Archive for January, 2009

Posted on Uncategorised

The trouble with tutorials

This is going to be a short one, but it was something I was thinking about when I was talking to Brad.

Lately I’ve been working on expanding my skill set a bit. My focus at work is on stuff that isn’t in huge demand in the Victoria job market, so I’m trying to build up a portfolio so that I’m in good shape if (when) I need to find work.

I’ve decided to take a fairly specific approach to how I’m going to learn things though, and I’m wondering if anyone else thinks this is a good plan. Basically, I am going to not use any tutorials for anything. No tutorials! None. Anything with a step by step component, I am not interested.  Code examples? Yes! Tutorials? No!
(more…)

Posted on Programming

Secret projects

Sometimes Shaun washes his car at lunch. I have few-to-no cars, and must find other things to do with my time.

Once upon a time, it was Codepaste. But times change, friends. Projects lose relevance, and usefulness degrades.

I am not so much one for change, and that is the story behind Codepaste 2 – Codepaste live messenger extreme pasting and code representation utility. Maybe we’ll pick another name for it later.

Well, what’s new with codepaste two? Ownership! Friendship! Revisions and branching?

Any code you add, be it by pasting, uploading or branching is owned by you. You can edit it, and save new revisions. Every file has a public key: a string of characters you can give to your friends, or anyone you want to be able to revise your files – ideal for situations where you’ve grown too accustomed to some code, and need fresh eyes to spot and correct an error.

Let’s say that we’re in beta.. No, not beta. What is before beta? Gamma? Let’s go with gamma. I don’t think it’s gamma.

So, you lucky six, feel free to give codepaste 2 a try before we make it super live! There are probably bugs. There is definitely stuff that still needs to be styled. Either way, let me know if you find anything horribly wrong?

Thanks,
Brad

 

Posted on Uncategorised

HERE’S YOUR DAMN BLOG BRAD

I’ve noticed a strong tendency among programmers to be extremely judgemental of other people’s code. It seems you can’t throw a rock without hitting a programmer who is rolling his eyes at someone elses code. I have never had a conversation about debugging, refactoring, maintaining or expanding a previously developed code base without someone questioning the abilities of the people who were working on it before.

Surely there aren’t that many bad programmers out there? I think there’s something about the solitary nature of programming, and the sometimes deeply personal notions of style and elegance that cause people to turn their noses at other people’s code. It doesn’t take much work to see it in action. Visit any forum where coding comes up as a topic of discussion. Inevitably some squabble will break out about the proper way to address a common problem, or even the proper way to format your whitespace. Even while being helpful people are belligerent. Read any response to a common beginner question and you’ll almost always see at least one person chastising the rookie programmer asking the question for one reason or another.
(more…)

Posted on Uncategorised

The dream of daily blogs is dead

Although it lasted longer than expected, it’s sad to see a pattern of dedication broken. Shaun was going to post last night, but instead I distracted him with Left 4 Dead — a game about zombies, friendship, and blogging.

He still plans to post before midnight, so I’ll keep this short.

He’s switched it up, and is coming at the day from the other end. It’s like the time in Left 4 Dead: I was getting attacked by a zombie, and Shaun shot it.

Just like real life, I am best used as bait.

Once i tried to wear a pink, polka dot head-band into a club.

 

Posted on Programming

Choreoheritance

Shaun is totally beating me at posting. I guess I’d better get on the ball. By the way, if you consider yourself a part of the GC community and want to be able to post, you should contact Brad on google talk.

So, I’ve been working on this thing, project name ‘Choreography’. It’s really just a utility — an interface into a part of a personal library I’m developing: ‘kdance’. The intent of kdance is to do for me everything I would ever need to do with skeletal animation. The problem is that it is a set of functions instead of a set of buttons. Choreography resolves this.

Unfortunately, in order to perform the function -> button transition effectively, one needs the arcane concept of a ‘gooey’ — a common device for interfacing with functions in a visual way. This device is the largest blocker between me and creating useful programs.

(more…)

Posted on Uncategorised

Once again I’ve summarized a portion of my day in blog form + filler

Today I was full of energy and not tired at all.

That is a lie I was super tired. But don’t even worry I took a four hour nap (10-2am) before going on a business organization binge.

I used one of them – two, actually – spread sheets, and made a list of money coming in and money going out. Hopefully that will be useful somewhere down the road – if not, what a sap I will look like, friends.

Also I made three invoices.

By the way, I have an official invoice design now! It sports the newly selected altered effect logo, and I’m pretty happy with the design!

The next step, I guess, is to get business cards to appease the people who keep asking for them. I guess I’d better get to designing some. Though, I do kind of expect it to echo the logo fiasco. There is always the other one, though… hope? Positivity? Something like that, I presume.

After we obtain, and possibly even distribute some business cards, we need to figure out the other part — the hard part: how to get clients. Right now I do that by replying to their e-mails, which is really more clients getting me, than me getting them.

I’ve been distracted today, and didn’t really know what to write. But, good news! The idea of writing a useless or boring blog can’t even stop me. And I’m sticking with the good news descriptor.

As a way of apology, or in the custom of filler content, I’m posting an incredibly poorly drawn picture:
(more…)

Posted on Programming

Imagined generality

One of the reasons i like HTML and CSS is because in my mind every tag is exactly the same, the only differences being in default CSS values for various tags. Now, this is obviously not the case, but it’s nice to believe. It’s for the same reason that i thought scheme was so pretty.

For such an inaccurate mental model, it works out rather well.

It’s when the lie is highlighted that I become frustrated or, worse, annoyed. Which is why I am not a fan of how certain tags can’t self close.
(more…)