https://media.notthebee.com/articles/fd3a5afd-1553-4042-a2b2-289ebc8b8002.jpg
Love or hate the vax, this ad from the State of Arkansas will make you laugh out loud.
Not the Bee
The Best Metal Detector
https://cdn.thewirecutter.com/wp-content/media/2021/08/metaldetector-2048px-0377-3×2-1.jpg?auto=webp&quality=60&width=630&dpr=2
The dream of finding buried treasure is compelling, but the reality of metal detecting is that you mostly find trash—and you spend a lot of time doing it. This may be the sort of repetitive, mainly solitary activity you intrinsically enjoy … or it may bore you to tears. It’s best to figure that out before dropping a not-insignificant chunk of change on a metal detector of your own. So before you buy one, try to find a local club or store that will help you go on a trial hunt or two with an experienced detectorist. If the bug catches you, you’ll know it. And at that point, we’d say the Nokta Makro Simplex+ is the absolute best metal detector for a newcomer to the sport.
Wirecutter: Reviews for the Real World
Pioneering Paint App KidPix Is Back and Ready To Run in Your Browser
https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/c_fill,f_auto,fl_progressive,g_center,h_675,pg_1,q_80,w_1200/22224b3df903754d84557092af44bb96.png
Everything old is new again. In 2021, fanny packs are high fashion, Clippy is a beloved icon, and KidPix—the beloved art toy that’s been untouched since the early 2000’s—is back.
Well, sort of. Software engineer Vikrum Nijjar ported one of the original editions of KidPix into Javascript and HTML, turning the forgotten piece of software into something anyone can play with, right in their browser. While there have been many different editions of Pix released over the years, Nijjar’s port features the OG KidPix 1.0 that was released in 1989.
For the uninitiated, KidPix was kind of like baby’s first Photoshop. There were wacky paintbrushes, stamps, and drawing tools, along with other features that could allow you to add gradients, duplicate parts of your canvas, and more. The only snag is that none of these tools are actually labeled. Instead, the program is designed to let you learn what the tools do as you play around with them. Instead of an actual undo button, there’s the face of a shocked man who shouts “oops!” at you while undoing your work. If you want to clear your canvas entirely, you’ll need to find the firecracker button that—after playing an equally loud explosion—leaves you with a white page.
It is, in other words, very, very silly. But that’s what makes it so fun.
G/O Media may get a commission
After about ten minutes of clicking around and listening to the bizarre sounds some of the brushes made (the spirograph’s ‘weewoo’ was my personal favorite), I have to say this gets the 90’s kid seal of approval. It’s exactly the type of thing you want to play if you want to pretend, just for a second, to be sitting in your 1st-grade computer lab. Give it a try!
Gizmodo
Human-Powered Tennis Ball Cannon
http://img.youtube.com/vi/QB6WHgeBVXw/0.jpg
Machines that fire tennis balls are as common. But we’ve never seen one that uses human power. Creative Machines’ ball cannon launches tennis balls up to 200 feet. Each time its handle is pushed, it raises a weight. When it reaches the top, it falls and becomes a piston, flinging balls into the sky using compressed air.
The Awesomer
The Clean Coder’s Guide to Laravel
https://ashallendesign.ams3.digitaloceanspaces.com/public/blog/27/clean-coders-guide-to-laravel-blog-post.png
What Is It?
Last week, I released a free PDF called “The Clean Coder’s Guide to Laravel”. It’s a 70-page PDF that covers 6 different topics of how to write clean code in your Laravel projects.
What Topics Does It Cover?
The guide contains the following 6 chapters:
- Cleaning Up Laravel Controllers – Learn how to clean up “bloated” controllers by extracting your authorisation, validation and business logic out into separate classes. This chapter shows how you can achieve this by using form requests and DTOs (data transfer objects).
- Quick & Easy Tips to Speed Up Your Application – Learn about several different tips that you can implement quickly to speed up your Laravel applications. This chapter discusses caching, optimising database queries, and reducing uneeded bloat from packages.
- How to Create Your Own Helper Functions – Learn how to create your own helper functions in Laravel and then register them using Composer.
