Have you ever worked in an environment where pull requests need your review in a timely manner, but there is a lot of traffic on slack, or in emails?

Worry no more! With this in-progress tool, you can select specific repostiories linked to your github account to monitor for pull requests needing your review!

This application is written in python, using rumps, and will eventually be published at least to GitHub open source.

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When I was in college, I lived very close to a Burger King®. This was convenient, and their coupons made it very cheap.

After ordering at least $100 worth of $3 coupon meals, I felt pretty confident I understood how their coupon system worked. The only factor I couldn't predict was the training of an employee. BK's coupon system has some pretty simple rules I've gathered over time.

1. A "trip" refers to a person or car making one or more orders.
2. A car may make no more than two orders.
3. No more than three coupon codes may be used in a single "trip".
4. A coupon code may only be used once per "trip".
5. Upgrade small fries to a large for $0.50 each. - This is less of a rule and more of a tip.
6. A customer must produce the code on their phones, or exchange a paper coupon. - This is the rule that depends on the training of an employee.
7. Coupon codes never expire
8. Coupon codes work nationally

None of these rules are listed in the BK application, of course. Each coupon says "one offer per customer per day", but while going to BK with two friends in my car, we were told we could not make more than two orders per car - establishing rule 2. When we attempted to use four codes for our planned meal, we were told no more than three coupons per car - establishing rule 3. We reasoned that rule 3 treated a car and a person as the same, due to experiences with using two coupons (one physical, one digital) in-person - establishing rule 1 and rule 6.

Through wanting double chicken fries and a large fries for $3, we discovered rule 4. Thanks to the kindness of an employee who knew us as usual, we discovered rule 5. Through a friend elsewhere in the United States, we established rule 8. Lastly, from my own life experiences saying memorized codes, I can confirm that codes never expire - establishing rule 7.

With these rules and their reasoning I felt confident I had reverse engineered the coupon system. At the end of a Friday night, while saying goodbye to a guest I had over, I gained motivation to make a clone of the BK application's coupon list and single pages. I spent the weekend developing an application called "Coupon King - Have It Anyways" that would allow a user to present as many BK coupon codes as desired, while appearing to be using the regular application.

To clone the application, I set up a proxy between my laptop and my phone to intercept the assets being transferred to the BK application from their source. I was unable to decipher how they generate or acquire codes based on location to expand my overall pool of codes. Completed, this application showed the same colors, font, and animations as the BK app, but without all the restrictions on location, and code removal after usage.

This app has since become non-functional, due to updates to the BK app UI. Unless the employee is really guilible or something.

I have never used this application at BK. It was developed for educational purposes. To look at stronger examples of coupon systems, check out Wendy's or McDonald's applications.

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A Fateful Encounter

My journey with MAGWest began during Rockage 3.0, in February of 2014, at San Jose State University. As part of the campus' Game Development Club I volunteered some of my time to watch over our pride and joy student-built Arcade Cabinets. While here I had what I'll always consider to be a fateful encounter.

I met Dominic Cerquetti, former game developer, and at-the-time CEO of MAGFest Inc. Read that tale here.

Skipping Ahead In Time

If you've read my project about MAGFest you'd know how I ended up with the title of Co-Chair of MAGWest. Well, that's not entirely true. You'd know how I ended up with the title Chair of MAGWest.

Becoming Co-Chair was not something forced upon me, but a decision I made for myself. Throughout building MAGLabs I worked with three other people. Out of these three, I picked one with whom I would split my power and give them equal creative authority over MAGWest. Sheva Goldberg received my offer, and much to my relief accepted it as well. Giving equal power was of course more of an ideal than a reality, but it is something we have worked hard to reach.

Building A Base

With a co-chair at my side the next goals became more clear and focused. I began reaching out to the network of folks within MAGFest whom I trusted to possibly run a department at the first ever MAGWest. MAGWest is not something I could ever build alone. Just breaking down the acronym: Music. Atmosphere. Gaming.

I trust myself to build an atmosphere and games, but music is one of my current shortcomings. I'm not a musician, or a stage manager, or a stage tech. I needed someone I could trust to fill this role. For me, this was Ian "Angel" Nixon. Unfortunately for me, but fortunately for him, the candidate whom had originally agreed to be the department head had to back out due to getting a once-in-a-lifetime job offer that would make his availability something we could not depend on. Without Angel we began a scramble to figure out a new department head. I ended up making the call that for the first year of MAGWest, Dominic Cerquetti - CEO of MAGFest - would be the department. This came with some obvious drawbacks, but I still believe this was the right call to make.

