
Due to my current focus on transitioning [BattleTabs](https://mikecann.blog/posts/battletabs-in-7-minutes) to mobile, my time for other activities is quite limited. However, I feel compelled to discuss a concerning practice I recently encountered on Meetup.com, known as a dark pattern.

As a longtime user, I've tolerated Meetup.com's mediocre app experience because it was a key resource for discovering tech-related meetups in Perth. When I relocated to Busselton in September, I decided to initiate my own tech meetup, [South West Devs](https://www.meetup.com/south-west-devs/). Unfortunately, Meetup.com does not offer a free tier for group hosts, forcing me to commit to a six-month subscription. My hope was that this period would be sufficient to gauge interest.

Regrettably, interest was lacking, partly because many local developers were unfamiliar with Meetup.com, not even considering it as a resource.

This brings me to the crux of my post. Attempting to cancel my subscription on Meetup.com I was presented with this screen:

![](./dark-meetup.png)

So you can see the problem, I am forced to talk to one of their sales team before I am able to cancel the subscription.

From a business standpoint, the rationale behind such a practice is understandable. It serves to re-engage users or propose alternative plans. Nonetheless, this approach feels inherently manipulative and, frankly, kinda scummy.

The frustration this experience induces is, to my knowledge, universally disliked.

A more user-friendly alternative would involve a simple cancellation process, followed by a post-cancellation email or an occasional reminder within the app itself, offering re-engagement opportunities in a less intrusive manner.

Regrettably, Meetup.com is not alone in employing this tactic. Upon sharing my experience within various groups, I discovered that other companies, including Xara and Adobe, engage in similar practices.

For now, I must redirect my attention to mobile game development, but I felt this issue warranted a brief discussion.


Its been quite some time since my original post on [The Sleeping Headphones Saga](./photos-personal/the-sleeping-headphones-saga/) so I thought it was time I updated with my current situation my my experiments since then.



# Recap

If the last post is [TLDR;](./photos-personal/the-sleeping-headphones-saga/) then basically the summary is that I (like many others) like to listen to music / audiobooks in bed to help me sleep with. I have been doing it for over two decades now and I thought I would share my experience trying to find the right headphones for my sleeping audio pleasure.

Up to that point I wasnt 100% happy with any of the options on the market and despite trying quite a few, some more expensive than others, I ended up with \$13 Panasonic RP-HS46 as my daily driver for now.

# Pillow Speaker

![](./pillow-speaker.jpg)

So one experiment I have tried since the last post is to buy a [Portable 3.5mm Pillow Speaker](https://www.ebay.com/itm/Portable-3-5mm-Pillow-Speaker-for-iPod-MP3-MP4-CD-Phone-Universal-White-Speaker-/253812585068) you can find lots of variants of it for sale on ebay.

The idea is that instead of headphones going directly in your ear you attach this little speaker to your device then tuck it under your pillow. Then you rest your head on the pillow and enjoy your music / audiobook or whatever.

At just \$5 I wasnt expecting much and wasnt disappointed.

The sound quality is predictably terrible, tho thats not a show stopper if it meant that I could listen to my audio without wires.

Well the problem is that the speaker is actually quite thick (1cm roughly) and hard plastic meaning that you cant put directly under your pillowcase as its way to hard to rest your head on. Thus you are forced to put it under your pillow, which means you have to turn the volume up quite loud to be heard. This was a show-stopper for my light-sleeping partner.

I think this idea could potentially work if the speaker was soft and thin enough that you couldnt notice it under some padding. As it stands however, this \$5 solution is pretty much useless to me.

# BedPhones Wireless

![](./woman-sleep.jpg)

In the last post I mentioned that I had ordered the brand new [Dubslabs BedPhones Wireless headphones](https://www.dubslabs.com/products/bedphones-wireless-sleep-headphones-the-worlds-smallest-on-ear-headphones.html) and was hopeful that they were finally going to be the solution to my problem.

Well after 6 months they finally arrived from the US. I went to bed eagerly that night hoping that the wireless soft-ear-pieces were going to be perfect for sleeping.. Well actually before I get onto the negatives lets list the positives:

- Great sound quality
- Love that they are wireless, no more wires wrapped around my neck
- The battery lasts all night, great for someone like me that has a habit of waking at 4am then struggling to sleep again without them.

Okay so thats great.. but for me the natives outweigh the positives:

A minor annoyance that its hard to tell which button does what on the controls without looking at them. The apple headphones controls does this better.

Another minor annoyance its really hard to open the little cover on the charging port for the headphones which is particularly a problem when the light level is low early morning and is exactly the time when you want to be putting them back on charge.

A big negative is that the wire that holds them in place on my ear really isnt very good. I know others have complained about this too and although Dubslabs have supposedly done work on this it really just isnt as good at solid plastic clasp that fits around the ear in the Panasonic RP-HS46.

