Forem: Jaimie Carter

I’m 53. Just graduated from University. What do I do now?

Jaimie Carter — Fri, 29 Jan 2021 23:32:58 +0000

I’m 53. Just finished this part of University. Hold a senior role in the broadcast industry. How to transition into the dev community on a professional level? Basically - get a job outside of broadcast.

Things to consider when advising:

I’ve never applied for a job in my life. Ever.
I’m used to extreme pressure. At the second by second level.
I’m used to getting people to perform at a high enough level to get what is needed done, done.

Any advice on how to proceed from here, would be greatly appreciated. I’m in Sydney, Australia.

Help! I have my first client

Jaimie Carter — Tue, 13 Aug 2019 22:02:09 +0000

Well, that was quick. I have my first job. A long time colleague from a major broadcast company has approached me, "you know how to do this app stuff, don't you?" Long story short: I've got the go ahead to build a web app. My problem: how to I charge?

I don't want to take the Mickey.
Transparency
I'm a LONG way from being a senior - experience wise.
I know I can build what they want.

I will do it through my company - charge a fee to build, a monthly fee for servers (AWS) and a fee to upkeep the code.

So how do I structure this?

Any advice would be very appreciated.

How'd you meet your co-founder?

Jaimie Carter — Thu, 01 Aug 2019 01:01:36 +0000

For those out there running their own show; how'd you meet your other founders? Are you all tech founders? Are you about to embark on finding co-founders? Any stories of serendipity to inspire us?

Do you really need to start a startup?

Jaimie Carter — Sun, 07 Jul 2019 21:46:24 +0000

Do you really need to persue the atypical startup? Chase funding, grow, scale, chase funding, grow, scale..?? When is enough, enough?

Or is it possible to have one or even a few projects, maybe a SaaS thing or an ecommerce site or whatever, that ticks along nicely and keeps you comfortably?

Is anyone doing this?

I have no idea what I'm doing, but here Goes #4 Ah C'maaaahhhhnn!!!!

Jaimie Carter — Tue, 02 Jul 2019 09:56:51 +0000

If you've not been following along: 1. Shame on you. 2. To learn Node, I've decided to build an API that automatically chases freelance work for me.

"Aaarrrggghhhhhhhhhhhhh ffffaaaaarrrrrrkkkkk!! (in the nicest possible way)" That's angry (but not really angry) Australian for: "Oh come on Google, does it really need to be so convoluted. You're making me look bad."

OK, ok. To preface this, I have been very busy with my day job. I had a very demanding job interstate, and just arrived back in town yesterday. I'm tired, grumpy, and not focused. There's the disclaimer. Not an excuse... dis-cl-aim-er. OK?

AANNNNyyway... The goal today was to understand how authorisation of Google APIs worked in dev vs production environments, respectively. The outcome? I have no idea whatsoever. None. Nuthin. Seriously, Google's instructions are about as useful as a hip pocket in a singlet. I can't even understand how it works AT ALL. "Arrrrrggghhhh ffaaaarrrrkkkkkk! (in the nicest possible way)."

I watched this video and the UI has changed, so it made this pretty much useless. But not completely useless, I managed to add gmail and calendar to my developer console, under my app. So that's a win. I'll take whatever victory I can get, right now. And to be honest, once I read the OAuth documentation properly, I think the verification process will be pretty smooth, and with the right authorisation keys, twc2k will be able to continue development.

The upside of today's effort is: I need to further break down this problem into smaller problems. I think.

I know I need to access sensitive data. So I need OAuth, so let's verify a domain and use that.
Then, I need to figure out what has to change in the google boilerplate that was given to me for authentication with the calendar app. That'll give me an idea of how to proceed from there, I think. Wish me luck.

Anyone want to bale me out, here???? I'll buy you a beer.

For those (terrible people, well maybe not terrible, maybe it's more like naughty) that haven't been playing along:
Episode 0
Episode 1
Episode 2
Episode 3

The security of Open Source

Jaimie Carter — Fri, 28 Jun 2019 22:37:36 +0000

Listening to a podcast where Werner Vogel, Amazon CTO, expresses concern about being vulnerable if you use open source code in your product. He raises the potentially valid point that you have no idea what is happening to your customers data when it's plugged into open source code.