The management of our staff operations, or STOPS, was taken on by department head Ryan Cho. Ryan Cho is a former staff member of Fanime, a participant in LARP communities, and someone I could trust, by extension of my trust in someone else. We're still getting to know each other, Ryan and I, but working with Ryan was a pleasure. Ryan's duties included on-boarding new staff or department heads with document locations, and training on our Registration and Management System, as well as putting together the hotel room assignments for staff during the event. Ryan encountered many stressors that happen unexpectedly, and handled them as best as he could. As co-chair of the event, he made me proud.

In addition to staff operations, another crucial department of the event is our tech operations, or TechOops. This department was run by Ted Hahn, a Seattle-native and California transplant whose technical prowess I have learned to believe in. As with most departments in MAGFWest there comes a heavy degree of autonomy. Ted received more autonomy than I'd know what to do with. He knew what to do with it though. TechOps was responsible for setting up radios, panel room A/V and in-house internet. They also did a heavy amount of gaffing. Ted assembled his own crew, planned his own shifts/coverage, and in the end, created a cornerstone of MAGWest going forward.

With TechOps, STOPS, and Music having established department heads it was time to find the people who would receive autonomy over their own space and budget for MAGWest 1.

A Call For Help

For the next phase of recruitment Sheva and I decided to put out a form where anyone could tell us about themselves, and we'd do our best to reach out and see if they were right for running a department at MAGWest. Now, I don't know if you could guess, but getting information from random strangers online, calling them for a single conversation, then determining if they are the right person for the job can be a hit or miss strategy. We had some hits, and we had some misses. Other limitations included the maximum number of staff we could support in our first year, and the amount of event space we could give to department heads.

Honestly, reaching out to these complete strangers was tough for me. I didn't reach out to everyone, and that isn't something I'm proud of.

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While I attended San Jose State University, some close friends of mine founded the SJSU Pokemon Club.

I never played an active role in the club, but I was more than happy to help out in building their former website.

This website was a static-site powered by hugo. It displayed the officers, how to contact the club, tournament winners, and an active area for any Challonge Tournaments

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During my sophomore year at San Jose State University, I had the opportunity to build an in-house arcade launcher for the SJSU Game Development Club that would compete against other in-house launchers.

For this project I partnered up with my friend and mentor, Arthur Baney, using Game Maker Studio's scripts powered through the Game Maker Language, or GML. Arthur was a junior at SJSU, a member of the Game Development Club, and a talented developer - especially when it came to using GML.

For Arthur's part, he built an incredibly front-end for the launcher that used a 3D wheel of game screenshots to showcase all of the available games at once, while clearly displaying a selected title. We tested it with over 300 "games". The coolest part about his work was the 3D component, as Game Maker Studio is a 2D-focused engine!

For my part, I built the backend of our launcher. This meant how it found files, how it provided the data about those files to the launcher, and how it launched files. This was no easy feat in Game Maker Studio, because honestly Game Maker Studio was not designed for this.

Game Maker Studio runs in a sandboxed environment. This means that the memory is sectioned off in a nice little container, and the games it runs cannot go mucking about in the player's filesystem. That's great! Woohoo for computer safety! This also means that using commands to try and locate a directory of EXE's installed on the computer is a big NO.

But why should that stop us?

To overcome the sandbox, I discovered that the EXE Game Maker Studio published was more like a folder, containing the real EXE and some data folders. If I extracted the contents of the EXE produced by GM:S, then my application gained the ability to muck about in the computer's filesystem! Victory for me, and a defeat for computer safety.

With this discovery, I was able to write the backend of the launcher, and recursively search folders on the computer for EXEs with a matching configuration file.

Our launcher was fully functional, and pretty to boot!

We did not win. The winner was a beautiful HTML5/Node.JS launcher that tracked play times and more.

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During my freshman year at San Jose State University, I had the opportunity to be a contractor building mobile games for a now-defunkt company called Rikoshe Games, Inc.

I produced games for Rikoshe with my friend and mentor, Arthur Baney, using Game Maker Studio's scripts powered through the Game Maker Language, or GML. Arthur was a sophomore at SJSU, a member of the Game Development Club, and a talented developer - especially when it came to using GML.

Throughout my summer between freshman and sophomore year, I produced a handful of titles for Rikoshe games. Each game was required to follow a few rules. The game must be primarily skill-based, with as few luck factors as possible. The game must use an ascending score. The game must be generally playable within a 1-5 minute period.

