My Worst Code Was My Best Code
summary
Builds a Windows 3.1 weather pipeline that sends PostScript over RS232 to a broadcast graphics card by driving CorelDraw with SendKeys and macros, cooks VB code that edits 24‑bit bitmaps inside strings to generate color‑morph frames, runs the 1997 UK election from a custom in‑memory DB server that survives network router failures using pause-and-continue live edits, ships a ticketing site that implements an event stream in a hidden field with jQuery, and ingests record catalogs via a file-system as messaging queue — brittle but all working.
AI-written summary · about
chapters (15)
- 0:00Introduction
- 1:45First weather system at Sky News
- 8:14Broadcast weather graphics system
- 10:48Morning Glory project at Broadcast Computing
- 13:14Bitmap manipulation in Visual Basic
- 20:011997 general election graphics
- 27:27Election night challenges and fixes
- 29:13Freelancing and ORM frustration
- 32:21RapidDB for QVC UK
- 38:24Lessons from RapidDB quirks
- 39:30Ticketing system for Electric Productions
- 44:32Optimizing with jQuery
- 49:08Processing music catalogs at Warner Music EMI
- 54:27Why simple solutions work
- 55:10Conclusion
