Railsconf 2015 CFP Announced!

The Call for Proposals for RailsConf 2015 is now open! And guess who's submitting?

Yeah, that was an easy one.

I've actually got two proposals in mind, but one is the kind that just grabs you and has you so excited that your hands shake as you literally dropped what you're doing to grab some paper and start writing furiously. It's a little out there but could be fun. (Or it could completely bomb, but that's the fun part!) And, yes, I know it's really brassy to even consider submitting a proposal to RAILSCONF (!!ZOMG) but 2015 will be my Year of the Brass Ones. :) I'll post more about it soon!

Just Ship It

Last week was a bit of a whirlwind. I slammed through most of my backlog in Skillcrush's Web Developer Blueprint course and published two (imperfect) sites:

The url for this site is about to be swiped for my Rails Rumble submission. I'm open to ideas for a better (more fitting) name for this brainstorming site. Also on the to-do list is to get set up with asset hosting on AWS so that the images uploaded along with the ideas will be saved! (Image storage on Heroku itself is strictly ephemeral!)

and...

This resume-splash page was for an assignment on Skillcrush. I've got two main to-dos for this site. First, optimize the image better so that the background isn't so slow to render. Second, it looks terrible on a mobile screen in portrait mode.

I need to figure out how to tell the css to drop into a different mode when in a really small screen.

I'd like to continue my streak and ship another page this week. Not sure what yet (likely a starter page for my SeaGL talk this month.) Finally, I'm throwing in my hat for Rails Rumble - registration starts on October 6th and I'm super stoked to be a part of it this year.

Oh, yeah, and I've got my "day" job at [company name retracted due to uber-restrictive social media policy].

It's going to be a great week!

Edited to add:

I completely forgot! I also (finally!) got around to signing up at exercism.io I've just started but it's so much fun! :D

Leaping into the World of APIs and Data

I am taking a flying leap and creating an entry for GitHub's 3rd Annual Data Challenge. My topic: The Six Degrees of Baconjs. Much like the movie-buff parlor game, the premise is simple: in six degrees or fewer, you can connect every user on GitHub (users who have at least one contributions/contributor outside of their own personal repos) with any other.

I have never attempted anything like this before. From the 10,000 feet view, given an input of a user, I will need to query for a list of all contributors to the Baconjs project and work backwards through each of their other repos to find the next degree's list of users. It's going to be recursive and strange but lots of fun!  I'm starting my studies of the first step with the GitHub API docs and the terrific tutorials on Codecademy. They even have one specifically on the GitHub API!

Wish me luck! I'm going to need it!

Time Flies Like an Arrow and Fruit Flies Like a Banana

That's my new little motivational mantra. Someday, I will help create a computer that understands that sentence.

Back in the present, though, here's a run-down of what I've been up to in the Open Historical Map project:

Week 11: July 28 - August 3[edit | edit source]

1. We're jumping into the rendering now. Most of the work will be in ohm_mod_tile, especially renderd and the master daemon program.
2. I posted the IRC log here (tried to strip out the filler /leave, /join, etc)
3. RENDERING
   1. This file is proving vital but elusive: home/tim/ohm-carto/ohm-carto/mapnik 2008.xml (UPDATE: I have the file now, but...)
4. The bulk of the renderer is written in C and C++ (with a lot of Bash and some inline SQL for good measure.)
   1. I am v e r y s l o w l y and carefully modifying the renderer to accept the {t} parameter. It's been many years since I've even looked at C code (and that was in an introductory C class.)
   2. I'm relying heavily upon the 'git grep' command (tracking here).
   3. I'm logging my progress so I can keep track of what I've changed and where: git diff log.
5. I don't want to lose this reference (is this Momento?):
   1. on line 245 in mod_tile.c, ~~bzero~~ recv() (bzero is used to zero out the bits at &resp to prepare it for the map tiles) and sends &resp to get the tiles from the database over a websocket
6. I am really deep in the weeds here in C. I am going to take a little time to read up more in the man pages and go through some more of the tutorial over on Learn Code the Hard Way

Week 12: Aug 4 - Aug 10[edit | edit source]

1. Made some changes to my changes (meta!) to the renderd.py byte packing/unpacking directive.
   1. IRC log on discussion here
   2. updated diff log here
   3. link on languages and urls from Chippy
   4. link on parameterization of mapnik tiles from Chippy
2. The OHM Team had our monthly Google Hangout notes
3. Re-attempting to install dependencies to run test server, instructions here for Mapnik and here for mod_tile
4. After much searching (and an upgrade to gcc, I finally got it all running well enough to attempt to compile.
   1. Sadly, MediaWiki's spam filter is preventing me from posting a link to the very helpful blog that walked me through the task of upgrading my C/C++/Java compiler. If you visit charette.no-ip.com:81/programming/2011-12-24_GCCv47, you'll get to the instructions.
5. I am now working on fixing the massive list of warnings and errors that running make generated for me!

10 Ways to be Smarter

A recent article by Jessica Stillman in Inc. magazine summarizes a recent Quora posting on what can you can do to get smarter. In short:

1.  Be smarter about how you use your time on the Internet. Think more TED talks, Khan Academy and (presumably, Inc. magazine) and much less YouTube, Farmville and Cracked.com.

2.  Write 400 words a day about something you learned that day.

3.  Make an "I did it" list to remind yourself of your accomplishments.

4.  Play games: chess, Connect 4, bridge, (MtG, anyone?).

5.  Surround yourself with friends who are smarter than you.

6.  Read a lot. A lot.

7.  Explain what you've learned. You don't really know it until you can teach it to someone else so they will understand.

8.  Do random new things. You never know how what you learn will help you down the line.

9.  Learn a new language. (I hope programming languages count!)

10.  Take some time to digest what you've learned. Sit and think (or exercise and think.) Spend time thinking.

I'm going to start with #2 tonight.

Dancing With My Fear

I, along with several million other people, read Seth Godin's blog. He writes every day, sharing his nuggets of wisdom to anyone who's willing to read them. Confession time: I often catch myself in a comparing another's middle to my beginning (a great nugget from Rebecca Garcia) trap. But that's a lost for another day.

I just finished a little blog playlist with Zen Habit's advice to writers, Seth Godin's piece called "How To Get Rid Of The Fear" and I'm now listening Denise Jacobs on  Hanselminutes on building the creativity muscle.

Leo Babauta's piece focused on how to get past procrastination, face the fear of discomfort or hard work or inadequacy and getting the work done. Then Seth Godin's piece was a reminder that feeling fear means you're doing something worthwhile. And Denise Jacobs was the kick in the pants reminder that great artists work everyday, painting or writing or practicing, whether they're "inspired" at that moment or not.

So, here I am, writing (Swyping, to be frank) this blog post, practicing shutting up the critical mind, writing a blog post. Feel free to check out the links above. You might have a different reaction.