self-promotion

Putting on my marketing hat: Random MailJet hack

Gregory Golberg doubledoor, holding forth, self-promotion , ,

(Yes, I do indeed wear multiple hats — marketing FTW, or is it WTF?)

Really wanted to use MailJet (BTW, guys, what’s with support and not being able to edit a campaign after launch? Get what I pay for?) to send users a list of items, dynamically. For example, say I have the following list of items, say, “forgotten” in a shopping cart:

User,Items
Alice,”bat, ball”
Bob,”racquet, shuttlecock”

And I want to send something like (notice I’d also like links there):

Hey Alice, did you forget this in your cart:

Ball
Bat

Turns out, loop construct doesn’t work. Aside: this is despite ChatGPT’s valiant attempt to suggest that something like this could work:

{{
{% set items = data.items|split(‘,’) %}
{% for item in items %}
{{ item.strip() }}
{% endfor %}
}}

But the answer is hacky but works. Because if you remember that SGML is OK with single quotes, then construct your contacts list like so:

User,Items

Alice,"<a href='https://www.amazon.com/BB-W-Wooden-baseball-bat-size/dp/B0039NKEZQ/'>bat</a>,<a href='https://www.amazon.com/Rawlings-Official-Recreational-Baseballs-OLB3BBOX3/dp/B00AWVNPMM/'>ball</a>
Bob,"<a href='https://www.amazon.com/YONEX-Graphite-Badminton-Racquet-Tension/dp/B08X2SXQHR/'>racquet</a>, <a href='https://www.amazon.com/White-Badminton-Birdies-Bedminton-Shuttlecocks/dp/B0B9FPRHBF'>shuttlecock</a>"
And make the HTML be just

Hey [[data:user:””]],

You did you forget this in your cart?
[[data:items:””]]

Works!

P.S. Links provided here are just whatever I found on Google, no affiliate marketing.

Random notes for January 2023

Gregory Golberg holding forth, self-promotion , , , , , , , , , , ,

Not enough for any singular entry, but enough to write a bunch of annoyed points. Because I hate Twitter threads and this is the reverse: unconnected entries jammed together.

  • GoLang: Looks like the answers to my questions are nicely written up here.
  • Technology and Society: Ok, I promise I’ll get to geekery here. So, PeopleCDC folks seem upset about the New Yorker article. But now, I am surprised — and maybe it is an oversight — at the lack of inclusion of IT people in the form. Artists, yeah, to carry the message — but if the goal is to slow the spread, why no consideration given to automation of various things (look at how pathetic most government websites are for things that are routine).

    Not expecting to hear back, really.
  • Google Ads and API Management: Every time you think you get used to all the various entities in Google Ads, you realize there’s of course a sunsetting of UA … Of course! Of course this is where I pause and let Steve Yegge on with his rant:

    Dear RECIPIENT,

    Fuck yooooouuuuuuuu. Fuck you, fuck you, Fuck You. Drop whatever you are doing because it’s not important. What is important is OUR time. It’s costing us time and money to support our shit, and we’re tired of it, so we’re not going to support it anymore. So drop your fucking plans and go start digging through our shitty documentation, begging for scraps on forums, and oh by the way, our new shit is COMPLETELY different from the old shit, because well, we fucked that design up pretty bad, heh, but hey, that’s YOUR problem, not our problem.

    We remain committed as always to ensuring everything you write will be unusable within 1 year.

  • API Management, ListHub: First, I learned there’s a standards body Unsure what I’m making of it (I mean, I suppose I’ve gotten good results from IAB, and standardization of FinOps is somewhat ongoing, so, er, maybe not all bureaucracy is an awful horrible crap.

    But that’s kind of a side note.

Being a drop-out was fun for a while…

Gregory Golberg self-promotion , ,

But all good things must come to an end. 11 years after the scheduled time, I am now a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and Engineering from MIT:

mit-diploma.png

Thanks be to: