Sunday, September 20, 2015
I'm Moving On Down The Road
This will be just a short post to let you all know that I'm moving my blog from here at blogger to my website bowtiebeej.com/blog. I've loaded my last two posts to it and will no longer be using this service. All future posts will be on my website. This gives me a little more control and practice coding. Also it will provide a testing ground for developing a WordPress Template.
Thursday, September 17, 2015
Episode 2: Physical Health Concerns for Developers Episode 2: Physical Health Concerns for Developers
In episode 2 we begin a four part series on health concerns for developers. The series will examine multiple aspects of our lives and provide some stumbling blocks and dangers to watch out for as well as tips and tricks to avoid them and stay healthy. We will be following the format of Physical Health, Social Health, Mental Health, and finally Financial Health.
The specific topics discussed in this episode are obesity/diabetes, back/neck issues, RSI (Repetitive Strain Injuries), Computer Vision Syndrom, and DVT (deep vain thrombosis). We will define each term or disorder then address some of the signs and symptoms, finally we will discuss ways to reduce or avoid the symptoms or treat the problem.
Links
| IoTease and Tricks | Obesity/Diabetes |
| Beer Fridge | Type 2 Diabetes |
| JSON Formatter | www.diabetes.org |
| RSI | Back and Neck Pain |
| Carpal Tunnel Syndrome | Spine-health |
| Vision | American Osteopathic Association |
| Computer Vision Syndrome | Desk Stretches |
| 10 Relief Steps | Chair Stretches |
Editor’s Notes:
A few errors that were caught post production include BJ mispronouncing ThingBox early in the IoTease section. Later in the episode BJ states that AOA stands for American Osteopathic Association, while this is true and we did use resources from their website the link to www.aoa.org is for the American Optometric Association.
from Complete Developer Podcast http://ift.tt/1MdRDZh
via IFTTT
Sunday, September 13, 2015
Automating the If Then with IFTTT
IFTTT stands for If This Then That. It is a way to automate a basic If statement to connect blogs, rss feeds, and social media. Above is an image of an active IFTTT recipe. In it If a new post comes out on the Complete Developer Podcast (a new episode) it will automatically post to my blog so those of you following me but not the podcast will have a chance to see when new episodes are posted.
It uses API (Application Program Interface) to check and see IF there is a new post THEN it uses the social media API like Twitter's REST to post. There are a total of 220 channels to pull from in the IF section and push to in the THEN section. Each of the channels has options specific to it's media form like posting a link or an excerpt from a blog, adding a picture, or specifications for when and what to post.
For example, I have IFTTT setup to post my blog posts to the Complete Developer Podcast site and set up to post of my blog from there when new episodes come out. IFTTT has an option to only post from my blog when it contains certain labels. This way I am able to avoid creating a posting loop when new episodes come out.
Also, I can disable a recipe (If/Then statement) without having to delete it. This way if I'm going to be on vacation and don't want the photos I post on Facebook to flood my other media I can turn that off so that when I return I don't have to go through the process of setting it up again. Below is an image of a recipe that has been turned off.
With IFTTT you can set up some interesting automations. Here are a few tricks I've picked up in the past couple of days working on the Complete Developer Podcast website as well as my own blog.
Currently I have a setup so that post from here will show up only on the Blogs page of the Complete Developer Podcast. I did this by setting IFTTT to only pull posts with the label WordPress from my blog here on Blogger. This allows me to have IFTTT post to my blog from our WordPress site without worry about redundant posts. I then set the IFTTT THEN section to post to WordPress in the category Blog. Using the List Category Posts plugin I created a blank page with the title Blogs then placed the short code for the Blog category so that only the posts in that category will show up in the feed.
I used a few more of the short codes to allow for use of custom CSS and set the parameters that I wanted for the page. I was even able to match the title covers to the hex code of the color on our logo.
With this I added the Ultimate Category Excluder plugin to remove the posts in category Blog from search results and SEO (search engine optimization) as well as the Recent Posts feed. This way our blogs only show up in the Blog section in addition to our own personal sites.
This was great, except the first time I used it I typed "Wordpress" in the Labels field on Blogger instead of "WordPress". Because of this error IFTTT did not pull the post from Blogger. Also, if listing multiple Labels put WordPress at the end as comma may interfere with IFTTT. To promote my own laziness and forgetfulness I went ahead and created separate recipes for each of the ways I could type out "wordpress". I then did this for my social media recipes.
