Jon's Stupid Blog

The Story of Stupid Apps

Thursday, January 5, 2017

2016 Event Mash Up

Description

This app uses JavaScript to perform a basic "Name Generator" that displays a made up event based on a popular person/character and event of 2016.

THE APP

How it works

The JavaScript grabs the strings from the two input boxes. It checks to make sure that something has actually been typed in both boxes. If either is empty it tells you to get your act together and fill the boxes. I mean come on! Its a pretty easy request. It then finds the ASCII value of the Uppercase version of the first letter of the string and uses that value to access a circular array of predefined outputs. That output is spliced into a sentence and displayed on the page.

Its pronounced MehMehExVuhEEEEEEeee

Conception

For my first app I wanted something simple. I figured a Name Generator wouldn't be that hard and would also be easy to make reusable. One would just have to edit the outputs and they could make any name generator they desired.

Whilst thinking about name generators I was also thinking about 2016. It was a different kind of year. Lots of interesting world events and people. I wanted to use that somehow. Internet memes continued to become a more mainstream entertainment as they invade the sites even my parents use. I wanted to use that. So, I decided my name generator would generate an event for each user. It creates a mash up of a person or character from 2016 and an event or trend from 2016. So, if the 2016 US Election didn't make you lose your mind, maybe Ted Cruz doing a water bottle flip will.

I originally made this app as a Java Spring App and tried to put that on a page as an applet. As it would turn out, Chrome and Java Applets have had a steadily declining relationship. Chrome has been slowly tightening its security on Applets and required a sight to have a Certificate for the app even run. Suffice to say, it got complicated really fast. So, I dropped my Java App. You can still look at the source code here.


The early test phase
There are some differences between the original Java version and JavaScript version. As you can see in the picture. The original version only has one text input. It used the first character value for the first name and then search for a space. It used the character after the first space to for the last name. It wasn't perfect algorithm, but assuming the user only entered two names with space in between it was perfect. PERFECT I TELL YOU.

So, if last year wasn't crazy enough for you. Have some fun.
THE APP






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