Given these rules, my partner and I produced our first game called "Connect The Bots". In this game, a factory line of robots passes by at increasing speeds. It is your job as a factory worker to drag the appropriate parts for each robot into place before it reaches the end of the line. Mess up three times, and production is unrecoverable!

This game was a pleasure to make, and we had the pleasure of working with a talented artist to produce our assets. I loved the assets so much, I requested to use them on one of my first business cards.

For our second game, we produced an isometric puzzle game during a weekend-long game jam. In this game, your goal is to strategically move a dinosaur and a shark between the land and the water, respectively, so that they can meet somewhere and high-five. We got second place, mostly due to a lack of qualified participants.

For our third game, we made something we called, "Rap-I-Tap". Looking back, I don't think the concept is very original. A certain amount of balls start blue, and a certain amount start green. You must keep track of the green balls as they turn blue. When the timer stops, locate all the blue balls that were once green.

For our final game together, we produced a math-focused skill game I titled, while in the shower, "Orcana". Orcana does not actually mean anything.

In Orcana, the player starts with a score of zero, and an active value of 50. Bubbles will begin to drop from the top of the screen, and each bubble contains either a number or an operation. Once a bubble is popped, the value inside it must be used before another bubble of the same type. Once both types of bubbles have been popped, the player's active value is modified by the given operation with the equation "ActiveValue (Operation) SelectedValue". If the new active value is less than or equal to zero, or greater than or equal to 100, then the player loses. In addition to all of this math, a timer is rapidly decreasing, and doing an equation rewards the player with a small increase to their timer.

The games I created at Rikoshe taught me a lot about working with companies, working with others, and working on game development in general.

If you compile those games, let me know how you enjoyed the music.

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MAGFest's Registration and Account Management System, better known as

Ubersystem, or Uber for short!

The first time I volunteered for MAGFest, I ran registration at small event in California. Before the event opened, I had been told that the guy setting it up, Dominic Cerquetti, had broken something. I had never used MAGFest's registration system before, but I was told we would be running registration manually.

After that weekend, I started getting more heavily involved with Python, as a programming language, and subsequently MAGFest and it's registration system. I learned about the MAGFest stack, which was my first encounter with a VirtualBox container, SupervisorDaemon, task-threading, SQLAlchemy, and WSGI web-apps. The MAGFest stack was centered around CherryPy, the minimalist web framework, as the lead volunteer developer has written a dissertation on the CherryPy api for his master's degree, and used a mix of Jinja2, jQuery, and sometimes Angular on the front-end.

The first project I implemented for MAGFest was a map featuring all of our attendees organized by zip code. My methods were naive, and my knowledge limited our map to just the attendees registered from the United States. Some notable drawbacks about my implementation, all of the calculations are done on the main thread of the server, with a read of the entire attendee table. At certain scales, this can halt the website for all users. Additionally, the calculations are then held in RAM. An update to the system, a reboot, many things, can cause the system to need a recalculation.

I've since learned much more effective ways to tally up such data.

The second project I implemented for MAGFest was a promotional code system. In addition to my work as an engineer, I was an event coordinator for MAGFest. As MAGFest, we believed that badges are somewhat like candy. We can afford to give a handful away. Still, when I attempted this I would be required to collect someone's email, send them a badge, and wait for them to accept it. This was not the smooth delivery of a free badge I desired. Given this problem, I designed a promotional code system for MAGFest that would allow authorized users to create flexible promotional codes. Promotional codes were designed for many situations.

A promotional code may have unlimited uses, or a number of remaining uses. A promotional code may be uniquely entered, auto-generated, or built from a user-supplied list of unique words. A promotional code may take a flat amount off the cost of a badge, may set the cost of badge to a flat amount, or may reduce the cost of a badge by a percentage. This was a versatile system that I could use for many situations. To aid my own distribution efforts, once this project was complete I wrote a small script that turned the exported codes into a sliceable PDF.

There is more than just Ubersystem.

In addition to MAGFest's Ubersystem, I was also a lead developer on a previous iteration of MAGFest's Website. This iteration of MAGFest's web development used a stack built and hosted by WebHook. This meant we had a static-site, with a CMS, webpack, and access to Javascript/jQuery.

For this site I handled many miscellaneous tasks. I converted all of the CSS into SASS, with variables to allow for easier color themeing. I wrote a script to use WebHook's CMS API to upload a copy of MAGFest's game database. I added pages featuring the dogs and cats of MAGFest staff. I wrote a script to scrape the website for show information that would be uploaded to our event Guidebook.

MAGFest's website was my first major experience being a web developer.