What are the realities here?

I have no idea what I'm doing, but here Goes #3 IT WORKS!!

Jaimie Carter — Thu, 27 Jun 2019 08:51:52 +0000

Phew! It actually works. Well, very roughly.

If you've not been following along: 1. Shame on you. 2. To learn Node, I've decided to build an API that automatically chases freelance work for me.

So where were we? trying to get anything out of Google Calendar and make a JSON. That was done, the only problem was - the way it iterated changed the data enough to be a pain when that same data needed to be interpreted. So the challenge was to leave to data extracted by the Google API unchanged, and change it when it needed to be processed, without destroying the original object/s. That way, any part of it can be used in any way, as required. Don't know if that's the right approach, but if felt good to me. And that's all that's important, right?

The github repo has the files.

The major nightmare I had was understanding the function below. I thought it returned and array... but it wasn't was it? It was iterating (wasn't it?) through every event and pushing them/console.logging them one at a time. I think? Don't mistake my confusion for confusion. Sheer terror is a better description. Anyways, I figured that if I pushed them into an array, that might be an idea, and it seemed to work. I'll take that.

    if (events.length) {      
      events.map((event, i) => {
        const start = event.start.dateTime || event.start.date;
        cleanDate = start.slice(5, 10);
        //calData(start);
        array.push(cleanDate);
        //console.log(`${start} - ${event.summary}`);
        //calData(cleanDate);
      });

From there I just needed to manipulate the data, to group days with months and then write an if statement to send string/s when conditions were met. And hey presto! A robot!

I showed it to one of my broadcast friends, and he LOST HIS MIND. "NO WAY! It can do that??"

Yes, Simon. Yes. It. Can. Simon now thinks I'm a genius. I'll take that. It's all about the bullshit factor, isn't it?

Closing shout out:
On the last post I got some great advice from Neil Green. Many thanks for the tips, they were greatly appreciated. The debugger in VScode has blown my mind. Woah!!! How good is a bit of degugging??!!!

Next up: Join this to gmail, and send an email. Oooooooooo. Fun times ahead.

For those that haven't been playing along:
Episode 0
Episode 1
Episode 2

What's the plan to monetise Devto?

Jaimie Carter — Wed, 26 Jun 2019 20:28:21 +0000

Wondering what the plans are to make this site pay its way? Just to put it out there: my preference would be to pay a monthly subscription. I don't want my data sold or the advertising jerks to get hold.

I think we all understand you have servers to run, offices to rent, electricity bills to pay... Happy to pay my way.

This is a good thing - don't fuck it up.

I have no idea what I'm doing, but here Goes #2 Yay! Json!!

Jaimie Carter — Mon, 24 Jun 2019 06:45:19 +0000

Well folks if you've been playing along, the goal here is to further make life easier with tWC2k (the Work Chaser 2000!) by automating the never ending treadmill that afflicts all freelancers - the work hustle, thus freeing up to for me to surf and drink beer with my friends. "A noble goal!" I hear you cry. Yes, yes it is.

So, after a busy weekend of work (cue the violins again), I sat down this morning and thought, "how will this actually work?" In the last post I thought maybe the right way to go would be to build an express app, then test the end points with Postman - and then connect that to the Google Calendar API. But, if you think about it (there it goes again, this whole 'thinking' thing... shudder), maybe I need to see if I can get stuff out of the Google API first. Probably a good idea not to put the horse before the cart, right? Let's get something, anything out of a Google Calendar, first. Fine. Now, that's all great, but how does one do that? Ah. Lightbulb. One could ask Google, I suppose? (I know, it's bordering on genius again) It turns out there's a npm script you run and hey-presto! There's your connection to a Calendar with the last 10 events listed. Even a dullard like me managed to do it.

The thing I managed to get working is on my GitHub. It manages to pull the last 20 events from a Google calendar and display them as a json object in the browser. The little bit of code that is there is like my house - a total mess, I apologise in advance, if you're going to look at it.

Next up: to use this json to find the holes in my calendar and make a new json with available dates.

