Category Archives: Technology

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Early morning musings: Twitter

It’s Saturday morning. My alarm woke me up to a sunny day and I remembered that have zero tasks or events on my plate for today.

I purposely laid in bed for an hour checking for my usual tech tidbits in my Twitter feed. Being a user for 16 years (an early adapter to, and adopter of, the platform), I’ve amassed over 65,000 tweets. Though I’ve watched Twitter evolve to what many call a cesspool, I find it invaluable as a source of information for things I’d like to learn about regarding certain aspects of our evolving techsphere.

With that, and all the impending doom many predict after Elon purchases it, I’m adopting a “wait-and-see” attitude. I’ve taken actions to make my feed enjoyable to read and will only exodus Twitter if those actions become OBE beyond my control.

Have a good one.

Fresh!

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Digital Minimalism (The Newport Way): 30 Day Results

Greetings,

From 27 August through 30 September, I set out to do a modified version of what Cal Newport discusses in his best-selling book “Digital Minimalism”. Essentially, the detox calls to get rid of using, not just social media sites, but all other types of tech that appears to have a grip on oneself (i.e. gaming, etc). The end result is to use technology to enhance the value of your everyday life, as opposed to technology using you. for it’s gain, in the midst of the digital and social media economy.

As said above, I took a modified approach. As suggested in the book, I removed the remaining apps from my phone: Twitter, Beta, Instagram, and Reddit. In doing so, I found that Instagram is (outside of posting photos and videos) essentially useless, the user experience leaves much to be desired. This is definitely understandable, so much to the point of me having little desire to check my IG account, let along engaging there on any regular basis. This result was discussed in the book – the inconvenience of logging into social media sites via the web vs the designed convenience of doing so with a mobile app. I didn’t think I would miss using Instagram, especially being an early adapter to the platform.

With removing mobile apps and causing the inconvenience of logging in via the web, the other part of the process was to avoid just that – logging into the sites via the web. Being a huge fan of Twitter, this is where I fell short. My modified plan was to just check Twitter for ten minutes every morning, primarily via the Twitter lists I have built in the beginning of the detox. The same was to take place for Instagram and Facebook as I could log into post content for music production. That process started well for the first week or so, but waned quickly after that.

There is this context of FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out). I spoke about this topic on a recent episode of my podcast, Tech Times. FOMO takes on many forms – for some it has to do with keeping up with friends and family posts, for others it’s breaking news, etc. For me, Twitter has always provided me with topic knowledge in the areas of technology developments, coding culture, and space news. It’s been an invaluable resource for those areas for the past 16 years, so going cold turkey on it has been difficult, even via the use of lists, and not having my feed littered with unwanted topic matter. Accessing it via mobile is barely different (unlike IG) then access via the web, so that didn’t help matters, but in the past month, one thing became very clear: the issue is not really the access per se, it’s ……………

…keeping the phone out of my hands.

I won’t wax phisophically on that issue, however, it’s the one and only thing that will cause me to use my time wiser and eventually get to the result that Cal ultimately states in his book. Last week, my screen time averaged 5 hours a day, which is way too much for the activities that caused that. That said, today is October 1, the first day of the last quarter of 2022. Yesterday, in my podcast episode “What’s The Password”, I mentioned that I plan to take actionable steps to finish 2022 on a high note. What I discuss, in terms of reducing my “digital footprint” (as a long time friend said to me years ago) is the primary strive I’ll be strengthening. With that strengthening, I hope to do more things to also strengthen the true and valuable things of my daily life for this point forward – things that don’t require the use of being online.

Thanks for the read.

Doug

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Back to the future: Hello iPod

Greetings all. As many have seen and heard, Apple has discontinued production of the iPod, a device that was undoubtedly pivotal to Apple’s trajectory of success. The iPod was produced in various formats since its debut in 2001. I was fortunate enough to own the original iPod, the little brick with a click wheel, Firewire connection, and capability of holding up to 5000 songs on its 5GB drive, if memory serves me correctly.

I, like many of you reading this, have owned at least one iPod. I’ve owned several – the mini, 2nd gen Nano, 4th Gen Nano, 6th Gen Nano (that I wore as a watch for fitness tracking (see below)), 1st Gen iPod Touch, and still have a few of them. The iPod, specifically those prior to the iPod Touch, did one thing, well two things, simply well – sync and play your music (via the use of iTunes). Those two things are the biggest attraction to me for the iPod and makes the pre-iPod Touch versions much more attractive. The obvious reason for me, which I’ve read others talk about and I’ve discussed with my brother-in-tech, DarrenKeith, is the fact that there were no internet apps on those earlier versions to distract the listener from the music listening experience the iPod provided.

