DEV Community: Patrick Hyatt

Greater than fiction

Patrick Hyatt — Sun, 07 Apr 2024 03:13:59 +0000

This is a submission for the Cloudflare AI Challenge.

What I Built

cat-nerd

I built an application which given a set of animals, and fictional universes, generates an image.

The functionality is simple, but is split between a Page for the front-end, and a Worker for the AI generated content.

Demo

Upon submitting....
The famed, Dune hamster, Sallakis, destroyer of lettuce

My Code

Front-end
Worker

The main heart of this is the Worker, which is a fancy API wrapping the AI functionality. POST the following two FormData parameters to the Worker

animal, the animal you wish to put in a universe, cat lets say
universe, the fictional body of work's universe name, star trek for example

The Worker's response will respond with a PNG image that AI thought was a good fit for your combination.

Give it a try yourself

 curl -d "animal=rat&universe=dc comics" https://pico.patrickhyatt.workers.dev --output C:\test.png

Meet Rex Ratham, DC's newest villain

Journey

I had a few hours after a long day and the announcement of this challenge has stuck in my head for a few days, so I decided to dive in head first, no look, and no 360.

My initial thought was just to create a Worker that took in a Star Trek character, and generated a cat image in that character's style.

However after seeing how limiting that was, it seemed better to take in some input and be a tad more dynamic, thus fictional universes. At that point, why limit it to cats?

This all required a front end which a Worker is not. So, a Page was also created to handle the display/input to the worker, thus yielding the two repositories listed.

Future thoughts
I believe I could make a single Page with a Function to accomplish the same behaviors in a single repository, but while the wheels were spinning, I did not want to clog the air intake (or basically slow myself down).

Multiple Models and/or Triple Task Types
I had big hopes to incorporate multiple models and/or 3+ task types, but with limited time comes snap decisions.

Edits: Add link to site... Add more details on how Worker serves as AI frontman

Crypto API in 256 characters

Patrick Hyatt — Thu, 21 Mar 2024 01:46:41 +0000

This is a submission for DEV Challenge v24.03.20, One Byte Explainer: Browser API or Feature.

Explainer

The crypto API covers cryptographic functionality.

crypto.subtle to hash, sign, en/decrypt, verify, and manage cryptographic keys.
crypto.randomUuid() generate v4 UUID.
crypto.getRandomValues(array) fills array with random numbers

Additional Context

256 characters goes QUICK

where have you been

Patrick Hyatt — Sat, 11 May 2019 03:09:00 +0000

Oh, hey there

Hi again, my names Patrick, I used to write more about things here, but it's been a while.

This thing called life threw some twists our way, it's been joyous, painful, and life changing.

This post is an attempt to recount my happenings, and lay it out there for those wondering. It may be a bit rambling, but it's hard to recount over a year in some detail without rambling.

Left coast to right coast

First up, a big move.

On August 3, 2017 my wife and I packed up our apartment, caged our 2 animals, and moved from always sunny San Diego, to North Carolina.

Neither she nor me expected to move here, yet this was the destination.

The home, packed in a PODS like box, and sent off to NC without a destination address was setup to stay stored until we identified the landing spot.

This lead to...

A new gig

Pretty much after landing (not really, maybe 2 weeks after, but it sounded cool), I ended up switching jobs. I left a position where I worked at over 9 years that was at a established company for a start up with some old coworkers.

We're shaking up the scene, why not shake up the workplace right?

La casita

Oh and we bought a home.

Another non-expected thing. Living in San Diego, we knew we could never own a home, costs were way too high.

Staying for a month in an airbnb, we got pretty familiar with our city's market, and realized renting was pretty much the same monthly as a mortgage.

Considering it's a college town, most rentals were multi unit, and we're old, so we were not down with that noise.
GET OFF MY LAWN.

We hit the market hard, and fast. And after less than a month, we got place. #lifechanging

Closing at the end of September was a rush, and scary. Really scary moving down payment money around, and seeing it disappear from the bank account.