- Using Interfaces to Write Better PHP Code – Learn about how you can use interfaces to decouple your code. This chapter discusses how you can use interfaces to make your code more testable, extendable and maintainable.
- Using the Strategy Pattern – Learn about how to use the strategy pattern to make your code more extendable and readable.
- Making Your Laravel Application More Testable – Learn about how to make your code more testable. This chapter also briefly discusses topics such as dependency injection, the Laravel service container and mocking.
How Do I Get My Copy?
This download is completely FREE! If you haven’t already downloaded it, you can simply drop your email address into the text box at the top or bottom of this post.
Laravel News Links
How to use UUID as Primary key instead of auto-increment IDs in Laravel application?
http://img.youtube.com/vi/1XIMI5kOPuc/0.jpgWhat is UUID? UUIDs stands for Universally Unique Identifiers, used to uniquely identify the table records. In this, you will learn how to replace Primary key auto-increment IDs with UUIDs. And you will also learn the advantages and disadvantages of using UUIDs in your database.Laravel News Links
Need Large, Durable Tarps? You Can Buy Ex-Highway-Billboard Vinyls for Cheap
https://s3files.core77.com/blog/images/1204259_81_109615_P3ewkYvOr.jpg
At the local home centers, small tarps are cheap, but large tarps (30 feet or above in either dimension) get pretty pricey, up into the hundreds. If you need something large but don’t want to pay a lot, there are at least two companies selling repurposed heavy-duty tarps at affordable prices.
"Each of our vinyls was once posted high in the sky alongside a freeway," writes Billboard Vinyls. "Once their lives as advertising billboards are over, billboard tarpaulin can be re-purposed for a wide range of applications. These high quality vinyls are created to be waterproof, weather resistant, and are UV protected."
"Vinyl billboard tarps are perfect for a variety of applications inlcuding hay tarps, roof covers, boat and vehicle covers, construction, weed barriers, rv skirting, dividers, slip’n’slides, agriculture, wood pile covers, vapor barriers, drop cloths, ground covers, and anything else that needs waterproofing," writes competitor Billboard Tarps. "The 3-ply design is durable, tough and long-lasting with vinyl coating and UV protection on both sides. They are specifically designed to withstand harsh outdoor weather conditions."
You don’t have a choice of what the printed ad is, of course, and the reverse sides are either black or white. Also, the sizes don’t quite correspond with what the big-boxes sell; because these were billboards, they all have letterbox aspect ratios. But you can get a lot of durable material for little money. A 14′ x 48′ reused vinyl tarp at either site goes for $75, for instance.
I’ve looked through both sites, and at press time Billboard Vinyls had a much wider range of sizes in stock.
Core77
FieldGoal – Don’t build a whole backend just for one stupid form.
https://laravelnews.imgix.net/images/fieldgoal-featured-thumb.png?ixlib=php-3.3.1
FieldGoal provides form endpoints as a service, so your simple sites can stay simple. Build your form your way, point your form at FieldGoal, submissions are delivered to wherever you want.
The post FieldGoal – Don’t build a whole backend just for one stupid form. appeared first on Laravel News.
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Memes that made me laugh 69
https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-p9KbHaFdZ9o/YQYkd_3IdBI/AAAAAAAAtUw/P9g_NxfiQG4qyhL0O6hOfv-d-OvxQZVFgCPcBGAsYHg/
Gathered from here and there over the past week. Click any image for a larger view.
(Verily, the mind doth boggle . . . because you know the only reason that warning label is there must be because somebody did that!)
More next week.
Peter
Bayou Renaissance Man
Lodata
← Discoverable APIs
OData RESTful APIs are easy to consume. The OData metadata, a machine-readable description of the data model of the APIs,
enables the creation of powerful generic client proxies and tools.
The metadata is available as standard OpenAPI v3(opens new window)
which can be loaded into API collaboration platforms like Postman.
← Discover insights
Easily connect to, model, and visualize your data in off-the-shelf business intelligence tools.
Microsoft Power BI(opens new window) supports OData as a first class data connector. Develop
reports locally, and then publish them to the PowerBI Service(opens new window)
where they’ll refresh themselves unattended, directly from your Lodata service.
Laravel News Links