From the Society Desk

In an unexpected move, Ms. Geek Muffin of Ottawa, ON, formerly of Vancouver, BC, married Nexus One in a secret ceremony this week. It was known that she currently was engaged in a relationship with Nokia barphone, but close friends and family knew that she secretly lusted for the sleek Motorola Milestone. Interestingly, Nexus is the faster, more full-featured big brother of Milestone. Says one source in the family, "I guess it makes sense. When she decided to throw away her 7-year relationship with Nokia, she decided to go big or go home."

In mourning about the shocking decision are Ms. Muffin's MP3 player, camera and travel alarm clock, to say nothing of Nokia, saying "She doesn't need us anymore, now that she has Nexus." The laptop is taking it slightly better as his position in her life is assured, but acknowledges that plans for a GPS in her life are now highly unlikely.

Ms. Geek Muffin is unavailable for comment at this time, as she is busy compulsively clicking on the courier website, tracking the location of Nexus, who is expected to arrive early this week from his home at Google Headquarters.

Take it Easy

In my first programming class, we had a prof who had been around the block a time or six. He was close to retirement; in fact, ours was the last class he taught. He had started his career as a procedural programmer, which I suppose is a redundant statement, considering that object-oriented (OO) programming wasn't the dominant programming methodology until the mid-1990's, and at a guess, I'd say this prof learned his coding skills in the 70's. Long story short, although he learned OO programming and taught it (some might say with varying success), he was still procedural at heart.

This was exemplified by his choice of development environment. He recommended that we do all of our coding in simple Notepad and execute at the command line. This made sense to us, as we had no other point of reference. This was ironic because our textbook came with a hefty book called "Eclipse Distilled" that looked so intimidating that neither us or the prof touched it (and that was just the condensed version of the book!).

A brief aside for anyone still reading that doesn't know what Eclipse is. It is to programming what MS Word is to word processing. Sure, you can type in text on a blank screen in a pinch. However, context-sensitive help, auto formatting, spell check, thesaurus and a hundred other tools make Word so much more powerful than Notepad. Same goes for programming. Eclipse is your Java on speed. It compiles, outputs, debugs, helps and offers an insane amount of power and control when coding.

It wasn't until towards the end of that first semester that some students explored Eclipse and extolled its virtues to the rest of us. I fought the steep learning curve to develop a deep fondness for Eclipse, and the more I learn about coding and Eclipse itself, the more helpful it is to me. I doubt I'll ever plumb its depths; the full documentation could be substituted for a boat anchor in a pinch.

I am not ashamed to say that I have been spoiled by the power. When given a project to complete at work, I held out until they installed Eclipse and the appropriate plug-in to allow me to use it to program in Perl. Though it is absolutely possible to program Perl in UNIX using vi and the command line... why would you want to? Why would you willingly deprive yourself of the power-tools and use a manual screwdriver and hammer?

Three things I've learned along the way: coders are lazy; laziness is a virtue, and it is the real mother of invention. To borrow an example from the O'Reilly "Learning Perl" book, the wheelbarrow was invented by someone who was too lazy to want to carry heavy loads. IDE's were invented by programmers who loath working in Notepad. Masochists need not apply.

What I Wanted to Be When I Grew Up

I always wanted to do something with computers; I've loved them ever since we got our first one (TRS-80) when I was in my early teens. I have no idea what prompted my father to drop over $800 at Radio Shack that day (for a computer with a whopping 16 k of memory!) , but I was thrilled. I dove in immediately, teaching myself how to program in BASIC and spending hours poring over Rainbow programming magazines. Later on when Macs were introduced to my school I volunteered as a tutor in the computer lab, just so I could spend more time with those magical machines.

I got sidetracked with photography right after high school, not because it was a passion but because I got the job and it paid the bills. However, a friend at the camera store I worked at kept my interest in computers strong by supplying me with hardware that he didn't need anymore and teaching me how to build computers from the motherboard up. I had a 286, then a 386, and continually upgraded and learned as he upgraded and taught. I will always be grateful to him as he taught me to be fearless with computers; to roll up my sleeves and dive on in.

