Quite some time ago I wrote a mini-review of Codekit 1.0 and then another review of Prepros. Admittedly I had only been using pre-compilers for several months at that time (what a difference a year makes).  Now that its been over two years down the chasm of Sass and a more varied workflow, I feel that I can expound in ways I couldn’t before. I’ve blogged about Codekit 2 error resolutions which have been referenced on Stackoverflow.com by people who aren’t me. While I may not be the foremost expert, I believe that I have some credentials to speak with some authority on pre-compilers and CodeKit specifically. 

I haven’t seen any massive reviews on CodeKit 2 either, since its a niche market so I’ll try and make this the most definitive review written to date on CodeKit 2. I’ve also continually added thoughts and notes at the end of this review. Its been over 21 months with Codekit since the original review, which is still accurate thus almost untouched.

Now, that we’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s get to the heart of the matter at hand, shall we?

Depending on your comfort level, there’s a few items I’ll be discussing at great length, if you’re a grizzled vet, you may want to skip to the review part, otherwise keep reading. :)

Quick Glossary

Preprocessor - a utility that converts one type of data into another type of data  that another program can use. This is often used as a blanket term for programming languages that require a preprocessor. Sass and Less are often referred to as preprocessors.

Compiling - converting code into data that a program or OS or web browser can understand. In regards to web development, preprocessors are used for languages that when compiled (processed) export a file in a common language such as Sass to CSS or Markup to HTML. There are many types of compilers and interpreters that differ wildly depending what platform and programming language are used. When I am discussing compiling for the sake of this article, I am strictly talking about compiling code with a preprocessor in order to spit out code in common web languages that are read by a web browser.

Task Manager - a program that automatically performs common tasks, usually when triggered. Task managers can “listen” and automatically run a series of instructions based on an event. For web development, this usually means when a file is saved or project structure is altered, then it will trigger a preprocessor to compile code,  reload a page and other common tasks. Popular preprocessors include:

• Codekit - A Mac only utility with a graphical user interface
• Prepros - A cross platform utility with a graphical user interface
• Grunt - A command line utility built on node.js
• Gulp - a command line utility

Package Manager - a package manager is a way to automate the process of installing, upgrading, configuring, and removing software. Bower is the most popular package manager for front end developers.

Minification - Every keystroke takes up minuscule amounts of data, measured in bytes. Minification takes out unnecessary keystrokes from HTML/CSS/JS and creates a “minified” version of your code, With Javascript, even variable names are replaced with short names to save data known as uglification. Since HTML/CSS/JS are the instructions that your browser needs to render the page, this will help aid page load speeds considerably.

Concatenation - Concatenation (concat for short ) when programming means combining to two variables’ stored values. When applied to file management, concatting means combining multiple files into one file. This allows for example, many javascript files to be combined into one JS file for distribution. This reduces the amount of requests a web browser must make, and thus (usually) speeds up the data transaction from the web server.

Why do we need Sass and Less?

CSS as it turns out is missing some very powerful features such as using variables, the ability to create things programmatically or the ability to nest  attribute.  Clever developers created  Sass and LESS as CSS-like programming languages to add these sort of functions to CSS. Both languages when compiled output plain ol’ CSS. It just makes writing very complicated CSS faster. Other developers have attempted to do this same thing with Javascript with CoffeeScript and Typescript, and even HTML.

There’s plenty of places other than here that can better explain what Sass and Less are and chances are if you’re reading this review, you probably already know.

What is CodeKit?

Simply put, CodeKit is a task manager that allows you to automate code compiling for popular preprocessor languages.

CodeKit for all intents and purposes manages projects akin to Grunt.js and Gulp.js and works with Bower, so you can easily deploy code.

CodeKit takes the place of using esoteric software packages like Grunt and Gulp and attempts to make it much easier to use.  It comes out of the box with support for several very popular Sass libraries like Compass and Susy, which allow you to execute functions from these libraries without installing them manually. 

The advantage of CodeKit is a much more familiar drag and drop approach which is more comfortable to many users.  

Setting up a project requires simply drag and dropping a folder onto Codekit. CodeKit will automatically detect the languages in the project and then allow additional configuration.

CodeKit can take the place of several utilities depending on how it is set up and even be used to assist project setup.

About my workflow and technologies

Workflows are everything in web development, everyone has their favorites. Take for instance an IDE: you have the VIM purists, Textmate lovers, oldschool BBEdit fans, Coda junkies, the large swath of Sublime Text users, the alternative Espresso crowd and the Github Atom fanboys. That’s just for a text editor, so I’ll try and keep this short as I believe its important to disclose so others can compare and contrast.

At my current job, our tech stacks vary a lot. In the last year I’ve worked on projects that use Django, Drupal, Wordpress, Expression Engine, internal PHP, Python, Angular, Jekyll and even an ASP.net project and a few old Coldfusion legacy sites. 95% of our sites are Sass, although there a few LESS projects and even one plain ol’ CSS site.

Internally, we have staging servers managed by Jenkins. Most of the time work off of a localhost using Apache (or Python’s server). 

On an average day I’m bouncing between Sublime Text, Tower (Git), Photoshop, ImageAlpha+ImageOptim, Sketch, VMware/simulators and a host of small utilities (Colorsnapper, Rulers, GhostLab)  along with whatever tech stack I’m working with that day. 

Now to the review part

CodeKit does what it advertises, and does it well.   All the options you’d expect are represented in  the settings panels, including settings for a few popular frameworks such as Zurb Foundation, Burbon, Compass and Susy. 

It takes me usually less time to configure CodKit properly than it takes to set up a grunt or gulp file. 

CodeKit also creates a CodeKit config file based on each project, which makes projects sharable with other users for minimal configuration. This is great for working with other developers using CodeKit, or a single developer working with multiple computers.

Image Optimization

CodeKit offers image optimization akin to ImageOptim or a grunt task. Its the low hanging fruit of image optimization and will losslessly reduce jpgs and pngs. File  size savings vary based on images. 

It provides a baseline optimization, but users looking for better  image size reduction will want to use specialized utilities like Fireworks or  ImageAlpha.

I found myself almost never using CodeKit’s image optimization, as I tend to process all my PNGs using ImageAlpha.

Code Compiling

The heart of CodeKit is it allows you to automatically compile and concatenate a plethora of languages: Less, Sass, Stylus, Javascript, CoffeScript, TypeScript, Haml, Jade, Slim, TypeKit and Markdown. Languages can also be minified and include features like auto-prefixing and blessing, and even supported now in Compass projects as version 2.1.9.

Code compiling requires minimal set up, CodeKit will analyze your project on drag on drop but you may need to specify where compiled code ends up.

Once connected to CodeLit’s internal server wrapper, simply hit save, and CodeKit will inject your CSS changes to any web browser or reload the page on Javascript/HTML/PHP/Python changes.

