I finally put something together with the ChucK programming language that doesn’t sound like random noise. Enjoy.

I’m using the ChucK programming language to get a feel for making music with algorithms. It’s a language made specifically for manipulating sound and it’s fun to play with, but what wasn’t fun was figuring out how to install it on Ubuntu.

I had no problems installing with Mac, but the Ubuntu installation was a bit more involved. I tried the old ./configure, make, make install trick on the source file but I was missing too many dependencies for it to run. I then checked for an apt-get package but then chuck told me that I was missing an audio API to connect to so I was stuck with a music programming language that couldn’t make a sound.

After searching through message boards, mailing lists, and blogs, I was able to find a solution from a post about “Using a DDR dance mat as a musical instrument”. Not my intention, but cool idea.

The author had figured out that you need to run apt-get chuck with another application call jackd. First you need to run the installation:

$ sudo apt-get install chuck jackd

ChucK still won’t work since you need jackd running at the same time, so once you have jackd installed, go ahead and run this in a new terminal:

$ jackd -d alsa

Leave that terminal running in the background somewhere and then proceed to run ChucK with this line:

$ chuck --srate48000 *.ck

And that should be it. After running that last line I was able to hear some audio from my speakers.

If you have a Mac, rejoice. It’s only one click. FML

Today was pretty awesome. Linkedin came to visit my school at Full Sail University and I got the opportunity to meet some of the staff working in their design department. A couple of them happened to be Full Sail alumni from a few years back. They gave an informative presentation over at Full Sail Live showing some of the work that they do over in Silicon Valley. First up was Matt Hackmann, who graduated from Full Sail University’s Digital Arts and Design program. His presentation introduced himself and some of the work he does for the Profile Page department at Linkedin. Second was Derek Kohn. He graduated with a degree in Entertainment Business and now works with the Education department at Linkedin. It’s really great to see successful working alumni making the effort to give back to their school.

I took some notes from their presentations and I found that there was a lot of info that was in common with what we learn at Full Sail in Web Design and Development. As an intro to their working habits, they explained their approach to “user first” design. From what I understood from design class, the user should be the focal point of every web application. I first learned about user interface design patterns from the Web Interface and Usability lectures that I had last year. Those lectures gave me a foundation for learning more about user experience. “User first” makes sense, especially for a brand like Linkedin. Their company is unique in a way because the users themselves are the service, so it’s only natural that they cater primarily to their user base.

The design team at Linkedin also went into code and shared some of the technologies they use in their web apps. I was able to recognize a few things like Sass and node.js but I wasn’t familiar with dust.js or injection(?). I’ll have to try those out myself some time. They also work a lot with MVC frameworks, like Backbone.js. From what I’ve seen, Linkedin seems to be in touch with all of the latest trends in web technology. Of course, that’s not too surprising for a leading tech company like Linkedin.

I really enjoyed getting to know Linkedin at their presentation and I’m really glad that they took the time to fly over to Orlando to see our school. It’s really exciting for me to see how grads have molded their professional careers. I’ve had my Linkedin account for a few years now, and it’s been a great tool for career insight. Having that glimpse into a career field is especially helpful for those students who might not have a clear vision for their future after college. My advice to them would be to get working on their Linkedin profile and start stalking people.

Do it. Go stalk. There’s really no shame.

Right now, I’m looking into getting my Macbook replaced but in the meantime I have work to do. Luckily, I’ve got another machine at home running Ubuntu. Right before my disaster, I was able to upload my dotfile configurations to Github, so I’m fortunate enough to be able to transfer my previous development environment over to my Ubuntu laptop. It’s an old and clunky laptop compared to my Macbook but it works almost completely the same as far as Unix tools.

I also dodged a bullet by keeping all my current projects on Dropbox. I’d have to say that Dropbox probably uses up the most processing power out of all the applications on my machine right now but it’s worth it having all your important documents synced just in case anything happens. Backing up files is never a bad idea.

I should be more upset about my situation but everything happens for a reason. I’ll just remember this as a learning experience and a lesson in how you can never be too prepared for when disaster strikes.

Back up everything.