Thoughts?

I have no idea what I'm doing, but here Goes #1: Decision time.

Jaimie Carter — Thu, 20 Jun 2019 00:24:38 +0000

Okey dokey, here goes. It's decision time.

What do I want to solve? I want to do NO work chasing up work.

How do I solve this?

Maybe I build an API that identifies holes in my diary, then automatically emails my contacts telling them I have available dates. Then it reads the responding emails and automatically populates my diary. Easy! How hard can it really be to build one of these things?

But what to call this it? Hmmm. Let's see... "The Work Chaser 2000". Perfect. The cool kids will call it "tWC2k". I know. I'm a creative genius, right? Don't feel intimidated by my awesomeness, I'm just a man, after all.

Righty oh. Now, how does one make a "tWC2k"?

Probably a big call for someone that has no idea what he's doing, but I suppose we can break this down: First thing's first. Can I access to and manipulate my calendar and emails? Turns out Google has an API on gmail and calendar, so that's a go. So I need tWC2k to talk to gmail and calendar, and vise versa. Let's start here.

Looks like (right now) I don't need a database or website. Pfft. Websites are soooooo for beginners. Wait.... oh yeah. That'd be me.

So, if I can do the following, to begin with:

It's going to be Node.
Build tWC2k API with an endpoint that connects to any of Calendars API endpoints. Just get a connection. Any connection to begin with.

I think I can use Postman to test my endpoints initially. Not sure what exactly I want to test. Maybe I look at the documentation in Google's API and pick the easiest looking thing to connect to?

This might take me a while, but I reckon that's a good enough place to start.

Thoughts?

I have no idea what I'm doing, but here Goes #0

Jaimie Carter — Tue, 18 Jun 2019 22:20:24 +0000

To get this out of the way; I have no idea what I am doing, but I'm going to make an app. Yeah, I'm that guy.

So I thought, this is a great place to write about the app's journey and share my stupid mistakes, so here's the first blog entry... or blog number 0. See! I made it zero, not 1! OK, settle down. I thought it was funny.

AAANNNyway, I have this problem that is annoying me. I'm currently working in broadcast, and my work patterns are all over the place. During the summer months (October to April - yes that is summer here -keep up, read my bio) I get loads of work. The days are long: I'll get to the airport at 7am, fly to venue, work, and I'm at the hotel at 11pm. Then I'm (usually) up at 5am for a 6am flight home the next morning and onsite at a home venue for a 10am start, and on it goes. I'm busy. Proper busy. It's high stakes, high pressure work, so we're all exhausted after every job let alone the cumulative it has. Stay with me, I'm getting to the point. Promise.

So this is the source of the problem. The problem? While I am working, I don't organise future work because, well, exhaustion. I know, break out the violins. You don't care. Nobody cares.... (sobs in corner in fetal position).

So I got to thinking (groan... this always gets me in trouble). Don't think, kids. It's overrated. Why don't I 'just' automate this process? How hard can it be? There are a lot of platforms out there like Deputy and the like, but they're all about the employer, and not ME. IT NEEDS TO BE ALL ABOUT MMMEEEEEEEE. So what an excellent place to start!

SO. Which platform? I built my first app (patch.team) in PHP. I gotta say, I like PHP, but is that a bit Truman Show-esque? Well, campers, we're about to find out. Unless anyone can talk me out of this; I'm going for the much hyped Node and MongoDB. I'm in the middle of my Lynda course, and it's already annoying me. I just want to start, but first I need to install what dependency? Then I need to call it? Really? How do I do that again? Do I do that? What? Why is the syntax different FOR EVERYTHING? It's making a cranky old man even crankier. But that's OK. I like it!

Until the next edition of "I have no idea what I am doing, but here Goes", happy coding!

I need advice before beginning new project

Jaimie Carter — Thu, 13 Jun 2019 21:16:04 +0000

Hello everyone! I'm about to start my next project to continue on the learning path. I'd like to build a calendar roster management application, mainly for myself and a couple of friends (to give you an idea).

What backend language would you use?
What approach would you take with structuring the database?
What approach would you take with structuring the application?