Then I joined the army, because they told me they'd pay me to become a computer tech. Sho'nuff, I spent 13 months training to be an IT hardware tech... and then got shunted away from it with each and every posting. True, I did some very interesting things in the fields of electronic warfare and long-range sat comm, but it wasn't what I really wanted to do, you know?

When I knew I had to leave the army due to a knee injury I had a long period of soul-searching and aptitude tests with the Personnel Development section, until one day I had the revelation that I could now do exactly what I wanted to do: programming. (Every aptitude test I took pointed me strongly in that direction... hello? Clue phone on aisle 8?)

A semester and a half into the program and I know with every fiber of my being that this is where I belong. It's such a good fit for my OCD-leaning, detail- and puzzle-loving logical mind. I am grateful for this chance to pursue my dream and look forward to the journey ahead.

A Post-Script about Fedora

...To be fair, let me also state that I'm using Fedora Live, with a 2Gb USB key as the boot drive. I am pretty sure that Fedora installed onto a fixed system disc would be less hinky. As well, as my prof says with a giddy grin on his face, Fedora is the Linux for Linux geeks... so it may well not be the most straight-forward version of Linux out there.

Back to your regularly scheduled Sunday, and I'll get back to my shell scripting. Carry on! :)

Not Tipping My Hat to Fedora

I've been using Windows Vista on my laptop for just about a year now. It's freakin' beautiful, and does everything that I need it to do. No issues worth mentioning, and certainly no crashes.

I've been using Linux (Fedora 10) for 6 weeks; since the beginning of the second semester. So far, it's had a cataclysmic crash four times. That's pretty much once a week, and that's crashed-so-bad-you-need-to-format-your-hard-drive crashed. Gone, baby... gone. It even wishes you "good luck" as it drools in a corner, its little mind gone, your command and control reduced to a black screen with a prompt from which you can do absolutely NOTHING.

But in the world of the geek, they worship Linux. I don't get it. Actually, I hate, detest and loathe Linux with a fiery passion and shall never use it of my own volition unless I am seeking to self-destruct an otherwise perfectly running system.

I am not qualified to talk Apple, not having the small personal fortune required to buy one, but I hear they're pretty nice. I lust one, and maybe when I'm a private software consultant, I shall indulge... but for now, I adore my Gateway laptop, the Vista that is installed upon it, and its supreme reliability.

The New Look

Gosh, you've never known fun until you get to change the font colour of 250 old blog posts by hand.

There was no way that I could find to batch change them, but I really wanted to lose that orange font, so here we are. (To my readers in Google Reader etc, who have been suffering with that orange font for years... sorry 'bout that.)

So. What do you think? It's a little less cozy, I think, but new homes always feel a little odd at first. I'll just put the finishing touches on this place (and finish changing my earliest 100-odd posts) and things will be pretty good.

A New Low

So I was sitting here doing homework and came to the realization I've hit a whole new level of geekiness. I can't even find it within me to see this as excessive in any way...

I was also sitting in a reception area earlier this week, scribbling out Java code for giggles. Another sign the transformation is in progress. :)

Speaking of Java... that last mid-term I was waiting for was in Java, and it was a solid "B" exam. It will do... for now. Not bad for the hardest exam I've ever written, but I know I have to dig deeper. This will probably sound arrogant, but I am not a "B" student.

Wireless, Revisited

Someone who I shall not name said in the comments that they expected my new wireless capabilities in the sewing room would reduce my over-all productivity. I beg to differ.

I love to listen to audio books while I sew or knit. Now, instead of downloading them and transferring them to a portable device, I can play them right from the laptop, as well as streaming radio.

I use EQ5 to design some quilts. I design downstairs then either print them off or walk down to reference them all the time. Now, I can EQ right from my sewing table.

Just this week I was sewing something and lacked the knowledge to continue. I made a mental note to look it up next time I was on the Net, and then realized I didn't have to. The answer was now at my fingertips.

I honestly don't think productivity will be sacrificed. I think it makes me more efficient, as well as entertains me while I am working. Win-win!

Wireless. Finally.

I am blogging from my sewing room currently, on my new laptop, on my new wireless network. I think I am in love.