Karl's Geek Tumblr

The Journey and Goal

Fri, 01 Jun 2012 09:29:31 -0700

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.

karl song slow. a few patterns i played around with a year or...

Mon, 31 May 2010 21:37:46 -0700

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

2010-01-18 14.36.41.jpg

Sat, 03 Apr 2010 16:08:34 -0700

2010-01-18 14.36.41.jpg

2010-01-18 14.36.30.jpg

Sat, 03 Apr 2010 16:08:18 -0700

2010-01-18 14.36.30.jpg

First song of 2010. made with garageband on a Mac. Not sure how...

Fri, 08 Jan 2010 00:07:00 -0800

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.

Creating as an idol

Sun, 03 Jan 2010 15:03:53 -0800

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.

challenge done: a 6 line playlist.com WPF player using powershell and powerboots

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 23:18:03 -0700

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

Fun powershell project of the evening

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 19:04:09 -0700

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.

AD Authentication with firefox

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 15:54:11 -0700

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

gave up the 24 hour MVC thing

Mon, 17 Aug 2009 14:34:31 -0700

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.

in response to scott hanselmans list of computer memories

Wed, 04 Mar 2009 23:35:18 -0800

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

A separate twitter account, twitter etiquette and the whole person

Tue, 17 Feb 2009 23:26:47 -0800

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.

different 24 seasons.

Tue, 03 Feb 2009 09:02:58 -0800

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

No Time yet.

Mon, 02 Feb 2009 07:47:42 -0800

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.

HOUR 4: (First Half) 4:00PM to 4:30 PM - events occur in real time.

Sun, 01 Feb 2009 16:44:50 -0800

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?

HOUR 3: 3:00PM to 4:00PM - events occur in real time.

Sun, 01 Feb 2009 16:00:32 -0800

Hour2: 2:00 to 3:00

2:05 Got installed, template there, created first application, for hello world got “System.BadImageFormatException: Bad IL range.” ODD error - but probably to be expected with no controller, or model

2:12 Got myself a nice cup of “English Breakfast Tea”

2:13 - YUCK I accidentally had made a VB.NET rather than C# project. I feel Dirty

2:16 made a NEW C# one, without tests and I didn’t get that strange error. Going to try C# with tests.

2:18 YAY, C# ASP.NET MVC project, with tests, compiled and run with no errors. Though I don’t intend of doing custom tests in the alpha. I’ll keep it this way.

2:20 changed app name, and it looks like I’m using master pages some anyway at least since that’s what the template uses.

2:25 poking through each file in the template generated project, and making sure I understand everything I see. Decided to not bother with other templates for now, but use this project to get a full round trip with different URLs, presenting data from the DB

2:29 I see the accountcontroller. I won’t have any login stuff in this Alpha. But I’ll leave this in here for now.

2:35 Decided on buying the domain name, but having a hard time locating my registrar login info :)

2:44 purchased tweetloss.com , there we go. You now know the name of the application.

2:45 BATHROOM break.

2:48 Decided on a restful URL pattern, and working on first Controller and View.

3:00 Making progress with the view and controller

"Convention over configuration is scary but fun, its great when you can guess the convention, but..."

Sun, 01 Feb 2009 15:16:20 -0800

“Convention over configuration is scary but fun, its great when you can guess the convention, but hard when you are trying to trace through how something works.”

- Karl Prosser (ME)

HOUR 2: 2:00PM to 3:00PM - events occur in real time.

Sun, 01 Feb 2009 15:03:18 -0800

Hour2: 2:00 to 3:00

2:12 Got myself a nice cup of “English Breakfast Tea”

2:13 - YUCK I accidentally had made a VB.NET rather than C# project. I feel Dirty

2:16 made a NEW C# one, without tests and I didn’t get that strange error. Going to try C# with tests.

2:18 YAY, C# ASP.NET MVC project, with tests, compiled and run with no errors. Though I don’t intend of doing custom tests in the alpha. I’ll keep it this way.

2:20 changed app name, and it looks like I’m using master pages some anyway at least since that’s what the template uses.

2:29 I see the accountcontroller. I won’t have any login stuff in this Alpha. But I’ll leave this in here for now.

2:35 Decided on buying the domain name, but having a hard time locating my registrar login info :)

2:44 purchased tweetloss.com , there we go. You now know the name of the application.

2:45 BATHROOM break.

2:48 Decided on a restful URL pattern, and working on first Controller and View.

3:00 Making progress with the view and controller

HOUR 1: 1:00PM to 2:00PM - events occur in real time.