WebGL is still an experiment but that’s what I love about it. I love everything that’s experimental, especially experimental music. I’m a huge fan of the Fuck Buttons and I was totally blown away by their latest album, “Slow Focus”. As an experiment, I decided to try out WebGL to make a 3D version of the cover art for their single, “The Red Wing”, which can be seen at the link below.

3D interpretation of The Red Wing cover art

What I ended up creating was really basic compared to other WebGL experiments found on the internet, but I’m fine with that because I learned something new along the way with something that I’m passionate about. I’ll never get tired of obsessing over the ways that technology pushes art and vice versa. As technology moves forward, we’ll find even more ways to share art with one another. I’m really excited to see what the future holds for interactive media.

Vim is my absolute favorite text editor. I recommend it to anyone who loves using Unix tools. It’s a powerful weapon for editing scripts but it isn’t for everyone. The main issue that most people have with Vim is that it has a steep learning curve. Performing even a small task like typing a single character is nearly impossible for a beginner to figure out. It’s a tool that forces the user to read the manual.

There’s absolutely no substitute for reading through Vim’s documentation and built-in tutorial but for those that love RPG styled video games, Vim Adventures is an excellent alternative.

Vim Adventures is an in-browser puzzle game that plays a lot like a tile based RPG. In the game you play as the “shadowy cursor” prophecized to save the world from doom. This should sound very familiar if you’ve played a few video games with RPG elements but this time your skills aren’t gained through experience points from battle. As the game progresses, your character collects shortcut keys obtained through solving puzzles. Every puzzle challenges the player to learn how to use Vim in the most effecient manner possible.

The challenges are tough and you’ll soon find yourself Googling for help along the way. I advice against spoiling the game like that. If you truly want to learn Vim, try to stick it out without looking up the solutions. At least make sure to talk to all the NPCs first if you find yourself stuck. Don’t give up. The challenges are designed to illustrate both the capablities and limitations of each shortcut command through every attempt made to solve the puzzle. You might spend hours on a single puzzle but by the time you’re through with it, you’ll be satisfied knowing that you’ve learned a new trick that can be brought into your text editing workflow.

So far I’ve gotten up to Level 7 and at this point I feel extremely comfortable maneuvering with Vim. Playing the game really helps to build the necessary muscle memory needed to work without having to looking up the shortcuts for every command. I’m sure by the end of the game I’ll have true mastery over Vim but for now I’ll keep my Vim cheat sheet close by.

Vim Adventures is free to try out but expect to pay at least 25 dollars for the full game. For the price, the game is totally worth it. Very few video games teach anything at all, let alone something as difficult as Vim. Don’t miss out.

After doing a bit of research I discovered that the problem may have been caused by using both Git and Dropbox at the same time for the same project. Now I’ve actually been warned NOT to do this, but I’m stubborn about my tools and I figured that if it’s been working for me for months, there really shouldn’t be any reason why I should do away with my own methods for my own projects.

I could do away with using Dropbox for coding, but Dropbox is super convenient for accessing projects on mobile phones. Github recently made a super slick mobile web version of their website for accessing repos on smartphones, but it’s not really made for editing. You can look but you can’t touch.

Now it’s not like I’m refactoring code on my phone on the regular, but it’s still a nice feature to have, just in case. Until I figure out how to use bash on the phone, I’ll stick to Dropbox.

Anyways, the conflict wasn’t too hard to fix. The problem was that Dropbox made an extra copy of a file that I already have. To fix the error I had to run a command that would look for the conflicted copy and destroy it. For this I used this command in the repo:

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$ find . -type f -name "* conflicted copy*" -exec rm -f {} \; 

With that command, I was able to get rid of the error and resume using git as usual. Simple right?

This was probably the proof that I needed that Git and Dropbox don’t mix well together, but I’ll probably still use Dropbox and Git anyway. What else could go wrong?

You should care because it’s your info. It’s not okay for agencies to pass along your private information without consent. I’m sure many of you are aware that CISPA needs to be stopped but this privacy war will not end with this bill.

Sure, go ahead and blackout or whatever. Spread awareness. Let everyone know that their privacy is at risk of being abused.

When you’re done. Take action. Direct action. I recommend that everyone take their privacy into their own hands and familiarize themselves with basic cryptography.

