BenSites Blog

My setup of Atom, editing a Diamond-Lang Ruby File

So it lets you setup it up exactly as you want it, but unlike other IDEs, it doesn’t have built-in build tools, so to compile/run your program, you normally need to install a terminal simulator and memorize the commands. It helps to install Gradle or Rake, which both help you.

They’ve also open source the code they’ve used to make their HTML/CSS/JS/Node into a desktop app into a project called Electron, which you can use to create your own apps.

I use the Material UI theme along with its sister syntax theme, and I changed the background color.

Paper on the left, laptop on the right.

My pocket of cords and supplies. It’s nice and organized, and has more space then my old backpack did for the same pocket.

I scan my papers when possible, and discard them, so at most I carry around 20 papers at once. It weighs little, and is super easy to carry. I haven’t had any problems with it.

I organize my papers by the date I last used it, and since I only have 20 papers, I can quickly scan through them. Although I don't have tabs, it becomes easier for me to put my stuff in the right place, so I lose less papers. Sadly, teachers who hand back everything at once become your organization system’s enemy, and it becomes harder to keep everything, but I take them home and drop them off into a bin of archived papers.

Since my school doesn’t use papers after the quarter they were assigned, after each quarter,  I remove all my papers, and put them in the bin or archived papers.

2. Angular.js lets my Javascript code know

3. I feed it through Chrono, which finds dates in your input.

4. My javascript creates a homework object

5. Angular shows you the homework object

6. You press create.

7. Angular tells me, and my Javascript code tells angular to send the homework object to my API.

8. Angular sends the homework to my api

9. Google Domains DNS routes my domain to Digital Ocean

9. Digital Ocean forwards traffic to my Ubuntu Droplet.

10. nginx takes that traffic, and sends it to one of 4 Unicorn workers.

11. Unicorn sends the request to Rack

12. Rack sends the request to Rails

13. Rails sends the request to my code

14. My code converts the Javascript homework object into a Homework model, which is then verified, and then sent to ActiveModel (part of Rails)

15. ActiveModel sends my data to ActiveRecord, which translates my new homework request to sql code, with is send to mysql.

16. ActiveRecord updates the homework object to include an id, and other things, and I respond with the created homework object.

17. I render the response with jbuilder

18. Rack sends the request to Unicorn

19. Unicorn sends the request to nginx

20. nginx sends the request through Digital Ocean to back to your compute

21. Your browser tells angular that a response has been received

22. Angular tells my javascript code that the homework object was created successfully

23. My javascript updates the homework object with the new information from the server, and puts it in the homework list

24. Angular renders the homework list.

25. You see the list, and your newly created homework.

Well, I’m out of ideas for the moment, not including this one. I’m currently writing about ideas, and maybe one will come. But it seems as if I’m writing a bunch of meta posts about blogging, but none the less, I guess this is a post.

Oh god. I did that much work for a new avatar? I wish it was a lot simpler to make an avatar. Or I picked a good non-minecraft avatar when I first made an account. At least Gravatar did 99% of the work for me. I can’t image what I would have had to do without it.

Actually, I could.

But I don’t want to.

But, I did get some pretty cool things that I’m proud of:

1. I found a project by an employee of Github that allows you to create geo-patterns from text, and put in my username, and then took the image it returned, and overlaid that with text in Sketch.

2. I used Vector Magic to make my avatar a vector (the original software gave it to me in a small resolution, and allowed me to get a somewhat larger copy for $20, but they allowed me to do whatever I wanted with it). It came out with a super clear svgs (I even used the one million degree zoom in Sketch. No pixels!)

3. I spent no money.

4. I uploaded it to Gravatar, and it changed almost everything for me.

/summon FallingSand ~ ~ ~ {”Block”: “stone”, “Time”: 1}

instead of like

/summon FallingSand ~ ~ ~ {Block:stone,Time:1}

It’s really annoying, especially since in the new Minecraft snapshots, other commands are forcing you to use strict JSON, while others require you use JSON-like nbt. It’s awful, especially since you can’t simply swap out strict JSON for non-strict JSON, you have to cheat it, handwrite the JSON-like stuff (humans were never meant to write JSON easily), or create your own JSON-like generator.

I ran into this while creating a command compactor, and I didn’t want to reinvent JSON, so I scrubbed it at the end with a regex.

@@instance.to_command.to_s.gsub(/\\?"(\w+?)\\?":/, '\1:')

But then I couldn’t use strict JSON, so to get around that, I made it so that if you have whitespace at the end of a key, it removes the whitespace and keeps the strict json:

@@instance.to_command.to_s.gsub(/\\?"(\w+?)\\?":/, '\1:').gsub(/(\\?"\w+?)\s(\\?":)/, '\1\2')

But this is ugly, and probably not the best solution. I really just wanted it to work, since this was getting on my nerves (if anyone has something for to make this work, PLEASE let me know.)

So, I really thought Minecraft should fix this (I thought it was a bug at first), so I filed a report:

https://bugs.mojang.com/browse/MC-94778?focusedCommentId=274524&page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels:comment-tabpanel#comment-274524

Turns out, they said it was intended. Makes no sense, though. I won’t request a feature on the subreddit, as it’s not a popular idea. It only helps developers, really.

I wish Mojang would fix this. Please make up your mind. You can use JSON-like nbt and drive developers insane, or just let use use JSON. 

And you’re still reading.

But I changed the blog to tumblr.bensites.com instead of bensites.tumblr.com, and I got exactly where I started. Actually, I need to buy .tumblr so I can have com.bensites.tumblr. Maybe that would make an improvement.

But it feels like design is just incremental improvements. You do something that seems like the smallest difference in the world, but it makes the biggest difference in someone’s life, or maybe it just fades away. Or maybe it seems useless, except for a few things.

But that’s life. No one remembers the guy who make scrolling seem realistic on a Mac and iDevices. No one remembers the guy who added vibration to your phone. No one remembers the guy who decided to cut a round object. But they all have amazing things that change the way we live. But they change the way we live in the smallest of ways.

This command:

summon FallingSand ~0 ~1 ~0 {Block:"redstone_block",Time:1,Data:0,Passengers:[{Block:"activator_rail",Time:1,Data:0,Passengers:[{Command:"gamerule commandBlockOutput false",id:"MinecartCommandBlock"},{Command:"fill ~2 ~2 ~0 ~8 ~7 ~5 stained_hardened_clay 13 hollow",id:"MinecartCommandBlock"},{Command:"title @a[] subtitle {\"text\":\"command by Ben from bensites.com\"}",id:"MinecartCommandBlock"},{Command:"title @a[] title {\"text\":\"Conveyor Belts\"}",id:"MinecartCommandBlock"},{Command:"setblock ~3 ~3 ~1 repeating_command_block 5 replace {Command:\"execute @e[] ~0 ~0 ~0 detect ~0 ~0 ~0 carpet 15 execute @e[r=0,c=1] ~0 ~0 ~0 detect ~0 ~-1 ~0 piston 2 tp @e[r=0,c=1] ~ ~ ~-.2\",auto:true}",id:"MinecartCommandBlock"},{Command:"setblock ~4 ~3 ~1 chain_command_block 5 replace {Command:\"execute @e[] ~0 ~0 ~0 detect ~0 ~0 ~0 carpet 15 execute @e[r=0,c=1] ~0 ~0 ~0 detect ~0 ~-1 ~0 piston 3 tp @e[r=0,c=1] ~ ~ ~.2\",auto:true}",id:"MinecartCommandBlock"},{Command:"setblock ~5 ~3 ~1 chain_command_block 5 replace {Command:\"execute @e[] ~0 ~0 ~0 detect ~0 ~0 ~0 carpet 15 execute @e[r=0,c=1] ~0 ~0 ~0 detect ~0 ~-1 ~0 piston 4 tp @e[r=0,c=1] ~-.2 ~ ~\",auto:true}",id:"MinecartCommandBlock"},{Command:"setblock ~6 ~3 ~1 chain_command_block 1 replace {Command:\"execute @e[] ~0 ~0 ~0 detect ~0 ~0 ~0 carpet 15 execute @e[r=0,c=1] ~0 ~0 ~0 detect ~0 ~-1 ~0 piston 5 tp @e[r=0,c=1] ~.2 ~ ~\",auto:true}",id:"MinecartCommandBlock"},{Command:"setblock ~ ~ ~1 command_block 0 replace {Command:fill ~ ~-1 ~-1 ~ ~ ~ air}",id:"MinecartCommandBlock"},{Command:"setblock ~ ~-1 ~1 redstone_block",id:"MinecartCommandBlock"},{Command:"kill @e[r=1,type=MinecartCommandBlock]",id:"MinecartCommandBlock"}],id:"FallingSand"}]}

Is written in Ruby as

require 'diamond-lang' require 'json'

class Conveyor < DiamondLang::OneCommand  def setup(c)    c.title s(:a), :subtitle, {"text " => "command by Ben from bensites.com"}.to_json    c.title s(:a), :title, {"text " => "Conveyor Belts"}.to_json  end  def tick(c)    black_carpet = b 'carpet', colors(:black)    pistons = (2..5).map {|d| [d, b('piston', d)]}.each do |d, piston|      c.execute s(:e), relative,        :detect, relative, black_carpet,        :execute, s_self, relative,        :detect, coords('~', '~-1', '~'), piston,        :tp, s_self,  (d == 2 && "~ ~ ~-.2" ) ||                  (d == 3 && "~ ~ ~.2") ||                  (d == 4 && "~-.2 ~ ~") ||                  (d == 5 && "~.2 ~ ~")    end  end end

Conveyor.create

which is pretty nice compared to the really long command it creates. Hopefully it helps people. I’ll talk about some of the really annoying things in Minecraft that made this command almost impossible to create in a day or two, but that’s the main idea. I haven’t yet gotten to do things I really want to, due to limitations in Minecraft, but I’m hoping to do them soon.

Anyways, turns out that Minecraft can be a lot ruby with Rubies. Hooray!

If you want to check it out, I made a webpage for it at bensites.com/diamond-lang, or you can do `gem install diamond-lang`

But today, I’m going to talk about my blog :D. It’s gonna be a collection of awesome tech, coding & tech, and stuff I make. Oh yeah, and I’m a 7th grade student, so you’l be seeing some posts about middle school.

So yeah - if you like school, or tech, or coding, or something else, I’m sure you’ll sure my blog. 

See you soon,