The largest capacity iPod I owned (and had two of at one point) was the 160 GB iPod Classic, in black. Talk about a workhorse. To date I don’t remember what happened to one (it may have crapped out on me), but the other is now owned by my sister (which I forgot I gave her and wish I didn’t – LOL). I have fond memories of listening to my over 7000 song iTunes library through the years. It provided just the right listening experience for so many events from just cruising around town to chillin’ at home, to flying across country and then half way around the world. It was 2005 or so when I discovered and then regularly using the Minidisc platform, first for band rehearsal recordings to then making my own MDs for a similar listening experience the iPod provided.

Fast forward to the introduction of Spotify and other streaming platforms. It made listening to music extremely convenient and even though iTunes (now Apple Music) became available on mobile devices, the combination of having all your phone/internet apps along with your music was highly convenient, but the distraction (to me) made listening to music less focused, or as I’ve heard put, made music “disposable”.

I have Spotify and the Soma FM app on my phone – my only two streaming platform apps, and yes I listen to streaming music (I’m actually listening to Soma FM as I type this post). I’ve never downloaded music to my phone (or Apple Watch) primarily because I didn’t want space taken up, let alone the fact that why do that when I can stream music. Call me sort of a neo-luddite, but I’ve always preferred NOT having to solely rely on the internet to listen to music (as common as that is today).

When the announcement was made that the iPod was being discontinued, as expected, all versions of the iPod Touch sold out within a day afterwards. I predicted the price gouging to appear on eBay and as expected, I saw a 160 GB iPod Classic with a starting bid price of… $1500 USD (smh).

I confiscated a 16GB iPod Touch from my son some years back that was sitting around doing nothing and decided I would make that into my dedicated music player. I have a 1GB Shuffle but the battery is not the greatest. I attempted to sync the Touch to one of my MacBooks that has Apple Music (vs iTunes) on it. I was able to sync most of my purchases from iCloud, but the vast majority of my collection comes from CD. I had one or two CD imports to this library but couldn’t get them synced. Maybe I’m not as familiar with Apple Music as a successor to iTunes but it was way too cumbersome. I then remembered my mid-2011 Mac mini in my recording studio, the predecessor to my current M1 Mac mini. I had moved my entire iTunes library from that drive to an external drive. I connected that drive back to that Mac, set it up as the main iTunes library and synced as much as I could to this little 16GB iPod Touch. It brought back a lot of found memories, including the auditioning of many tracks I featured on my podcast, The Sunday Soundtrack. What else did I really love about the early iPods? The early ones came with the Nike+ Training app (known as the Nike+ iPod system) that first worked with a Nike running shoe sensor and a transmitter that connected to the 30-pin port of the iPod. Later the Nike+ app was created for the iPhone and iPod Touch. I blogged about that whole ecosphere (and my love for it) many times on this blog site.

Now I’m a happy iPod camper again – 1265 songs in my pocket (thought I’m a bit anal in that a fair amount of tracks don’t have artwork – a must for me since this is an iPod Touch…haha…I have to fix that issue). The iPod has a regular headphone jack and I prefer listening with over the ear headphones, so I’m good. I can hook it into my car audio system via USB as well and it’s small enough that I don’t mind carrying both it and the iPhone with me.

I really thought about getting another iPod Classic, but will learn to live with this one (unless I can somehow convince my sister to fork over the one I gave her…LOL!).

Thanks for the read…have a good week.

Fresh

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The Doomsday being presented as Elon Musk’s Twitter

