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My programming education is wanting

July 27, 2011

I find it really interesting just how excited I can be when returning to my programming projects. Normally I’ve all of these marketing/social media projects that keep me busy. But over the weekend I did a little programming. It’s exciting. I like debugging. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still frustrating, but at least I have something that can tell me I’m doing something wrong. Then it’s up to me to fix it. There are so many situations in life where you don’t get that feedback, so you don’t know you’re doing something wrong. The personal life debugging is so difficult. If you do get that feedback it can highly likely be in terms you don’t understand. Any information returned from programming, at least, is returned in phrases that you understand. You just have to figure out how it’s connected to your code.

Either way I still miss it. I’ve got so much else to do as well I can’t focus on it as much as I want to sometimes.

I also wish I could understand more of how to connect things together. Like how to connect code to websites, or use code on an excel file. I’ve done it before, but I’m still not 100% on the understanding part. I’m working on understanding some bits and pieces and it’s slowly coming together. It’s just not all there yet. Without that understanding I know I’ll be in a bad situation for more complicated programming, especially for doing things on my own.

Which brings me back to realizing just how much more I have to learn.

Continuous Recovery The Power Of My Fear

July 26, 2011

When I’m about to fall asleep I feel that nagging self doubt. That questioning about what happened. I think about whether I could have done anything else and I ask myself if I’m a good person or not. I ask if I tried my hardest, if I’m smart enough or a good enough worker. I ask myself why it happened to me.

Then the fear starts to creep back. My recognition that the lack of unemployment support confirmed that the “authorities” believe my former employer. But then I have to stop myself. I have to remind myself that it happened to me. That she treated me like that, and that I did my best and worked my hardest to do the job. I did my best while still choosing to think that I might have been at fault. I did my best to work on both sides, standing up for myself and understanding I might be wrong about the whole thing. Despite everything, and how far I’ve come, I still find myself angry and hurt. I still find myself wishing I could do something to prove them wrong. To not allow them to have the power they have over me to exist anymore.

I’m so sick of not believing in myself. I’m so sick of even thinking about it. Some days I can imagine it never happened. But lately I find myself seeing more and more of my former coworkers around town. In the beginning each time it happened I would almost have a mini panic attack. My heart would beat painfully, and I would start breathing very fast. Now my reaction has calmed down, but each interaction still unsettles me; the thought of that place still angers me. They still have that temporary power over me and I hate them all for it. Then I get angry again. They’ve changed my life entirely. I thought I was finally starting to focus on what I wanted to do professionally before, and now I feel like I could never work in that field again. One of the base reasons being for fear of having to talk to those people who hurt me so much.

Now I feel like a mixed metaphor. What a curve ball I’ve been dealt.

Back to Cribbage.offti.me

July 25, 2011

How long can you talk like a broken record before people stop listening?

The eternal question of the startup.

How many times can you resend the same email, or revamp the same email and make it something new and sparkly, before you have to decide to do something totally different.

So what am I up to this week? Helping to continue cribbage.offti.me development. I’ll be working on the final details of Cribbage boards and then getting ready for a larger scale Cribbage push. This means verifying Cribbage websites to notify of our game. This also means lots of writing and research.

Writing, research, worry, and starting to think about my new interest: creating a tower defense game.

Feedback Form Love

July 20, 2011

Here at FlamingLunchbox we have a feedback form. This forms allows those who enjoy our products to respond with concerns, bugs, queries, and positive or negative comments. Yesterday we received some feedback, with a request to respond, but no email was provided to respond to. Therefore we’ve responded within this blog, and this post is in response to that person, who brightened our day.

To the person who said:

“why did you create this game? I spend way too much time playing it. Actually i love it. thank you. “

We created this game so that people could waste time solving puzzles. Whether that’s at the bus stop or waiting for a movie to start, we want all people to have something they can waste time on. We hope, fellow Curvy supporter, that you continue to waste plenty of time playing our game. We will also continue to do our utmost to make the game the best way to waste time.

Thank you for your support.

Sincerely, FlamingLunchbox

A Canvas and WebGL Programmer's Text Editor; a Kickstarter from FlamingLunchbox

July 19, 2011

FlamingLunchbox has been approved for a Kickstarter project! If you already know what Kickstarter is then check out what our project is by reading "What is our Project".

What is Kickstarter?

Kickstarter is the largest funding platform for creative projects in the world. Every month, tens of thousands of amazing people pledge millions of dollars to projects from the worlds of music, film, art, technology, design, food, publishing and other creative fields.

