June 1, 2012
The Journey and Goal

The Goal


In 6 months (Dec 1 2012) to have an advanced level in Chinese approaching fluency. (will follow up with what i mean by this)

The background

I have always loved languages, and did well at Japanese at School. I was never a “natural” but still did well (>95% on tests), however it took effort, unlike with subjects like math and physics. I love languages, linguistics, and even computer languages.

As a computer profession I delve a lot into various different computer languages using many on a daily basis, and love the variety between imperative, declarative and functional languages, and though different from human languages, i see how patterns and facets of different groups of programming languages relates to differences in nuances between human languages. Certain human languages have certain ”difficult” features, which aren’t even a concern in other languages etc. I also love thinking and researching ancient cultures and languages.

Sometimes I can get lost in Wikipedia for hours looking at the people groups and languages as they moved around A LOT in the past. I often am intrigued with central asia. For me its fascinating also that they are probably > 30,000 Dead languages with no trace left whatsoever.

When I started High School and was choosing electives i wanted to actually choose 3 or 4 languages, but my parents said i should only choose one and do other things like woodwork and metalwork (which I did not do well at or enjoy). I wonder how different things would be now if i did choose and stick with 3 languages. Maybe I wouldn’t have gone into IT and would be a poor scholar somewhere.

I took Japanese for 5 years in High School, and it was my love, and i want to go and live in Japan. I’d associate with the exchange students and practice a lot, and I loved the difference in grammar. I also did a little bit of Chinese here and there by correspondence school and had passive exposure from my Chinese nanny as a young tot.

In 1996 I went to China for a year, and did learn a bit of Chinese. Japanese Grammar is very different than English, and was difficult to learn, but I got to the stage of thinking and even dreaming in Japanese, Chinese grammar however was not too different thank English and followed the general word order without the auxiliary words in Chinese, much like how some older Chinese people speak English (“I GO STORE BUY APPLE”).

My Chinese didn’t progress well though. I think in part because i wasn’t confident in speaking, maybe because of difficulty in pronunciation with the tones and all, but also because when in China, I spent a lot of time speaking Japanese (sometimes 10 hours a day) as i fraternized with the Japanese Teacher and Chinese people who spoke Japanese.

When I returned from China, i took a year of Japanese and Chinese in university, and made progress, however for about 13 years since then I haven’t practiced, and I’d say that i’m now a beginner again, but with a bit of history, and context that will make it easier.

9:29am  |   URL: http://geekkarl.prossertribe.com/post/24199904865/the-journey-and-goal
May 31, 2010
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

karl song slow. a few patterns i played around with a year or two ago trying to do some “slow motion rock”

9:37pm  |   URL: http://geekkarl.prossertribe.com/post/652189755/karl-song-slow-a-few-patterns-i-played-around
April 3, 2010
2010-01-18 14.36.41.jpg

2010-01-18 14.36.41.jpg

4:08pm  |   URL: http://geekkarl.prossertribe.com/post/494267173/2010-01-18-14-36-41-jpg
2010-01-18 14.36.30.jpg

2010-01-18 14.36.30.jpg

4:08pm  |   URL: http://geekkarl.prossertribe.com/post/494266784/2010-01-18-14-36-30-jpg
January 8, 2010
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

First song of 2010. made with garageband on a Mac. Not sure how i feel about that. I like tracking better and don’t like loopy sort of things, but it was a fun diversion.

12:07am  |   URL: http://geekkarl.prossertribe.com/post/323009948/first-song-of-2010-made-with-garageband-on-a-mac
January 3, 2010
Creating as an idol

  • often got my worth from what I’ve created
  • the process and experience of creating and fixing things and finding the solution is elating and gives a high
  • the above happens when dreaming and designing and solving each prob bit not when faithfully completing projects.
  • often without disciple things aren’t fixed and I jump to the next thing becuase the next thing is a new high.
  • the prospect of completion brings elation during the beginning bit often there is little satisfaction upon completion and it often feels pointless and empty.

