Binary Lottery 2008
30 Mar 2008This year at MountainWest RubyConf 2008 we had a slew of books and t-shirts to give away to attendees. Like last year we printed each attendee's unique number on their badge in base 2 (binary). We would then randomly select a winner from the attendee list. But we would use their binary number in the reveal, showing only one number at a time. It might be cheesy, but we really enjoy it so deal. :)
This is what the badges looked like:
Last year I wrote a command line app that used figlet to display the winner. You can see the video of last year's Lightning Talk where I show the code if you are interested. This year I wanted to mix it up a bit, and I decided about 10 hours before the conference to try my hand at using _why's Shoes to build a GUI version. So here it is:
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require 'yaml'
# The source of much evil...
def update_digit(p, cnt, dig, wnr)
if cnt < dig
p.replace rand(2)
else
p.replace wnr[8 - dig].chr
p.style[:stroke] = red
end
end
# Use the full path because either Shoes is easily confused, or I am
users = YAML::load(open('/Users/blowmage/Lottery/users.yaml'))
winner = users[rand(users.size)] until (winner and winner[:eligible])
count = 0
Shoes.app :width => 900, :height => 700 do
keypress do |k|
count += 1
end
stack do
para "MountainWest RubyConf 2008 Binary Lottery\n",
"And your winner is...", :font => 'Helvetica 48px'
lbl_name = para '', :font => 'Helvetica 128px'
flow do
a = para rand(2), :font => 'Helvetica 192px'
b = para rand(2), :font => 'Helvetica 192px'
c = para rand(2), :font => 'Helvetica 192px'
d = para rand(2), :font => 'Helvetica 192px'
e = para rand(2), :font => 'Helvetica 192px'
f = para rand(2), :font => 'Helvetica 192px'
g = para rand(2), :font => 'Helvetica 192px'
h = para rand(2), :font => 'Helvetica 192px'
animate(60) do
update_digit(a, count, 8, winner[:number])
update_digit(b, count, 7, winner[:number])
update_digit(c, count, 6, winner[:number])
update_digit(d, count, 5, winner[:number])
update_digit(e, count, 4, winner[:number])
update_digit(f, count, 3, winner[:number])
update_digit(g, count, 2, winner[:number])
update_digit(h, count, 1, winner[:number])
if count >= 8
lbl_name.replace winner[:name]
end
if count > 8
# Click one more time to flag the user so they won't win again.
lbl_name.style[:stroke] = red
winner[:eligible] = false
open('/Users/blowmage/Lottery/users.yaml', 'w') do |out|
YAML.dump users, out
end
end
end
end
end
end
Here is a sample of what the users.yaml file looked like:
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---
- :number: "00000000"
:name: Jonathan Younger
:eligible: true
- :number: "00000001"
:name: Brian Cooke
:eligible: false
- :number: "00000010"
:name: Justin Kay
:eligible: false
Here is what the app looked like while running:
Logan Barnett also wrote a GUI using JRuby and MonkeyBars. I really hope he releases his version as well. Here is what the app looked like on the third draw, sort of an easter egg I discovered during the conference:
