CNHCircleK.org DevBlog

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[districttech-blog]

May 11, 2014: Compromise

Being the only district committee chaired by two individuals, it takes a lot of compromise to reach a consensus.

This is true for many things. Both Catherine and I should be fighting for our own opinions, but at the same time we have to mesh well when it comes to decisions.

One person cannot decide to do something without the others' approval.

Sometimes it's hard to respect those decisions, but we have to. That's what trust is. In fact, trust is the backbone of our society.

Many failures arise when trust is breached.

Relationships, financial obligations, life and death, all depend on trust.

You trust your significant other to be there, and be faithful. You trust that the banks will give you credit, and they trust that you pay them back. You trust in society to keep you alive.

Therefore, any working relationship between any body of people depends on this abstract notion of trust. Trust isn't something that can be quantified. There are numerous measures to help try to quantify trust such as your credit rating, but they're always flawed in the most human sense possible. Trust is based on emotion, and reflexively, emotion is also hard to quantify.

I feel like I'm getting off topic, but let me assure you that this has a purpose.

We trust in people, who trust in us, who trust in others, who others trust in them... where does this cycle begin or end? 

How do we define this? Obligation? Integrity? Virtue? Chilvalry?

This goes beyond Circle K and beyond any physical notion of organization. This is us, and this is our story. We are the beholders of our future, and sometimes we have to trust our decisions.

[districttech-blog]

May 8, 2014: Broken

This post has nothing to do with the district website, but this has everything to do with the district technology chair position.

The Public Relations Committee is often regarded as the Publications Editor's committee, but now it's a jointly chaired committee. Though, even then, the committee is considered more of the brainchild of the Publications Editor.

I mean how could you deny the Publications Editor the title to the Public Relations Committee?

So therein lies Catherine's problems and my problems. How do we refocus this committee? How do we cement its worth as a district committee?

We believe that this new committee could grow and prosper in so many ways. In fact, they should be complementary and add to the experience of all Circle K'ers within California-Nevada-Hawaii.

We lack the connection to the outside world. Circle K'ers often consider this the "Circle K Bubble." When we go outside and identify ourselves as Circle K, "What is Circle K?"

We should be a known presence. We run service projects with 400 attendees. We help the elderly keep their house from being evicted. We paint fences. We do a lot. But who appreciates it other than the Kiwanis family?

So, we've decided to rework the committee. We've decided to sent precedents that we would either look back and say yeah that didn't work or yeah that worked! It's about trying new things.

Therefore, deciding who gets to take on these positions within our newly arranged committee is one of the hardest things Cat and I will have to do for the forseeable future.

Do we split it between north and south? Do we have half girls and half guys? Do we emphasize personal growth? Or do we emphasize professional experience?

Today, we had our first round of interviews. And while I do admit to having a small bit of confirmation bias, these interviews made me reconsider my predispositions.

To be frank: I'm torn.

How does one decide amongst friends and potential members?

How does one be objective? How does one say no? How does one decide one qualified candidate amongst qualified candidates?

No matter what we decide. We're decidiing for the best interests of the individuals and our goals for the committee. Even if that means saying no to some of our best candidates, our friends, our fellow Circle K'ers. 

Now onto day two of interviews...

P.S. My computer died halfway through our second interview... That was terrible...is terrible. I'm not even sure if I'll be able to fix it with the time crunch I'm in.

[districttech-blog]

May 3, 2014: Retcon

I believe I may just have retcon'ed my whole previous post...

Developing in a foreign environment on a large project like the CNH district website is stupid, especially if you're starting from scratch.

While a lot of design goals of Model View Controler are extremely important, being able to get a working website working within the next month without having to fight new territory is infinitely better.

At least there's something I'm improving on between this website and the one I did for UC Irvine. I'm once again re-evaluating folder structure. Every iteration of the code-base I've been working on has significantly changed in how I organized my files.

When I first started out, this was my folder structure:

home directory

-> style (which includes stylesheets and images)

-> includes (headers and footers)

-> -> modules (libraries, yeah I made total sense as a 7th grader)

-> admin

...etc

Before I did the UC Irvine website...

home directory

-> public

-> -> css

-> -> img

-> -> js

-> private

-> -> includes

-> admin

..etc

This was much better than when I first started out, but then you realize... wait I can delve into Object Oriented programming! 

When I first started following the OO-programming paradigm starting in college, this messed up my whole workflow (this is still the case on UC Irvine's website).

It's my goal this time around to fix that mistake.

It is very important to keep learning new techniques and to not care how you do it when you first start out. That's experimentation.

When you adapt and fix how you go about things in the future, that is learning.

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For your enjoyment, here's a sample picture of my WIP (work-in-progress).

Because district websites have to follow the CKI Branding Guide, I'm working on a nice front for very simple pages such as documenthandlers and the login/logout system.

[districttech-blog]

April 24, 2014: The Beginning

Today is the day that most developers dread. Dread to the point where projects go unstarted, or abandoned. Today is the beginning.

I've been in web development for about eight years now, and day zero is always the day that makes me reconsider my life.

Unlike previous projects, I will be attempting new programming paradigms that I have never attempted before.

In recent years, I've been making strides to achieve that to no avail. But this project has forced my hands into building an application that is versatile.

To achieve that, I will be using a concept in software engineering called MVC: Model-View Controller.

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Side note: the purpose of this devblog is to explain the techniques I use and outline the challenges and difficulties along the way.

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What is the Model View Controller?

In software engineering, it is a good practice to separate code from the design/look of the application. This means that the Graphical User Interface shouldn't be managing calculations beyond its scope.

The GUI should communicate to the "model" to figure out what to display.

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Along with using this technique, I will be using version control to manage the changes I make to the source code. This will also allow additional developers/help along the way.

As for that additional developer...

In my Public Relations committee application, I have a position named the Technology Assistant who will fulfill that role. 

It is my goal to not only have this term be solely for Circle K, but to better our professional careers. By developing, or taking part in, the district website, we will gain indispensible knowledge that we can use for the rest of our careers. This is real world experience that you can apply in jobs.

But for now... there's a lot of bootstrapping to do!

Until next time,

Baldwin