A peek behind the curtain – Part 3 – Fun with Globally Unique Identifiers

I’m preparing to showcase the results of this project. One think I realized would be nice is some kind of graphic for each of the devices which connected to it. Through the cookies (see A peek behind the curtain – Part 2), I have a globally unique identifier for each one.

So, I came up with a scheme for programmatically generating unique “faces” for each one.

The graphics are rudimentary, but I’m amused and proud of the results. Here is a preview:

 

For those technically curious, I used the first few digits of the GUID for each user to select a random asset image. Here is the relevant C# code below:

 

A peek behind the curtain – Part 1

Tonight, I have launched the blog portion of the project. For those people with QR scanners on their phones, one of pages on the blog has a link directing to the main project site itself. Will anyone try it? What will they see?

I’ve been prepping this project for approximately a week and a half now. I’ve been writing a lot of code. I’ve been playing with some code libraries I’ve never had reason to use before and others I use every day. A special shoutout to the guys over at the messagingtoolkit-qrcode project. Their library was free, easy to use, and worked beautifully. The only QR code I had issues with was one containing a lot of data, the entirety of the first post to this blog. Even though I could encode it using version 40 and error checking L (40-L), I couldn’t get any of the QR reading apps I have to read it. I think it’s actually the apps + the iPhone camera at fault, but I have no way of knowing. I did really like how easy their library was to use and how many options it had once you realized you needed them.

I was going to include this in my first post. It contains the entire text of the original draft in 40-L. Unfortunately, I couldn’t test it.

Even though I do most of my daily work in Windows using Visual Studio, I was pleasantly surprised when Microsoft announced the availability and new licensing for Xamarin Studio. As a result, I wrote the vast majority of this project in Xamarin Studio. It’s been a few years since I made a serious attempt to use Mono.Net, and I was very happy with the progress the project has made.

Xamarin Studio and some code to create a QR code using the messagingtoolkit-qrcode library. Not too difficult.

Now, the project is launching. Launching this blog today was the first step. The project site which is being powered by my C# endeavor is live as well, but I am still creating new content for it. Additionally, there are going to be flyers going out around the city linking people to the site.

These are some of the flyers I am preparing.

The next step is to actually distribute the flyers. I’m not sure of the best places for this yet. I figure coffee shops and…..um…yeah. Any ideas or advice? I would love to hear it!