Coffee and Clover

Calen says to capitalize on learning experiences. From the start I planned on making a code generator for the project. In addition to making it less tedious and more interesting to work, I was also anticipating the benefits that it could bring to round 2. So I did despite the inevitability of taking longer to finish than I would have otherwise. So aside from finishing (well practically done anyway) the project and learning the essentials (Acrobat, GIT, Selenium and the coding methods we needed) what else am I bringing out of this? 1. I became more proficient in Freemarker including debugging despite its relatively sparse error messages. 2. I learned to use FMPP (easy really). 3. Reading XML much faster than I used to. 4. Gone through 5 versions of a code generator for the application we were making. 5. A very clear idea of how to make the 6th version code generator to make the work almost dead easy, and the foundation to do it.

Ever since we started coding the new project my brain has been running almost non-stop in code. Because of so much structural repetition I'm designing a code generator to create the target software much quicker, neater, and more reliably. The code generation strategy with so many different targets is so intriguing that I find myself coding while walking (forgoing the jeep ride), on the MRT, and just today, again, while I was napping in the office. The weird part is I knew I was asleep and I was still developing code at the same time. Freaky funny. Overall, work days have been really fun.

DNS flaw

We had music playing all day in the training. It began with one of the trainees plugging his phone into the sound system, then we switched over to my laptop because his battery was going. Why the music? It's to stop one of the other trainees from singing and talking like a ghoul to the computer as he works on the machine problem. I mean, think of a raspy, baritone version of Gollum talking Java code and you'll get the picture. UsssssssssssserDaaaaaaaaoo

The Columbia shuttle disaster was heartbreaking but out of the charred remains, a tiny bit of tech humor survives. This article was both heartwarming in a techie way and a huge laugh at what saved the day. Data recovered from Columbia Disaster

Finished day 3 of training. Despite not trying to speed things up (in fact I consider myself a bit too talkative during lectures) the class is moving at breakneck speed and we are now 1.5 days ahead of schedule. My slides are now out of sync, LOL. This is certainly a good batch of teachers as they are picking up the concepts very well and it shows in the way they participated in the CRC exercise today. They also are asking very good questions regarding various aspects of replicating the training later with their students. I'm also very glad they interrupt my explanations with their questions. Maybe that's why we're going so fast, dunno. They're a bit overexcited to get to the programming part already and thankfully we start that tomorrow. Unlike earlier, Ubuntu's zoom function worked well today and I was laughing to myself being able to zoom in to specific parts of the slides especially when showing the teacher-students parts of a Java class while in Eclipse. Havin...