I joined Twitter in November 2006, upon being told about it by a friend I knew from the days of AOL Instant Messenger, iMusic, Yahoo Instant Messenger, and Blackplanet, Lis. Shortly afterwards, I began to connect with other early adapters like Ray, Kenya, Brian, EJ, Will, Terri, and Todd aka The Big La. “In the early 2010s, when Twitter, which launched in 2006, was still relatively fresh, the site had a dramatically different atmosphere. People were more likely to tweet about fairly mundane things: school gossip, lunch, Shonda Rhimes’ hit TV series “Scandal.” Twitter was a place where ordinary people could talk about ordinary things”1 For me, it was just that, posting about the what DID appear to be mundane things – what you had for breakfast, lunch, dinner, running late for work, how you’re feeling, etc. I posted about all those things and, in addition, mainly about tech and music production (to include podcasting), along with other hobbies of mine. It was a relaxed, friendly, and fun place that forced you to be confined to the microblog’s limit of 140 characters. It was about or year or two later when my friend DarrenKeith aka DK joined. He and a number of us, including EJ, Fave (RIH), BSOTS, and many others were hosting podcasts on a regular basis, some weekly like DarrenKeith’s My Love For Music, Fave’s Friday Favecast, EJ’s Wayback Wednesday, and my podcast, theSunday Soundtrack. We are all pretty much regularly blogging back then. I know DK and I still do.

Fast forward to 2022, Twitter has changed tremendously as Internet technology advanced. Twitter was once known as a social network (like Facebook), but that term died and has been replaced with “social media”. Twitter has adopted a slew of new features, just like many other social media sites, but with the growth of technology, the advent and ease of first person news reporting, the use of advertising, algorithms, mobile device social media apps, and the like, Twitter has grown to possess the good and the bad (the latter I like to refer to as being akin to a cesspool).

Recently, the news has been full of the fact that Elon Musk has purchased Twitter. Most of that news (I’d say close to 100%) is that Twitter, based on who Elon Musk is, will suffer greatly at the hands of this millionaire and what he proposes to turn the site into, with respect to free speech and non-anonymity. From what I read, it’s a forthcoming doomsday for sure. Frankly, even with all Elon has been in the news for, the good and the bad, it’s speculation, which I treat as just that. Many say they’ll be part of the exodus already, despite the fact that he hasn’t fully taken over and no changes will be seen for at least six months from now.

Being a user of Twitter for as long as I have been, I’ve seen its evolution and know pretty much exactly how it works. I choose to follow who I do and use its privacy settings available to make my Twitter experience as pleasing as it can be for me. I can’t stand its algorithms in the least bit, BUT, algorithms are innate to social media technology so it’s something we all must live with.

As of today, I have no desire to leave Twitter and don’t plan to UNLESS (under the guise of ‘”free speech”) the environment becomes unavoidably more riddled with hate speech and the like. If that becomes a reality, I’ll take my 65000+ tweets and hit the road – meaning I will not participate/engage as a user any longer. No, I am not going to create a Mastodon (or similar) account and start all over. There is one site similar to Twitter, pnut.io, 100% user run, that I will continue to remain on (since joining in 2017). What I will also do is something DK and I have discussed ad infinitum – crosspost my blog posts from my blog (or walled garden as DK and I refer to it), along with future episodes of my latest podcast Tech Times, and give Twitter users the opportunity to visit. Might as well leverage social networking tech, yes? I’ve lived without Twitter prior to it’s existence, and if I feel the need to do so in the near future, I will. I enjoy Twitter for what it offers me and have connected with many great and resourceful users over the years that have expanded my personality, as well knowledge in a handful of personal interests, for the better. For what it’s worth, I never saw Twitter as a “race thing”, but a community of global users. Yes, racial issues continue to plague us today, but nonetheless…

Time will tell with regards to my exodus or not.

If you decide to leave Twitter, for whatever reason, what will you do, where will you go?

Thanks or the read.

Fresh.

1: Elon Musk’s possible takeover of Twitter is unsettling for many Black users

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Attachment to Tech

When’s the last time you noticed you were attached to a tech device? Whether it’s of the latest and greatest to hit the market or something used for years, I think we’ve all experienced it to some degree at some point. For me, it’s been the Pebble Watch.

The Pebble Time Steel

The Pebble watch shot to massive stardom m back in the 2012 time frame, boasting an always on e-ink display and long battery life on one charge (many times in excess of seven days). While I won’t get into the history of its rise and fall, there are may things, outside of the two above, that I like about it. It’s ecosystem is very much still alive by dedicated fans and developers via rebble.io. One of the most enjoyable aspects is the hundreds of watchfaces capable of being downloaded or sideloaded to the watch. I use an iPhone and the Pebble app still works quite well on iOS 15.4.1

The watch in the photo above is my dedicated dress watch showing one of my favorite watchfaces, FEELTTMM, designed by Albert Salamon. While my Apple Watch does a lot of the heavy lifting far better than any Pebble watch today, I sometimes prefer everything that the Pebble ecosystem presents to me. It’s different and offers and experience that is still quite enjoyable to me.

