's a better replacement to me, is just having the kindle app installed on your phone. When I don't have a paperback with me, I just open the kindle app and read from there.
Which arguable is even easier to carry for being in-transit than a small book, since people usually have their phones weith them.
The format was invented by someone at Jongbloed publishers and printers, which specializes in printing on thin paper, usually used for bibles and hymn books.
Most of those used to be combined bible/hymnals, but the most recent (2013) hymnal of the mainstream protestant churches is so large that it is also printed on thin paper (maybe not the thinnest?).
Those combined bible/hymnals are usually personal, not for multiple people, and they're most common among denominations that only use the 150 psalms and a small number of hymns on texts directly from the bible, although I do have one with the bible and the entire Liedboek voor de Kerken (from 1973). Normal hymnals usually used to be printed on normal paper here.
And they were available in the US about 5 years ago as "flipback books". I have John le Carré's "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" in the format. It is kind of cute and smaller than modern phones, but the claims that were made at the time that it was going to be an ebook killer never materialized and eventually they stopped selling them here.
I tried to run a challenge but upon trying to run it, I'm greeted by an obnoxious pop-up that asks me to register or log on. Nope, sorry, won't do that. You could have mentioned that _before_ trying out a challenge...
Please don't do that. Aside from being a major buzzkill, it probably kills conversion, which I'm sure you find a buzzkill ;)
Maybe you could let people try out some challenges and then after N runs, ask them to sign up?
Hey wjvdhoek, I'm the guy working on this project. I agree mandatory registrations are indeed very annoying (and 95% of the time completely unnecessary). My reasoning behind requiring user registration is for security. Since code is being executed on my server, I want to be extra careful.
That being said, you have an idea I never thought of. I could simply let any user make X number of attempts and then prompt for registration. It's not as annoying that way and still secure. And yes, it's definitely hurting conversion BUT I couldn't think of any other way to set things up. If anyone else has suggestions on this, I'm all ears!
It is kind of soul crushing to work on a problem only to be denied execution. Thankfully, I ran an easy JS challenge that was a one-liner. Had I done a a harder challenge that took 10 or 20 minutes, I would have been rather upset.
I understand why you put the registration further into the process. People have already invested time, so they might as well register so that the time isn't wasted. This is markedly different from how the rest are. They either put registration up front (HackerRank) or you're required to validate your own code (cryptopals). Aside from intentionally infecting my computer with malware or something, I couldn't think of a more negative user experience from a code challenge site.
These types of sites are far from unique. They are basically a dime a dozen. But now my experience is, "Don't make the same mistake I did. It gives you an input field to submit a challenge, but it will not validate your answer until you register. Either register up front, or don't bother."
Edit: This post was intended to be constructive, but I can see how it can be interpreted otherwise. See here[0] for more info. Apologies!
It's not meant to be flippant, although I see I should have chosen better wording. It's meant to go right into the next point: I spent time solving a challenge, but the site will not let me validate it without creating an account.
Sometimes the challenges take 30 seconds. Other times, you may spend over 30 minutes working on something more challenging. Who wants to spend time working on a challenge only to be told, "Wait a sec. You need to register before I tell you if you were correct." If I am presented with an input field, I would expect that I am allowed to submit that input. And that's where the dime a dozen comment comes from. If I try to accomplish the task your site has given me but there's an unexpected roadblock imposed by the site itself, why would I stay on that site when I can go elsewhere?
If registration is required, it should say so up front. Allow users to browse challenges. Even allow users to view the full challenge text. However, disable the input field if they must register first. It otherwise implies that I can solve the challenge without an account. You don't want to mislead your potential users.
I supposed I should have said something like, "There are many code challenge sites available. It is imperative to give users a positive experience, because users can easily go elsewhere for something similar." I did not mean to be insulting.
What about putting a small banner / notice right above the code editor that explains the user must register before executing code? I'm honestly not intentionally trying to create an annoying site, it's just when you have users running code you legitimately have to take some security precautions. I'll put some thought into how I can communicate this to the user... My favorite idea so far is to just let the user execute code X number of times and then prompt for registration.
Having an account tied to the execution of the code does nothing to help with security. I can still register with a bogus email account and then run code anonymously. This doesn't inconvenience attackers, only legit users.
I am sympathetic to your reasoning. I am terrible at design, but I think almost anything would be better than what you have. An obvious banner works well. Allowing a few attempts works well, but in that case, how do you rate limit someone executing code without an account?
The security-rationale is a fair point, haven't thought of that ;)
Without knowing how you run the code server-side, are there any languages/challenges that are presumably safe? Maybe you could offer the Javascript challenges without the requiring the user to register.
"Since code is being executed on my server, I want to be extra careful." If you mean security I think your concern isn't necessary, if nothing else you will have less people using your site so whatever issues you do have will take longer to surface. If the concern is performance or loading your backend that may be valid but is also a great problem to have! I would try to get as many people to use it as possible OR at least make the first challenge or two available to anonymous users.
This would make for a great anti-spam mechanism. Kind of like the ultimate captcha. If quality / spam ever (inevitably) becomes an issue, I will absolutely require a minimum REP / XP.
We (me + a couple of buddies) were in the process of building such a service. Unfortunately due to the circumstances, we had to stop working on it but I firmly believe such a service can benefit professional development teams to improve. So I don't fully agree about not using such a service in your work place.
Anyhoo, we did find that such a service exists[1]. I haven't looked at it of about a year, but at the time it seemed interesting though a little lacking in features. They do seem to have improved over the year. You might want to check it out!
I'd be lying if I said that ensuring the box for a date was "green" on my GitHub contribution graph hasn't motivated me to get some shit done that i've been putting off, or hitting a star milestone on a project hasn't motivated me to pick it back up and check off some of the TODOs i've been ignoring.
It might be stupid, it might be "pointless", but it works for me. And while every single one can be gamed or "hacked", if you are working with someone that can't help but cheat a game like this, how can you trust them to actually do any work?
As for getbadges.io, that's a bit too "gamey" for me. I'm looking for a more "professional" kind of profile or badge or card that displays this information, the cheesy little "defeat the monster by closing issues!" turns me off more than motivates me. But slap a different UI on that and I really feel it would do wonders for me!
Since I moved to Linux as my daily driver, I've been using Darktable as prefered editor. I do have to say that I'm not a high demanding user, so you'll have to take my experience with a grain of salt.
Coming from Lightroom there's a slight learning curve and it's not as refined as Lightroom. But once you get the hang of things, it's really a great editor. Definitely quick but also really usable. The interface can sometimes be somewhat confusing, I can recall several occasions at which I didn't really know how to use a tool or preset. Luckily I'm better at googling than photography. I don't miss Lightroom at all and as of yet have not encountered any missing features.
I've used a 13" laptop as my main workhorse for 7 years now and can't imagine trading it for a bigger laptop.
The reason for choosing 13" is that I travel a lot for work and I want to get some work done when I'm on the road. I also find it the ideal size to still accommodate a decent-sized keyboard and trackpad. When I need some extra screen estate, I just hook it on an external monitor.
Because I do allot of programming on it, I've chosen one with a high resolution screen (1920x1080) so I don't trade in screen estate but that might be a bit too high for most people (e.g. everything tends to get a bit tiny).
m000, you are my new best friend.