CodeKit’s code compiling is reliable and when you’re in a bind, you can specify external compilers. External compilers are Ruby gems installed usually for the CLI. It means if Compass (for example) is updated, you don’t have to wait for CodeKit 2 to be updated. 

CodeKit’s error log is fantastic. However, when specifying external Sass compilers, I noticed sometimes the error logs displayed generic errors, which weren’t very helpful.

Internal Servers

Codekit 2 also does a fantastic job with external servers (locally hosted or external) which can be accessed by other devices on the network: be it a virtual machine, another computer, a mobile device and so on.  Any changes to the CSS are injected without needing a browser refresh. Editing PHP/Python/HTML/JS (or other defined files) will trigger any browsers to refresh.

CodeKit however, lacks an external inspect element like Prepros has, or address following like GhostLab. Its good but not as robust as other solutions. Any injected CSS changes are animated. Its gimmicky to see colors fade into the new value or objects change in shape or size but it also is useful as you can track all the elements that are changed.

Its fantastically useful, especially on locally hosted projects as it allows you to easily connect from an external device or virtual machine. While I’m a fan of GhostLab, I found myself eschewing it for a leaner setup of simply CodeKit on day to day operations.

Currently, IE10 and IE11 give JS errors when connected to the server, other than that live refreshing mostly works. Hopefully the bug will be resolved.

Package Management

Package management is one of my least used features of codekit… It has to do a lot with my work flow, and the way our staging servers are configured and my general laziness towards concating bower packages into my tasks, and my bad habit to often trim down popular front end Sass libs.  When I do, I use Bower from a CLI.

I’ve tested CodeKit’s Bower Package Manager, and it works but it saves almost no time if you’re creating a json file for bower. The GUI makes  finding projects easy and simple.

Source Maps

Source maps are a fantastic innovation for development, as source maps cite original source code for compiled code, allowing you to easily debug and troubleshoot.  CodeKit offers source map support which is crucial.

In terms of Grunt…

It’s impossible to describe CodeKit without comparing it directly to Grunt, its free CLI alternative. However, the utility of a such program like CodeKit is called into question as Grunt can be configured to do everything that Codekit does: image optimization, compiling code, injecting CSS changes and minification. In fact, grunt can do a few things Codekit can’t such as SVG optimization, which begins to beg the question why use Codekit in the first place?

CodeKit’s biggest advantage and disadvantage is that it lets easily create projects and workflows without Grunt. It takes admittedly a lot less time to start in on a CodeKit project. The interface lets you plug in all your defaults in a nice handy GUI without having to go through the steps of writing JSON in a gruntfile.js.

This is exceptionally empowering but somewhat limiting, everyone in your team will need a copy of CodeKit or will need to create separate task manger (grunt/gulp) to compile the Sass.  

Since CodeKit has a GUI, it  makes bouncing between projects quicker and faster than starting/stop Grunt watches. You can switch projects quickly by clicking the project you want to bounce into and it’ll automatically start watching the project files in that project, and swap your server. Codekit also tends to eat less CPU cycles than a Grunt Watch task, its better for battery life than a complex grunt task.  

CodeKit also lets you use Libsass, a Sass compiler written in C instead of Javascript. Since the code is native to the operating system, it compiles code much faster. It greatly speeds up build times, but also may not be compatible with some Sass libraries. It’s simpler than installing and configuring libsass for Grunt. 

Libsass still has its limitations, Libsass currently is incompatible with Compass and still has yet to catch with Sass 3.3 features. CodeKit automatically defaults to a non-libsass compiler for Compass projects. Its one less thing to configure properly when using CodeKit. 

Lastly, CodeKit has hooks and allows you execute Bash or Applescript after CodeKit compiles. Using hooks, you could potentially upload your changed CSS after a compile to an FTP.  Hook functionality allows beyond some of Grunt’s capabilities. To be fair, since Grunt at root is a task manager, it can be configured to execute commands like SVG or HTML minifying which CodeKit currently cannot.

Codekit 1 vs Codekit 2

Codekit 1.0 never quite fit my workflow in the way I wanted it to. A short list of complaints:

• it had maximum file watch limitation
• it wasn’t as fast as libsass
• the interface wasn’t as straightforward
• it didn’t support the latest compass
• its CSS change injection was severely limited (it’d reload Safari/Chrome’s front-most tab), not the tab with actual website..
• it’s internal server didn’t support external URLs

CodeKit 2 fixed every last one of these complaints. It’s nice to see an application evolve so elegantly. I’d still like it to borrow a few features from Prepros, mostly in the server department. More on that later…

So who is CodeKit for and is it worth it?

CodeKit is the everyman’s task manager. Its much easier to use than grunt and a great way to get introduced to the world of preprossing as you can concentrate on learning the language instead of writing esoteric grunt and gulp commands. This alone makes it worth $29. Anyone looking to start using Sass or Less probably should start with CodeKit as they can focus on coding and not setup.

When I started using preprocessing, I barely understood what Grunt was doing and found configuring it frustrating. I’m not afraid of a CLI but I find GUIs more intuitive.  Codekit 1.0 was my introduction to preprocessing but working in a team environment developing websites, I ended up simply using grunt files that I was given, or using Prepros.

Later, when I was lead on a few projects, I ended up having to configure grunt files in case we needed to bring in other developers. When CodeKit 2 was released, I was comfortable with grunt configuration.

CodeKit 2 feels like a different tool. Its polished and powerful. Its fun and quick to use… but unnecessary. To use it on projects, requires me to configure Grunt first then CodeKit.   I’ve found myself recently starting to favor Grunt again. Its more flexible, and has sped up in recent versions.

CodeKit vs Prepros

In my review of Prepros 4, CodeKit 2 had been release the same week as I was finishing up my writing. Ironically, Prepros 5 was released while writing this particular review. Codekit 2 has a leg up for speed and compatibility, and distributability (thanks to its pref files stored in projects). 

I abandoned Prepros 4 entirely for CodeKit 2 and didn’t look back. Prepross still has a few things CodeKit doesn’t, mostly the ability to inspect element on external devices, automatically detects VPNs and displays internal and external IPs for its internal server, and the ability to serve many projects without having to switch projects. Lastly, Prepros is cross platform, which is a big deal.

Running Grunt on Windows  is painful on Windows. It makes more sense to want a GUI task manager on Windows as you’re not in a *nix environment where you can natively run many common command line utilities.

CodeKit really could take a page from Prepros’s (and GhostLab’s) more powerful server. The ability to remotely use Inspect Element without any configuration can be insanely great on older devices and browsers. Plus the VPN detection is a nice touch. Prepros 5 boasts browser click syncing and following, akin to GhostLab and BrowserSync, FTP support, and now boasts Libsass and ability to use external compilers putting it in the running with CodeKit for speed. I’ve yet to use Prepros 5’s browser syncing but if it works anything like GhostLab, it’s a killer feature. 

