w1d5

One week done! The first week is over and it flew by. At the same time it feels like so long ago that we started. We were doing simple things like practicing loops and creating methods to sum arrays… Fast forward to today and we are doing breadth first searches through a set of nodes in order to find the set of squares that a knight on a chessboard will move to in order to get from any given start point to any given end point… Big difference! I can only imagine what we’ll be doing by the end of next week!

We also took a crack at programming an unbeatable tic tac toe AI today using trees of nodes to represent possible outcomes of the game after each move. we were able to get pretty far before we had to leave, but will have to leave the finishing touches for the weekend

w1d4

Today was all about recursion and blocks, which usually seem to be hard concepts to wrap your head around. While the exercises were certainly not easy, we were able to complete them and felt great about our solutions. Once you learn to identify the base cases, it was usually not too long until we figured out how to get the next few cases to work down to the base cases, which is the whole trick with recursion.

Blocks are another story. The concept makes sense, but they don’t quite seem to behave the same way as everything else in Ruby. I’m sure as I start utilizing them more, I will better understand their behavior and uses.

I can’t believe its already about to be the end of week 1. In 4 days I’ve already gotten used to working in pairs. It definitely helps to have a second set of eyes and another brain working toward the same goal.

w1d3

Today in the morning session we went into detail on “pass by reference” and learned some nice ways to avoid having issues with it, including passing a block into a new array or hash call, using the dup method, and creating our own explicit methods to behave exactly the way we want.

We also learned how to circumvent “pass by reference” issues with nested arrays by doing a deeper dupe on the inner arrays.

For our exercises we were asked to build simple simulations of existing games: Mastermind and Hangman. Both exercises brought up their own share of problems to navigate, but by the end of the day I was felt like I would be able to implement a good solution from start to finish on any similar problems

w1d2

Phew! Day 2 flew by pretty quick! We didn’t cover anything that was really new, but the exercises certainly felt a bit more challenging than yesterday. The day was filled with minor victories as we stumbled through some of the problems, being notably tripped up by the dreaded “pass by reference” a couple of times.

Ultimately we were able to figure out working solutions to all of our exercises and felt pretty good about them. Later, upon seeing the solutions, I can see quite a few areas where we could have improved our code and streamlined it. Most glaringly, I need to get better at using helper methods to get the job done. I’m sure part of that will be going back in to refactor our code once it’s written, but it’s still something i’m going to play closer attention to going forward.

w1d1

Today was an introduction to the course. We got to jump into Ruby right away after some brief personal introductions, starting immediately with pair-programming. We got to look at some of the same problems that we’ve seen while preparing for the course, but the curveball of having to do it as a pair definitely added a challenge. Once we switched back and forth a few times, we grew more accustomed to communicating our thoughts and being able to work out the problems as a team. As time goes on, I’m sure the pair-programming will get easier and more natural, and the course material will get more challenging, so it will be interesting to see how things change compared to day 1.

We covered some of the basics of Ruby today, utilizing objects like strings, arrays, hashes and enumerators to solve today’s exercises. The material was very familiar, but even so, I was able to get something out of it, as my partner and I were able to provide different approaches.

We will already start to dip into new material on day 2, so it will be fun to start putting some new methods and techniques to use!

Speed Reading

What if you could read faster? I mean, significantly faster? I know it's not the most exciting super power you could think of, but it actually could be huge... I mean, it takes us one step closer to this:

Now he knows Kung Fu.

So we may not be there yet, but there's a new app on the block, and I think it looks pretty exciting. Introducing Spritz, an app that promises to revolutionize the way we read and process information. According to Spritz:

When you read a word, your eyes naturally fixate at one point in that word [Optimal Recognition Point” or ORP], which visually triggers the brain to recognize the word and process its meaning...Once the ORP is found, processing the word for meaning and context occurs and your eyes move to the next word. When your eyes encounter punctuation within and between sentences, your brain is prompted to assemble all of the words that you have read and processes them into a coherent thought.

Apparently, we don't give our brains enough credit. We don't really need a full word to read, just a certain letter in that word. What Spritz does, is highlight that letter in every word, and then it flashes the words to you, one at a time, so that the highlighted letter is always in the same spot. Your eyes never have to move, and your brain, somehow, understands these words almost immediately without having to think about it. I know this seems too good to be true, but just take some examples:

This is Spritzing at 250 WPM, about the speed of an average college reader.

But now things get a little more interesting...

This is Spritzing at 350 WPM

And this is Spritzing at 500 WPM!

Images courtesy of Huffington Post

Were you able to read all of those? Maybe, maybe not, but with enough practice, you should be able to handle the 500 WPM box like a champ, and Spritz can actually go up to 1,000 WPM! I think the main question will be: How much of this information will you brain actually retain? According to Spritz testing: "retention levels when spritzing are at least as good as with traditional reading and...with just a little bit of experience, you will retain even more than you did before." Interesting...

So how fast is 1,000 WPM? If you read at 1,000 WPM, you would be able to read a 300 page book in about 75 minutes. Hot damn, that's fast! I think the most exciting part about this app is that it doesn't need much real estate to do it's job. You could use this on your smartphone, your SmartWatch, your Galaxy Gear, your Google Glass (although you will still look silly), etc... So many possibilities!

Will you Spritz?

30 on 30 for 30

Happy Birthday to my Beautiful Wife!

Woodworking

So I've gotten into woodworking... And by gotten into, I mean I started building something small a few months ago and I'm not quite finished... Still, I like to think that I will eventually complete it and move on to bigger and better things. At the top of that list of bigger and better things is a new computer desk. That will definitely be a big project, but I'm looking forward to the challenge.

So of course, I started off with something simple in mind, but then I came across this...

Whoa...

Click the picture for the whole story, including the step-by-step build

In case you couldn't tell, this guy built a desk with the idea to put the computer INSIDE the actual desk. The motherboard is mounted inside and all of the components are visible through clear plexiglass. He actually has the whole thing water cooled, with the reservoir enclosed in the right side of the desk (along with the power supply).

Now I'm not saying that I would be doing THAT, because that would be quite an ambitious project for a novice builder, but maybe I'll use it as inspiration. First things first, I have to finish that end table...

Who Am I?

I'm just a guy with a website... That's pretty exciting! My own space to publish my thoughts, ideas and creations! I'm not sure what the future holds for this place, but I think it will end up being a lot of fun for me to play around with. Join me on my journey!