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Warren Shea

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Random Update

Tuesday, October 18th, 2011 at 11:14 pm

Despite wanting to give up on the Kirby game, I’ve taken another approach: Finish 1, 2 or 3 levels in a sitting, rather than try to force myself to continue to play (cuz that makes me really sleepy). Better to play this game in moderation. I’ll eventually hit 100%…I’m at world 3 now, 46% complete…with all Gold Coins for each level. So far, I’m on my way to 100% completion rate :)

Almost everywhere I go now, I keep thinking about Zombie Apocalypse Survival. For example, I went to Table 17 for dinner today, using a Groupon that expired today. While there, Z and I had a window seat…and I was thinking how…unsafe that place would be in the zombie apocalypse. Honestly, almost everywhere I go, I’m thinking about zombie apocalypse survival. I had no idea The Walking Dead would have this kind of lasting effect on me. It’s quite entertaining.

I read somewhere that when women enter a room, they look at faces…and [other things women notice]. When men look into a room, the immediately, unconsciously, begin to study escape routes, safety issues, etc. Like survival is so innately important to them.

I have a new website project. Domain purchased. It’s related to my interests…but also something I might not be able to share with everyone. That is, I might build it, but not tell people that I run it. While a Japanese otaku might understand it’s awesomeness, I fear the close-minded co-workers of mine may not be so forgiving. Anyways, will write more.

My plan is to finish warrenshea.com before Oct 31…but I might not hit that date due to work. I don’t know why I set that date out…I was just motivated to work on projects and be productive but I find that with deadlines, and productivity, come stress. And with stress, come sickness. I’m avoiding sickness like the plague right now. Everyone around me is sick… :/ It’s a hard battle to win. Like surviving the zombie apocalypse. Anyways….I want to start the new website project. I’m not sure whether to use WordPress on it temporarily, while I build an ASP.NET site….or to just start building an ASP.NET site now, and…not have a website for a while. The problem is that the website topic is peaking in interest as we speak….well, it may continue to peak….but I don’t want to complete the site during the fall of interest.

Also, I want to develop this ASP.NET site:
1. Correctly – code in the proper places…no inline code hacks like I’ve done in the past. Correct layers…Presentation, Business, Code….[insert other words that are releveant]
2. Locally

I’m always about trying to do something different….with code (not irl lol). The more approaches you take, and continue with, the more you learn. Rather than do the same thing, or method over and over again.

It’s difficult: Lots of work, lots of personal projects, and avoiding stress and sickness. But this is currently what I’m trying to balance.

My Personal (Developer) Resolve

Wednesday, January 12th, 2011 at 1:31 pm

Resolve
To be awesome at (almost) all aspects in the limited stage of the web.

*The following is a list on all the web-related items that I already know, would like to learn, and have no interest in learning (despite being related to the web). Some points may not seem to make sense, that is because my knowledge in the area is so terrible that I don’t know what I’m writing >_<

This Resolve includes:

  • The ability to develop proficiently in various development languages, frameworks, and techniques including:
    • ASP.NET 4.0 C#
    • ASP 3.0 VB (Classic)
    • HTML5
    • PHP 5
    • XHTML 1.0/HTML 4.01
    • JavaScript
    • MS SQL (and mySQL)
    • Ruby (on Rails) (maybe…)

    • CSS2
    • CSS3
    • SASS
    • OOP
    • AJAX
    • JSON
    • XML
    • XSL/XSLT
    • DOM
    • DHTML

    • jQuery
    • Prototype (and script.aculo.us)
    • MooTools

    • Google Chart API
    • Facebook API
    • Twitter API
    • Google Search Appliance API

  • The ability to develop for major browsers including Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari and (maybe) Opera
  • Familiarity with Web Accessibility standards including:
    • WCAG 2.0 standards
    • CNIB (The Canadian National Institute for the Blind) Priority Level 2
  • Understanding of fundamental SEO principles and Analytic tools including:
    • Google Analytics
    • Google Search Appliance
  • Knowledge of various Content Management System and Web Publishing tools including:
    • Drupal 7 and Drupal
    • WordPress and Blogger
    • Vignette 7 and Vignette 6
  • Proficiency in various graphic programs including:
    • Photoshop
    • Fireworks

This Resolve does not include:

  • Mobile development (although this may change in the future)
  • Email development
  • Development of non-web languages including:
    • C
    • C++
    • Java
    • Visual Basic
    • Perl
    • Python
  • Development of non-web languages that are fundamentally from the list above including:
    • JSP (Java) (although this may change in the future)
    • Mason (Perl)
    • Django/Zope (Python)
  • Development of supporting web languages:
    • ActionScript
  • Proficiency in web-related tools including:
    • Flash, Premiere, Illustrator
    • Silverlight (although this may change in the future)

What to learn? HTML5 or ASP.NET?

Monday, January 10th, 2011 at 4:00 pm

The CSS book that I’m currently reading is 350 pages. I’m currently on 230, having gone through 100 on Saturday…and the other 130 in the 2 weeks before -_-; I can accomplish so much in one night if I focus! :S

As I close in on the final 120 pages, which I hope to finish very soon, I’m wondering what to study next?

I decided that for my EPIC SITE, I may as well do it in ASP.NET 3.5/4 AND HTML 5 (not XHTML 1.0).