Prepros 4 was a better product that CodeKit 1.0. CodeKit 2.0 is better than Prepros 4. The question now is if Prepros 5 is better than CodeKit 2.0? Based on toying with Prepros 5, its a tie or at least fairly close. Update: Codekit 2.0 is the better product. 

The biggest differences are:

• CodeKit’s per project config files (correction: Propros does have per project config files that can be distributed) make CodeKit more compelling for teams, ability for hooks, external compilers support, has built in package management, Syntax Checking,  and framework support.

• Prepros has a more robust external server with remote inspect element and scroll/click syncing, and FTP.

After using CodeKit 2 and managing to resolve some major errors using external compilers, and the ability use JS syntax checking, CodeKit 2 is the better task manager.

Final Thoughts 

Pros 

• CodeKit 2 feels like brand new product compared 1.0
• Fast. Libsass is super fast Sass compiling!
• Massively improved server.
• Cleaner user interface.
• Bower Package Management
• Animated CSS injection
• Easy project configuration
• No more file watch limit
• Compass is built in and can be manually configured
• Codekit Config files can be distributed with project
• Very low learning curve!
• Faster than Codekit 1 or Prepros 4
• External encoders
• Less resource intensive when idling than Grunt
• Easy to read Error Log

Cons

• Must make current project active
• Server isn’t as robust as Prepross or GhostLab
• Grunt is free and once you get over the configuration hump, more flexible and powerful.
• Trouble shooting esoteric errors will probably land you at my blog
• No built in FTP support

I highly recommend CodeKit 2, especially for people looking to get serious about web development. 

CodeKit doesn’t offer anything other than convenience and speed for seasoned developers comfortable with grunt. My days are limited for CodeKit 2 professionally, but I got my money’s worth and then some. Depending on your tech needs, you may not outgrow CodeKit as fast or at all. 

It’s worth noting CodeKit 1.0 had rather robust support after version 1.0, two years of free updates, more frequently than its competitor, Prepros (although version 5 was a free upgrade). 

Troubleshooting CodeKit is a bit of a crapshoot. Since I’ve become much more technically competent, I’ve taken it upon myself to blog every time I encounter a CodeKit 2 error and how I personally resolved it.  Even the day this review went live, I found myself queuing up another CodeKit 2 troubleshooting post. CodeKit takes a lot of the sting out of front end development but it really helps to have some CLI chops and a deeper understand of task managers. If you’re looking to avoid Bash (the terminal app) in OS X, CodeKit is only a band-aid as even CodeKit users such as myself benefit from having a basic understanding of what’s happening. To CodeKit’s defense, the errors are dependent on the technology CodeKit is built on and rarely CodeKit 2 itself. CodeKit 1.x had a habit of crashing, CodeKit 2.0 almost never does.

Lastly, the author of CodeKit, Bryan Jones has a pretty good sense of humor. It’s a weird thing to note, but sprinkled through out his website for CodeKit and anything pertaining to CodeKit are some gems. Its the sort of humor that’s pretty fantastic when you spend all day developing websites and probably not so funny if you do just about anything else.

I have a short wish list of features for CodeKit, a few are pipe dreams and a few are likely:

• Optional Remote Inspect Element (FireBug’s JS beta or otherwise would do nicely).
• Remote server tuning (I get JS errors in IE10 and IE11)
• SVG minification
• Ability read Grunt or Gulp tasks and pair them to CodeKit’s functionality (A man can dream…)
• Ability read Bower configurations and automatically install missing libraries

I happen to have wildly changing tech stacks and projects that ship after only a month of development and service agreements to maintain.  Milage may vary but if the worst thing you do is outgrow CodeKit, you won’t regret your time spent with it.  I haven’t. 

/edit: CodeKit 2.1.9 was released a day before this review went live, suggesting a trajectory away from Ruby configs, in favor of a more centralized preferences to enable things like Bless and auto-prefixing for compass projects.  CodeKit continues to evolve and make life simpler. I’ll eventually review Propros, but writing 3500+ words is time consuming. 

Codekit 2

Version(s) reviewed: 2.0 - 2.1.9

Price: $29

Incident57.com/codekit

Update - December 1st, 2014:

CodeKit 2 still has use even in my post CodeKit 2 workflow.

I was working on a Wordpress + Grunt with Browser sync. It had already gone to our QA process and thus I was fixing IE8 errors, using a standard workflow: local machine to git push to  staging server.

However, I had disabled browser sync as I was nearing production (BrowserSync requires pasting in a JS file into the footer of the site) and needed to quickly test on my IE8 virtual machine off my local wordpress install.

GhostLab refused to play nice with IE8, severely borking the site. CodeKit 2’s internal server came to the rescue, easily serving up the site to my VM.  

Update - April 8th, 2015:

I’ve all but stopped using CodeKit except when dealing with IE8 since GhostLab doesn’t play nicely with it. CodeKit is a fantastic app but moving forward as I’ve gotten deeper into grunt with grunt, all future projects probably won’t include CodeKit 2.  

This isn’t to say that CodeKit is beneath me or a lesser product but with the technical demands of my job I’ve moved outside its scope. CodeKit works reliably enough to be used in a professional setting, and I can say that with sincerity as I did for the company I work for. We’re a little more tech heavy as a do-it-all digital agency.

If you aren’t using Sass or LESS, and reading this, buy CodeKit 2 now. Sass isn’t the future of front end development, it IS front end development.

Update - August 24 2015 - Prepros: 

I finally posted my Prepros 5 review. Writing 2500 per review is exhausting but forcing myself to review a product that I haven’t had time for is more so. There’s still things I’d of liked to say but scrapped for timeliness.  The big spoiler? CodeKit 2 is a better product more suited for a professional environment. 

CodeKit 2 still is being updated, mostly with the latest precompilers. Reading my last update makes me think: “Ghostwhat?” I haven’t fired that up probably since writing the post now with BrowserSync arriving. Gulp and Grunt are just too damn powerful.

Update - late December something 2015:

I finally got around to working on redoing greggant.com, still a work in progress. I could have used Gulp or Grunt but as a single developer, with only a local Git repo, I ended up firing up Codekit and enjoyed the braindead simplicity of just writing code without all the usual leg work. 

It reminded me of using Reason after years of using Cubase. Instead of spending time configuring, I was simply composing. It wasn’t the best tool but it was the right tool just beat out a melody. That’s Codekit. 

Months ago I acquired CinemaGraph Pro as part of a bundle but I hadn’t taken it for test run until earlier this week. As a hobbyist motion graphics designer (who’s done contract work for three TV shows) and photographer, it intrigued me but I found many of the demos creepy or kinda cheesy.

Recently, I was asked to create a background for video project. Having written a few reviews, including an exhaustive examination of CodeKit, I figured I’d roll two projects into one by reviewing CinemaGraph.

An under hand pitch

CinemaGraph is unusually simple. It’s a one trick pony that allows you to create animated “stills” from a video. The end result is a picture that has selected elements animated, an effect increasingly seen on video billboards in movie theaters and kiosks in malls. 