3:03pm  |   URL: http://geekkarl.prossertribe.com/post/315288127/creating-as-an-idol
October 28, 2009
challenge done: a 6 line playlist.com WPF player using powershell and powerboots

Here is a quick version. It only works if the original song is still around. Maybe i’ll fix that another day but it was a nice little proof of concept.

ps code

$pl = 3040381707
$xml = [xml](new-object system.net.webclient).downloadstring(“http://pl.playlist.com/pl.php?playlist=$([int]($pl/256))”)
Boots -MaxHeight 600 { stackpanel -width 300 { Label -HorizontalAlignment center -FontSize 30 “Song Title” | Tee -Variable global:title;
MediaElement -loadedbehavior “Manual”  -Width 150 -height 1 - | Tee -Variable global:mp;Image -MaxWidth 180  | Tee -variable global:myimage}
ScrollViewer { stackpanel   {$xml.playlist.tracklist.track | foreach { button  $_.annotation -tooltip “$($_.tracktitle) `r`n by $($_.artist) `r`n on $($_.album)” -Tag $_ -On_Click {
if ($this.tag.image.length -gt 0){ $myimage.source = $this.tag.image }; $title.Content = $this.tag.tracktitle ; $mp.stop(); $mp.source = $this.tag.originallocation;$mp.play() }
if ($_.image.length -gt 0) { Image $_.image  -Height 50 -Width 50 ; }} }}}

screenie

11:18pm  |   URL: http://geekkarl.prossertribe.com/post/226695252/challenge-done-a-6-line-playlist-com-wpf-player-using
FILED UNDER: powershell 
Fun powershell project of the evening

Goal: make a small (5 to 10 line) powershell script that uses powerboots to present a snazy ui consuming some sort of web based service and be something that would have general web user interest.

7:04pm  |   URL: http://geekkarl.prossertribe.com/post/226487296/fun-powershell-project-of-the-evening
FILED UNDER: powershell 
September 21, 2009
AD Authentication with firefox

The main reason I still used IE at work as the default browser was the plethora of intranet sort of apps that require that AD Authentication. I knew it was probably an easy setting, but hadn’t got around to it. Thanks to a question to twitter and a quick answer I got a link to.

http://superuser.com/questions/5161/windows-domain-authentication-with-firefox

3:54pm  |   URL: http://geekkarl.prossertribe.com/post/193683289/ad-authentication-with-firefox
August 17, 2009
gave up the 24 hour MVC thing

as you can probably tell i gave up the MVC 24 hour project. It was good for learning but i lost motivation to complete it. I have some other projects that i might do a 24 hour on some time.

2:34pm  |   URL: http://geekkarl.prossertribe.com/post/165164394/gave-up-the-24-hour-mvc-thing
March 4, 2009
in response to scott hanselmans list of computer memories

Scott posted an awesome list here. http://www.hanselman.com/blog/10AwesomeThingsIRememberAboutComputers.aspx AS for me quickly: wow lots of memories there! similar with vic20 and tape drive. others would be coding in basic then 6502 assembler of c64. Once took over the 1541 disk drives CPU to use a a “coprocessor” to do 3d calcs. another making my own bootsector OS for 386 that was 32 bit. Messing with Himem, Qemm, etc is a memory, but not fun. Reading a Peter Norton book on x86 assembler, i was blown away that x86 has a multiplication opcode. typing in stuff from oldschool mags were great also FIDONET!!!!!!! Dialing overseas BBSs to download demoscene productions. http://www.hanselman.com/blog/CommentView.aspx?guid=4857D217-FBCA-49D9-AFCC-B78CB9EC022F#5bce0922-c087-4707-9819-bfb2fe4faf88

11:35pm  |   URL: http://geekkarl.prossertribe.com/post/83712440/in-response-to-scott-hanselmans-list-of-computer
February 17, 2009
A separate twitter account, twitter etiquette and the whole person

For a while i’ve wanted to tweet more about my spiritual life, yet I haven’t wanted to bombard the stereotypical twitter follower who follows me mostly for geek reasons.

