Author: admin

Contractor Catfish

Preface: I hate having to outsource anything, but there is a project that I started with a client who needed some extensive custom ecommerce work and I could just not do.

While looking for a Coldfusion developer to help with a client project, I got an offer from a guy named Harris Ryan on the freelance-finding site elance.com. I liked his list of experience and skills, and messaged him to  ask when a good time to chat would be and setup a date for the weekend.

The weekend rolls around and it works out well to chat with him on Skype on Sunday night. I messaged his Skype name and I am told that it is his wife, and they run a small two person business called ‘Vogam IT’.

After talking a bit about the project and beginning to trust that they will do a good job, ​I ask to do a Skype call. It takes a really long time, around 30 mins for her to ‘get ready’, but when she calls and we begin talking she had an english accent – everything is adding up – no reason to be leery.

When we first started the call it was just her, but shortly after Harris joins in, but when he comes on, it sounds like a three way call, there was some static, and he has a very strong Indian accent!

I was completely thrown off, so I don’t know what to do, I ended up discussing the concept of the project just a little bit, but after a minute or so it was becoming very obvious this guy was not who they were saying he was…

“Your name is ‘Harris’?” I ask him.

“Yes.” He states.

“…and you are based out of the UK?”, I ask.

“Yes” he says again, ” it is 9:30 pm here right now.”  he adds. (nice touch buddy!)

Not at all convinced, I take a look back at his profile on elance again ​- while still on the call -​ and I could not imagine that voice belonging to the man in ​this profile photo….

So I tell them “I need to talk to my project manager and I will get back to you when we are ready to begin..”  just so I can gett off of the call…

I go and take a screenshot of the elance profile, and message “Harris'” wife and say

“I have nothing against Indian developers, but you should be up front about who you are outsourcing the project to.”
She replies back after a long pause stating that he is NOT in fact Indian, he IS her husband, they have 3 kids etc.. etc..

So I pop the profile photo in google image search, and only one other source for the image shows up – a Facebook page,
I click it and it’s for some sort of organic food company,  I scroll down the page to see where the photo of Harris is, and bingo!

I see the guy commenting about how he loved one of the companies apple cinnamon bars.

I click the name and I am taken to his profile, I wont say anything specific to project the identity of the victim here, but the photo and the name “Harris” were the only things relating to “Harris Ryan” on elance.

Location – completely different – not from the UK, but from the US,

Education – nothing to do with programming, IT, anything

– the real guy is an artist.
I take a screen shot of the facebook page, and send it to Vogam IT on Skype.
 – Check mate. –
She persists with lies even after being beat saying:

” everything apart form the pic is true” and “I guess if you know the stuff, what difference will a picture make?”

Honesty makes a huge difference! – and I told her that.

This has nothing to do with nationality, but in my opinion if you are going to lie about something as foundational as who you are, then you are  very likely to lie about other things as well, and that is just not the way to start off a working relationship! I understand what she was trying to do, hire a contractor from India at a low rate, and be the middleman making roughly double what she was paying them.

Here is the profile for ‘coldfusionharris’ on elance, If you are into deception, go ahead and hire them:
https://www.elance.com/s/coldfusionharris

The whole situation sucks because I still need to find a reliable CF developer…

Here are my screenshots of the whole ordeal:

‘Harris Ryan’ Profile on elance
skitch (1)

I did a little internet sleuthing with a ​simple ​google image search:
The real dude on Facebook:
skitch (2)

I showed her what I found…
Check Mate. Then the excuses pour in…
skitch (3)

…and then moments later…
Quick, cover your tracks!
skitch (4)

 

NEW DEVELOPMENT

You can’t make this stuff up:

Screen Shot 2013-04-28 at 10.59.07 PM

I feel pretty awesome right now.