Redditor postmodern’s list of privacy tools is a great start for anyone who values secure communication.

Here’s a copypasta:

Don’t ask your government for your Privacy, take it back:

Browser Privacy: HTTPS Everywhere, AdBlock Plus + EasyList, Ghostery, NoScript (FireFox), NotScript (Chrome) * VPNs: BTGuard (Canada), ItsHidden (Africa), Ipredator (Sweden), Faceless.me (Cyprus / Netherlands) * Internet Anonymization: Tor, Tor Browser Bundle, I2P * Disk Encryption: TrueCrypt (Windows / OSX / Linux), File Vault (Mac). * File/Email Encryption: GPGTools + GPGMail (Mac), Enigmail (Windows / OSX / Linux) * IM Encryption: Pidgin + Pidgin OTR * IM/Voice Encryption: Mumble, Jitsi * SMS/Voice Encryption: WhisperSystems, Silent Circle ($$$) * Google Alternative: DuckDuckGo * Digital P2P Currency: BitCoin * Live Anonymous/Secure Linux: TAILS Linux

If you have any problems installing or using the above software, please contact the projects. They would love to get feedback and help you use their software.

Have no clue what Cryptography is or why you should care? Checkout the Crypto Party Handbook or the EFF’s Surveillance Self-Defense Project.

Just want some simple tips? Checkout EFF’s Top 12 Ways to Protect Your Online Privacy.

True privacy necessitates that you act for yourself instead of waiting for legistation to pass. It’s a nice gesture to petition the politicians that have already been bought, but in the long run it’s really up to you to keep your personal data from being stolen.

Don’t wait for permission from authority or beg some higher power to protect your own information. Be proactive!

A few months ago, I learned about a new mobile service called Solavei. Back then I was looking around for a reasonable unlimited phone plan that didn’t involve contracts. At the time, my phone carrier was Red Pocket Mobile, which was great but their mobile web data plan costed more and was limited to only 2gigs of data and I wasn’t going to sign a contract with another mobile service to be charged for more data usage.

Personally, I can’t stand contract service agreements. If I’m unhappy with anyone’s service, I should be able to decide not to continue doing business with them. Why should I guarantee my money every month to a phone service that’s questionable? I’ve always felt more comfortable using a prepaid plan. I like the freedom of having other options available.

But you know what? Companies probably make you sign contracts so you won’t run off to new companies like Solavei. I lucked out finding a great service like Solavei. I found an affordable unlimited mobile service plan without any contract agreements and so far I’m really happy with it.

I didn’t really trust them at first since they’re a completely new company, but my family in Dallas who I love and trust assured me that Solavei was something that I would want to be a part of.

After hours of research, I went ahead and ditched my old plan and ordered my unlimited phone plan with Solavei. It’s been 3 months already and I’m 100% satisfied with their revolutionary phone service.

My prepaid plan came up to $58.34 a month including tax and that’s without participating in their referral program. If you recruit enough members to Solavei, eventually, you won’t even have a monthly bill to pay. Solavei actually pays its members for sharing their services with other people.

Switching carriers was a no brainer for me. There were no activation fees involved other than the 9 dollar SIM card I had to ship to myself. Once I got my SIM card in the mail, I popped it into my iPhone and I was set. I’ve never been happier with my phone.

It feels awesome to be able to blog about this new service as an early adopter. I have a feeling that Solavei is only going to get bigger. Be sure to check out Solavie’s video down below to learn more.

It’s funny how my very first hackathon experience ended up being one of the largest hackathon events in the nation. Last week, I took a chance and signed up for Startupbus America. It was fun but I must must warn everyone that it isn’t for the faint of heart.

Day 1

The first day, I met up with the SouthEast StartupBus crew in Tampa. Once the bus started moving, we all shared our startup business ideas and split up into teams. After all the startup pitches, I joined up with Adam Nerland, Anthony Decana, and Ashley Mooney to create Thumbtrotter. We all liked Adam’s idea to create a ridesharing mobile app with “Couchsurfing” elements. Within minutes, Ashley quickly drew up a window mural of all our brainstorming ideas and at that point, we were ready to hack.

