I haven't blogged in a little while. I've been working on rails projects for The Odin Project. The current one is a "Facebook clone". It doesn't have to look exactly like facebook, but it should...
I haven't blogged in a little while. I've been working on rails projects for The Odin Project. The current one is a "Facebook clone". It doesn't have to look exactly like facebook, but it should have the basic functions such as likes, friends, friend requests, posts and comments, as well as full login functions, including omniauth login from facebook (You know, those "login with facebook" buttons). So, I go to the meta developer website and look at instructions. I'll have to register my app and get an ID and a secret key to do this. Great. Time to register and get this done. I'm already logged in to facebook on this computer, so it recognizes me. This should be easy. It asks me to enter my email, but then gives an error
That's a strange error message to me
Umm, yeah that email is already confirmed, that should be great, right? nope. So, I give it a different email and have the code sent.
You can see the code.
Normally I wouldn't share a login code like this, but I'm willing to because it doesn't work.
You can verify that it's the same code in the email.
I can't figure out what is going wrong here, so I try it again, and again, and again. You can see the other emails from facebook to the left of the email above. Here's the thing... They ALL have the same code in them 46453. There is definitely something broken about this. It should be a unique code every time, and it should work as long as I type it correctly. It would seem someone substituted a hard coded number instead of the actual code generator.
So, I try to find a way to contact meta to let them know their developer portal is broken, so that they can fix it, and I can get on with this project. I can't find any sort of contact form or email on their website. Ok, I'll submit a bug report. Nope, have to be logged in to do that. Ok, I'll go on their discussion board and post there... Nope, have to be logged in to do that. I click on the support tab. It's just a search function. No chat options. No way to send a message.
At this point I was pretty frustrated and had been working at this for a while. I elect to step away from it and work on omniauth from github instead. I planned to have both anyway. So, I did that, learned some stuff and wrapped up for the day. Dinner, sleep, etc. At 6AM I sat straight up when I realized that this was most likely not a case of incompetence at Meta. This was likely sabotage. They just had layoffs and someone probably did this on their way out the door. It was pretty sneaky too. It would be hard for Meta to notice it until someone look at some quarterly metrics and realized that no new developers had signed up with them in the past couple of months. Nobody who's already signed up would be affected, and anybody not already signed up has no way of contacting Meta to let them know about the problem.
That's part of the motivation for writing this blog post. I plan to put it on facebook and hope that one of their content reviewers notices it and passes the information along so that I can finish the project properly. If anyone reading this knows someone currently at Meta, please pass it along. Thanks.
Edit: It has now been a month and I just tried to signup again. They sent me the same 46453 code in my email to "confirm" the new email. I think I will try creating a new email just to see what happens. However, as far as I know, no new developers have been able to sign up with meta for at least a month. I'm pretty astonished by this situation. In my next experiment I will go so far as to sign up in an incognito window and see what that does.
Edit2: It has been over 2 months and it's still the same.
Hi all. I have decided that my dog, Daisy, is a unique beast and it would probably be entertaining to watch FPV videos of her absolutely pummeling tennis balls. We have like 30 in the yard. I ha...
Hi all. I have decided that my dog, Daisy, is a unique beast and it would probably be entertaining to watch FPV videos of her absolutely pummeling tennis balls. We have like 30 in the yard. I have one of those "chuck it" tennis ball throwers. When she gets one she stomps on them with a death from above move that basically says "Fuck you in particular" to that tennis ball. It is very entertaining to watch. She has trained me to perform a special kind of game of "fetch". She doesn't really fetch. She wants to chase a live ball that is moving. And she wants to stomp on them. She does all the running with a ball in her mouth. So, the first ball I throw she will chase, and then she basically stands there while I toss the rest. She tries to catch a few of them. Then when I move to that field of balls, she runs at a blistering pace from one side of the yard to the other and then I throw the ball so that it is leading her and she can chase the fast moving ball.
In order to film this, I have invested in a Runcam Thumb Pro V2. It weights 16 grams and I have a 128 GB micro SD card in it. It is coupled with an absolutely tiny Battery Eliminator Circuit (BEC) that allows me to use any lipo and regulate it to 5v. The product description mentions 250mm x 220mm, but I suspect that's the quadcopter dimensions because the end product was about 10mm x 6mm. It is essentially the size of a mcro SD card. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07MS1ND5M?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details It was designed for use on quadcopters and RC planes, so lightness is expected. I doubt my dog will notice it. I have updated to the latest firmware and soldered up the BEC so that it can connect to some 3S 450mah batteries, of which I have many. Each one should power it for an hour and takes about 20 minutes to charge. I have the mount that came with the camera, but I am awaiting a roll of TPU 3D printer filament to be able to print a bunch of other mounts that I will attach to my dogs harness. It can record at 4K 30 FPS, 2,7K 60 FPS, 1.44K 60 FPS or 1080P 120 FPS. It also has gyro stabilization built in. I'm eager to get a new harness for my dog and figure out the best mounts to use and get to filming this. Our "fetch" games are very fun no matter what. This should elevate it. I really look forward to sharing this fun with the world.
I just wanted to share some picture of my dogs, because... Who doesn't love dog pictures, right? This will also let me test out the photo direct upload feature in Action Text to AWS S3 bucket. It...
I just wanted to share some picture of my dogs, because... Who doesn't love dog pictures, right? This will also let me test out the photo direct upload feature in Action Text to AWS S3 bucket. It was recently fixed by updating my rails version to the latest available. Anyway, here we go. Enjoy.
Here is a picture of Oscar in the car:20220407_180147.jpg3.55 MBHe was feeling a little bit anxious after a visit to the vet for a checkup.
Here he is just lounging in the grass on a nice day:
20220508_101150.jpg2.88 MBThis is one of Oscar's favorite spots... the sand pile. It's like a little bit of high ground where he can survey his kingdom.
20220422_192954.jpg2.97 MBThis is Daisy. She is lounging in the flower bed.
20220403_121323.jpg2.25 MBShe's having a nice snooze and hogging the bed.
20220311_220552.jpg2.37 MBThis dog loves mud. Luckily, she also loves the hose, so it's easy to get her clean. 20220112_163619.jpg2.77 MBI hope you enjoyed the pictures. 'Til next time.
Stuart
About
A blog about technology, life, and whatever I am feeling opinionated about that day. It certainly won't all be great content... but, what do you expect for free?
