This Site Uses Cookies (Duh)
What on earth are (web) cookies?
Cookies are, at their core, a very simple yet powerful means of communciation between a web browser and a server.
Little more than (key=value) pairs and some metadata, these unbaked goods enable a wide swath of the functionality of the modern internet.
Much of their utility is derived from the fact that they enable web servers to store information in your browser that persists even when the browser is closed and the computer shut off.
Check out the box below - you can set a cookie to be one of three flavors. If you close the website and come back, you'll notice that the previously selected flavor is still in the box.
The cookie has been saved, and was likely sent to the web server when you navigated back to this site. To get rid of this, you'll either have to clear your cookies or play around with
the dev tools.
Now, unless you're a big fan of web development like me, nothing here has been particularly sweet. So what's the big deal?
Your cookie:
What are they used for?
It turns out that being able to store pretty much any character you can think of in a cookie enables a whole mess of utilties.
Usually these keys are unreadable ASCII nonsense that correspond to hashed and/or encrypted data that ultimately represents extremely pertinent info for a given session.
Are you logged in? Have you paid? What're your browsing habits? All of these questions can be answered utilizing cookies.
This makes them a bit more interesting, but they're still fairly intangible.
This info can also be seen via the developer tools in your web browser - Application->Cookies for chrome and Storage->Cookies for FireFox. More complicated websites with many dependencies tend to have many more cookies, and they'll be a lot less readable than those shown here.
If you want an in-depth overview, check out the Wikipedia entry, MDN docs and
Google docs.
What's the plan, chef?
This brings us to the genesis for this website. I want to make virtual cookies into real ones.
By storing literal flavors into the cookies being sent to my website, interpretting and aggregating the data, and hooking up a handful of motors to a fridge
(filled with sweet, sweet dough) and a toaster oven, virtual strings of text can be transmuted into delicious confections.
The project is a 3-phase project taking heavy inspiration from "Twitch plays pokemon." I'm gunna build an arm, automate a toaster oven, and hook it up to the internet.
I'm hoping that through this project I can learn a little bit more of front-end, a lot more javascript, and a little bit more of what it takes to run a website.
Because I am extremely unmotivated unless forced, there's a clock below. It's mainly for me.
Also, if you've got literally infinite free time, you should click one of the cookie images
a few times (read: like 100) and see what happens.
Update I!
The electromechanical stage of the project formally begins in earnest. I've finally gotten around to modeling a bunch of the components involved. The current mock-up of how I'll be automating the toaster is adjacent.
Currently this'll use up three steppers, but both the cookie dough cut-and-allocator and tray handling system will each likely need an additional one. These will be controlled through whatever driver circuits I have on hand communicating with the Raspberry Pi that's exchanging messages both with the Twitch stream and the website.
The next stage will be to 3D print the motor housings, model the fridge, and start testing the initial movements. From there I'll be designing the cutting mechanism, the tray handling mechanism, and then the power board. Check the bottom of the page for an expected update timing!
Beeg delay as I enter grad school. Check back in like May or email me if the project really interests you.In the meantime, why not try learning CSS with frogs?