Sun, 01 Feb 2009 14:03:03 -0800

1:00 to 2:00 - events occur in real time.

1:10 - Blogged about the project.

1:15 - researched if there were any similar apps. Only one mentioned that doesn’t exist yet. Might have missed something, but since this is mostly a learning experience that’s a fine risk.

1:20 applied .net 3.5 SP1 to dev machine.

1:26 looked for an ASP.NET blog entry I remember but can’t find. I really need to go back to bookmarking and use something cool like DIIGo

1:30 ARG, dotnet update is 304 MB and going to take 1 hour :(

1:31 contemplating whether I should throw $10 at a domain name for this thing.

1:36 found the blog item I was looking for http://bit.ly/IedX

1:36 - had some issue installing .net framework 3.5 SP1 - hope a reboot will fix it

1:37 realized that I didn’t put “WILL NOT USE TDD” in the list of things not in scope in the Alpha.

1:40 found this blog entry from Scott WU http://bit.ly/IedXhttp://bit.ly/129PF that has a link to the download. Wow the MSI is less than 2MB/ (downloaded)

1:55 - windows updates completed, finished reading the blog entry I found earlier, and ASP.NET MVC RC about to be installed.

1:56 ASP.NET MVC RC setup installer had an ERROR - ARRG - think when it was trying to add the templates to visual studio.

1:59 maybe it completed. But there was still an error. This hour wasn’t as productive as I’d have hoped.

Building an ASP.NET MVC Twitter app over 24 hours.

Sun, 01 Feb 2009 13:10:17 -0800

I want to make a asp.net MVC twittercentric web app in 24 hours. I had initially thought that I’d do 24 hours in a stretch, but as an aging (31) family man I don’t think I will be able to pull that off, so its going to be stints.

So my starting point:

WHAT HAVE I GOT SO FAR?

-I’ve decided on the platform

-the idea and name of the app

-written a few thoughts, notes down,

-registered the twitter account that its going to be based around.

-I am a proficient DOTNET developer, but a fair bit of asp.net experience, but I wouldn’t say an ASP.NET expert, and I haven’t touched ASP.NET MVC. I have however been reading about it during its development, and grok the concepts.

- I’ve brainstormed many aspects of the features, design and architecture probably for more than a couple of hours in the background whilst doing real life.

WHAT HAVEN’T I DONE YET?

-I don’t even have it installed in my development environment (which will be my first task).

WHAT I DON’T THINK WILL BE IN THE SCOPE OF THIS ALPHA?

-Allowing the user to pass in their twitter credentials. I’m going to force any account related stuff to be sent via tweets from their account. I don’t want to even temporarily have twitter credentials pass through my server, until an app is fleshed out, tested, and secured.

-Won’t be on the public internet - it will be running on localhost on my dev box.

-Making it look pretty - I’ll just choose some basic ASP.NET MVP template to start with, and even “borrow” images from image.google.com while I flesh out the app. Of course once the first round of code is done, I’ll work on themeing it myself.

-Won’t have any web based jobs updating my database with twitter responses. I’ll probably just have a build that part of it out in a powershell script on a recurring job for the first alpha.

- Won’t have any ajaxy behavior. Jquery will be there, and may be used for a few visual things if it takes a short period of time, but this is pretty much just simple page requests showing data. However of course the 2nd alpha should be in more depth.

- Will keep basic views, won’t use master pages or anything else.

WHAT I PLAY TO BE IN THE SCOPE OF THIS ALPHA.

-Allowing the user to issue commands through twitter ( with replies or direct message).

-Allowing the user to issue and record a few different types of information.

-Have a web page that displays the data related to this app, that includes graphs and charts

-Data will be retrieved by LINQ2SQL, but that LINQ2SQL will probably be simple, and for complicated queries will just call stored procedures.

FIRST STEPS. (some of these can be done concurrently )
-Download ASP.NET MVC and get a build in test project running.

-Choose an ASP.NET MVC template to start with

-Start the first ASP.NET MVC proof of concept. Basically get full round trip. From request->routing->controller->model (which will get data from DB) and back to view sort of thing.
-Start database and model design

-Start building powershell scripts to query twitter, and update the database.

-Fleshing out command syntax and scope limiting features.

I know I haven’t even said what this application will do, but that will come in time. I don’t plan on spamming by blog with lots of updates on this so I’ll be running a tubmlr blog for that. http://geekkarl.tumblr.com/ and will also be doing small summaries on twitter http://twitter.com/karlprosser

I’ll also be hanging out as usual in the #powershell IRC room on freenode.com and hopefully not getting too distracted there

-Karl