MAGFest was my first major experience being a developer.

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Introduction to MAGFest

The first ever interaction with MAGFest was during Rockage 3.0, in February of 2014, at San Jose State University. As part of the campus' Game Development Club I volunteered some of my time to watch over our pride and joy student-built Arcade Cabinets. While here I had what I'll always consider to be a fateful encounter.

I met Dominic Cerquetti, former game developer, and at-the-time CEO of MAGFest Inc. I didn't know any of that of course. I only knew two things, and I needed to know one more. He had a Pebble on his wrist, and those had just recently gotten a store release. Did he get his Pebble on Kickstarter like myself, or at a store? I really hoped he'd obsessed over it on Kickstarter like I had, because I had yet to meet anyone with a Pebble like that yet, but he hadn't. Bought it at the store like everybody else. From here I learned a bit about his background as a game developer, and as a Freshman looking for his way in the world, I looked at him like the pinnacle of what I could ever be. I didn't see Dom again throughout my weekend at the event.

On Sunday night another fateful encounter occurred. The fire alarm in my building went off, and our waiting location was next door to the event center where Rockage was held. Instead of waiting in the cold, I decided to see if the event was still happening, but it probably wasn't. Inside the building I find a mass of chairs, some stacked, some not, and one Dominic Cerquetti doing all the work himself. The answer was clear to me, stack chairs to disguise my desire to get some conversation with this man. After that conversation I didn't see Dom for another year.

Meeting the MAGFest Family

One year after Rockage 3.0 came Rockage 4.0, once more at San Jose State University, but this year the event came with a "PRESENTED BY MAGFEST" logo. Upon arriving at the event to volunteer I discovered this, and raced to find Dom. I found him at registration where he was working on launching the registration server. Leaving him to work on that I went to move CRTs with Paul Good, President of MAGFest.

Upon returning from that task I returned to Dom where he informed me that the server was a bit busted, and registration will need to be run manually until he can fix it. Unfortunately, opening time was upon us. Lisa Hartsock, or Chaney, and Antigonus Jarrett, or Blue, were the people in charge of registration, and they immediately began on-boarding me to run registration with them.

This responsibility came with its stressful moments. I encountered a patron who didn't have a ticket, and didn't want a ticket, but wanted to come in for free. I did my best to let them know that I had no power, and was simply checking in people as I was instructed. Chaney stepped in here and solved that case for me. Soon though, Chaney and Blue had to leave registration as the line was manageable, and there were issues to be dealt with elsewhere. I spent my entire first day of the event running registration, and it filled me with Joy.

By the end of the weekend with these wonderful people I had found a group of weirdos I wanted to spend my time around. I felt indebted to these people, they were like heroes offering me a chance to shine. I told them as much, but their response was to tell me that I was the hero to them. Then they said words that could never be unsaid, "Get Thee to MAGFest!". I said I wanted to, but was restrained by the limitations of not being able afford the hotel, badge, and flight. They offered to take care of the hotel and badge, if I covered the flight. That was a deal. It was February now, and the next MAGFest was planned to be the coming February. One year, that's what I had to wait.

The First Step to West

Waiting around isn't my style. I've never been able to sit still, especially writing this. In the months following Rockage 4.0 I became much more involved in the local gaming community. I worked a variety of shows with the SJSU Game Development Club as our Arcade Cabinet Engineer. I helped establish the SJSU Pokemon Club with some friends. They did most of the work, I just built the website. Then I got involved with some others in the community as part of a group called ggSJ, or good game San Jose.

The goal was to be the hub for anyone looking to do gaming events in the area. We'd pair them with the right local community to try and help everyone get work. To establish ourselves we ran a few game rooms, composed of local groups such as the South Bay Button Mashers, SJSU Game Development Club, SJSU Tabletop Club, SJSU Library, and more. We provided the game room for the first Silicon Valley Comic Con, a prideful achievement. We were in the works on agreeing to run the game room for GaymerX 3, but the deal fell apart at the last moment for reasons beyond our control. Lost business was unfortunate, especially because I hadn't made any money for my work so far, but one door closed is another door open.

Dom reached out and informed me that GaymerX 3 was looking for MAGFest's help with running its Arcade and Game Room, and Dom wanted to know if I wanted to be the point-person for getting the job done. I couldn't say no. I even skipped a final to be there. Note: I could do that because I had been doing extraordinarily well in the course.