Due to the extreme simplicity of the program, videos thus need to be captured with Flixel in mind: stationary and via tripod. Any other serious processing, such as stabilization or color correction will need to be performed by another video editing or video compositing program. Quite simply, if you do not plan ahead, you probably won’t be able to create meaningful results.

It’s also an effect that can be recreated in Apple’s (extremely more powerful which can be bought for half the price) Motion, Adobe Affect Effects, and even video editing programs such as Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premiere, and Avid Media Composer. Within these programs, it requires a few more steps: a still frame, a masked video layer and then manually looping the video with fade transitions, the last step being the most tedious.

To be fair, Flixel makes achieving this effect much easier than using any of the aforementioned programs.

In action…

For my experiment, I used a time lapse I captured with HyperLapse on my iPhone 6 during a recent wind storm in the Pacific Northwest. 

Flixel’s program is incredibly simple, open up a video, trim your loop and then start masking. Your results are revealed in real time. Its fast and its easy.

There’s no keyframes, no animated masks, no video steady cam. The only controls beyond masking are repeat, playback speeds and crossfade duration. The only features are Instagram-like Filters and basic color management.

Anyone familiar with motion graphics or video compositing…. hell, even just Photoshop can pick up and start using Cinemagraph Pro, and that’s a good thing. Flixel deserves kudos for a  simple, fun and easy to use application. Without so much as a tutorial, I was able to produce instant usable results first try for a professional project.

Pro though, it is not.

While I’m a proponent of app developers charging sustainable pricing, $99 is stiff. Compare it to other programs in the same price range: Panic Studio’s Coda or Bohemian Coding’s Sketch or Black Pixel’s Kaleidoscope, all less expensive and fully featured seriously pro-applications by written small studios. While none of these programs are video related, each offers an interface design of the same caliber and are for serious creative professionals.

Most telling is that Apple’s Motion, a full blown graphics compositing application costs HALF the money, and is capable of delivering the same results (albeit not quite as easily) and a ridiculous-to-the-point-of-absurdity more features. I just cannot emphasize this part enough.

Flixel does offer some unique features such as the ability capture video and hand off functionality from iOS to OS X.  Its nice but not $50-more-than-Motion-nice.

While Flixel allows GIF export, I found it was extremely advantageous  to export to video and use GifBrewery to generate my GIFs.

Final Thoughts:

CinemaGraph Pro is fun, but gimmicky. Its a great way to create infinitely looping stills, suited mostly to nature scenes or creepy statue humans. As an avid hiker, I may find mild use for it, and as a front end web developer, it’s yet-another-tool in my expansive arsenal of media apps. While Apple’s Motion can recreate the effect, it’s much more cumbersome. Motion however,  can create animated masks, and use vector and raster masks. Even at creating animated “still”, Motion has the upper-hand. 

The real problem with Cinemagraph is entirely its price.

Easily the most telling part is the app was temporarily on sale for $15 on the App store after being slashed from $200.

At $99, I cannot in good conscience recommend it to anyone other than working professional who has a seriously need for it. Apple’s Motion is insanely good deal these days. It certainly has a higher learning curve but its  fantastically more powerful. 

Flixel’s application at somewhere between $15-$25 seems like the correct price. At $99, is a steal, and not for you. Its far too limited. The saddest part is I actually really like CinemaGraph. It’s fast. It’s fun. It works nicely in a motion graphics work flow.  I was able to get stellar results first try.

Version reviewed: 1.5

The iconic “Scumbag Steve” hat is certainly overused but also eloquently summarizes Uplay.

Common PC / Windows Far Cry 4 Fixes

Gaming and Windows are two things I usually don’t blog about. That said I spent several hours  battling THREE separate problems with Uplay, I figured i’d spread the knowledge. Hopefully someone will find this useful.  Ubisoft has some great games, so its unfortunate to see them marred so badly by the problematic Uplay service.

GameSpot even has written that users are complaining the game marred with bugs and glitches. It looks as if Ubisoft is aware of plenty of other problems, with a new patch 1.6 arriving on December 30th, 2014.

For those experiencing random crashes, 1.6 patch (weighing in at a hefty 577.4 MB) includes RAM leak fixes among other tweaks. Make sure you’re running the latest version of Far Cry.

Problem #1: I downloaded Far Cry 4 via Steam but I can’t launch the game

Apparently downloading the game from steam doesn’t install everything you need, nor does the game appear to alert you that need additional software. To remedy this problem, You’ll need to download and install uPlay, at the uPlay Website. 

Problem #2: Far Cry 4 stopped saving game / Far Cry 4 won’t save game.

In my case, I was able to play Far Cry 4 for several hours before it stopped saving games. If I went to the pause menu and hit Save game, the yellow save icon flashed normally, but my mouse pointer disappeared and my keyboard stopped working. The game acted like it was still running properly, as the menu sfx continued to play and the menu background animations continued to run.

I couldn’t find a straight answer for this but I figured out a solution. It appears to be that the Uplay service (responsible for managing game saves) no longer has the correct permissions to save the game. Essentially, the Uplay service has become locked out of its own directory. To remedy this, do the following:

1. Locate the Uplay service, it should be under Program Files/Ubisoft/. Drag it to a safe location, such as the desktop. (We’ll need it for later).
2. Download the Uplay installer and run the installer. 
3. Drag from your old Uplay folder the Save Games folder into the newly installed one.
4. Open up data, drag over all the missing files into the Ubisoft/data folder. Do not overwrite any folders.
5. Launch the Uplay application. It should take a few moments to sync up.

I highly recommend preemptively following The Honest Canadian’s fix (see below) to prevent any future problems from happening.

Problem #3: Uplay launcher has stopped working. A problem caused the program to stop working correctly.

Part 1 - The Honest Canadian’s fix

Another studious blogger (The Honest Canadian) posted a fix guide here, complete with pictures. However it didn’t quite work for me. First try Honest Canadian’s fix, (if it doesn’t work, you won’t harm anything).

1. Locate your Uplay Folder, under Program Files/Ubisoft/
2. Right click the folder and choose Properties.
3. Click the ‘Security’ Tab and click ‘Edit’. 
4. Select your  User profile (the one that reads YOUR\Users and set the Allow column of check marks to ‘Full Control’. Click Ok.
5. Launch the Uplay application to verify it is working.

However, this didn’t work. I attempted to declare ownership of the folder only to find the permissions had been set in such a way that all the files and folders couldn’t be changed by me or any other user.

You may find that you cannot alter any of the settings in the Uplay folder.

Verify that you are signed in as an admin. If you aren’t signed in an admin, first try the Honest Canadian’s fix.

 Part 2 - The Honest Canadian’s Fix didn’t work :(

Assuming you are signed in as an admin and the Honest Canadian’s fix did not work, you’ll need to combine double whammy of my Save Game fix and the Honest Canadian Fix.

