DEV Community: nobody5050

How I fixed my bad typing with a taser

nobody5050 — Sun, 28 Feb 2021 17:08:21 +0000

Yep you read the title correctly... I used a taser to fix my typing and here’s how.

Part 1: Why? Why would you do that?

About a month ago I started to notice my typing speed was being slowed down by needing to make corrections in nearly every word. This obviously needed to change, so I devised a plan.

Part 2: The plan.

The plan was simple.

Step 1: Detect typos. In Order to improve my misspellings, we first need to figure out when they’re happening.
Step 2: Reprimand user Once we’ve detected a typo, we need to trigger the taser, to help make sure I won’t do it again.
Step 3: No more typos! Hopefully when I get teased I’ll make less typos.

Part 3: The software

In order to detect the typos I threw together a simple website which generates a random English word, and then prompts me to type it.

But how does it work?

Well the code is actually really simple.

The code first grabs the content of a json file I got from here:

dwyl / english-words

📝 A text file containing 479k English words for all your dictionary/word-based projects e.g: auto-completion / autosuggestion

After that it picks a random key, and sets the

element’s content to the word.

Lastly I need to make sure the user is typing the provided word correctly.

That code is a really simple function, all it does is check if you’re typing the word correctly and if not it calls a function called turnOn() which triggers the taser.

Part 4: The hardware.

Now the fun part!

To handle the taser circuit I’m just going to use some prank shock gum I found on Amazon, it’s a pretty mild shock.

This is good for two reasons, 1: if I mess up I’m not going to electrocute myself, and 2: if I mess up I’m not going to fry any of my electronics.

But how will I interface the website with the hardware?

Let me introduce, the particle argon!

This is an Arduino compatible board, with cloud connectivity over WiFi. You can control individual pins over the air, just by pinging an API

So I’m going to use a circuit like this to open and close the taser switch via the particle:

Now that that’s done it’s time for

Part 5: Testing!

So yeah it works! If you liked this post you’ll probably like my previous project:

Why I let strangers control my lights and why you should too

nobody5050 ・ Jan 7 ・ 2 min read

#javascript #webdev #python #programming

Thanks for reading!

Why I let strangers control my lights and why you should too

nobody5050 — Thu, 07 Jan 2021 15:04:38 +0000

The title photo features the website I built to let strangers annoy me. The website includes text to speech, YouTube audio playing, and even control of my lights. But why did I make it?

Why did I make it?

Well like many projects, this one was started over pure boredom from being on a break from school.

I’d had the idea for a while to try and replicate the tts setup twitch streamers use sometimes, but I wanted something unique, so I also added light controls.

Ok, that’s great and all, but how does it work?

The project actually has two parts, the tts part and the light control part.

first, how do the lights work?

The light controls are incredibly simple, I use LIFX http api to toggle the lights.

Below is a simple fetch api request to toggle some lights using default parameters, just replace YOUR-APP-TOKEN with the token lifx gives you.

So how does the text to speech work?

This is where the project gets considerably more complex. Fist up, discord webhooks.

When I was building the project I needed a way to store messages in a log, so I could read them if I’d been away from my loudspeaker or if it had turned off for some reason. The best one I can come up with is a discord webhook, it’s great because it acts as an intermediary between the site and my servers, as well as being completely free.

So how do you connect with it?

Below is the actual code I use for handling discord messages, including my webhook url

I opted to use xmlhttprequest here, since I’m more familiar with it, but you could use fetch as well.

The basic concept is this, it takes in text from a textbox element when the function sendMessage is called, then it sends that test as a request to whatever webhook url you specify.

Next up on the train, discord bots!

For handling the text to speech I use a python discord bot and the pyttsx3 library

I won’t show the code for this since it’s ugly and I don’t want people replicating it, but basically it watches for new messages in a discord channel, and then plays their contents through the pyttsx3 library using default parameters. I also run all requests through the googletrans python library to ensure that I hear all messages in my native tongue.

So why should you make it yourself?

Well I’ve been asked a fair bit by the people on my subreddit r/theannoyingmachine why I would build this, all I can say is that it’s more fun than it seems like!

If you’re interest in learning about api’s, webdevelopment, and python all in one project, you should do this one!

Thanks for reading my post!

