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Happy Father's Day

June 20, 2011

This post is dedicated to my father.

My father became homeless when my mother and him split up during my last term of college. He ended up living in his pickup for two years. He rented a storage facility to keep all his things in, and accessed all the benefits he could to take care of himself.

He also, because of his lack of a fridge and as he was living on food stamps, lost over 90 pounds. He had been severely overweight, but after the lost weight that he feels he could never have done on his own, has felt that this was one of the best things that happened to him in his life. He was able to focus on himself, and take care of himself, and he did.

He also had a membership to a local swimming pool, so he was able to sit in the sauna/hot pools to relax, and keep himself clean. He also started dressing smarter than he ever had. He had always worn mostly sweats and t-shirts. Now he was sifting through the local goodwill and finding nice dress pants, button down shirts, and jackets to wear. He would even wear ties fairly often. Once he started doing all this no one would ever dream to ask if he was homeless. He didn’t look the part.

My father didn’t have the money and he honestly didn’t know enough about technology to buy a cell phone, so one of the first things I did after I graduated from college was go with him and buy him a phone and put him on my phone plan. That way I could get in touch with him, or him me, if needed.

By the way, my father was around 60 when this all happened. And to this day, he feels that becoming homeless was one of the best things that ever happened to him. He definitely does not advocate for it, he even consistently volunteers at homeless shelters for men and still works to get help for many of the homeless in our community. But despite everything that had happened to him, my father did his utmost to live. It was hard, and painful, and lonely, but he lived.

When you become homeless, make sure to take care of yourself as much as you can. Find things that, despite your situation, allow you to relax. Whether they be getting a membership to a local swimming pool so you can sit in a sauna, or if you have the time to do the things that make you feel wonderful. Take care of your mind and yourself so that you can face the hard decisions every day. Cut down on as much responsibility as you can. If that means pack all your unneeded stuff into a storage shelter until this blows over then do it. If it means find a way to make your truck as comfortable as possible, do it. Definitely DO NOT loose your connections to your friends. Or make new ones, if your current friends don’t understand. Make sure you have someone to talk to through all this.

NEVER think of yourself as a bad person. Never let the stereotype become part of who you are. Be who you are, and someone who is currently homeless.

Today I am so amazingly proud of my father. He went through a very difficult situation and did his utmost to make the best out of his situation. There are many out there who could not have done the same. I love my father and I hope only the best for him in the coming years.

FYI: He is no longer homeless.

An eleven year old's Internet experience

June 17, 2011

One of the new aspects of modern culture is the quick addition of technology to society. In previous times the additions were simply not as often seen by the common man. More often than not, those additions did not add unlimited communication/connectivity for the average Joe to the world. Now we have blogs, YouTube, and forums. With such easily accessible means to make yourself look stupid, so many more people are doing that. Sometimes they mean to, but sometimes they are too young to have any clue as to what their actions might do.

So many children know easily how to lie around the various age restrictions online, and if their parents don’t know enough about computers, they would have no idea how to stop them. This is similar to the situation with my family. My niece’s and nephew’s parents have many more things going on in their life and don’t have much time to sit and learn how to understand all these different things about the games their kids play. But the kids do, and they are learning like crazy. Should they be prevented from even accessing the Web, or should they be allowed to because it’s understood how much it will be a part of society. An “earlier they start, the better” mentality if you will?

They are learning to use technologies before they are old enough to really understand the implications of their actions, and they really have no one to prevent them. My nephew is starting middle school next year, and I wonder how his generation will view this in the future? Will they just learn to laugh it off or are current media practices to make sure that such things don’t happen, at least for a while. You do something stupid, it stays with you forever, especially if it’s online. The paranoia that comes along with all of this explains why so many people honestly don’t bother with the Web. Who wants to be judged by millions of faceless names?

Now wait...why Javascript?

June 16, 2011

After my minimal review of Javascript so far, I’ve already learned several important aspects. Mainly that if someone learned how to use Javascript then only used the W3schools tutorial to learn the rest, they would be sorely missing part of the point. Javascript, while being a breakdown of the more intense programming languages, is still a programming language. It still harnesses some of the same power structures in order to process the information.

