May 11th, 2012
More Nominees for the Illiteracy Awards
Howdy Firefans,
It seems that a new crop of Craigslist solicitors are chomping at the bit to get collectively torn a new one in our semi-regular, wholly-prestigious feature, The Firefall Pro, LLC International Illiteracy Awards and Steak Dinner Benefit Concert for a Free Internet®™©. Anyway, we at Firefall are just trying to do our part to boost these fine companies’ SEOs and get them those coveted page ranks that they so rightly deserve! (and totally not for being hacky, poorly designed, generally confusing trash cans of sites that should be bleached off the face of the web forever and ever, amen. [That would be totally dickish on our part, right guys?]). So, drumroll please maestro, without further ado, we present to you the the nominees for this week’s illiteracy awards; and remember ladies and gentlemen, when everyone nominated fails this hard, we all win!
1. Rae Parth/ Axis.com, Inc.
As I’m just posting these in order of how they came into my inbox I almost hate starting off with this guy because he’s got a kind of awesome, Game of Thrones type name, but public shaming is the only way these people will learn to respect the do not solicit flag. Here are a few choice nuggets from Mr. Parth’s initial correspondence,
Take a look at my portfolio you will see that I am more then able in this realm of online website creation. I just charge a lot less then others. Basically what that means is I always beat my competitions price.
A sincere and heartfelt thank you, Rae, for clarifying what you meant by charging a lot less than others. He so eloquently continues:
I have clients IN CT, NJ & PA so I am constantly traveling throughout the week. Meeting in person is never a problem and I insist on face to face meetings weekly.
Watch out! we got a real jet-setter over here! Also it’s always a good idea to insist things of people you’re trying to get to hire you.
Rae included this link, www.axis.com in his contact info so I’m going to assume this is whom he’s affiliated with. Click through to see a stock image of a creepy Mormon in what looks to be some kind of country club change-room!
Pro-tip Rae, send a maximum of 10 links that you’re really proud of instead of fucking 500 and for everyone’s future sanity, DON’T SPAM PEOPLE.
Edit: Apparently this is at least the second time we’ve been spammed by Axis so we surmise not only have they e-mailed every single web-development job, but also every casual encounter ad as well.
2. Portrave.com
So we’ve got our standard sub-continental offenders here; some sweatshop development in Cochin, India which by my calculations is 20,000 metric fuck leagues from the New-York metropolitan commute-o-plex that we posted to on CL. so It’d be pretty hard for Santhosh Mathew to make it in for the odd client meeting. Also based on the Google Translated cover letter he was goodly enough to attach to his e-mail, it’d be like pulling elephant tusks communicating with these gentlemen. The Gems:
[W]e specializing in design, implementation and maintaining of web-based information systems, web-sites and…
Kindly revert me back with an appropriate time to call you. I would also appreciate if you share your contact details so we can further go on with this discussion.Like to hear from you.
I like to hear from you too, Mr. Mathew, your command of the English language makes me giggle.
3. Sprima Inc.
Feel free to ask me any questions that you may have. I would be be glad to answer any questions you have.
Just one: what in the sweet name of the virgin’s tear-ducts are you on about? I defy anyone to read more than a sentence of this without their eyes glazing over,
I am sending you some of the websites that I made in last few months. These web sites have different web features and they use different technologies based on client requirements. I work with my clients to understand the requirements and then build web-sites to our clients satisfaction. Here are some of the example websites. I build attractive, dynamic, informative and eye-catching websites to get more prospective clients to you.I can assure you that you will have the best experience to work with us in building your web-presence.
Let me know what you think about this project. I work closely with them to understand the requirements and produce quality product in most affordable cost in a timely manner. My customers are extremely happy working with me and my service. In the outset, I would like to assure you that you will have the best experience working with me to build your web-presence.
4. Todd Greenberg/ tbgdesign4u.com
Quit spamming Greenberg, your shit’s weak.
5. Terry Parrott/ Dolphin Micro Inc.
Terry Parrot…Dolphin Micro, I’m getting a heavy Jimmy Buffet vibe from these people — too bad their whole steeze is just as tepid and un-interisting as Margaritaville. See for yourself, www.dolphinmicro.com/home.
And then there’s Mr. Parrot’s stunted, shuffling cover-letter that leads me to believe Terry Parrot is nothing more than a robot powered by a barely functioning brain-in-a-jar, sorry I just watched Source Code last night. You be the Judge:
Thank you for the opportunity to reply to your post,
Your looking for a Web Developer/Designer? I can help! Web development/design is not new, but sometimes we forget just how powerful and versatility the tools to develop/design websites has become. It makes you wonder if developer/designers will every have any limits. This is why our team is made up of the strongest web development/design experts you can find. And I do not use the word experts lightly! Our developers our continually expanding their knowledge and skills in all areas of Web Development/Design. It is true we work as a team, but you would be assigned one developer to head your project, probably Peregrin or Pablo, two of our best. Check out the examples of work we have done and see if you think we might be a good fit.