Loss

After close to a month in our new place, unboxed with our measly furniture and clothing, Thanksgiving was had, we got news that my mother in law was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.

Cancer is no picnic or great thing. Pancreatic cancer is like the picnic where birds poop on everything and it rains while ants bite you. It is very deadly.

Life takes a real downturn here. One good thing is we're closer to our folks now. Flights are ~2 hours in the same timezone, vs ~7 with 3 hour differences.

The months of November 2017 until March 2018, my wife and I were fortunate (aka able to fund) and had enough job flexibility to help out our mom and pops. Most of the times, one of us would fly out for a week or so, while the other stayed at the house and took care of the animals.

We both still worked full time and from a professional point of view, nothing changed.

Internally, this was a wreck.

A darklight (opposite of highlight?) for me in particular was handling the housework for my in laws, cooking, cleaning, meal prep, groceries which made it hard to sit down for more than an hour before something came up, then around 11pm start working on feature work for the super fast moving startup.

I'd stay up until 3-4am, trying get features out, or bugs fixed, then sleep until 8am, and repeat the next day.

I am grateful I was able to help, comfort, and mostly BE there for my in laws when they needed it. I come to tears still thinking of that time, and as I type this.

But in the end, the cancer won, and in mid-March we lost an strong, stable, rock in our lives.

I still don't know how we managed, but we did somehow.

With her death, we continued the back and forth travel arrangement, to help out, to comfort, to just be there, and it was 100% worth all the money, time, stress spent doing it.

Life

In February 2018, while we were hopping back and forth between Florida and NC, we got pregnant. I still think this is amazing considering the stress and grief we were dealing with, but life finds a way.

Somehow my in-laws, with my mother in law getting weaker by the day, made the trip up to NC during the first week of March to visit for my wife's birthday. During their short trip here, we were able to share the first audible heartbeat of our son with my mom. I'll remember her reaction forever.

In October 2018, our son was born. #life

Needless to say, our life has changed drastically with the new addition.

Sleep - Nope.

Normal meal times - Naw

Worry - Absolutely

Stress - Aww yeah

Cuteness - You betcha

Endless time to blog/game - What is that?

Have watched X series or Y movie - It's on the list

Since

How things pan out is funky. The startup I was at collapsed around the time my son was born, so workloads dropped to a non-existent level, coupled with 2 weeks paternity leave, 2 weeks vacation use, and getting laid off. I had a lot of time in the initial days with our boy home. It was HIGHLY beneficial. I cannot fathom how the hell the house or schedule would have looked without that time to figure out the new lay of the land.

We're still figuring out how this growing boy's life changes fit into ours, but it's gotten better.

I started in January at another startup, again with some old co-workers from the 9 year position, and it's been great so far.

I've been mostly active on Twitter for better or worse, but have neglected this amazing empty blog.

No more I say. NO MORE.

I hope to bring ~~sexy~~ something back.

Thanks again,

Patrick

Life costs

Patrick Hyatt — Sun, 05 Feb 2017 23:30:00 +0000

Nothing in life is free

You’ve heard that saying before. Usually by some older person, about some topic that may have seemed irrelevant, but all I can say is it is true. The damn saying is true.

As I age, now 35 years old at the time of this writing, I apply and say this saying in my head all the time. I wrote it off as unwarranted “wisdom” in my youth. Or as I started understanding politics, I wrote it off as political BS. But the saying and its application applies to everything in your life.

Another way I phrase it to myself, or unfortunate others I yap with is:

At what cost

How does it apply?

Let me provide some examples of how it this applies to areas that seemingly it does not.

Gaming

I’m a gamer, my wife would say I’m addicted, and I easily get pulled into playing video games for hours on end. I have gamed most of my life, Commodore 64 to now yo, but what am I paying here?

Time.

The time here is time I could spend with my wife, I could spend on this blog, I could spend fixing that clogged sink I always bitch about. Like a lot of great things, time is limited.