1. Locate the Uplay service, it should be under Program Files/Ubisoft/. Drag it to a safe location, such as the desktop. (We’ll need it for later).
2. Download the Uplay installer and run the installer. 
3. Drag from your old Uplay folder the Save Games folder into the newly installed one.
4. Open up data, drag over all the missing files into the Ubisoft/data folder. Do not overwrite any folders.
5. Launch the Uplay application. It should take a few moments to sync up.
6. Right click the Uplay and choose Properties.
7. Click the ‘Security’ Tab and click ‘Edit’. Select your  User profile (the one that reads YOUR\Users and set the Allow column of check marks to ‘Full Control’. Click Ok.
8. Launch the Uplay application to verify it is working

Problem #4:  MSVCR100.dll Missing Error

I haven’t encountered this but during my searching for answers I saw this fix. If you see this, you need to Install the redistributables

1. Go to <path-to-game>\Support\Software\
2. Install all items in this folder.

Problem #5:  Crashing at Start Screen 

Again, this is an issue I haven’t experienced but other players report some success doing the following:

1. Turn uplay to offline mode and play offline campaign.
2. Rebooting if problem continues.

Nerd Stuff:

I probably won’t be able to help anyone troubleshoot their Far Cry problems as I’m Mac-using, unix-loving, web developer. Windows is the operating system that I boot to play games and to test Internet Explorer. I’m not a hardcore gamer, but I do enjoy games. Chances are if you’ve been gaming for a half-decade on Windows, you know as much as I do if not more.

Windows users may not understand this, but the permissions issue frustrated me immensely without the ability to just jump the terminal and type: sudo chmod -R 777 /Program Files/Ubisoft/Uplay. However, permissions are permissions and can be a pain on any OS.

Also, shout out to the Honest Canadian, whoever you are, you magnificent bastard. His/her/their(whatever preferred pronoun)’s post lead me to pin-point the save game issue as a permissions issue.

Thanks for reading! I’m all ears for feedback, and happy to respond.

Edit: Dec 4th, 2014

Added MSVCR100.dll + Start Screen fix.

Edit: Dec 30th, 2014

Added info about the Far Cry 4 1.6 patch

Before we get started…

Disclaimer: This tutorial is for for jailbroken iOS 7.x / iOS 8.x phones with iFile, available via Cydia. iFile is a utility that allows you to access your phone’s file structure. This will NOT work with non-Jailbroken iOS devices. You can add custom ringtones and text tones using non-jailbroken devices.

Image: iFile logo. iFile is easily one the best jailbreak mods money can buy

I decided recently I’d like to add the Mac OS Classic sounds from OS 7, OS 8 and OS 9 on my iPhone, however I was at work and couldn’t sync my phone to my work computer. Besides, who doesn’t love the Wild Eep, Sosumi or Quack? 

You can download classic error sounds here. Edit: this url now no longer seems to work, see for more details. The Mac OS classic sound pack even comes with .m4r versions of each file, iOS’s native ringtone/text tone format.

Not one to be deterred so easily, I decided to do it manually. 

Step 1:

First connect your iPhone and computer to the same WAP (wifi network).

Step 2:

Next, fire up iFile and click the web server (the globe icon). 

Step 3:

Plug the IP address into your web browser on your desktop computer (In this example its 192.168.0:103:10000). 

Step 4:

Locate the Ringtones folder, in will located in var -> /stash -> _.somefilename -> Ringtones. 

Note: You should have several folders in /var/stash/ so you’ll have manually locate it.

Upload your .m4r  sounds in the Ringtone folder, they should be in the .m4r format.  There are several utilities that can do this for you or you can use iTunes.

Step 5:

iOS 7 & 8 use a .plist to list your ringtones. In theory, you could manually alter  so your new sounds show, but its much easier to use a Cydia tweak.

Connect  to Cydia and search for ToneEnabler. Its free, tiny and open source and will allow iOS to find your new ringtones without using a plist. Once installed, any manually installed ringtones will show up in the Preferences -> Sounds lists.

Install the tweak, (it’ll require you to Restart Springboard).

Step 6

Enable your sounds on your iPhone from Preferences -> Sounds

And that concludes manually adding custom ringtones and text tones to iOS via iFile.

More iFile Tutorials: 

Using iFile + Zeppelin to create custom carrier icons

If you haven’t been to Modern.ie and you’re a web developer, you really should. Microsoft provides free VMs (Virtual Machines) for pretty much every Internet Explorer configuration imaginable for every major VM platform: Parallels, VMware, VirtualBox etc.

Strangely the VMs come pre-configured with below the recommended settings for VMware.  It only takes a minute or two reconfigure the virtual machines properly.

Step #1:

Shut down your virtual machine

Step #2:

Right click your VM and click settings

Step #3:

Under settings, click “Processor’s and Memory”. First you’ll want to give your VM access to at least 2 processor cores if you’re on an i5 or i7 or Core2Quad..

Secondly, you’ll want to allow the VMware machine access to at least the recommended amount of RAM. If you’re a a computer with an ample amount of RAM (16GB) you may want to give double the recommended amount of RAM for increased performance.

You may note the “Enable Hypervisor applications in this virtual machine” which may benefit speed for Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7 configurations and Parallels recommends it for speed. 

To quote StackOverflow poster David Pokluda

The main difference is that Hyper-V doesn’t run on top of the OS but instead along with the system it runs on top of a thin layer called hypervisor. Hypervisor is a computer hardware platform virtualization software that allows multiple operating systems to run on a host computer concurrently.

Sounds good right? However for Windows 8 it requires additional configuration  and so does Windows 8.1. You’ll want to enable Hypervisor for Windows 8 if you intend to use Visual Studio or the Windows Phone SDK. Note: If you do not properly configure it will decrease performance for Windows 8 since Windows 8 has drivers for Intel Vt engine built in.

So should you or shouldn’t you use it? For Windows XP, Vista and 7, yes, otherwise for Windows 8, check the links above.  If you have any doubts, you can safely skip enabling hypervisor as it only provides modest gains for VM performance when running one VM for browser testing.

Step #5

Boot your VM, VMware may ask you to upgrade, click yes. Once booted Windows will install new drivers and need to reboot. Reboot one last time, and enjoy.

On Tuesday, November 25th, I posted fixes for the video-game, Far Cry 4. It was the most read blog post I made in November despite only being up for 5 days. 

While writing the post, I could barely contain my absolute disdain I had for the new gaming services / digital distributions and digital rights mechanisms.

Gaming services are the new shovelware.

In the past few years, after watching the rise of Valve’s Steam and Apple’s App Store, in an effort to successfully monetize intellectual property, we’ve seen an explosion in gaming services…. mostly forced upon users.

The idea is simple, if you design a game that requires a  service/distribution platform service, then buyer is converted into that service’s user base. However, these same companies still need Steam in order to reach customers and thus you have services that replicate (often poorly) features that Steam has perfected over the course of a decade. 