It's a new form of commerce and patronage. This is not about investment or lending. Project creators keep 100% ownership and control over their work. Instead, they offer products and experiences that are unique to each project.

All or nothing funding. On Kickstarter, a project must reach its funding goal before time runs out or no money changes hands. Why? It protects everyone involved. Creators aren’t expected to develop their project without necessary funds, and it allows anyone to test concepts without risk.

What is our Project?

A Canvas and WebGL Programmer’s Text Editor.

A technical description: This will be a fully featured text editor implemented using the canvas element in HTML5. It will support WebGL for graphics acceleration to visually pleasing but uncluttered scrolling, anti-aliasing and other effects. This is designed not for the wow factor but to minimize visual irritation when working with text for long periods of time.

Browsers also have many features of modern text editors built in. We’ll be easily extended and scripted using Javascript. We’ll have tabs and split screen. Tabs will allow dragging between windows. Additionally we'll have direct access to things that other text editors only get with some effort: all of those internet enabled services. We can integrate tightly with github, DropBox, Box.net, Amazon S3, anything with either a Javascript library or HTTP interface of some kind.
Once the core functionality is created the project will be released as open source under the GPL license. Also check out our Kickstarter Video for more information <insert video>

A less technical description: Our project is designed to create an Open Source text editor for use in browser. A text editor is a program that allows programmers to edit code more easily. It's comparable to using a document editor like Microsoft Word instead of a simple text editor. This text editor is unique, in that you can use it within your browser (your Internet Explorer, Firefox or Chrome browsers). This particular project is needed now, because of such advancements like the Chrome Netbooks, which are run entirely through browser. Lastly, it will be Open Source and free for the community of programmers out there to use.

What will this Project do for our Company, FlamingLunchbox?

This project will provide us with significant press. We will become a more establish company, with a much more highly regarded name by introducing such a project into the Open Source market. It will also help us to create a product that we ourselves can use to more easily complete our projects. In the end, we get to provide the Open Source community with a quality product. A product that will hopefully increase the efficiency of all programmers out there, for years to come.

If you are interested in supporting our Kickstarter Project, simply follow the link and donate! Thanks to all our supporters out there!

Life of a Startup

July 18, 2011

What is the single most stressing thing out there?

MONEY

It stresses everyone out, it’s really quite crazy how much it affects us all. What’s not helpful is that when you’re attempting to start your own company and you’re not known very well, it drastically increases everything. Right now we’re stressing all the time because each month our total savings, which is making this whole thing happen, is getting smaller and smaller. Each month our panic increases just slightly. It’s all nice and stuff that most businesses have the ocean effect regarding their sales (eb and flow or something). However when you’re already trying to make something happen, and you’re really trying the for the very first time it’s scary as *****somerandomexpletitive****.

Your sales drop, and then you’re sitting and scratching your head trying to figure out why and what to do to make it come up again. You do what you think helps, and sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn’t. The sales beast is a wild thing in nature, annoying as heck, and likes to vomit on my carpet. I don’t like it...

What else about not having money sucks? The gift culture sucks when you don’t have any money. I have these people I like, that I see more often at the local sports bar than at my home, so I can never give them things. I like to buy people beers and wine, when I have the money. Right now, I can offer them sandwiches and fresh grown produce (sometimes). How do you make a name for yourself when you can’t even take the good old boys/girls club out for a beer?

Also, does anyone know of a good way to get a loan for a application/browser based gaming startup company? Money man, my eternal bane during this point in time...

More Curvy News!

July 15, 2011

This past week has been pretty difficult. Apologies for no posts for two days. I went back and was reviewing my current mental status in a recent post, and it then it affected my entire week. Everything regarding my former place of work has been on my mind, threatening me on a daily basis. It’s taken hold of my focus and shredded it slightly. Not to mention I ran into one of the people who escorted me off the premises from my previous job at my local hangout. We noticed each other... and then quickly pretended the other didn’t exist. Always a great experience. Despite all, I was mentally capable to send out another round of notifications to all those would be Curvy fans out there (in other words, I sent out Press releases to everyone and their Uncle), and do other work-like things.

In more exciting news, I’ve created (what I think) is a pretty schnazzy Press Release page. It has all our related materials and it looks exactly like our website!! Oh my, I’m actually learning how to do HTML and CSS now! Thank you! I know how to cut and paste and do quick debugging, it’s crazy! I think my next step is to start reorganizing the site and then find good and interesting ways to add in some javascript for learning purposes. You have been warned.