Love

From a monetary POV, love is free. No argument here. But it still costs time, usually lots of it. It costs attention, focus, caring and a whole sleuth of other emotions. But it also costs cold hard cash also, maybe not a lot, but some.

You’re likely going to visit the new love interest, since you do not live together at the start right?

Transportation costs.

What are you guys going to do together?

Entertainment costs.

You’ve got to eat, and even if it is home cooked you’re increasing the amount +1.

Food costs.

So while romantics say love is free, it is not. It costs something, usually multiple somethings.

Work

Taking that high paying job in that other state, WOOT. Forgoing the obvious costs of moving your stuff, transportation of yourself, what else is there?

You’re likely moving away from someplace that you have established relationships (friends, family, coworkers). Those relationships will suffer, degrade or at least change. You’re no longer next door to Mr. Glenn, so there is no more yapping while taking care of the yard. Mom is no longer home all day to hear you complain about how professor Joe Bob marked you down on the quiz.

Work

Time & effort at the office and in the home is time and effort not spent elsewhere. Working from home exacerbates this. While you’re thinking of the best way to approach that API integration, you’re not thinking about Geordi’s (the family cat) flea medications, or listening to what your loved one is really saying. You hear it all, but to listen to it is different, and is blocked by the work churning.

Not to count the time, effort, stress, and monetary costs of commuting.

Politics

This is a fairly obvious one. My political beliefs aside, legislation for or against something has positives for some, and negatives for others. That balance is important and very much missed it seems. Senate just passed bill X that reduces taxes on those in the Y brackets. Ask yourself At what cost? Money from those taxes were used somewhere, now it is gone. Something is getting cut, right?

What to do?

This entry is more for me to rant on something that pops up for me more and more. It is a plea for you, the reader, to put some more rational thought behind the decisions you make. We make so many decisions in a day, and more often than not they’re the go-to decisions, the standards. But try asking yourself, “at what cost” for some of the larger decisions you make.

Recently, a close friend’s father died fairly suddenly. There were some issues between them and they were not too close. But talking with him about it, the first thing he said was he wished was that he saw his father just once more before he died.

This is a worst case scenario, I admit, with someone permanently disappearing from your life. But as I pointed out above, some of the seemingly simplest decisions or approaches we take COULD cost us elsewhere.

Remember,

At what cost

I made the web better today, you can too.

Patrick Hyatt — Sat, 11 Jun 2016 07:11:27 +0000

A long while ago, say 5 years back, on the way home from a work trip from Bellevue, WA I purchased a book before getting on my flight. Thanks to the company’s (now under a different name) liberal education policy regarding technical books, it was on them.

The book I purchased, after some internet sleuthing on “good books for developers” or a similar keyword setup, was this guy:

This book goes over good design, and it has been long enough that I can’t recall other good bits about it (sorry Steve!). But on the flight from Bellevue back to D.C. I devoured this book. For a technical-ish book, this was the fastest read for me to this day. One section in the book stands out immensely and had from that point on, always stood out for me, which was “Accessibility and you” (3rd edition, 2nd edition it was “Accessibility, Cascading Style Sheets, and You”) where the author details various practices or attributes to use to help make web pages you’re working on accessible to those with some kind of disability.

To quasi-quote from a 5 year old memory bank, “Accessibility is not the law now, but it will be” was another line that stuck out, because it is true. If you know a tornado of work is coming, why wouldn’t you get ahead of it?

To brag a bit here, I went to Google I/O this year, on my own dime, thanks company? and went to a session on accessibility. Some of the statistics were amazing, 1 in 5 folks (US based) using the internet have some type of disability, for those that like statistics, thats 20% yall. I reckon that if you work for a company, some subset of your user base has a disability and would love the option of navigating your elephant ear recipe site using a screen reader, or without squinting.

So, reigning in this mind dump of typing. How, Pat, did you make the internet better?