The offenders are many: Rockstar Social. Uplay. Windows Live. Origin. Yet, none of these services incentivize users to love them. Instead of buy -> install -> play, the wonderful three step process that Valve introduced and Apple took and ran away with. Now, when you buy a game on Steam, you have to buy -> install -> register for service -> verify registration -> sign into service -> play. 

These would be a minor annoyance if they always worked smoothly but often they don’t. 

Some services are only quasi-evil MyCrysis by CryTek and WB Play is nagware at best. A very small handful of services are good, Gearbox’s SHiFT is completely optional and nag-free. You can chose to sign in, get some nice bonuses and it doesn’t try to replicate the functions that Steam does. The WB gaming service with Shadows of Mordor I’ve successfully avoided. I’m not sure what it does (it replicates some social functions that Steam does) but I don’t care. I don’t play games online (besides Borderlands).

In the past two years, I’ve had three separate games rendered unplayable entirely thanks to their services: Max Payne 3, Fable 3 and Far Cry 4. I am not hardcore gamer. I don’t even call myself a gamer, nor do I play a lot of games. I play games occasionally in Windows on my Mac Pro. With Max Payne 3, I could not play the game until I signed into service and unfortunately under OS X would not let me sign in. I had to download the 30 GB game in Windows, sign up in a web browser (sign ups within the game were broken) and then sign into the game, save my game, reboot and copy my game save to Max Payne in OS X. Fable 3 defeated me. The save game corrupted so I stopped playing. Not long after,  Windows 7 borked and I had to reinstall (I kept all my data). I forgot all about Windows Live. Fast forward to months later, I was ready to try my hand at Fable 3 again. Sadly, since I don’t know what email address I registered the game to I can’t sign in to play it despite having a legit key tied to my Steam account. Most recently Far Cry 4 had not one but three separate glitches that broke the game, all entirely thanks to Uplay. After hours of work, I managed to fix it and even documented how in a blog post. I’m privileged class of user, who’s been who’s had been using computers since 1992, had internet connection since 1997, has a technology degree, and works as a web developer. When I play games, I’m not out to replicate my job.

We’ve seen some entirely terrible schemes, such as Ubisoft’s Uplay scheme the required an active internet connection AT ALL TIMES, Window’s Live’s geo-regioning (akin to a DVD or Blu-Ray) which can render a game unplayable. Origin has been accused of spyware, so much so that it’s EULA violates German law.. WB Play has yet to fully materialize but I fear we’ll see something akin to UltraViolet. I’ve gone as far as to use hacks to remove said services on games I’ve legally owned.

I was thinking I may eventually pick up Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag, but now I won’t. This is plea that’ll land on def ears but please stop using proprietary systems to manage games. If they offer enhanced functionality, let me choose to opt in. Gearbox’s SHiFT should be the gold standard: Optionally enhance your game, and do not replicate functionality that Steam already provides (and does a better job of).

Ubisoft Uplay, Electronic Arts Origin, and Microsoft Windows Live as a paying customer please stop, don’t turn me into a pirate. I love Steam and I hate your service(s).

On September 2, 2013, I wrote a post entitled “When learning to code always type it, do not copy and paste…“ It’s a clever anecdotal bit of advice that I read once on someone else’s blog. I’ve tried to track down the original source but have never been able to do so.

As of writing this, it has been liked 18 times and reblogged 8 times. That’s just a tiny ripple on Tumblr but its easily my biggest success in the Tumblr-verse.

The Tumblr platform

Tumblr’s biggest draw is its ability to easily reblog content from other sources. t is a novel idea as it allows content to be reshared on someone's own blog easily. The end result is usually a user’s collection of images and quotes that a user finds interesting or fits a theme. Combined with the ability to follow other bloggers, Tumblr has lead to the creation of range of large and diverse communities.

That said, I originally selected Tumblr as my blogging platform since it provided the right amount of customization, ease-of-use, and external management. Having set up more than a few Word Press blogs, I wanted to avoid maintenance as much as possible. The community aspect of Tumblr is a bonus, but I almost never participate in it, and almost never reblog or reshare content.

Statistically speaking, reblogging is an interesting proposition. Any time content is reblogged or found via the Tumblr hashtag search; it cannot be tracked by Google Analytics as the GA-code isn’t embedded within posts. However, I can track how many referrals I get from other blogs, as my posts are attributed to me and reblogged posts may create enough agency to drive someone to visit my blog.

How does this stack up against likes?

To better understand how likes translate to page views, it's important to understand what is normal traffic for my blog.

Weekly sessions (unique visitors) from September 2nd, 2013 to November 15th, 2014. 

My blog gets roughly 600 sessions per week according to Google Analytics, meaning that it it gets roughly 600 separate visitors a week. A single session is defined by Google as a single visitor to the same website within a half hour period. If a repeat visitor comes to my blog twice within a half hour or clicks another page, this is counted as a single session. If a visitor revisits my blog 2 hours later, it is counted as a new session. Google Analytics also lets you track how many repeat visitor your web property receives.

Top 10 pages by Pageviews

One might expect my most liked post to show up in my top ten pages, since September 2nd, 2013, but it is plainly absent and doesn’t even appear within the top 100 posts on my blog. One might also expect that my top posts are nearly as successful on Tumblr as my most reblogged post.

My top post accounts for 22.56% of my traffic but only has 4 tumblr likes and 2 tumblr reblogs. In fact, none of the top five posts have more than 2 reblogs or 4 likes.

My most reblogged post has a grand total of 8 pageviews. The spikes in the above graphic represent a single page view.

As we can see, there’s almost no correlation between likes/reblogs and pageviews on a post. Perhaps, instead of driving pageviews to the reblogged/liked article, one again might assume Tumblr is driving more visitors to the first page of my blog, which isn’t the case.

Social media makes up for less than 1% of all the traffic to my blog and of that, Tumblr only accounts for 24.49% of social media traffic, meaning that Tumblr accounts for less than 0.25% of my entire traffic, tallying for a grand total of 60 visitors.

Processing the data…

What we can infer from this is that Tumblr rarely results in traffic acquisition for my blog. While I may get additional exposure from reblogs, it rarely results in anyone visiting my blog directly. Google Analytics reveals that there’s little correlation, if any, between likes/reblogs and pageviews. Tumblr also obfuscates traffic through reblogging and its own internal “follow” news feed. While I can see how many followers I have, its impossible to know how many people are reading my posts through Tumblr. My hunch is that it isn’t many.

Depending on the nature of the Tumblr blog, it is possible to be far more successful within the Tumblr-sphere than it is via web searches. People creating popular image macros/gifs/photos that aren’t easily indexed by search engines possibly see far more reblogs than pageviews.

While my case study can really only can accurately reflect what is true of my own blog, I’d be willing to bet in the case of technical blogs featuring long posts probably do not fair nearly as well on Tumblr.  When gauging success, Google Analytics is a far better metric for this instance.