The website featured in the post is https://nobody5050.GitHub.io/annoy

How a small team of developers revived a dead version of Minecraft

nobody5050 — Wed, 09 Dec 2020 21:14:46 +0000

Minecraft Pi edition is a bad version of Minecraft... At least it used to be. What changed?

A few months ago Minecraft Pi Edition was regarded as the worst version in existence. It’s only redeeming quality, it’s modding API.
However through the hard work and dedication of a few developers, it’s grown to be something much more.

The Beginning

Minecraft Pi Edition was released in 2013 as a stripped down version of the pocket edition (version for phones) and even then it was a bad version due to its characteristic lack of survival mode.

A few people tried to mod it, to little success. However a in 2020 a new project started, called mcpil which allowed Minecraft pi to really take off!

Mcpil

Minecraft Pi Launcher or MCPIL for short is the project that allowed Minecraft pi to enter its renaissance. It supports full mod loading, a custom modding API, survival mode, fancy graphics, and so much more!

Mod Loading

By default Minecraft Pi has a mod API but it takes quite a while to setup, mcpil allows you to launch certain mods when you join a world, and automatically use them.

Survival Mode

MCPIL also exposes the mcpi-docker API which allows support for survival mode. It even includes hostile mobs which the original version did not support.

Even beyond this, mcpi-docker supports crafting and farming which are also accessible through MCPIL.

And So Much More

There’s so much more that MCPIL and mcpi-docker can do that I just don’t have time to mention in this short post.

If you like what you read check us out on GitHub at mcpi-devs/mcpil or by clicking the card below

MCPI-Revival / MCPIL-Legacy

Minecraft Pi Launcher (deprecated, use MCPIL-R under our same organization).

Also check out our website at https://mcpi.tk

If you really like what you see feel free to also join our discord at https://discord.gg/UuR7WNx

Thanks!

How a small team of developers revived a dead version of Minecraft

nobody5050 — Wed, 09 Dec 2020 19:58:06 +0000

Minecraft Pi edition is a bad version of Minecraft... At least it used to be. What changed?

A few months ago Minecraft pi edition was regarded as the worst version in existence. It’s only redeeming quality, it’s modding api.
However through the hard work and dedication of a few developers, it’s grown to be something much more.

The beginning.

Minecraft pi edition was released in 2013 as a stripped down version of the pocket edition (version for phones) and even then it was a bad version due to its characteristic lack of survival mode.

A few people tried to mod it, to little success. However a in 2020 a new project started, called mcpil which allowed Minecraft pi to really take off!

Static blogs: The good, The bad, And the ugly.

nobody5050 — Sun, 19 Apr 2020 02:49:57 +0000

When it comes to website design, particularily with blogs there’s a war that’s been fought for ages: Static or not?

That’s not a very easy question to answer and everyone seems to have their own opinions on what you should pick. I personally will always pick static, just because that’s what works for me, but everyone is different and you should weigh your own needs and wants before picking one option over another. In this post I will weigh the pros and cons to help you pick the best one for you.

The good

When it comes to choosing how you want to build your blogs and sites there are a few very good reasons to pick static.

You control your content

This is a big one. With something like Wordpress you are restricted to a few very specific themes. Many of these companies claim to have thousands of templates but in reality many of them are just color shifted versions of eachother.

While with static sites you have templates too, you aren’t required to, and you can easily make something that looks good even without prior programming experience using some very good resources such as W3 schools or css-tricks. The fact is you own your content.

The bad

Very little interactivity

This is a problem that has plagued static sites since their inception. With no servers there is no comments, no logins, no nothing. Just text on a page. Sure you can make it look pretty, but in the end there is nothing the user can do but read.

Many proponents of static sites say it doesn’t matter, for comments you can use disquss and why does your site need a login anyways? These are both real arguments and that’s why you need to pick what’s right for you.

The downright ugly

Large sites

Where building a site using static html pages gets really ugly is when your site needs to scale. Sure you might not get much traffic when you are just starting out, but eventually you’ll need to scale your site to meet with demand. Keeping hundreds of html pages up to date especially after your site design changes can be a real challenge in the long run.

Conclusion

So what should you pick? In the end it comes down you your personal needs. If you honestly think your site will be getting thousands of visits, and you honestly think you will need to make hundreds of pages of content, go with a CMS. Otherwise a static site might be good for you. Go with your gut.

this was originally posted on my personal site, which is a static blog without any stylizing. Check it out here: original post