At Google I/O one thing kept popping up that the company is pushing, is Accelerated Mobile Pages, AMP for short, which is a technology that enforces really strict web design guidelines and adds in a few custom HTML elements, that the underlying code optimized for delivery. For those with Android based phones, if you visit your News and Weather application, those little lightning bolts with AMP next to them indicates web pages that are using AMP. In fact, newer pages on this blog are using it, it is fast.

One of my more recent posts, I just paid 70 for pjs , has an Instagram image, which AMP requires a special element for, <amp-instagram>. I got on a accessibility kick one night, trying to make this very site more if not most accessible using tota11y. The constant error coming up, img tag does not have an alt attribute. Easy peasy right? Just add an alt attribute on the <amp-instagram> element and we move on.

Nope. Damn. AMP validation kicks off that the alt tag is not allowed. (Non-Pro but documented tip: For an AMP enabled page add #development=1 on the URL, and view the console for errors)

Oh damn.

Enter PR of the century* Open source allows you to fix stuff, and possibly get it in the final project, no matter how big or small the project is. I did say this was one of Google’s flagship products right? Like incredibly pushed at Google I/O?*for me at least

So I was able to identify a missing problem, that affected up to 20% of US internet users, with one of the largest tech companies in the world. Hows that feel?

Indeed…

Be Humble

Patrick Hyatt — Wed, 30 Mar 2016 06:16:00 +0000

Using the poorly referenced dictionary patrickhyatt.com

Humble (adjective) :

To keep oneself below the their own egos growth.

To not be a dick, to not belittle

Programming, or programming in the business realm at least, has a tendency to generate highly skilled individuals, that master an area of knowledge.

Lets take a look at two completely made up examples: Sally, the quality assurance engineer, that sits in the back and has been around for a few years. She owns the application that processes credit cards and refunds. She knows she owns it. There is honestly nobody left in the company that has any knowledge of the product, but her.

Jorge, the quiet developer, that barely speaks louder than the whisper of a feather that falls. Jorge is the guy to to go to with SQL issues. He previously worked at Oracle and knows all kinds of performance tweaks and shortcuts.

Approach both with a question in their area of ownership/expertise.

How do they respond?

Sally

“Oh, hey, yeah that exception with the credit card submission, that does look like a problem. I can’t believe we missed that! Send me a copy of the exception and I’ll see if I can reproduce it so we can isolate the issue and get out a fix.”

Jorge

“Interesting. Definitely not me, that is too amateur of a bug. I think that was Alex’s, but he left the company.”

Q1. Who would you rather work with?

Q2. Which response fosters better learning?

Q3. Which person has interest in the ultimate goal?

The field really does not matter, but in the field we work being historically more introverted/shy people, this stuff is poison. It will slowly kill off any interaction between important knowledge bases. Who wants to talk to Jorge, if every time something goes wrong he will very likely push you onto a non-available ex-employee, that helps none.

Personally, I try to help everyone that gets the urge to ask me. Especially if it is an area of code that I wrote or modified heavily. If I touched it, I immediately assume I introduced the issue. Assume it is in fact my bug/issue that a fellow developer or QA member is reporting. And as a result of owning that, it’s my responsibility to help get it addressed.

This can obviously be huge interrupt to my own tasks. I mean Bernie Sanders HUUUUUUGE (just in time for election season..). However, I strongly believe that most success comes from working with each other and getting through issues as a team/company. I do not know who to attribute my approach to really. Maybe it’s I am the best programmer in the world, or maybe it’s because I’m a phony. You can make that decision.

This sounds so corporate team builder-ish, but it is not even close. Forget the trust drop, or sinking a hole-in-one, or building the highest paper tower. These things emulate work, but everyone understands that after exercise is over, you all go back to your holes and never work with the group again.

Take a slice of humble pie, choke it down. It may seemingly suck, but it sucks as an individual, and rarely are you an individual when it comes to success.