We were ready to hack, but we also needed power and internet to do our work. The bus had to go pick up a generator for our laptops, so we stopped by CoworkJax to get started and get ourselves situated. It was a short stop, but it was enough for us to have a steady internet connection and a place to sit and work. Thank you CoworkJax.

For internet on the road, I had to rely on phone tethering. It wasn’t the best but it was all we had. I don’t really recommend mobile internet use in transit. Connections dropped in and out throughout the entire trip. It was awful.

Our bus ride was basically an internet-less desert, and I continued to share sips of unlimited mobile internet with iPhone tethering. It was enough to get us through until Atlanta.

In Atlanta, we stopped at our second co-working space, Hypepotamus. Landing here was like finding an oasis. We were greeted by Georgia Tech students over there and got to see some of their own startup ideas. It was an awesome welcome into the startup world in Atlanta. Anyone in the area looking for tech hot spots in Atlanta should start looking here.

Day 2

On our second day, we had breakfast at the Mailchimp office. The tour was great. We had a chance to take a look inside the office of a successful startup brand. The place looked like a fun and creative office space. It had a very strong personality. Geek paraphanelia was littered all over, and I thought about stealing all of their framed Street Fighter 3 portraits off the wall.

The geek stuff was all in good taste though. It never felt too overwhelming like entering Pee Wee’s Playhouse. You could just feel that the work culture there would make any kind of geek comfortable.

By the end of the tour, we all had swag bags full of cool monkey themed merchandise. The whole insider’s startup experience was fun. Mailchimp is definitely on my list of places to apply to once I graduate.

Thanks for all the swag gear.

Day 3

On the third day, we made our way to NOLA, better known as New Orleans, LA. Here was where we met up with StartupBus Midwest. Launchpad gave us a warm welcome when we arrived and there at their co-work space, we shared our startups with each other and also got a feel for the budding tech scene in New Orleans.

By this time, our team already established our game plan for Thumbtrotter. While our Thumbtrotter app was still in its early development stages, we were still able to gain a good amount of Facebook likes for our Facebook page. We did a bit of our work in NOLA, but most of our time there was spent getting to know each other.

It was great meeting other devs who were crazy enough to work on a bus for 5 days straight. I learned a lot talking with everyone and I was able to get a feel for the languages and tools that I would need to learn to be competitive in this career field. I loved how the devs I met were just as eager to teach as much I was eager to learn, and everyone seemed to share a common respect for each other for the work that they did.

It was here that I realized how fast dev communities are growing everywhere. I met some really smart people from the Midwest, and all through the entire trip we’ve been finding cool tech spots in cities like Tampa, New Orleans, Jacksonville, and Atlanta. I don’t know why I thought the tech community only revolved around places like Silicon Valley. The reality is that you find these awesome communities by doing the things you love rather than where you go.

I love ‘Aha’ moments.

Days 4 and 5

Our final days were spent in San Antonio, Texas. All 6 buses from all over North America finally made it to the main event hosted at “Rackspace Castle”. This was the battleground for our startups to compete amongst each other.

All together, there were around 150 of us packed into Rackspace Headquarters and every team gave it their all to be the champion startup.

When it came time to introduce our startup to the judges, we gave them our pitch video.

My team was ready to win, but we were challenged with the fact that there were other existing ridesharing apps for mobile. The judges were not impressed even though we had a working prototype ready and a viable business plan that seperated us from rival competitors.

Closing

Team Thumbtrotter didn’t win, but we weren’t defeated. We came together to create an awesome app that we believed in and shared it with everyone we knew. StartupBus was only the beginning for us and we understood that more opportunities would present themselves in the future for our startup ventures to grow.

For hosting my own blog, I chose to use Github pages. There were several other options but I felt better having my blog linked to the same place I keep my other projects on my Github account. It made sense considering that most of what I’ll be writing about on my blog will revolve around these repositories. As I update my repos, I’ll be updating my blog.

Using Github Pages

Github Pages is a free public hosting service that allows users more freedom in workflow options with git and other tools for web such as Jekyll. It’s most likely the best choice for our blog. I assume Octopress was created with Github in mind, considering the workflow format and the similarity between mascots.

