Learning buffet

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.

Brain in perpetual motion

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.

Ok, this one shook me up.

DNS flaw

Java Boot Comedy

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

OMFG! LOL! DOS still scores!

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

Postcard from UE

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.

Having loads of fun here, and so are the teachers apparently.

Day 1

Day 1 of my first training for O&B. How did it turn out?

The teacher participants are competent, responsive, enthusiastic, unafraid to pick up stuff and ask good questions. Some of them knew SQL already but were intrigued by how much farther they can take the base material in their classes later.

It was an eye opener for a number of them how the view of SQL from the academic and the business fronts differ oh so slightly but result in dramatic differences.

Day 2 coming up. I won't be blogging daily about this. Just very very happy that day before birthday is worth celebrating.

And I really enjoyed the tuna sandwiches I prepared for lunch.

Oh before I forget, +1 to geek. Getting a United Federation of Planets comm display (it's my Ubuntu login splash screen) projected onscreen.

1991 all over again

It's like I'm back in 1991 when I was revamping the DLSU Manufacturing Engineering curriculum. We were designing syllabuses (syllabi? syllabeese? syllabusen?) left and right trying to fit all the topics we needed into the class times allotted.

It's quite a challenge trying to squeeze our 240-hour Java course into two trimestral terms with a total of 72 class hours (accounting for slack, finals, holidays, and possible lost days) evenly split between a lecture and a laboratory.

I'm taking advantage of the fact that unlike our course which runs 5 days a week, the college students using the syllabus have space between classes to read, review, consult, and imbibe.

But even then, oooh this thing is going to be a screamer.

... almost there...

Burning rubber again

Got the rudiments of BASH down and now self-study crash course in Spring.

Smelling smoke ... lol.

Typing on an old friend

Been doing quite a bit using the command line lately and I anticipate typing on it a lot more in the days to come. Being a visual-kinesthetic person, GUIs should work better for me, but there comes a point where slower becomes just plain too slow.

So it's hola otra vez, command line. But it's Linux this time, not DOS. LOL