Working.

There's been less time to update the blog because of all the running around that's going on. The about me page was updated today to be a little more in touch with what's happening, particularly the projects that are becoming more of a time consumption.

With that in mind, I finished one book of six to get a fresh look on web design. The next book that was recommended was HTML5 For Web Designers, which was written with HTML5 not being complete in mind. At just under one hundred pages, it should keep me busy for the rest of the week outside of work-related things.

It's been really interesting writing up the code for CTDJ. I've gone through about 4 designs by now, and every time one looks okay, a better one comes up on paper. The plan was to have a workable demo for them by Friday--I'm keeping the current design for now and showing that to them once I work out all the grits.

Getting around

Learning Python has been interesting so far. I like Zed Shaw's approach (and thus, just like writing the code out all the time to learn), and I'm picking up a few general programming concepts that I hadn't learned before. The biggest thing is importing into the file, writing, etc. This will be more useful once I start exploring the world of code that already exists.

In the meantime, this blog has turned into somewhat of a book review blog. I began reading another book earlier this week called A Practical Guide to Designing for the Web by Mark Boulton. I'm only about six chapters into the book thus far, but at least it's gotten me to go out and buy several different sized notebooks at Muji, which is located north of Canal on Broadway. Boulton reinforced the idea that I should always have something to write in, and while I watch engineers I know do the same and counted all the times I've said, "I wish I had something I could write in right now," it was about time something was actually done about it.

Lastly for today, heypodo.com's index page was finally thrown up. It was coded in an hour or two, and there's plenty of work to still do on it, but it's there and hosted from github.

My goal is to get CT's Most Wanted DJ's website completed by the end of September. I met with the guys a few times so far and things are definitely moving forward. It'll be much easier to get that project rolling once I finish the python book next week.

Productivity++

Trolling through work the last few days, just thought I'd share a few of the things I have done/know I have to do in order to have the best day at "the office."

Sit, or stand. Don't lie down.

Living in Napa was tough. I didn't have a chair to sit in just a futon that was not ideal. I lay down a lot, and that just screams failure. Once I moved to New York, I made sure I either had a) a desk that I could stand at, or b) a chair that is only comfortable with good posture.
Hanging out at the General Assembly can make this difficult with their beautiful (and by beautiful I mean seductive) black couches, but I know it'll be a good work day when I can find a chair or find a place to stand at the bar.

Find a script to get rid of reddit.

I have a ridiculous habit of hanging out on reddit and clicking on imgur links nonstop. There are scripts all over github to disable select websites, so I'm going to turn one on that just says "Problem?" if I attempt to access it. Self-restrain can come later.

Do a warm up.

For now, I do about an hour or so of warm up work each day. Read out of a book and do "write as I tell you to" code; something relatively simple and gets my mind going. It reminds me of when I taught how students complained about doing Daily Oral Language every single day insistent that their writing was "fine", but nonetheless they sucked it up, did it, and after a few months we all slowly began to see improvement. It's a witless activity, but a great reminder that 99% of the errors in code are probably my fault, even to the point that I just didn't copy it correctly. Eventually, I'd like to move onto using this hour to just looking around on github or stackoverflow to learn new code to implement or find questions within reason that I could answer. But for now, I still have a lot to learn.

Make everything on my computer huge.

I started doing this for a couple of reasons. One, as monitors become better and better, the resolution increases, and then everything gets smaller. I'm not getting old, but if I'm reading an ebook online (probably because I was too lazy to take out my kindle, or put the book on it), I like to make the text readable to the point where I'm not squinting or leaning forward--again, something that doesn't promote good posture. On a typical ebook or article, this is at least 2 cmd+'s on Chrome, somewhere between 20-24 lines viewable on a full screen computer. I do the same thing with terminal (2 cmd+'s), and set that to "hacker mode" (pro mode) to contrast the typical black-text-on-white that I see on the web, or even my textmate workables. This all lets me focus more on my work instead of straining to determine where I left off or to find a bug in the code.

Meet someone new.

This I kind of take for granted since I live in New York with 8 million people, but I make it a goal to talk to someone that I haven't spoken to before. This sounds like simple networking, sure, but just a matter of opening my mouth every day for the last two weeks has gotten me two job interviews, plenty of business cards, and chances to meet people I would have never met otherwise.

Work with a goal in mind.

Short term goals seem tame, but any responsible person understands that in order to succeed, you need reachable daily goals. I figured that out the hard way when I would tell myself "I'm going to read these ten articles and then do some crazy stuff with it!" That never happened, and I got frustrated fast. Instead, I'm finding what's doable within a day, getting that done, and taking a break before I try to figure out what my next steps should be.