There’s plenty documentation for assisting in deploying to Github Pages on the official docs page. I recommend following the simple instructions offered there, but I’ll still walkthrough and share my experience deploying my Octopress.

Creating a New Github Repository

For a Github Page, we will need a Github account. Make one if you don’t have a Github account already.

With your Github account, create a new repository and name the repo username.github.com

http://username.github.com will be the url for the Octopress.

Configuring Github Pages

The next step in our deployment is to use rake to configure github pages. Octopress has a built-in task for setting up everything so all that’s needed is the following command to be entered into Terminal while inside the Octopress directory.

rake setup_github_pages

A prompt will appear to enter the repo url. Entering the url made in the previous step will link your Octopress to the new Github repo.

Once that’s complete, we are now able to use rake to commit and push whatever changes that are made to the Octopress directory by entering:

rake generate
rake deploy

With this our Octopress is now published!

Check the url to see if it’s up. If you can’t find your blog at the url, carefully repeat the steps until it works.

Conclusion

We’ve only covered the beginning stages, but at least now we have a visible working blog on the web. Next, we’ll take a look into posting and making configurations with Octopress.

The StartupBus is basically an annual event where teams of strangers on a bus travel together to conceive, build and launch startups. Each team only has 72 hours to create a startup that’s ready to present to potential investors at the end of the trip.

Right now I’m really psyched to be a part of this and I’m very thankful for this opportunity to collaborate with others to do great things.

It’s disappointing, but the folks at Dev Bootcamp decided that I was not a good fit for the program. I’m not completely surprised considering what I had learned of their expectations after the 9 weeks of training.

A good chunk of my interview with Karim Bishay was spent discussing what was to be expected after Dev Bootcamp. After thorough questioning, it became clear to me that Dev Bootcamp was more than a 9 week commitment. Boots are expected to hit the ground running into their careers.

My plans were a bit different, since my goals at Dev Bootcamp had more to do with supplementing the education and training that I already had in place for myself. Moving and working in San Francisco would have been a dream come true but I wasn’t willing to make that decision right now as a commited student at Full Sail University.

What Now?

It’s easy to speculate the reasons for why things happen, but I don’t want to fall into the trap of dwelling on my failed interview. Right now, the best thing for me to do is to focus on improving my interviewing skills. Apparently, I don’t interview well, so I should be working on that right away. To prepare for future interviews, I’ll be focusing on practicing the main thing I believe that’s important to master for scoring developer positions, solving puzzles.

Puzzles

As a developer, you’ll be expected to solve several problems in your career. By sharing the way you solve problems through interview puzzles, employers are better able to gauge your critical thinking ablities. It isn’t enough that you get the right answer. What matters is your ability to communicate what you’re doing to solve the problem and why you’re doing it. The only way to get better at this is to practice.

Project Euler is a great site for sharpening your problem solving skills. Taking the time to work through these puzzles will help tremendously for developer interviews. I’ve already created an account for myself, so by the time I get to my next interview, I’ll be ready for anything.

What I’ve Learned

What I’ve learned is that this isn’t going to be an easy career field to get into. It’s going to take a lot of work. I’m going to have to rely on dedication and perserverance to get what I want out of this. There’ll be plenty of fail along the way, but it’s okay because there’s more to learn from our failures than from our small successes along the way.

The Cathode app is an emulator that runs Terminal in a retro style that closely resembles cathode monitors from the past. It’s a fun Terminal alternative for anyone who likes to apply unique themes to their favorite apps. All of the themes that come with Cathode are incredibly detailed and take their authentic looking styles from several different computer eras.

The older crowd will definitely appreciate the app for all the flicker and noise effects that give a nostalgic feel to the Terminal experience. For others, it’s a nice to have novelty app that looks like an old school tool for hacking.

Overall, it’s a wonderful app that’s stable, reliable, and fun to use. I like to have it open at all times in case I need to use the command line for anything.

Cathode is free to evaluate but it’s $9.99 for the full version. Go ahead and give it a try.

Once the Skype tone turned on, I choked. My blank mind struggled to find words to express simple phrases like “Hi” and “How are you?” to maintain a decent conversation flow.