Long live Pebble.

Thanks for the read.

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Vintage Apple Memories (Macs, iPhones, and other Apple products)

Greetings and thanks for stopping by. Recently I came across a photo of an old ad (ten years ago) for the iPhone 4S. This was the model that introduced the world to Siri. It was also the second iPhone that I ever owned – an upgrade from my first one, the iPhone 4. I still have both those phones, still in near immaculate condition. Seeing this ad brought back fond memories all the way back to the first time I ever used an Apple product. That product was the Mac Plus (and the Mac SE/30), back in July 1988. Looking back on being an Apple fanboy to present day, I consider the late 80’s into the early 2000s as the “golden era” of Apple. This (long) blog post describes my journey and fandom (as it has evolved), from then to now. This post evolved from a series of tweets I posted on my Twitter feed from 28 Sep 2021 through 2 Oct 2021, which can be read here.

I hope you enjoy the read.

It was June 13, 1988 , the first day of my first job as an engineer. My previous job, working in the materiel coordination department of a major airline, saw the office full of IBM PC-XT computers, not one Mac in sight, but this new job had two, a Mac Plus and a Mac SE/30. The Macintosh line of computers were launched in 1984 and I had new of them through various ads, but didn’t pay too much attention overall. What I did remember is them touting the ease of “right out of the box” use, and how friendly the experience is. The business analyst in our office, David, was an older gentleman, maybe pushing 60 or greater, but what struck me was his affinity and love of the Mac. He was the one that embodied all that Apple was advertising in a Mac user. As he continued to explain to me how the OS worked and I began to see how different the experience was from using a PC, I also began to see and feel exactly what Apple was advertising as well.It was weird to me at first, that they can connect to a user through a computing device, so warmly, friendly, and easily, but I was totally getting it

As I worked to be acclimated in my position, the work was standard and enjoyable (it was actually my dream job in the field I grew to love and still work in). While the programmatic and design engineering work were done on PCs, David did a lot of the business aspects aligned with his position description on the Mac platform. The small set of Macs in the office expanded from that Mac Plus with a 20MB external drive, a Mac SE/30, to a Mac iiCi, and a really nice Apple Laserwriter II printer to a brand new Mac IICi. Any chance I got, I asked David what he was working on (though I knew nothing of business administration and the like), just to work on the Macs, System 6, System 7, etc. Working on the Mac platform almost seem eerily magical and captivating. David introduced me to a lot of software made for the Mac that existed on Windows, and software solely made for the Mac, like the Mac version of WordPerfect, AEC Information Manager (a database program for the Mac), After Dark and After Dark II screen savers, and many others. It was during this time I discovered the magic of Hypercard, loading software via 3.5″ floppy discs, and so much more. Everything about Macintosh ecosystem had me hooked beyond hooked – it was a scary pleasure, one that I still can’t quite figure out how Apple instilled that in so many users. The friendly usability right out of the box, the print ads in tech/regular magazines, the commercials, everything, I remember the feelings VERY clearly, about how this tech company can lay grip on the psyche so easily with a product…whew.

Three years in 1991, after gleaning so much from David about the Mac ecosystem (during work and after hour office social functions), I scraped and saved enough to by my first Mac – The Mac Classic II, from a small Mac computer shop (whose name escapes me) on Georgia Avenue, in Silver Spring, MD. When I finally got it home that night, took it out of the box, connect the mouse and keyboard to the serial port, plugged it in, and turned it on, it was more than exciting. I felt everything I described at work but now this was far more special because that was MY Mac. I felt like Ralphie’s dad, from The Christmas Story, the night the Leg Lamp personally delivered to him!

The Mac Classic II was running System 7.0 and I learned the ins and outs of it. Eventually I got a 14.4K modem which allowed me an introduction to BBSs, as well as a Stylewriter printer. From that point, I was SET. Every thing about that Mac Classic II was gorgeous, aesthetically and user-wise. I don’t remember when it met it’s demise, but years later I was able to get a used Mac Classic to replace it. I did so because it was my first Mac, of which I still hold sentimental feelings for, and it was my first opportunity to use the Mac for music production. The Mac Classic is sitting in my studio, as I type this, running a freeware screen saver called Darkside – the same screensaver David told me about around the time of After Dark.