The Chrome team is delighted to announce the promotion of Chrome 39 to the stable channel for Windows, Mac and Linux. Chrome 39.0.2171.65 contains a number of fixes and improvements, including:

• 64-bit support for Mac
• A number of new apps/extension APIs 
• Lots of under the hood changes for stability and performance 

- Chrome Releases

Now we can use 4GB+ for a single tab in Chrome.

VMware Fusion plays nicely with the Virtual Machine Disk format (.vmdk) seeing as its a spin off of its enterprise VMware software like VMware Workstation.

You can mount vmdk preinstalled images in VMware but you can also install from vmdk images. In this example, I have a OS X 10.7 Lion Installer Disk .vmdk and VMware Fusion 7. These instructions should be OS agnostic and the process hasn’t changed in VMware Fusion 8 to my knowledge.  

These steps can be mimicked using other operating systems, in fact only step 9 differs when using Ubuntu or Windows.

First MAKE A COPY OF YOUR VMDK as VMware Fusion can break your install disk image. Once you have a copy to work from, launch VMware Fusion and select create new virtual machine.

Now let’s begin…

1) Select More Options from the lower right hand corner.

2) Select create custom virtual machine

3) Select the version of the OS you are installing, (I’m using OS X 10.7) and create the image.

4) Select “Use an existing virtual disk” and click “chose Virtual disk…” to locate your disk image. VMware Fusion will create a dummy Virtual Machine for you to save. 

5) Once created, you should see your VM’s window, select the configuration options (the wrench icon on the far left)

6) Select “Add Device” and then “New Hard Drive”

7) Configure your new hard drive disk image and confirm that its in your device list under the “Removable Devices” on your settings panel.

8) Boot the virtual machine.

9) You’ll need need to partition your virtual machine’s space from the installer. In OS X, this is located under the Disk Utility. Click the Erase and setup up the volume with HFS+ journaled.

For other operating systems, you’ll need to use the installer’s utility to properly format the blank volume to a format compatible with the operating system in question. 

10) Now you can begin installing as you have a volume to install from!

11) Wait… once installed, your VM will reboot, but will relaunch with the installer CD.  You’ll need to shut down the VMware machine.

12) Go to your settings for the VM, and select the Startup Disk and select your new volume.

13) You’ll need to remove the Installer disk. Click on the Hard Disk, and select the advance options and select “Remove Hard Disk”

Now you should be able to boot your Virtual Machine normally and use it.

You may see this error when compiling with Sass or Compass, in CodeKit or Grunt or otherwise: 

Usually it’s a result of a bad compile, and you’re seeing this instead of a helpful error log. 

Ignoring fast-stemmer-1.0.2 because its extensions are not built. Try: gem pristine fast-stemmer-1.0.2
Ignoring hitimes-1.2.2 because its extensions are not built. Try: gem pristine hitimes-1.2.2
Ignoring posix-spawn-0.3.9 because its extensions are not built. Try: gem pristine posix-spawn-0.3.9
Ignoring redcarpet-3.1.2 because its extensions are not built. Try: gem pristine redcarpet-3.1.2
Ignoring redcarpet-2.3.0 because its extensions are not built. Try: gem pristine redcarpet-2.3.0
Ignoring yajl-ruby-1.1.0 because its extensions are not built. Try: gem pristine yajl-ruby-1.1.0

Fire up a terminal window and try the following:

compass version

Likely you will see the error echoed the same as your failed compile. You’ll need to resolve these using a simple terminal gem pristine

In your terminal, you’ll need to resolve each of the following errors individual.

Example:

For the first error you’d need correct the install, so you’ll want to run

Ignoring fast-stremmer-1.0.2 because its extensions are not built. Try: gem pristine fast-stemmer-1.0.2 

From the terminal  run:

sudo gem pristine fast-stemmer

This will for the rebuild the gem install and resolve that particular error. You’ll need to repeat this for each individual instance of the gem pristine error.

Each built should look something like the following.

mycomputer:username$ sudo  gem pristine hitimes

Restoring gems to pristine condition...

Building native extensions.  This could take a while...

Restored hitimes-1.2.2

Now you should be able to continue compiling Compass.

If you need a primer for what/how net neutrality affects you, the most eloquent explination comes from none other than Matt Inman of the The Oatmeal fame.

 The success and protection of the internet hinges on how successfully proponents of a free and open web can frame their argument. The argument can be boiled down, refined and distilled to:

Net Neutrality is free speech.

Opposing it is censorship.

I’m not the only one it seems that isn’t fond of Helvetica Neue for my OS font. 

Despite its grand reputation, Helvetica can’t do everything. It works well in big sizes, but it can be really weak in small sizes. Shapes like ‘C’ and ‘S’ curl back into themselves, leaving tight “apertures”–the channels of white between a letter’s interior and exterior. So each shape halts the eye again and again, rather than ushering it along the line. The lowercase ‘e,’ the most common letter in English and many other languages, takes an especially unobliging form. These and other letters can be a pixel away from being some other letter, and we’re left to deal with flickers of doubt as we read.  - Tobias Frere-Jones

And while we’re on the subject of screens, sure, type legibility across the board is going to get better with the advances in Retina displays. But until everyone has Retina displays, you’re going to have a lot of squinty, frustrated Apple users. Helvetica is just not fun to read at small sizes—in books, on posters, or on iPads—and it never will be. - Gizmodo

Lucida Grande despite the designer bitch-fest was a workhorse font, akin to monospace fonts like Courier. While Helvetica has its place in design, it’s an inferior font at small type faces, retina display be damned. 

Pictured: Yosemite search using Lucida Grande. Lucida Grande may not be the end all, be all of typography but its legibility is superb at smaller resolutions

Fortunately for those of us addicted Lucida Grande or at least feel that its a superior option for onscreen legibility, there’s a fix for that. Lucida Grande

Simply download and install the zip from github and run the application. Reboot and you’re back to running Yosemite (tested on the public release) with Lucida Grande.  

Even though I was playing lots of games, I still didn’t call myself a “gamer” because I had associated that term with the games I wasn’t playing — instead of all the ones I was playing. This was largely because I’d bought into the myth that to be a “real gamer,” you had to be playing testosterone-infused blockbuster franchises like Grand Theft Auto, God of War or Call of Duty.

Anita Sarkeesian, It’s Game Over for ‘Gamers’

I couldn’t agree more with her, I ran a very popular cheat code websites for years, PS2cheats.com (No longer under my control) for 7 years. The website made me enough income that I never had to hold down another job during my long duration of college… and yet, I distanced myself from gaming and the term “gamer” during that time, back in the early 2000s. Gamer culture embarrassed me to the degree that I wouldn’t even mention my popular website in person in causal conversation despite having serious “gamer” credentials. I did not want to be associated with videogames, and nearly stopped playing them. Even today, I don’t talk about videogames with many people outside of a select few people . I avoid gaming as a topic for this blog despite owing my current job as a front end web developer directly to gaming . PS2cheats is where wrote my JS script, my first CSS line, and switched to writing HTML by hand.