Thursday, September 10, 2015
Episode 1: How to talk tech with non developers
In this episode we discuss how to talk about technology with non developers such as bosses, customers, or coworkers. We provide seven tips for how to explain yourself and your ideas to those that don’t speak geek. These are:
1. Use of analogies
2. Be empathetic: avoid jargon, don’t talk down
3. Phrase your statements in terms of how it can help the business
4. Rephrase complaints and requests back
6. Present a solution rather than a problem. Present a symptom, not a problem.
7. Catch them at a good time.
Links from the episode:
from Complete Developer Podcast http://ift.tt/1UFUeT0
via IFTTT
Episode 0: ‘Hello World’
In this preview episode we use a question and answer format to give some insight into our individual backgrounds and where the show gets its origins. The audio quality is not the best as we were learning to use the equipment and figuring out how to best record and master the show. This was a great learning experience and we both learned a little about the other.
from Complete Developer Podcast http://ift.tt/1M0HdvL
via IFTTT
Wednesday, September 9, 2015
Pod to the Cast
We are ready to publish our first episode. It will be published tomorrow, September 10, 2015. Go check out our website and sign up for the mailing list and listen to the first episode of The Complete Developer Podcast.
This has been an interesting and educational experience. We started working on the idea back in June. I didn't know how much was involved in creating a podcast beyond the recording. Some of the things we have worked on since June include: setting up the website, creating social media campaigns, finding a hosting site, get photos and a logo designed.
This blog post will be about the actual recording and creation of our first episode. I'll post in the future about some of the other issues. I have a post about WordPress that I'm working on already.
The first thing we had to do was to find the right place and right equipment. Our plan was to record at Will's house in his home office. The benefits of this were that we already had the space and didn't have to rent it and for Will he was already there working. However, some things we had to contend with were interruptions from his dogs or his daughter running overhead. Most of these we overcame by recording later in the evening.
As for equipment we needed good quality microphones and editing software. We wanted to get microphones that didn't use the sound cards in our computers and ones that could last. After doing some research into professional microphones and gaming headsets we decided to go with a high end amateur microphone due to the sound quality and price. At Best Buy we found what we were looking for in the Yeti.
Next we needed editing and recording software. We found an open source editor that had all the functions we wanted with Audacity. This took care of everything except our recording as we planned on being in separate rooms and using Skype Callburner to record our calls then add the two tracks together in editing. Well, that didn't turn out so well either because we didn't have the settings correct or Callburner just isn't meant for recording podcasts. We settled on being in the same room and using both microphones, again combining in editing. This has worked out as Audacity records well and has a function to line up the tracks.
Now comes the fun technical part of the post. I did most of the editing simply because I had more time. It took about 15 hours on our first episode. That time has greatly reduced with subsequent episodes as I was learning how to use Audacity as I was editing. As the show continues you'll be able to hear my progress in the quality of the episodes.
The first thing we did was to have a few seconds of silence to assess the background noise. In editing I used the noise reduction function to first sample the background noise then remove it from each track. The only material I found on how to do this was in video tutorials so in a later post I'll explain how to use several of the functions in Audacity. The next thing we did was to isolate the vocals so that our voices would overpower any residual background noise. We have found that the amount of gain on the microphone has a significant effect on the background noise and setting the gain is a balancing act as my voice is more boisterous than Will's.
Next came actual content editing. I can safely say that I can look at an audio feed and tell you who is talking at that moment. Most of what I did here was to remove pauses and filler noises like umm and err. We both use umm a lot and I can identify that word in the waveform of an audio file now. This took the majority of the time as I had to listen to various segments multiple times to make sure that the edit sounded natural.
After this we added the intro, special segment, and closing music. Finally we were ready to master and render the audio into an mp3 file. I was so proud I put it on my phone and made my father listen to the entire episode.
This has been an interesting and educational experience. We started working on the idea back in June. I didn't know how much was involved in creating a podcast beyond the recording. Some of the things we have worked on since June include: setting up the website, creating social media campaigns, finding a hosting site, get photos and a logo designed.
This blog post will be about the actual recording and creation of our first episode. I'll post in the future about some of the other issues. I have a post about WordPress that I'm working on already.
The first thing we had to do was to find the right place and right equipment. Our plan was to record at Will's house in his home office. The benefits of this were that we already had the space and didn't have to rent it and for Will he was already there working. However, some things we had to contend with were interruptions from his dogs or his daughter running overhead. Most of these we overcame by recording later in the evening.
 |
| My setup for recording |
Next we needed editing and recording software. We found an open source editor that had all the functions we wanted with Audacity. This took care of everything except our recording as we planned on being in separate rooms and using Skype Callburner to record our calls then add the two tracks together in editing. Well, that didn't turn out so well either because we didn't have the settings correct or Callburner just isn't meant for recording podcasts. We settled on being in the same room and using both microphones, again combining in editing. This has worked out as Audacity records well and has a function to line up the tracks.