The next new Mac I bought was the Macintosh LC III (aka the “pizza box”). It’s slim design was one I came to love, especially because of how well it served the ergonomics of workspace, not to mention it being the first color Mac I ever owned (oh, I guess I DID mention that LOL). Once again, I had it for quite some time, but for the life of me, I can’t remember what ever happened to it. I don’t remember selling it so…. hmmm.

Let’s see, the next Mac I owned…hmm…at this point my memory is a bit fuzzy. At this point, music production with the Mac was well underway. I acquired a Power Mac 7100, that was shortly outfitted with an Audiomedia II digital NuBUS card which gave me digital and analog inputs and outputs, allowing me to directly record with Pro Tools 3.4 Free. It was a game changer at that time. It was running Mac OS 9, which also allowed me to run Opcode Vision’s sequencer and use the OMS ecosphere, but I actually used another sequencer called Master Tracks Pro 5.2. This was the brains of the rest of my set up, which included a Roland VS-880EX hardware digital multitrack recorder for audio (the Power Macs internal HD was so small it was prohibitive to record multiple audio tracks into it). I still have the 7100, which really came in handy last summer when I had to convert some old Pro Tools audio tracks from a recording session done in 1987, Mac OS 9 to the rescue.

After discovering I needed more HD space and a faster processor – along came my favorite desktop Mac to this day – the Power Mac G5 1.8 GHz Dual. I didn’t purchase this machine new but when I got it, it was in near immaculate condition, a beautiful looking, beautifully designed machine which allowed simple and easy access to its inner components via the door removal on it’s side. A heavy machine, just like its twin, The Mac Pro, it served me well for years of music production, including upgrading to Logic 8 and finally being able to record audio to its internal HD as well as an external 500 GB SATA drive. I was also, for the first time, able to run dual monitors, which made recording and mixing MUCH easier than doing both via one monitor. This machine is still have as well, though it seems to have the dread fan issue and I was having some issue maintaining video on a monitor. Research tells me the video card may not be seated properly and/or I may just have to replace it’s internal battery. I’ve been meaning to solve the issue and find someway to use it again, from a nostalgic standpoint. Every time I see a pristine looking one in the wild (as with the Mac Classic or Classic II), I’m like….”wow….”.

It was during this time I had found a great deal on 15″ Powerbook G4 Aluminum, from a graphics designer in uptown DC who was looking to upgrade. I had always wanted a Powerbook, but couldn’t afford one prior, at least a Powerbook with similar specs. This PB was sort of like the little brother to the G5 as they were both silver. The PB ended up being my daily runner BUT doubled nicely as my portable recording computer after loading it up with Logic 7.2 and some additional audio editing software. I took it with me when on business in Guam for a month and recorded the first tracks from my first release as a solo artist. Armed with a 25-key MIDI controller, it made a perfect combination for recording in my hotel room after work. Not only did I do music production on that PB, but also technical design and simulation work, so all around it was a great first PB to own. While on the subject of Powerboks, in the years to follow, I acquired the following: Powerbook 5300cs, Powerbook G3, and a Powerbook 165. The 5300cs ran Mac OS 8.6 and I mainly used that with my MessagePad Newton 2000, which was always a seamless connection. I was, with all the Newton software and apps I acquired, hoping to get the Newton wireless via two Orinoco wireless cards I ended up with at some point but that never transpired. The G3 Bronze was another good deal I just wanted to have in my collection. Using it was fun while I had it but it was eventually given to a friend who’s current computer crapped on on her – she and her daughter were Mac users for a short time, then back to the PC at some point…oh well, LOL. Out of all the PBs I owned, the G4 remains, needing repair as it won’t power on now. Maybe one day I’ll get around to it.

It wasn’t until the mid 2000s that I got another new Mac, a white 1.33 GHz iBook G4, entering the world of Mac OS X 🙂 I enjoyed the iBook as well, still being able to use my MessagePad with it, it was new daily runner, while the PB G4 was then my full time mobile music production Mac. the iBook was nice to use also but I think I ended up selling it – I really can’t remember at this point. What I do remember that replaced it was a 2007 Black MacBook, 2.16GHz…blazing compared to the iBook…LOL. Once again, a great deal from an owner who just upgraded to a MacBook Pro, so this suited me fine, as I always wanted to own that “black book”. Yep, still have it, new battery installed, running what I’ve seen said as the most stable versions of Mac OS X – Snow Leopard. It gets pretty warm when in use, so instead of trying to remedy that, it’s just tucked away now. I got some good daily use out of it – technical analysis work and everyday stuff too.