While the ASP.NET code would compile and render to XHTML 1.0, would that be HTML5 valid? I mean, if I built my site in HTML5, I would like it…y’know, in all HTML5, not HTML5 + ASP.NET compiled XHTML1.0/HTML 4.01.

I really like the look of <br />….<br > just looks wrong to me. It’s how I used to develop…but gave that up to be XHTML valid. Now, <br> is valid again in HTML5 so why do <br />? <br> is 2 characters smaller as well as just as easy to read as <br />

I really (and I wouldn’t be surprised if you thought this too) have a bad habit of procrastinating my ASP.NET learning. Like, did I really need to read a CSS book before ASP.NET? Should I really be reading a HTML5 book before studying a multiple-year resolve of studying ASP.NET?

I’m trying to learn both for my EPIC SITE but I imagine that the learning curve for ASP.NET is much higher than HTML5, with the exception of the canvas tag, which seems very daunting. Like learning ActionScript….bleh.

There’s so much to learn! Not that I’m under a strict time limit, everything is self-imposed…but it seems like if you don’t study frequently, it’s so easy to fall behind in technology. I’m already behind with my current skills…but at least I’m attempting to catch up. That’s leaps and bounds better than the progress from my recent, WoW years.

I love solving a good problem.

Sunday, November 28th, 2010 at 3:50 am

Not much to write about. I have been coding all night, from around 6pm-11pm in ASP classic, VB.
I couldn’t get this file upload thing to work.

It’s dumb, I should have written everything in ASP.NET C#…but 90% was already coded in ASP classic VB…so I tried to power through.

5 hours later with no success, and no wanting to recode everything in ASP.NET C# or ASP.NET VB, I decided to go with PHP.

30 minutes later and I had most of what I needed. I was so happy!

And then I ran into another bug. Skip forward 4 hours (to now)…and I have it solved :) And I’m feeling very good…it’s a good feeling, working on something, in this case, 10 hours….and finally solving the problem. Yourself. I mean, there’s the internet, but not asking friends/coworkers…and being able to do what you need.

I dunno…just really happy right now :)

I really wanted to spend this weekend reading. Reading my novel and reading a CSS book. But this was good, I learned a lot about PHP and have more code base to work with, and isn’t that what it’s all about? :)

What’s next (for me in web development)?

Thursday, September 16th, 2010 at 5:54 pm

So, the last few days I’ve learned a couple of things
1. My fundamentals suck. I don’t read any books, other than the ASP.NET one that I’m “currently” reading. I never read any html, asp, css, javascript book or anything. Everything I’ve done, everything I’ve learned my entire web career has been self taught or looked up, ie: I look up what I want to do, do it, and learn that “method” and use it elsewhere. For example, if I wanted something to loop, I would look it up.
Learn about for, while, do while. Make my change that needs the loop. And down the road, apply my knowledge to something else.

What this means is
a) I’m strong because I’ve looked a lot of things up.
b) I’m strong because I’m good at thinking outside the box…because I’m able to apply what I know creatively to get something accomplished. And if I can’t think of a solution like that, I look it up and add to my knowledge base.
c) I’m weak at fundamentals. I don’t know the “right way” (by that, I mean, the shortest, most efficient way) to do things because I find creative workarounds to accomplish the same thing. Like when I built a calendar from scratch. A feat in itself but time wasted when I could have used a control or other source code available.
For example: I didn’t know what display: block did. I thought it was just the opposite of display: none. I thought everything was inherently display: block’ed unless you specified display: none, which would hide it. I never learned what display: block was, I just guessed it’s functionality based on some use and the difference between that and display: none.

Conclusion: I will begin my re-education and buy/read some books on: CSS2.
I will learn CSS3 and HTML5 from a book so I get my fundamentals down. From there, I’ll continue learning what/how I currently learn….which brings me to my next point.

2. I’ve often wondered if I should move away from front-end web development and move to back-end. I’m good at both, stronger on front-end (that’s my job). But front-end does get kind boring in the way of “deep” thinking, something I really love. I thought I’d learned enough about front-end to try something more complicated…but because of 1 (above), I realize I’m not as strong as I thought, maybe there’s still room to stay in the front-end side. The thing is, with CSS3 and HTML5, where HTML5 is fundamentally different from HTML 4.01 and XHTML 1.1, there’s still a lot to learn. I imagine HTML5 will bridge the front-end and back-end development sides…but since I don’t know too much about HTML5, I can’t confirm that statement.

Conclusion: I will continue what I’m doing, both front-end and back-end. I will try to learn CSS3 and HTML5 early and decide whether or not it’s enough to satisfy my “deep” thinking. I will start working on something more complicated to fulfill my back-end need…which brings me to my next point.

3. I’m getting bored with warrenshea.com. Not in terms of blogging, but in terms of updating the site, creating themes, in terms of content/difficulty. I’ve launched 2 themes in the last week, I probably should have staggered myself, but there isn’t/wasn’t any challenge in doing my gmail theme. The idea was fun, the design was okay (like always), but the development was tedious. There are 4 themes I want to do still but currently have no motivation to do any of them. They all include a little “quirk” which would make the development interesting…but not interesting enough.

Conclusion: I think I’ll take a break from warrenshea.com for a bit (again, not the blogging aspect). I’m going to spend more nights re-re-re-re-catching up with ASP.NET….and planning the “EPIC SITE” site I want to build.

I know I write that ever 2 months but THIS TIME I MEAN IT :@