The interview had already begun, and I was greeted by Karim Bishay. After introducing myself, we shot a few questions back and forth about the Dev Bootcamp program.

Soon after we got settled in, he finally threw down the gauntlet and gave me a puzzle to walk him through. I was already somewhat familiar with the puzzle but I didn’t say anything because I still had no idea what the answer was even after several minutes passing. It was challenging only because my brain moves so much faster than my ability to explain things. Maintaining both focus and communication was the real challenge.

After solving the puzzle, Karim asked the big question. The question was “Why?” That was the one question I really wanted to answer. I simply gave him my own personal definition of success and explained how my actions aligned with my goals.

When I finished my explanation, he looked way more satisfied with my “Why?” answer than with my solution to the puzzle.

Overall, I feel really good about my prospects. It was a great experience to get a feel for the big interviews that we have to conquer for a respectable salary.

I look forward to the next one.

Stop torturing yourself and get a text editor that uses snippets.

Code snippets are a great way to increase your workflow productivity, and in Sublime Text, making use of them is easy and simple. I highly recommend snippets to anyone who wants to become a faster coder. I should warn you though, hacks won’t instantly make you a “better” coder. True skills come with practice.

Getting Started

So? Where do we begin?

First, we need a text editor worth bragging about. I love Sublime Text. Download it. It’s what I’ll be using in this post to show how snippets work. There are other text editors like Textmate that work great with snippets, but I prefer Sublime Text.

In Sublime Text, a snippet is a block of code that’s inserted into your working document when triggered. An example would be typing in ‘html’ and hitting the Tab key afterwards to trigger the following output below within an html document.(FYI:this default snippet won’t work in any other document format)

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<html>
<head>
  <title></title>
</head>
<body>

</body>
</html>

Ok, not very exciting, but what if I told you that you can create a snippet anyway you want, using ANY kind of text to trigger ANY size block of code of your choosing. Oh and you can place any number of cursors anywhere within that block to type multiple code values at the same time.

Yea I know.

Sublime Text. Download. Install. Open.

New Game

Now that we have Sublime Text up and running, we’re going to go ahead and open up the snippet template.

In your Sublime Text menu, search within the “Tools” dropdown and select “New Snippet…”. You should be presented with a template that looks like this:

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<snippet>
  <content><![CDATA[
Hello, ${1:this} is a ${2:snippet}.
]]></content>
  <!-- Optional: Set a tabTrigger to define how to trigger the snippet -->
  <!-- <tabTrigger>hello</tabTrigger> -->
  <!-- Optional: Set a scope to limit where the snippet will trigger -->
  <!-- <scope>source.python</scope> -->
</snippet>

Nice. Now we have ourselves a fancy xml script to modify with help comments. Self-explanatory, right?

For those of you who can figure this out at first glance, I salute you.

The rest may read on.

How to Play

Ok. Let’s break this down line by line.

Starting at line number one, we have our snippet bracket which contains the entirety of our code.

In the next line, the content bracket nested within the snippet bracket holds the block of code that we want to output when triggered. Within the block, ${1:this} and ${2:snippet} are used to point to where the cursor should be placed sequentially after each time the tab button is hit.

Afterwards, we have comments stating that we have the option to set the tabTrigger to trigger the snippet and also the option to indicate the format where the snippet is able to trigger.

I’m guessing that anyone is free to not use the code that is commented out, but for the purposes of creating a fully functional snippet, the tabTrigger and scope elements are NOT optional. We want to specify how our snippet is triggered and where our triggers are able to function.

Practice Mode

As an example, we’ll use one of the Z-Snippets that I created for CSS to compare with the “New Snippet…” template.

Text-Shadow snippet:

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<snippet>
  <content><![CDATA[-webkit-text-shadow: ${1:}px ${2:} #${3:}; 
-moz-text-shadow: ${1:}px ${2:} #${3:};
text-shadow: ${1:}px ${2:} #${3:};
]]></content>
  <tabTrigger>ztext-shadow</tabTrigger>
  <scope>text.html, source.css, source.less, source.scss, source.stylus</scope>
</snippet>

Let’s look at the code that I replaced in the template.