For example, in the W3schools Javascript tutorial, they don’t explain why to make sure to use quotes around words. The reason being because it’s a string, or something that is not to be treated as a number in any way. But W3schools doesn’t want to get into those specifics, which is understandable. However I could see simple aspects, such as that, which could create serious problems for those learning how to use Javascript who don’t understand that tiny detail. It might make debugging in Javascript that much more difficult. Not to mention that as far as I can tell Javascript has no actual debugging functions within the language, the website either does what you want or not. Which that... brings up another total set of problems.

Press Hook

June 15, 2011

More editing and editing to be done it seems. I was working a good portion of my morning on our ‘Press Hook’ as they are so named. Thank you Ars Technica for providing a great article on how to do so.

The more I work to build the business, the more I realize just how many times I need to redo my work. I learn what I want (first and hardest step really), then I figure out how to make it, and then I make sure that the message is consistent. With this process the content is slowly but surely getting up on the web, but as it gets created I realize all the other changes/edits I want to make to make it all look better...ah work. It never really leaves.

For example: when I created my ‘Press Hook’ I went through three phases. The first was collecting basic information about what I wanted, with some research. The second was doing more research on how to write a ‘Press Hook’ and writing up a more thoroughly detailed one. The third was skimping down the thorough second run back into something the Press might want to read. More, something short and sweet and to the point but includes all the important pieces.

Proud of the final result, but took a bit more brain power than I wish it had.

Vlog

June 14, 2011

You can also view this video on Youtube.

Final Review The Cathedral And The Bazaar

June 13, 2011

First off, as a non-hacker and beginning programmer, this book was very difficult to get into at first. Mainly because it was about a topic I myself was only starting to get involved with. After reading most of the book I finally started becoming enthralled with the story when I hit the Magic Cauldron Essay, and I literally could not put the book down when the author started describing the creation of Open Source. It has definitely opened my eyes about many things, worldly and within my own interactions among my immediate peers. This is not a book for the non-dedicated, but it is satisfying for those who would learn more about hacker culture and late 90’s programming history.

The one topic I wish to address in my final review of the collection of essays/book, is the comments made on page 222.

“Will the Linux community actually deliver a good end-user-friendly GUI interface for the whole system?...That is, while hackers can be very good at designing interfaces for other hackers, they tend to be poor at modeling the thought processes of the other 95 percent of the population well enough to write interfaces that J. Random End-User and his Aunt Tillie will pat to buy.”

I think that truly is the crux of Linux operating systems. They will never gain full strength until the programmers that run them are willing to create them for people who don’t know how to program. So many people simply won’t purchase or use such devices because they won’t know how to use them. Like many things open source, they focus so much on usability and adjust-ability that the actual product, while of high quality, is simply not user friendly. I have learned to use Ubuntu and Arch Linux at very minimal levels. I am still in the beginning learning stages of many things programming. If Open Source were to ever truly succeed at overtaking the market many hackers, honestly, have to get off their high horses of expecting other people to devote their time to learning enough about computers and programming to buy them. There are so many things in the world that wouldn’t exist if those same people didn’t spend their time doing those things instead of learning to program.

Another interesting aspect I would like to re-mention is that many hackers tend to come from cultures that either have enough state support, or they have enough financial support, to learn to program without having either jobs, or problems taking care of basic survival needs. I think that this is definitely emphasized by where many of the major open source projects come from, and the people who create them. It would be very interesting to see a study that reviewed where many hackers came from, on the basis of financial assistance and nationality. I would be very interested in the results.

My last comment regarding this book is that the author seems concerned that Open Source may never truly take hold because of the Open Source communities need to focus so much on the goal. He indicates that many hackers are, “more effective sticking to relatively narrow, pragmatic arguments.” With that I say, while the Open Source community will definitely continue to thrive it needs a couple of things before it is truly successful. Number one, the community must be willing to develop more user friendly interfaces in their products released for the public, and these interfaces must be made with the understanding that others will not know how to program. Number two, Eric S. Raymond discusses that programmers need time and space to create truly great things. That being said, there are many wonderfully distracting things on the Internet and I know that it’s not just me who is distracted by them. While I know that I am only beginning to grasp just how much it can take to recognize the organization of a program; and learn how to re-tangle the web, so to speak; but everyone must also be willing to admit to being distracted and unable to complete work. Raymond’s comment regarding the need for the Open Source community to stay focused comes immediately to mind with regards to this topic.