2007 – 14 years ago. Up until that time, I had also in my collection a silver door Power Mac G4, a Bondi Blue iMac G3, and an eMac – all for very short times. It was fun owning Macs that are referred to as vintage. That era of Apple was a great time. This fanboy, besides the aforementioned Macs, owned the iPhone 4 and 4s, Quicktime 100 and 200, PowerCD, original iPod, Newton MessagePads 100 (still have), 130, and 2100 (still have). Apple has done many great (and not so great) things since then, but there is no era like the “golden era”.

If you’ve read this far, thanks for hanging until the end, I appreciate it.

Be well.

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Tech’s ‘n Effect

For those of you who didn’t catch the play on words in the blog post title, but are curious, the hint correlates to a well known R&B group from the 90’s, not just the subject of this post.

Though its four months later and 49 degs warmer right now, it is 11:55pm. After a long workday (even working from home), tonight we celebrated my son’s high school graduation.

As many are, during this pandemic, the usual gathering of friends and family was all for naught due to you-know-what. What was truly awesome in the midst of this was how, his school, the faculty, staff (of which my daughter is one of them), students, and parents managed to turn this into a joyous occasion.

As with all schools, they have been closed for the last few months and classes have been completed virtually. The process for preparing for a graduation ceremony to a great deal of planning, but was followed up by flawless execution. Being as though my son’s graduating class is very small, last week the process was to have two families come to the school, in thirty minute intervals so that each student can walk across the stage, receive his or her diploma, take the usual pictures with the headmaster (principal) of the school and family, then head home. That whole process took 20 mins. Only immediately family was allowed (because it was most likely the case that said family had no one suffering from COVID-19 symptoms), thus no family members who didn’t live in the household, or friends, were aloud.

Many of the activities you would see at a graduation – faculty speakers, valedictorian and salutatorian speeches, musical selections, etc, were all pre-recorded or provided by archived video. When all was said and done, each aspect of the graduation was coordinated together, in sequence, and streamed via Zoom. The Zoom link was provided to family and friends, weeks before, and from the beginning of the graduation exercise until the closing, it was as if you were watching a ceremony on TV.

Despite the necessity of conducting the entire event virtually, it was a seamlessly executed, blessed event. I, for one, am glad to see where advent of internet technology has taken us and allowed this Class of 2020 graduation to be a grand success in the midst of what is currently being called the “new normal”.

Have a safe weekend.

Fresh.

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Episode 28 – Tech Times Podcast: Interview with the CEO of BLR Rocket Technologies and Binary Inc,

Greetings all. Glad to have you back for this special edition of the Tech Times Podcast. This episode is a departure from my quick thoughts on the evolution of consumer internet technologies and a detour to a longer podcast. I had the pleasure of interviewing the CEO and founder of BLR Rocket Technologies AND Binary Inc., Lemon.

I first came across Lemon on Twitter in September 2019 when he was posting updates on the development of his company, BLR Rocket Technologies. BLR is an up and coming thrust vector controlled (TVC) model rocket technology company who aims to provide TVC-based model rocket technology demos as well as custom flight computers to such enthusiasts. He’s also the founder of Binary Inc, a software company focused on developing software for businesses via coding in-house software for hobbyists and makers that we open-source for anyone to use. 

During this episode, we discuss the ever-increasing popularity of TVC model rocket technology, his background in it, its wide ranging presence on Twiiter, its effect in the STEM community and other topics. We also discuss his new startup, Binary, its goals, and the future of the company.

You can find BLR Rocket Technologies and Binary Inc, on the web at the following locations:

BLR Rocket Technologies on Twitter: http://twitter.com/inc_blr

BLR Rocket Technologies: http://blrrockettechinc.wixsite.com/blr-inc

Binary Inc. on Twitter: http://twitter.com/inc_binary

Binary, Inc: http://blrrockettechinc.wixsite.com/binaryinc

You can listen to Episode 28 starting tomorrow 17 March 20, at 8am EST: http://anchor.com/mrfresh

Thanks so much for listening!

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The 100 Days of Code Journey

Greetings all…

For those of you that follow me on Twitter(@MrFresh), you’ve seen daily posts about my progress during this 100 Days of Code challenge. I’ve embarked on my third try at teaching myself how to code in Python. In short, the first was following tutorials on Codecademy, along with a book I bought, back in 2013. The second stint was trying an “Introduction To Computational Programming Using Python” course given by MIT, an online MITx course, commonly known as a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course). The first go around, I spent too much time just doing tutorial section after section. While that was ok, I wasn’t really applying what I was learning. The MOOC was good, but there were so many global students involved with much more programming experience than me, that I kinda felt out of place, found myself spending too much time on the course’s Facebook page, resulting in it being difficult to meet the class assignment due date deadlines..