Curvy is continuing to get attention, much to our excitement. We have over 4,000 Facebook likes now, along with 300 +1’s (Thank you Google). Curvy was recently approved for the Chrome Experiments website! We’re also getting almost daily emails from various sources wanting to add either the mobile or the HTML5 version to their ‘collection’ online. All in all we’re continuously growing and increasing, albeit slower than wanted. But, we’re still growing.

Information Graphics; a review

July 12, 2011

I know everyone loves Information Graphics, or Infographics. It’s the new best way to describe and understand information by using images, flow charts and text all at once. Lately I feel like it’s been a tad overdone. People are getting way too excited about it, and humorous and interesting things are being done constantly. Now, I do think that they are useful, and since they are gaining tremendously in popularity it brings up an interesting question. What does this mean for educational practices?

Look at current day text books in for many high school students. Those books are changing more and more to become a large collection of Infographics. Look at the books many children learn by. Those collectors books regarding history where they have images and graphs and writing all over large glossy pages. For so many high school students that is the trend. Then for many of them they go from glossy pages and pictures to the original source-work of many classic writers. People talk about symbol shock when it comes to mathematics or learning new languages, what about page shock. I can understand that for many children who are overwhelmed with websites, TV shows, and games that are purely Info-graphic in nature; I can see how the next generation can be severely intimidated by primary source materials. Going from a mashed up recreation of Hamlet to straight Chaucer in college would be incredibly intimidating. So many teachers are choosing not to do the more difficult material because, honestly, who expects a high school student to understand such things in most US public educational systems? Perhaps it’s my medieval background, but I feel that to be able to look at texts and recognize similarities between Middle English words and modern English should not be difficult. I was continuously astounded in college when some of my fellow classmates had difficulties recognizing these factors.

Back to the original point. Infographics, while incredibly helpful in getting the point across, are, I feel, making it horridly difficult for the next generation to connect with primary source material from anything previous to the late 20th century. Yes, they can read books, but unless the books are much more simplistically written it can be difficult for them to get through it. There is so much more out there to read in order to be considered ‘well read’. Does reading simply written books increase your ability to read and decipher? Does it increase intellect like so many think? What is the future of Infographics?

Mental State Check In

July 11, 2011

When I think of getting an actual job I’m not as afraid. My fear is calming down, and I can handle considering it. However, anytime I think of getting a job in the Academic or Administrative side I start to get a little panicky. Anything that reminds me of that atmosphere is traumatizing. Then I think of getting another type of job and my mind calms down. I think of yard work or more simplistic positions and I don’t fret. I know those are temporary situations and that I would be so much less invested in the whole job to worry as much about needing to leave if it was a bad situation.

And that comes to the crux of my previous situation. The reason that my former position, and the situation that came from it, was so traumatizing for me was because I was invested in it. I believed I had more of a chance to make significant progress in my career through this position and company than any other. What happened was the feeling that I was being severely prevented by forces that were not under my control. If anything, these forces were hurting my chances of making anything of myself for a while. Never before had I felt so controlled by my superiors. Never before had I felt so stifled. I had tried so hard to make things work, and I had worked so hard to get the work done.

I admit, I wasn’t perfect. I admit I made mistakes. I admit that I’m human. I feel that under the situation I was presented with I did an amazing job. I do a good job. I’m a decent human being, and I deserve to be treated as such.

Thus I saved myself. I choose to leave. I choose to make a leap and attempt to drastically change my life for the better. I choose to learn to program. I still have stress, and there are still things in my life I need to work on, but I can tell you right now I am happier than I’ve been in many, many years. I feel more capable. I feel driven. I’m excited about what I’m doing. I can actually realize that the people around me want to support me. That they care for me. I’m not questioning my friends or my family. I’m not imaging (as much at least), that everyone is simply putting up with me anymore. I’m starting to realize what an amazing person I am. I’m recognizing I make mistakes, but I’m not as torn up by it.

I’m happy. I’m generally happy; isn’t that Crazy?!?

Stay Unique

July 08, 2011

There seems to be a specific idea that keeps running through my head. It’s one from an email we recently received. We recieved a personal email from a game developer who emphasized the following:

"Keep your originality without pursuing the commercial success too much, it will happen of its own volition if you stay unique!"

I think that’s a grand idea and one that we hope to pursue. However I'm sure that you can be too unique sometimes. When people can no longer connect with your experiences and ideas, then it’s hard to make them interested. Granted all the indie traffic in current culture begs to differ.

One last thing, the Summer is beautiful in Oregon this year! I hope that all other Oregonians are also enjoying our beautiful weather. Have a wonderful weekend my fellow Oregonians. :)

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