In which I nearly write bad Javascript, buy some games and make a small difference to humanity.
Contributing to GOV.UK
I got a sticker recently (above) for a contribution I made to the GOV.UK Design System.
Also I just found out that something I helped to build on GOV.UK has been used by 10.5 million people since March 2018 (as of March 2019). The same thing also won a design award from D&AD.
I feel good about these things. Feels like a tick in the 'worthy' column.
Javascript puzzle
Here's a quick quiz for any Javascript developers out there. Without running it in your console, what's the result of this code?
"1st - 2nd, 3rd: 4th".replace(/[,-:]/g,'')
If your answer was something like "1st 2nd 3rd 4th" then congratulations! You didn't get it right, just like me the first time. The correct answer is...
st nd rd th
The regex above can be translated as 'replace any of the characters within the square brackets with an empty character', except that the dash is a special character, denoting a range, so the regex actually says 'replace any of the characters between , and : with an empty character'. This range includes all numbers.
I was nearly caught out by that one.
Cheese and onion crisps
How did anyone think of making cheese and onion flavoured crisps? It's one of the most common flavours, after ready salted and salt and vinegar, but those are at least flavour combinations that occur in daily life. Who ate a plate of onions and thought "hey this could really do with some cheese"?
I just don't see how it came up in any of the early pitch meetings for possible crisp flavours. Unless the people who pioneered crisps had some weird eating habits. We're probably lucky the third most common crisp flavour isn't chocolate and peas.
I bought a Humble Bundle
After a year or more of being subscribed to emails about Humble Bundles, I've finally bought one.
It's not that they're generally unappealing, it's just taken til now for there to be a bundle where I was interested in every game in it. It felt wasteful to buy a bunch of games just to get one of them and never play the rest.
Having said that, as previously lamented, I don't have time to play the games I already own, never mind these eight new ones I've just acquired. Let's have a quick look at the exciting games I won't be playing anytime soon!
- Party Hard - sneak into your neighbour's noisy party and murder people to shut it down. This is basically the game I've always wanted but never imagined could be real.
- The Final Station - post apocalyptic train journey with resource gathering and retro graphics, didn't get amazing reviews but looks great.
- Clustertruck - worth it for the title alone.
- Diaries of a Spaceport Janitor - I've actually played this one a bit! It was very garish and confusing, but I want to play more.
- Speedrunners - I doubt I have the reflexes needed to play this well, but I might enjoy a bit of the single player.
- Hello Neighbour - similar premise to Party Hard, but with some complex AI designed to trap the player. Not super excited about this one but sounded interesting.
- Punch Club - a sort of fighting game RPG? I like the graphics.
- Streets of Rogue - GTA but retro? I think? Could be good.
If any of them turn out to be intriguing I might write about them at some point. Or I might never find time to play them. We'll see.