They say the “third time’s a charm”. I’ve been putting in at least an hour everyday but this time around, I’m using the same book purchased years ago, “Python Crash Course – A Hand’s On, Project Based Introduction To Programming”…AND…building a project as as I learn. The latter is probably the most single important approach one can take when learning how to code. Picking something to build that you (or even someone others) can find useful, allows you to apply even the most minimal knowledge to something concrete. I’m seeing that this approach was the missing part in keeping me interested.

Here are a few other tips you may find useful:

  1. Don’t try to learn everything at one time – find an approach that will allow you to become grounded in the basics, and move forward only when you’re sure you have a grasp of them.
  2. Be mindful to avoid what I call “tutorial purgatory” – spending too much time watching tutorial after tutorial and not taking to write actual code. Try to write your own code similar to the exercises you follow, perhaps even modifying an exercise to add what you’ve learned in other areas.
  3. Find a way to document what you learn, via writing it down in a journal or doing so online (Evernote, One Note, GitHub, etc)
  4. Put in some time studying and writing code everyday – consistent actions end up forming habs.
  5. Take advantage of anyway you can with the coding community available to you – often times those there are willing to help you.
  6. Again, continually write code, even the smallest, simplest programs, with comments in the proper style. Not only will it help you learn coding itself but get you familiar with the code editor and IDE you work in.
  7. Participate in the #100DaysOfCode challenge. It’s one that is beneficial to anyone just starting out through those with vast experience.

The challenge, in and of itself, is often helpful because there are many going through it, as well as just starting, that provide a vibrant, robust community of those willing to help and provide motivation. I’m exactly three weeks in and look forward to putting in the work everyday at this point (even knowing that they’ll be some hard days ahead).

I keep my progress posted on Twitter, as a note page in my Evernote account, and in a small blue notebook. At some point, when I feel that GitHub will be useful for me, I’ll create and maintain my log there, just as many do already. So far, my project is coming along nicely, it’s nothing spectacular, but getting a glimpse of what I know Python can do, there will be lots of room for improving the code as I learn.

Thanks, 

Doug (github.com/dsrlab

References:

  1. 100 Days Of Code Official Website
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The Return of Tech Times – The Podcast

Tech Times Podcast

Greetings all,

If you’re fortunate enough to have Labor Day off and not working as I type this, I hope you’re enjoying the weekend.

This post signifies the return of a podcast I started back in the Summer of 2013, entitled Tech Times. It started out as an answer to the annual AudioMo challenge and evolved into a podcast I actually enjoyed doing. Part of the enjoyment came via the ease of using my iPhone to record the episodes on the go and quickly upload them, with tags and artwork, to the then BLIMS server associated with the ADN (Application Developer Network) for streaming and/or download. ADN was primarily a place for developers to talk software coding, app development, and the like, but subjects were wide open beyond that. It was a user run, free microblog, with the developers creating the infrastructure and apps to build it. It was like a young Twitter without the advertisements and other aspects that Twitter is now known for. A nice breath of fresh air with great members. With ADN going away, that site has now evolved to Pnut which is essentially the same as ADN with many of the same users. I’m fortunate to have been able to grandfather in after the transition, and still engage their regularly.

After listening back to all of the previous Tech Time episodes today, I found it interesting to compare what was then to what is now, in terms of how the technology of these topics evolved. That said, I’ve decided to continue the podcast by now employing the ever simple to use Anchor app in the iOS Store. It didn’t take long for me to create the trailer episode, add background music from the app’s library, add tags, and submit for possible upload to a number of different streaming services, including Spotify, pending approval.

I’ll be posting episodes 11 through 22, one a day, through the middle of September, then start the new episodes after.

So yes, this should be fun again, especially talking about my thoughts on some of the current technology that wasn’t even in existence or barely in existence 5 – 6 years ago, as well as those that have evolved. You can stream the new episodes after 11 Sep 19 here: Tech Times – The Podcast. Hope you enjoy listening.

oceans of rhythm,
Fresh!

  • PNut (nee ADN)
  • Tech Times – The Podcast