Making this decision has been an interesting process because one of the things I love about twitter is the insights you get into people, seeing more of the “Whole Person” - for better or worse, through the variety of tweets they have. You learn things about their family, worldview, humanity and other hobbies that you wouldn’t through many normal geek channels.

Twitter Etiquette I suppose is quite complicated given the public nature, and the various reasons people follow you, and unfollow you etc, but as a follower i’ve learnt that a huge conversation between 2 people shouldn’t get to that stage and go Direct Message before then, and that you end up unfollowing people who tweet a lot about things that aren’t relevant to you.

As a Christian though I don’t want to segregate my life into different buckets, the public and the private, for I am a whole person, and my religion and worldview are part of all of that. I am committed that along with the geeky stuff, the different parts of me - quirkiness, family, faith, humor and even a little bit of politics gets expressed from time to time in my Geekstream yet the majority of my followers are following me for purely geekish reasons, in particular PowerShell reasons.

So i’ve set up a new @karlofjesus twitter account to complement my geekier @karlprosser . There is not going to be a total seperation of Church and Code however, its just that @karlprosser will only see that in moderation.

on the same note there will be two tumblr miniblogs http://karlofjesus.prossertribe.com and http://geekkarl.prossertribe.com

and eventually there will be a a blog other than my geeky one at http://www.karlprosser.com/coder that will bring in the whole stream - the spiritual, the geek and the family man.

I’ll be contacting the people I know that are friends mostly for spiritual reasons and invite them to the new stream.

11:26pm  |   URL: http://geekkarl.prossertribe.com/post/79296866/a-separate-twitter-account-twitter-etiquette-and-the
FILED UNDER: twitter 
February 3, 2009
different 24 seasons.

though its a bit premature with only having done 4 hours of my first 24 season. I’ve planned the next few 24 seasons - things that i’ve really wanted to touch, and they are mostly all based around this application. SOme should be less than 24 hours effort as well 1) This app. Building Tweetloss, an ASP.NET MVC twitter app, with powershell script in the background. 2) Building a RestFul API for (1) in less than 24 hours 3) Building a Silverlight frontend for above application in less than 24 hours 4) Rebuilding tweetloss in pure ruby on rails, in an ubuntu VM. 5) Rebuilding in ironruby on rails 6) Building 100% webapp just in javascript. I.e one HTML/Javascript file could be downloaded and run on anybody’s machine, without the need for a webhost. Using some widgets, ajaxy stuff etc.. basically a full client side application using public web apis (maybe a mashup). I have a particular idea for a front app for playlist.com

9:02am  |   URL: http://geekkarl.prossertribe.com/post/75349063/different-24-seasons
February 2, 2009
No Time yet.

Though i wish i had pulled a 24 hour stint at once, i’m glad i took the evening off with the family and got some sleep, especially given the fact that i’m recovering from being sick. I hope to at least finish up Hour 4 today.

7:47am  |   URL: http://geekkarl.prossertribe.com/post/75055366/no-time-yet
February 1, 2009
HOUR 4: (First Half) 4:00PM to 4:30 PM - events occur in real time.

Hour 4 (1st half) : 4:00pm to 4:30pm Hmm the guy in http://blog.codeville.net/2009/01/26/video-aspnet-mvc-show-me-the-code/ doesn’t use the models folder, but makes a separate DLL, which makes sense to me with interfaces and the way I normally work, but I wonder if ASP.NET MVC really cares about the model as much, and just leaves you to yourself without any Convention over Configuration stuff. 4:00 Worked on some Model stuff, using Linq2Objects to Mock it up. Putting the results into ViewData. 4:30 interupted hour to go to church. or maybe I should say that church was interupted earlier to do this?

4:44pm  |   URL: http://geekkarl.prossertribe.com/post/74890861/hour-4-first-half-4-00pm-to-4-30-pm-events-occur