Another big negative is even though the ear pieces are thin and padded I still find them really uncomfortable when resting my head on my side on my pillow. To be fair this is the same with every pair of headphones, but what I usually have to do is pull one headphone out my ear when I want to rest my head on my side, then when I swap sides of my head I have to swap headphones, I have to do this multiple times during the night every night. I was hoping the bedphones would solve this problem by allowing me to keep them in all the time but unfortunately they dont, they are still to uncomfortable.

# Conclusion

So after all that im still using my trusty Panasonic RP-HS46's. They certaintly arent perfect but they are better than the plain Apple earpods. The Dubslabs wireless headphones were a bit of a letdown for me, but I have donated them to my sister and she likes them so thats good that the money wasnt wasted.

So the quest for the best sleeping headphones continues, until next time..

I love the mix-streaming service Mixcloud but its unfriendly user-interface was really starting to bug me so I whipped up this little tool to help.



# The Problem

Mixcloud is a great service to find dj mixes from a wide variety of people. I have listened to hundreds of hours worth of mixes on the service and discovered some of my favorite artists through it.

It seems however that Mixcloud doesnt put too much effort into their playlist and playback experience however. When you just want to listen to all the mixes from a particular artist, Mixcloud seems to take it upon itself to do something totally different such as playing mixes from totally different artists.

![](./chrome_2018-09-16_16-18-37.png)

The "next" playlist down the bottom is totally abysmal. Theres very few options particularly for common things you would want to do such a clearing all upcoming mixes or finding mixes similar to the one playing, sorting or even shuffle.

So I decided to whip up a quick tool so I could grab those mixes and play them however I liked in the comfort of my own desktop music player.

# The Solution

So I decided to smash out this little tool:

https://github.com/mikecann/mixcloud-dl

Its really rather simple. It takes advantage of [Mixcloud's public API](https://www.mixcloud.com/developers/) to grab all the "cloudcasts" for a given user then the hard part (scraping the mixcloud page for the stream) is done by the awesome [youtube-dl](https://github.com/rg3/youtube-dl) which despite the name can download just about any streaming content, not just Youtube!

Anyways, enjoy!

In the [spirit of repeating myself](http://mikecann.blog/tasks-for-trello/tasks-for-trello-a-trello-tasks-rewrite/). I have decided to rewrite another one of my chrome extensions.



# What Does it Do?

Checkout the video:

<iframe width="853" height="480" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/qEK3Zl2xA2E" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen></iframe>

It basically adds chat functionality to a Trello Board.

# Whats changed since Trello Chat?

As with my [Tasks for Trello rewrite](http://mikecann.blog/tasks-for-trello/tasks-for-trello-a-trello-tasks-rewrite/) 99% of the source is new, using modern development practices.

I borrowed many of the components and functionality from Tasks for Trello so the browser-action and settings page looks good and is clear and easy to understand:

![](./2018-08-19_10-55-21.png)

# Why change the Name?

The reason why I changed the name and created a whole new extension rather than upgrading of Trello Chat was because when I reached out to Trello to see if I could get official approval from for the extension they told me that I would have to rename the extension to "X for Trello" to comply with their branding guidelines. Well I didnt want to do that at the time as I had just spent ages getting everything setup with the name "Trello Chat" so I decided to keep it as it was.

So this time around I decided if I was going to do a rewrite, I might as well rename the extension at the same time and hopefully finally get Trello's approval.

# Rewrite?

So the decision to do a rewrite rather than an upgrade was partly because of the name and partly because I was going to have to make changes to Trello Chat for GDPR compliance. I also realized that Trello Chat was built using (what seems like) ancient coding practices so I decided in my typical naïve way that I should just start again, it shouldnt take too long, right?

Well it took about twice as long as I was expecting, but I am happy with the way it turned out.

# Open Source

I decided to do this rewrite on a public Github repo. This is because a great many extensions these days are doing very shady things such as crypto mining, ad injection, ad replacement, privacy violation and other things. I wanted to be able to avoid all of that by pointing to the source and saying; "here, look at the source, you can see im not doing anything shady".

https://github.com/mikecann/chat-for-trello

# Premium

To help justify continued work on the extension I have provided a "Premium Membership" section in the settings.

![](./2018-08-19_11-01-27.png)

From there users can choose to become a "Premium" member for \$2 per month. That entitles them to all the premium features of which there is currently only one (Desktop notifications) but I will be adding more in the future.

When they sign up they get premium membership features free for 30 days and can cancel at any time so there is no strict lock in.

# Using Trello for Support

So I decided this time around to use Trello itself as the hub for the project.

![](./chrome_2018-08-19_10-58-39.png)

People can leave comments, suggestions and error reports on that board which I will receive notifications for then update the board. Its a quick and simple way of managing the project.

# Trello Chat Depreciation

So I also made a very small update to Trello Chat at the same time to add a message informing my users that Trello Chat will be no more in a few weeks and to go download Chat for Trello instead. I hope they all get the message!

# Download

If you are interested then you can go grab Chat for Trello now from the chrome store: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/chat-for-trello/lmhjnehakebobgfdlfcoejppgbjhnfcl

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