So, by all means, if you’re interested in hiring AIs on the verge of becoming self-aware, but with no danger of ever becoming competent have a blast with the “people” over at Dolphin Micro Inc.
5. Jaredsdirect.com
Interested in the services that Jared Scott Findel, CEO/CIO of Jaredsdirect.com offers? Well I wasn’t once I saw that it was listed in COMIC FUCKING SANS; the list might as well have been genocide, animal cruelty, child abductions, vivisections and infomercials (they actually do offer infomercial services, so next time you’re up at 4AM and you hear the Education Connection™ song curse the name Jared Scott Findel).
Anyway, there’s nothing else especially awful about Jaredsdirect.com, that being said there’s nothing particularly good about it either. This company is just a factory for more bland, meh internet pollution of which there is already so much. Won’t you please think of the children and boycott these horrible cyber-environmental terrorists.
That concludes our round-up of this week’s edition of the Illiteracy awards. We’re accepting votes by text and all of our judges are easily bribed so pick your favorite candidate and happy balloting!
This is Jake Cohen, saying good night and good luck America.
March 21st, 2012
I got this
Hi,
I’m Jake, I work at Firefall. I’ll be updating the blog with random musings, things heard round the office and internet treasures.
Scott regrets this already.
March 21st, 2012
Latest Illiteracy Contest Winners (MyInfo.com, Ayatas Technologies)
As some of you may know, we here at Firefall Pro hate when people don’t read. We especially despise those who solicit us even when we explicitly say not to. So without any further ado I present the winners of this round’s illiteracy contest:
MyInfo.com
Our first winner is Emiliano Sanchez of Myinfo.com. Emiliano writes us explaining how he’s, “a real person, trying to make a sincere dollar”. I’m assume he means by spamming Craig’s List. I think his website alone serves as a good enough deterrent.
That soccer ball is animated. No really it is.
Ayatas Technologies
Our second place winner is Ramesh from Ayatas Technologies. I’m just going to put the entire message in here:
Hi,
This is Ramesh from Ayatas Technologies; We are expertise
in ASP.net ,wordpress, PHP, SQL ,AJAX, JQuery, CSS, Flash,
Photoshop, HTML, Dream weaver and illustrator .I am ready to provide you
100% CSS/HTML valid and SEO friendly web pages.
We work for $12/hr and also project based. Please provide full details of the project.
We will be available for communication more than 15 hour a day on phones/messengers
(MSN/ Yahoo / Skype / AOL) and on emails for client’s communication.
You can visit our Web site: www.ayatas.com
Please feel free to contact me at +1 424 204 5594.
Looking forward to your long term relationship. With Regards,
Ramesh Kuppili
Contact: +1 424 204 5594 Email : ramesh@ayatas.com
Visit us:www.ayatas.com
Instant Messengers: Skype : coolprogs | MSN : ayatas@live.com Gtalk: Kuppili.ramesh | Yahoo : ayatastechnologies
I like the creative use of spacing and grammar. Its not like development is hard and fast with semantics or syntax, oh wait it is. Bonus points for having a table based website.
369 Interactive Solutions
Honorable mention goes to 369 Interactive Solutions, they’ve got a mostly broken website but their letter wasn’t a mine field of misspellings, just a variety of font sizes.
I’d like to thank everyone that participated in our illiteracy contest. Matt pointed out that we should put up more Craig’s List ads just to get more of these excellent submissions.
March 10th, 2012
HTML5 Audio & Video MIME Types
HTML5 video and audio can be endlessly frustrating to get working properly across all platforms. To further complicate matters there is more misinformation out there than definitive resources. This problem isn’t much different than JavaScript where there hundreds of thousands who can write JavaScript, but there must only be 10 people in the world that really understand it.
An important step in serving HTML5 audio and video is serving the files with the correct MIME type. To add them to an Apache server, use the AddType directive in a .htaccess or directly in a Virtual Host file. The following example assumes separate .htaccess files for each:
Audio
AddType audio/aac .aac AddType audio/mp4 .mp4 .m4a AddType audio/mpeg .mp1 .mp2 .mp3 .mpg .mpeg AddType audio/ogg .oga .ogg AddType audio/wav .wav AddType audio/webm .webm
Video
AddType video/mp4 .mp4 .m4v AddType video/ogg .ogv AddType video/webm .webm
The only tricky and rarely discussed thing is some files use the same file extension for both audio and video formats. This means depending on the types of files you want to serve you might want to add a .htaccess file to the specific directory containing either the audio or the video files so the proper MIME type is served.