First, I took out the Hello, ${1:this} is a ${2:snippet}. text within the content element and replaced it with the CSS code that I want to output if I trigger it. Note that the text must be placed within the ![CDATA[ ]] brackets for the code to work properly. And for the sake of convenience, ${1:} ${2:} and ${3:} are used to type in the appropriate CSS values for multiple vendor prefixes simultaneously.

Next, I replaced the hello text with my own trigger text. Now with the text, ztext-shadow, placed within the tabTrigger element, the snippet will only trigger after pressing tab at the end of any ztext-shadow.

Lastly, we must identify which formats to allow the snippet to be used in. A CSS snippet would only be appropriate within file formats that are able to use CSS, such as HTML and LESS. Some snippets may clutter your autocomplete lists, if you’re not careful enough to label your scope correctly. It’s not a difficult task. I’ve found that almost every format’s scope is identified by typing “source.” before the file’s extension, with the exception of HTML which uses text. as a prefix.

Let’s Play

You’re free to create a snippet of your own just like the one I made for myself.

Once you’ve made your own snippet script, you want to save your xml file over to the Sublime Text Package Folder. You can find where it is with Browse Packages under Preferences.

Snippets should start working immediately after saving. It’s a simple code modification, but if it doesn’t work out, you’re probably better off learning Emmet coding to start off with.

I’ll be sure to expand on more coding techiniques in future posts as I learn more.

Enjoy!

Anki actually stands for “memorizing” in Japanese, and that is basically what this app specializes in assisting with. By using a spaced repetition scheduling system for arranging the order of the flashcards, users are better able to focus their time more efficiently, balancing between the study time spent on learning new material and reviewing old material that’s at risk of being forgotten.

This system is very similar to the popular Pimsluer method used for language acquisition. It’s a proven technique that’s been used for several years.

I’ve already begun to use it to familiarize myself with what I’m learning in the Physics class that I’m taking right now. By the time each lecture is through, I have a full stack of flashcards ready to run through daily before my next exam.

It’s a neat app but what blows my mind about Anki is the accessibility of the flashcards you create. Once you sign up for a free account with Anki, you’ll have the ability to sync your flashcard collection with almost any computer device with an internet connection. This includes cell phones, Macs, Android devices, Windows and even Linux machines. There’s even a client version for the Nintendo DS. It’s the perfect anywhere anytime app.

In my opinion, there isn’t a better productivity app out there for studying. Anki is free to download, except for the iPhone app which goes for $24.99. I bought the app full price and it was worth every penny. Try it out.

Dev Bootcamp is an intense 9 week training workshop located in San Francisco and Chicago. They take both beginner and experienced programmers, turning them into readily employable Rails beasts.

I first found out about DBC from reading a few discussions about the program on Hacker News and I was impressed with what they had to offer in their curriculum. They cover mainly Ruby, Rails, JavaScript, and Agile methodologies. It’s very similar to what I’m learning in Full Sail’s web program so I’m sure I’ll be prepared once I start my training at DBC.

To handle my nerves, I’ve been pushing myself much harder to learn how to become a Rails developer. My classes at Full Sail University have been a huge help so far and the tips that I’ve gotten from meetups with Team Treehouse and Code School have been inspiring for me.

I know this career field is a good fit for me, but I still have my doubts about whether I’ll be able to get into Dev Bootcamp. I’m not the best student at school and I barely have enough experience with code to impress anyone familiar with dev subject matter. Right now, I’m just relying on my passion to learn.

All I know for sure is that my path to becoming a Rails developer is going to be long and challenging, but I’ll enjoy writing every step of the way.

Wish me luck!

I’m actually typing this blog post with a text editor on my iPhone. The app that I’m using is called Nocs. It’s a text editor that integrates well with both Dropbox and the Markdown format that Octopress uses to publish with.

In the Nocs app, I’m able to navigate and edit the Octopress directory through Dropbox with ease.

The Dropbox/Nocs combo allows me to write anywhere with my iPhone. Then once my post is ready to go, all I need to do is push my Octopress repo up in Terminal using

$ rake generate

and

$ rake deploy

Easy.

Both apps are available for free at the App Store.