Tim's Creative Journey

Goal: To work on something creative every day. This can be writing, art, programming, an outdoor project, or anything else involving creating something.  Starting...

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Ruby

I started learning Ruby over the weekend.  It’s quite a straightforward language with simple syntax.  First step towards understanding Rails and hopefully beginning to build my Online Personal Library project.

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Slow

Not much progress lately.  I’m still getting over this cold, been a couple of weeks now.  I did do some javascript object lessons at Codecademy and have been doing some research on my project to build a book collection library for my parents and my book collections.  I found an open source ISBN scanner program that I can theoretically build into a book scanner on my phone to add books to a database.

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Sick week

Was really sick all last week, couldn't muster the energy to do much of anything.  I finally started feeling a bit better over the weekend and worked on the lawn edging in my back yard, and continued the javascript track at codecademy.

I looked back into Everquest Landmark this weekend as well.  They’ve added combat and underground tiers since last I played, along with lots of craftable equipment.  The combat is fairly dull and clunky so far, but I’m interested to do some more exploring.

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UnraveledProblems.com

I got a website up and running this weekend: www.unraveledproblems.com.  I created a basic home page, and uploaded my etch-a-sketch program.  I’m working on a tic-tac-toe program now that I think should be fairly straight forward to complete, and then I may try to build Connect Four.  I need to get back to the Odin Project soon to start learning Ruby stuff.

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Etch-a-sketch web app

Very busy weekend.  I spent over 3 hours on Saturday in the yard replacing dangerous rusted steel edging with plastic stuff so my daughter doesn’t kill herself running around out there.

Saturday night and Sunday I completed a project in the Odin Project syllabus to build a web page that fills in a grid as you mouse over it.  You can reset the grid and change it’s size.  A very satisfying project to make use of what I’ve learned so far in HTML, CSS, Javascript, and jQuery.

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Jquery and Library Project

Not much progress lately.  Haven’t been sleeping very well.  Tonight I’m working on jquery a bit.  I’ve also had another project idea.  My parents have a large library of books, and I’m always stumbling across something there that I have on my reading wish-list and didn’t know they owned.  I’d like to create a searchable database of their books and mine in a web application.  Ideally I’d create a scanner to load books via barcode as well.

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No progress

It’s been an unproductive week.

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NCAA Bracket Simulator

It’s tourney time and I had a fun idea for a project over the weekend watching some basketball.  I’m trying to build a website that simulates the outcome of the tournament by choosing how much weight you want to give the teams’ seeds.  I have the programming to simulate a game working pretty well in javascript, and I have a rough layout in CSS, but I need to create the HTML info and tie it all together.

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Jquery

Started learning a bit of Jquery last night, but didn’t get too far.  More this weekend.

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Map Site

I found a pretty useful site that does something pretty close to what I want to build.  http://www.mappedometer.com/ lets you create a route and tells you the distance it covers.  You can follow roads and trails, or draw straight lines across un-marked land.  I used it to map out a 3 mile run I did yesterday, and measured my typical weekend run (also about 3 miles, longer than I thought).  I’m going to try and understand how this site works and use that understanding to build my own version with slightly different functionality.

I also did some more problems from Project Euler yesterday.  I’m through #13 now.  They’re getting more focused on making efficient algorithms, which is a bit less interesting to me than just solving the problem.  It’s still a fun challenge though.

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Map Project

I knocked off a few more problems from Project Euler last night.  I'm going to keep working on that, but I'm starting to turn my attention to another project I've wanted to build.  A website that lets you map out a hiking or running route over Google Maps and gives you distance and GPS waypoints.

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Project Euler!

CSS and HTML are good to understand, but they don't get me really excited.  I'm much more interested in back-end type things and programming as opposed to coding I think.

I went back to The Odin Project to move on to the next step beyond HTML/CSS, and it brought me back to JavaScript.  I was supposed to do the track on Codecademy, but I already did most of that.  The next task was to use JavaScript to complete the first three problems of Project Euler.

I had heard of Project Euler in the past, and maybe explored it a bit a few years ago, but this is the first time I really spent much time with it.  I really got hooked quickly.  I was only supposed to do the first three problems, but knocked out the first seven yesterday.  It's been a great way to apply what I've learned of JavaScript so far, and more importantly it is exciting me to dig deeper and learn more.  I'm going to keep working on problems, and finish the Codecademy track.

Onward!

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Stall

Not much progress the last few days, getting back at it today.

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Radio Recorder - 1st Steps

I did some research and made some progress towards my Radio Recorder project.  I learned how to use VLC to record an internet radio stream, and successfully made a recording.  I also read a bit about how a command line script can be executed in Linux to create a future recording.  I need to learn how to do that.  Ultimately I still want to write a self contained program to do the scheduling and recording, but this is a good step in the right direction.

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Forms and Radio Recorder

I did some more review reading of CSS and watched a video on using Forms in HTML.  

I'm really getting an itch to take a break from Web Development stuff and really just try and figure out this internet radio recording program I want to make.  I'm thinking about taking one of my old computers and building a Linux server.  I think I'm missing a power source, though.  I think to get my internet radio recorder to work I'll need a local server to run the program on a timer and record the broadcasts.  I still have a lot more research to do.

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HTML Dog

I did some follow-up reading at HTML Dog on HTML and CSS last night.  That's a handy site for easy to reference tutorials.  My next step in the Odin Project is to build the Android logo, and then the Google.com HTML project.  I really want to start working on my radio recording project, but still don't know how to even start with that.  After I finish with HTML/CSS tutorials I move on to Ruby, I'm hoping that will help.

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Finished CSS/HTML

I finished the intro HTML/CSS course on Codecademy this weekend.  I feel like it gave me a pretty solid foundation.  I'm doing some more reading to fill in my knowledge now, but need to actually start building some stuff.  I've got an idea for some children's illustrated stories online that I could start making for my daughter to read when she gets a bit older.