Now comes the fun technical part of the post. I did most of the editing simply because I had more time. It took about 15 hours on our first episode. That time has greatly reduced with subsequent episodes as I was learning how to use Audacity as I was editing. As the show continues you'll be able to hear my progress in the quality of the episodes.
The first thing we did was to have a few seconds of silence to assess the background noise. In editing I used the noise reduction function to first sample the background noise then remove it from each track. The only material I found on how to do this was in video tutorials so in a later post I'll explain how to use several of the functions in Audacity. The next thing we did was to isolate the vocals so that our voices would overpower any residual background noise. We have found that the amount of gain on the microphone has a significant effect on the background noise and setting the gain is a balancing act as my voice is more boisterous than Will's.
 |
| What "umm" looks like. |
After this we added the intro, special segment, and closing music. Finally we were ready to master and render the audio into an mp3 file. I was so proud I put it on my phone and made my father listen to the entire episode.
Thursday, March 19, 2015
Getin' into Git Hub
Well it's been a while since my first post. A lot has been going on in my life since so I'll give a brief personal update. I have been on a job hunt the past few months and will be starting at Aflac tomorrow selling insurance, not quite ready for a tech job but I'll be there soon. My oldest dog passed away, he had liver cancer. We buried him in the back yard. I've decided to post on a weekly basis. It will either be Wednesday or Thursday nights.
I've written my first WinForms app. It is a basic calculator and I added trig functions. I'm planning to continue working on it until it is a full scientific calculator. My sister who is a math teacher has helped out a bit and I'm expecting her to help more. When I tested the trig functions I was getting different results than on my phone calculator. I called my sister and we worked on it for a while before she asked if I was using degrees or radians. I felt so stupid as my phone was set to default on degrees and C# was defaulting to radians. I have plans to add a button to allow a change. Currently I'm working on getting the Key Press Events to allow only numbers and then I'll add functional keys like (+, -, *, /). Here's the code I've been working on to restrict the keys allowed but it only works the first time. After I press a function button all keyboard input is blocked and the error message doesn't show.
Last week I started learning SQL via Code Club through the Code Newbie website. We are using Zed Shaw's book Learn SQL the Hard Way. He has us using SQLite to learn but as we have found out SQLite is not always the same as SQL. Some of the questions we've looked up on StackOverflow have not matched in syntax. I've started a list of the differences and sill post it once we finish this course. It will not be an exhaustive list as I'm sure someone has already created one, just the differences that we've encountered and the solutions we found or figured out. I originally set up the group session for myself and a friend to learn together. Last week she wasn't able to make it but we had two other people join. These sessions have been enjoyable as we are learning at the group's pace and taking time to research questions as they come up.
Tonight I created a GitHub account. I also uploaded my calculator, even though it isn't complete I want my friends to be able to see my progress and help out. Much easier to let them have my code to see and give advice than try to explain it over the phone or chat. As I create more projects I will be adding them to the account. I would like to participate in the Game Off challenge though I doubt my abilities are at a level to make any significant changes to any of the games.
 |
| This is what it looks like so far. |
private void
textBox1_KeyPress(object sender, KeyPressEventArgs e)
{
if
(!System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex.IsMatch(e.KeyChar.ToString(), "\\d+"))
{
MessageBox.Show("Enter Only Numbers", "Not a Number", MessageBoxButtons.OK, MessageBoxIcon.Error);
e.Handled
= true;
}
}
|
Last week I started learning SQL via Code Club through the Code Newbie website. We are using Zed Shaw's book Learn SQL the Hard Way. He has us using SQLite to learn but as we have found out SQLite is not always the same as SQL. Some of the questions we've looked up on StackOverflow have not matched in syntax. I've started a list of the differences and sill post it once we finish this course. It will not be an exhaustive list as I'm sure someone has already created one, just the differences that we've encountered and the solutions we found or figured out. I originally set up the group session for myself and a friend to learn together. Last week she wasn't able to make it but we had two other people join. These sessions have been enjoyable as we are learning at the group's pace and taking time to research questions as they come up.
Tonight I created a GitHub account. I also uploaded my calculator, even though it isn't complete I want my friends to be able to see my progress and help out. Much easier to let them have my code to see and give advice than try to explain it over the phone or chat. As I create more projects I will be adding them to the account. I would like to participate in the Game Off challenge though I doubt my abilities are at a level to make any significant changes to any of the games.
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