On that note, I've finished all my CSS review, and what's left on github of my splash page is just garbage. Tomorrow's gameplan: rewrite this from scratch on paper, and start doing the visual designs in inkscape. I'd like to get this page running on just HTML and CSS before I start cruising into javascript land again--or before I implement some anyway.
I also completed the next three exercises in Zed Shaw's book on Python (my current daily warm up). If you haven't checked it out yet, I highly recommend it.

Moving along with Validation

Just a couple things to share today:

HTML review is complete. Probably missing some essentials, but the core is there and I can more on to CSS. Best things I realized:

HTML is all about structure. It should really be all about the framework.
CSS is all about presentation and what I want all this information to look like. The more I break it up with id, class, div, span, the more unique the website can be.
I assume, then, that JS is about interaction. How the website works with the user. This is where the legit coding comes in, and ideally, where I can start using my ruby background to design some really neat things.

Also want to share a couple one page web app links:

Get Skeleton: This is a framework that helps you format a single webpage. All the code you'd ever need.

Node.js Web App: From an up and coming startup founded in New York City (I believe), a founder shares how node can be used to form a solo page for a web app. hij1nx breaks it down fairly clearly--skills coming from his lecturing experience, I think.

Follow my splash page work on github. It's slowly coming along, and I have a much better idea of how to present all this information now. Looking forward to writing all original blog CSS code as well.

Interview Week 1 Completed

Just finished the last job interview I had lined up of several since last week. There are two hopefuls; one I'm hoping I'll hear back from soon, the other wants me to come in for round two later this week or next.

I'm meeting with Jon to discuss some website designs for his Disc Jockey business. Hopefully he will approve a couple, get me the things I need from him, and then I can get this website figured out by the end of the month--something to add to my starving portfolio.

In the meantime, working on splash page for heypodo.com (I'm sure everyone has noticed the contents is just a blog for now), and flipping through this article on web standards sent by Chris Korhonen. Another reader suggested I run the webpage through my mac, though I'm looking at more "open" hosting options. I assume I can get through this and write up my own blogger markup for something more interesting than this simple template.

Till then!

Back to Ruby; Back to Koans

Took a huge leap in Koans today after hanging out at the General Assembly downtown. Met a few people (due to Mozilla shirt, what what George), but mostly processed a few key ideas in Ruby Koans--now committed to github after someone's recommendation.

Today's chunk was rather huge: Focused on classes, constants, message passing, and methods, as well as finished the Greed game code (which didn't take too long), and the Dice Project code (which was very familiar to Chris Pine's version). One major difficulty I've come across is writing code to someone else's code--it's really frustrating when you have a design idea but it has to work with someone else's idea of how it should be framed.

I left off at Proxy Object Project, realizing I think I need a night to let the learning settle in before I get back at it. I also need to find my coding notebook so write the pseudo-code, since I'm not nearly good enough to just figure it out by writing code straight. This is a lot of calling objects and messages to be sent around--which is everything I read about today--but I just need some time to digest and review before kicking it in. 259/274... so almost done!

Interview week starts off tomorrow, followed by meeting with a startup CEO about another position, and more interviews next week.

Final Stretch: Oakdale, CT, and New York, NY

Final travel post tonight, back to the typical rubying schedule tomorrow.

Sunday's twelve hour drive was definitely the worst. Hottest day, longest trip, most traffic and slowest vehicles. While every other day trip took only one stop for gas and stretching, I think this one took at least four stops, two for gas and two for just being tired and restless. We finally made it back after stopping in New Haven for pizza at Frank Pepe, which was totally worth it. Unfortunately neither of us took any pictures of the pizza--we were starving.

Spent Sunday night in Oakdale with my parents and the dog, but only about three hours of sleep since Colleen wanted to get back to lab as early as possible. We took the 6:00 am train from Old Saybrook to finally arrive at Washington Heights around 9:30.

Celebrated with all you can eat sushi in the East Village at night. It feels good to be back on the East Coast, but I will miss California and San Francisco.

Pictures will slowly go up on Flickr, and tomorrow will be back to the norm of programming all day, something I feel like I haven't touched in over a week. Yikes.

I did do some fair reading today. I am following Google's testing blog, and I'm jumping around the internet to learn more about ruby gems, considering the Ruby Talk email group shares knowledge of new ones constantly. I'll do some research about them tomorrow and even try to use one to write something to get this programming biz going again. I have a few interviews over the course of the next week, so it'll be a busy schedule once again. At least I'm not driving anymore.