References:
May 10th, 2011
FirefallPro: getting the social all over you
If you need more FirefallPro in your life (you know you do) you can now follow us on twitter and like us on Facebook. In the spirit of Facebook deals (whatever that is) if you check in at our office you get a free shot of one of our top shelf liqueurs. Actually, we just like excuses to do shots at the office so we will offer the shot even if you want to avoid the social.
May 9th, 2011
Paying Us Just Got Easier
We understand that sending checks via mail is annoying and retro but not yet retro enough to be cool in an ironic way. Well, this can plague you no more, thanks to a new feature in Quickbooks, we can now accept online payments. Invoices sent from us will all have this option from now on. Hopefully this will make it easier for everyone and avoid that dreased phrase “the check is in the mail”
April 6th, 2011
WordPress Auto-Update Fails via FTP
WordPress auto update has never worked properly for us and we’ve been forced to do them manually. After doing a bunch of manual updates to 3.1, I noticed 3.1.1 was available. I was not ready to manually update them all again and went in search of a fix.
Most forums contained awful solutions, like setting permissions to “777″, or increasing the max execution time, all things you’re not supposed to do. Some blog posts offered more reasonable solutions, like removing the “/wp-content/”upgrade folder. I finally stumbled across one that mentioned WordPress not working properly with Pure-FTPd, but their solution was to switch the FTP server to ProFTPd. They hinted that WordPress is trying to access incorrect paths via FTP, which was confirmed by looking at the FTP log.
I hoped that changing the FTP_BASE would fix the problem, but that didn’t help. Nor did clearing the upgrade folder, or the ill-advised increasing max_execution and memory_limit. Unwilling to switch the FTP server, I searched a little longer and finally found a real solution in the form of a plugin, FTP Upgrade Fix. Supposedly this fix will be included in WordPress 3.2, but why it hasn’t already is maddening.
Since installing the FTP Upgrade FIx plugin we’ve been able to update at least 6 blogs without any problem.
April 1st, 2011
Opulence: FirefallPro has it!
We are so excited to be among the first to receive our very own petite lap giraffe! Here I am with the newest addition to the office, Valentina, isn’t she great? We beat the thousands of people on the waiting list and got her from Sokoblovsky Farms. See, now that we turned to Russian outsourcing we have the means to indulge in fancy pets, ahh child labor never felt so good.
Anyway time to go back to our usual tasks of development and swimming around in our pool of gold coins like Scrooge McDuck.
March 8th, 2011
Full Window Flash With Minimum Dimensions – Updated
Several years ago we came up with a solution for “full window” Flash that maintains a minimum width and height, without requiring JavaScript in modern browsers. Thanks to the feedback of several users we restored Chrome compatibility. At the same time we simplified the CSS, created a landing page, hosted example, downloadable package, and re-certified it in all major browsers, even IE 5.
In our testing we also came across swffit and SWFForceSize. Both of these JavaScript only solutions can be replaced by ours in most cases with better compatibility and less fragility. Our solution primarily relies on CSS, and only uses JavaScript in IE 6 or less.
The original article “Full Window Flash (With Minimum Dimensions), Done Right” is now it’s own page. The original article is still useful for a procedural explanation on how we came up with the solution and what each part of it does. The inline examples have not been updated to reflect the new code, instead refer to the standalone page.
Please post any comments, suggestions or problems here.
March 7th, 2011
Game Development and Firefall Pro
On top of a passion for web development here at Firefall we also have a bit of a passion for gaming ( We even recently setup a Minecraft server for the office ). Prior to my work here I used to do game development on my free time and ran a small studio to help teach others the process of making a basic game from the ground up. One of the annual rituals I have settled into is participating in the Global Game Jam. The GGJ is a global event held over the last weekend of January that involves many locations from around the world. Newcomers and veterans alike come together and make a game from the ground up in 48 hours. Some people take it easy and get good sleep in between working during the day or you can power through the event without almost ever sleeping if you want ( and some do!.. like myself ). The short explanation of it is that everyone assembles in their meeting location for wherever they live ( NYU was NYC’s location ) , gets a theme to create a game around, make their own group/team and get to work. At the end of the 48 hours everyone presents their game and teams get to vote on which they thought was the best in one of several categories.
This event takes a lot of blood sweat and tears to get done and a lot of really cool stuff , and sometimes really BAD stuff can come out of it. This year was the third year running of the event and I have been to every one of them so far. This year’s theme was “extinction” and the idea I brainstormed out with the help of others I worked with was going an obvious route but making it hilarious. In the case of our game that would be a T-rex piloting a meteor smashing planets. Humor was a big important factor of our game as the idea was ludicrous and we used Flixel, a game engine written in AS3, to make it. Before I get to linking you the game keep in mind everything that you see/hear/play was done in the period of 48 hours. So without further ado, HERE is the game!