During GaymerX 3 I spent more time with the MAGFest Family and learned that in MAGFest if you want something to get done, you need to say you're going to do it repeatedly and then actually do it. It was over donuts one morning that I made my decision. I turned to Dom, Chaney, and Steph Prader, and told them I was going to be the guy who runs MAGWest, and I can't be talked out of it.

Throughout my time at MAGFest I have been repeatedly informed that my life decisions are bad life decisions if I want to have a calm normal life. Good.

That weekend was 2 years and 8 months before the first ever MAGWest 1.

I am beyond honored to have been the co-chair of the wonderful amazing people who came together and made MAGWest 1 the spectacular weekend that it was. The 100+ volunteers that put together this event are the next generation of MAGFesters. The 1214 unique attendees of MAGWest 1 came to our show, had a blast, and hopefully cannot wait for MAGWest 2 to come soon enough.

Final Thoughts

MAGFest is really special. Truly, dearly, incredibly special. The places and actions where people say "this is how we do it right", MAGFest tends to say "this is how we do it left".

We don't advertise and primarily grow by word of mouth. We don't accept sponsorship deals, we're not an industry expo, and we take extreme lengths to preserve the grassroots vibe that creates the magic MAGFest is so famous for among our insane, diehard fans. We strive to break down the distinction between attendees and staff- People don't just come to MAGFest to consume, they come to create their own content in areas like our indie developer showcases, makerspaces, or cramming every last inch of available hallway spaces with musical performances. At MAGFest, videogame music tracks from NES and SNES are like old-school jazz standards, riffed on and played by everyone everywhere.

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It All Starts With A Name

Many things in this world revolves around names. Everybody has one. Me, you, my father. My father was born David Alexander Richard Evans, and he was the son of Derek Alexander Evans. I am Daniel Alexander Ross Evans, and I am the son of David Alexander Richard Evans.

I can't quite explain why. Honestly, I don't think I really need to. I just, I can't explain why this lineage of names is important to me. Its important enough to me that I commonly go by the name 'Dare', the name being a composition of my initials. Its important enough to me that I hope to one day name my son 'Dante Alexander Red Evans', a name created during a vacation dinner with my family.

Its important enough to my father that his website is davidARevans.com. That was important enough to me to title my first website danielARevans.com. Moment of truth, I first had a .net, but that is gone forever now. The first site was something I felt I needed to have as a nerd on the internet, but something I didn't quite have all the skills to build myself. I acquired a template to use and filled in the blanks myself.

DanielAREvans.com, is it Daniel A R Evans, or Daniel ARE vans?

One of the blanks that was filled was the blog. The template came with example html for the blog, but updating in the manners I currently knew meant statically updating the blog information, and losing the data each time I moved something in, as I had a desire to keep the page short. To solve this, I launched a WordPress Blog, and used a mix of PHP and Javascript to fetch the first three entries from the blog, and populate my site with them on load.

I've never been the best with words. Communication can definitely be a strain at time, but the ideals I hope to connect on with other people push me to keep trying. To this end, I've never been great at talking about my own works, or more specifically what some might call Achievements. It doesn't come across amazingly, but the words for my 'Works' page really meant something to me. It didn't, and doesn't, matter what an employer might think.

My contact page was simple and function, it included links to my social media or whatever. No one ever contacted me.

It Can Be So Hard To Pick An Internet Handle.

To continue onto the next iteration of my site, I feel it is important to first talk about some of the internet handles I've had in the past. I was eight when I first went on the internet. At the time my mother had me in Tae Kwon Do classes. My name is important to me. Thus, danielkungfu8 was born.

Then, it was time for A.I.M., or A.O.L., or America OnLine, Instant Messenger. I was with my older sister and her two friends. I was the shortest person in my grade. I was eight. English is hard. migetman9 was born. I swear, I didn't know there was a d in midget. Also, I understand that using language to describe myself with a medical affliction I do not possess can be viewed as an offensive action. Give me a break, I was nine.

High school is here. I'm Team Xbox, not Team PlayStation. migetman9 doesn't feel like a name I want to carry anymore. Its late, like 1am. I'm eating an entire box of cheez-its. I like cheez-its. I love cheez-its. My birthday is on July 31st. Alright Xbox Live, I'll pay you your money, so make cheezin31 my name.

Now we're at University. Computer Science class is a bit too elementary for me. me@danielarevans.com is incredibly long to write and people never understand it means Daniel A.R. Evans. I'm Dare. New gTLDs are available. daredoes is who I'll be, and DareDoes.Work will be my domain. daredoestweets, daredoesgithub, daredoeshishomework. So many use cases. I think this is it for me. Here I am.

I'm Dare, and I do work.

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