Wayback machine of Version 4 of PS2cheats.com, 

When my Xbox 360 experienced the Red Ring of Death, I didn’t bother to replace it. I spent 3 years without a game console besides my iPhone and my Mac. The games I played were iOS games like Zen Bound, Plants vs Zombies, Triazzle, Spider and games ported to the Mac such as Portal 1 & 2, Borderlands (with friends) and indie games like World of Goo, Crayon Physics, and Thomas Was Alone.

For my birthday my brother bought me a PS3, and I rediscovered gaming That Game Company’s Flower and Journey games and Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us reminded me that there still could be a mass market for games willing to break the boundaries and narrow confines that appeal to a certain demographic. I still enjoy games but I couldn’t give a royal damn about being a gamer. I even celebrate the death “gamer” as it means that gaming is no longer an activity owned by testosterone-driven white male gamer. I live in an age where mom plays more videogames on her iPad than I do.

The worst part is, I suspect a good portion of the #gamergate community are 80s children such as myself. I grew up, and its time my games did too. Hats off to Anita Sarkeesian, keep fighting the good fight.

Now back to our regular program of web development, Apple tidbits and digital audio…

I never thought I’d be defending Walmart or any other oligopsony in a blog post, but here I go…

Pictured:  Widely distributed screenshot used as evidence of Walmart’s “Fat Girl Costumes”.

The Orlando Sentinel ran the following story.

 Despite growing complaints on Twitter, Walmart has yet to remove a section for “fat girl costumes” on its website.

The plus-size Halloween costume section was first pointed out by Kristyn Washburn who tweeted the corporation with her complaint on Tuesday.

Gawker owned Jeezebel.com added fuel the fire with its own speculation.

As of this morning, the Fat Girl section is still up; it features a lot of the same outfits as the Women’s Plus Size Adult section, which makes us think some web developer created the section as a “hilarious” joke and then neglected to change it.

CNN reports Walmart even apologized.

Walmart found itself sending apology tweet after apology tweet Monday after the Twitterverse raked it over the coals for a major goof on its website.

For whatever inexplicable reason, the retail giant’s site featured a Halloween category, titled “Fat Girl Costumes.”

You won’t find it there now, thank goodness, but it stayed there for a large part of the morning – and long enough for multiple screen grabs.

The real story

As much as I object Walmart for any number of ethical, moral, economic and staggering number of other reasons, this story is too good to be true. This is one crime that Walmart isn’t guilty of. Allow me to illustrate.

Note the URL being presented in the article:

http://www.walmart.com/c/kp/fat-girl-costumes

“Fat-girl-costumes” is simply a search string. Many websites place queries as human readable strings into URLs for search engine optimization (SEO) and for human legibility. This is further evidenced (in the screenshot above) that this is a search query as there isn’t a gender selected on the left hand side. When I tested this myself, I was presented with a mish-mash of adult costumes, plus and regular sized.

Due to my decent level of technical proficiency, I knew intrinsically that I could manipulate the values used.  With this bit of knowledge, I easily created my own  Walmart listing. In the sake of faux-moral outrage, I decided to make my own morally reprehensible URL.

http://www.walmart.com/c/kp/dead-children

Clicking it will take you to a search page, simply clear out the address bar, click a department, take a screenshot and you now have evidence of Walmart’s support of Dead Children!

Pictured: An undoctored/unphotoshopped screenshot.

Social media as evidence…

The fun doesn’t stop there. You can even take this to Facebook as further proof. Using my faux controversy URL,  http://www.walmart.com/c/kp/dead-children, watch what happens when I post a link to it on FaceBook:

Pictured: Edited out last names, but otherwise undoctored.

It’s complete with an auto-generated thumbnail of a pixie-goth girl(?), and a note “shop for dead children”, and as a bonus, my mom approves! Clearly Walmart supports selling dead children (and my family has no moral compass), right? 

What’s happening with Facebook?

Web pages contain various bits of data, known as OpenGraph tags, that are used to assist popular social media sites with previews and to prune for other data.

On massive websites like Walmart, Amazon, BestBuy (just to name a few) logically/algorithmic determined data automatically populate these tags within a webpage for social networks as it’d be unsustainable to create each of these by hand. The data used on my FaceBook Post simply was Walmart’s best guess for “Dead Children”.  Computer algorithms have no morality.

We can explicitly disallow combinations of words in a search field, like the famous, nearly decade old, 1,121 banned NFL Jersey names (warning adult language), but even then the algorithm and logic is not making  moral call. It is simply checking the jersey name against a list of predefined words and rules that a human concocted list.  (Funfact: my last name is on the list of banned from Nike+ ID  thanks to yuppie-clothing-line Gant). It’s up to humans to make filters in the computer logic that defines our sense of morality (or sense of intellectual property law in the case of my last name).

Walmart appears to have no such filter, and thus (much like Amazon) can be searched for any string of words you can conjure. You’ll be surprised, as you’ll continue get search results even with vulgar words. You’re probably thinking “Why on earth would they allow this?” In Walmart’s (and especially Amazon’s) case, they carry massive amounts of books, music and movies, some of which have raunchy titles or cover explicit subject matter. Art often ventures into dark subject matters, be it sexism, racism, slavery, prostitution and so forth. The movie “12 years a slave” may come off as crass without any context, and I can’t even begin to list how many great works of music have crass album titles. Censoring search terms would potentially unintentionally obfuscate access to many movies and books, which in Walmart and Amazon’s case, would equate to lost profits. Walmart isn’t a great patron of the arts (even if Walton’s own a gallery) but it loves money. 

While guilty of many things, Walmart isn’t guilty of creating “Fat girl costumes” as a bad joke as Jezebel suggested above. Rather, its logic matched easily “girl” and “costume” and generated a webpage, complete with title, much akin to my “dead children” example. Walmart isn’t the first to be hit with controversial product listings. Amazon last year was swamped with outrage over a seller who auto-generated thousands of unclever variations of “Keep Calm” shirts. At least in the case of Amazon, the products were real. This isn’t. There are plenty of reasons to dislike Walmart but this isn’t one of them.

Seeing a message that reads something like the following?:

Error: File to import not found or unreadable: normalize-version.
Load paths:
/yourpath/to/yourstyles.scss
Sass::Globbing::Importer
on line 10 of /yourpath/to/yourstyles.scss
Use --trace for backtrace.


Usually you’ll encounter this from a gem installed library, my current example I’m using Compass Normalize.css, which requires Compass.  There’s quite a few globs out there that require Compass to run that aren’t bundled as bower components but rather Ruby gems. 

First make sure your have compass installed on your Codekit project, you can see this in your project list.

If you do not see Compass listed, right click on your project and  select "Edit Project Settings" on your project in question. Scroll down to the Frameworks and click “Install Compass”, make sure your paths are accurate before proceeding.

If you’re still seeing problems, you may need to swap your Sass compiler. 

Happy Coding!