On a final note I would like to mention that despite some of my comments regarding some of the needed steps for Open Source to promote, this book nevertheless inspired me. I have a feeling that installing Linux on my own computer alongside Windows is in the immediate future, along with a more intense focus on my MIT Open Course Ware studies into beginning programming with Python.

Friday Poetry Corner

June 10, 2011

Creativity is lacking
boredom and gum smacking
chewing tobacco and hacking
my lungs up on the stove

Upon which I cook my old pajamas,
into the shape of pancake llamas,
why do I so like commas?
Ask’s my editor in “”

For he reads my tiring essays
that kaw like just born blue jays
which, really, what can you say
when they’re born of crusty eyed goats?

whose goatees need some combing
as blurry eyed and roaming
through countryside and homing
towards red eyed blue blood dolts

Yes, my confidence is waning
it truly is quite shaming
though I hear no one complaining
of my lack of expertise

I’ll jump through hoops I swear
but no one really cares
except the evil one, that wears
the red tongued Schaefer goat

ridiculous it is said
I might as well be dead
so someone shoot me in the head
or I shall surely croak

from my poor poetry
it’s brings only one true glee
and that only one is me
now hand me that hand saw...

Noted by Gizmodo!

June 09, 2011

This past weekend has been incredibly busy. First we received a review from Phandroid, which was amazing and exciting. I sent in requests for reviews from several websites, and Phandroid was the first to respond. The same evening they posted their review we were noted as one of Gizmodo’s week’s best Apps. Directly afterwards we started getting flooded with downloads of the free version, and of people buying the paid version.

To say the least I’m astounded. It’s been so incredibly exciting to see the sudden rise in popularity of our game. It makes me feel like all this work, all this pushing can possibly make something great. Or at least temporarily great, and that’s good too. Thanks to all our supporters out there!

Wink and a Cribbage Rules Tutorial

June 08, 2011

Currently I’m spending a ton of time working on a Cribbage Rules Tutorial. Explaining the rules to this game is more difficult than I expected. This is mainly because I’m hoping to create a tutorial that is so gosh darn amazing that I can send it all over the Internet and get us a lot of exposure among the Cribbage sites.

I’m using Wink which, thanks to Phil Shapiro, I learned is a Noble Piece Prize winner, not to be confused with the Nobel Peace Prize. This little program does pretty much the same things as Adobe Captivate but is Open Source. Open is also known as adjustable, code available and in this case free. It’s going well, this Cribbage Rules tutorial creation. It is, however, one of the more onerous of my tasks and has thus filled up more of my time than expected. I’m making sure to take breaks so that I can devote true focus to this project. Honestly, there are loads of people out there who don’t know how to play Cribbage. That’s just shameful! Not to mention harmful for the business. I must encourage the learning of this splendid game.

I find it saddening that the game doesn’t really exist outside of the English speaking world. It’s considered mainly an English (aka English speaking, however originating from England) game. Perhaps we can find a way to cultivate this game in other cultures and find a way to bring about world peace through online game play! Anyone up for translating a tutorial into their native language? I can translate it mainly into Deutsch, but I’m so rusty I would need someone to heavily double check my grammar.

It's Review time!

June 07, 2011

Today we sent out for reviews of our product, Curvy. Now that High Scores are available I felt it was high time we had some people with the experience of reviewing take a look at it.

Both of us are nervous and yet work/life must go on. More work to do, more products to create, more funding to find... such is the crux of our situation. Financing a start up until you actually have enough stuff out there is a bit difficult. They want to take collateral out on your existing products but we have only a few at the moment.

On a side note I’m doing rather well mentally right now. Robey has enacted a strict “No TV unless it’s MIT” policy (outside of our Harry Potter review for the upcoming release). I can read pleasure books if I want and it’s exactly what I’m doing. I found that not watching TV *amazingly* has made me much more productive. Seriously, the things you know and yet don’t do. It’s crazy how often that happens.

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