-Alex

What software do I use part one

Sublime Text 2 $70
http://www.sublimetext.com/2

Code Kit $25
http://incident57.com/codekit/

Sublime text 2 Plugins

SFTP $16
http://wbond.net/sublime_packages/sftp

Package Control -free
http://wbond.net/sublime_packages/package_control

Bracket Highlighter
– Install via Package Control

CSSComb
– Install via Package Control

Emmet
– Install via Package Control

Hex to RGBA
– Install via Package Control

SidebarEnhancements
– Install via Package Control

WordPress Plugins

WP Migrate DB Pro $99
http://deliciousbrains.com/wp-migrate-db-pro/pricing/

Perch Add-Ons

Redactor

A really clean and simple text editor that was edits super easy for my clients

http://grabaperch.com/add-ons/plug-ins/redactor

_s (underscores) A Completely Blank Starter Theme for WordPress

Screen Shot 2013-04-28 at 3.38.23 AMSo when you first get into theming for a Content-Management-System you will more than likely take one of the existing base themes included with the CMS and start snooping around in the various files. You might just edit the ‘style.css’ file or equivalent – or you might go straight for the jugular and strip out all the html leaving only the relevant tags the CMS uses to fill in dynamic content, then add in your own markup around them. This is what I did when learning Drupal, and now that I am working with WordPress I started down the same path for a couple of client sites – but now I have found a real gem for any WP theming beginners out there and that gem is underscores.

A completely blank theme agnostic to any design direction to give you a blank canvas to work your creative magic however you want. No pre-supposed boundaries or grids, just a clean slate.

I really dont know what else to say – its exactly where you should start as a WP themer – and its open source and being refined and updates all the time via the GitHub repository.

Check it out here:

http://underscores.me/

And let me know how it worked out for you.

-Go make the web a better place.

-Alex Bezuska

Hello world!

Hi my name is Alex, and I’m a CSS addict.

I have been a freelance UX /Web Designer for about 6 years, and just recently – started a full-time job working as the web designer for a great local company. I have a love for HTML5, CSS3, and Javascript, and I recently took the dive into Sass, which is purely rad-tastic.

I hope to learn more about WordPress, jQuery, NODE.js, Backbone.js, and Compass!

That’s where this blog comes in, my hope is to share the new things I learn with hopes to teach others who are trying to learn the same things as I am.

Well , I’m off to work. – but check back here and see what I’m up-to, or follow me on twitter @alexbezuska!

‘Hiatus’

I took a break from the squid game, for a couple of reasons, including having the flu pretty bad, but I will be starting up the dev log again soon.

I also found this device called the SD2SNES, and I am blown away. It’s a a board that can be used like a SNES/ SFC cart that allows you to store roms/saves/home-brew etc on an SD card and run them directly on native SNES or SFC hardware. The price is quite high, $195 for the board alone (you would need to salvage an old cart to give it some ‘clothes’ or $260 for the deluxe with custom painted cart/case/ SD card/stickers etc.

The work that went into getting the multiple add-on chips many games had inside them alone is incredible, and I totally understand the cost, but I probably can’t afford one just yet. This makes me dream of creating my own games to run on a real SNES… wow I have no idea where to even begin on that one! If anyone if working an a home-brew SNES /SFC project and needs someone to work on art, contact me for sure! I will be very interested.

Mentioned Links:
Stone Age Gamers – home of the SD2SNES

Until next time,
-Alex

Squid Game Dev Log/ Learning Unity3D Day 11

Day 11 – 12-10-12
So-far so Good, I have now figured out how to have the player ‘eat’ the caffeine pills and boost the awake meter by 25pts and have the pill object disappear
– Fun stuff, most of the game mechanics are done, as this is a simple game.

  • Movement – Done
  • Collection of items  and positive effects – Done
  • Rock rolling ability – Somewhat Done
  • Enemies and negative effects – Not Started
  • Endpoints, and level switching – Not Started
  • Saving and continuing from where you left off – Not Started
  • Menus – Still needs to be done
  • fix rock dynamics – Needs to be done

I Shot a quick video of a somewhat unrefined version of the first level:

After I recorded the video, I spent some time fixing bugs with the terrain, and sealing off some of the weird visual gaps on the outside borders.
Here are some screenshots from before I went to bed: