Teach to Learn

[vikingreins]

Meaningful error messages

Program: *crash for no apparent reason*

Sysadmin: Why did you crash?

Program: Because something went wrong.

Sysadmin: What went wrong?

Program: Something.

Sysadmin: I need more detail. Increasing log level.

Program: Something bad went wrong.

Sysadmin: I need more than that. Increasing log level again to max level.

Program: Fuck you. Here's a 42GB hex dump of system memory. Figure it out yourself jackass.

Sysadmin: *picks up a crowbar and goes off to find the programmer*

[clientsfromhell]

Back when I worked for a large retail company’s copy center, I was dubbed my particular district’s go-to graphic designer, simply because I could use Photoshop and Illustrator fairly well. Mostly the job was okay, but sometimes we’d get someone terrible. One day, this client arrived unshowered, unshaven, and covered dirt from head to toe.

Client: So I have this really great, earth changing idea!  I need YOU to help me design it!  It’s going to be HUGE!

Me: Okay, our store’s prices are [price], and generally how this works is: you give us your design specifications like fonts, colors, and imagery. We put it all on this order form, and then I’ll work on it and give you a call when I have the initial proof done, so you can preview it before we continue.

Client: No!  It’s a secret!  I can’t tell anyone what it is!  Not even you!

Me: Sir, I can’t design anything for you if you don’t tell me what I’m supposed to design.

Customer: I’m sending it to the President!  It’s going to save lives!  It has to be a SECRET.

Me: How is the President going to know what your idea is, if you aren’t going to explain it somewhere in your flyer?

Customer: Oh, he’ll know!  I’m including a James Brown song on a CD! He’ll get it.

What he ended up wanting was to sit at the desk beside me and tell me, slowly, painstakingly, and with far too many instances of “that’s not how I spell that word!” what his design was, in as vague a form as he could manage, and without ever actually telling me what the world changing project WAS. And because I was working for a retail establishment, I was forbidden by management from turning this customer away.

He was a hardcore conspiracy theorist and insisted that everything we’d worked on for the day was deleted from the PC entirely, and then he’d come back the following day and want us to start the work from scratch – without charging him for redoing everything.  He repeatedly refused to keep copies of the PSD files on disc for his own personal backups.  Oh, and, as it turns out, he was living in his van in our parking lot, and would come in to the store every few hours after my shift had ended, asking if I was there.

The moral of the story is: never tell anyone that you can use Photoshop and/or Illustrator.

> Want to know if freelancing is for you?

[vikingreins]

UX/UI Breakdown => Digging Up Old Projects

A week after my onboarding session with Erik Trautman for the Viking Code School FLEX program, I have already had the opportunity to participate in a codecast with Pinterest developer, Jessica Chan and refine my basic understanding about UX/UI.

Having built multiple Rails applications over the last two years, full-stack experience has presented itself in delightful and not-so-delightful ways. Over that time I’ve found that I really enjoy backend/devops/sysadmin and the logic of connecting systems of tools. Though frontend work can be fun and satisfying, I do find the pitfalls a little more frustrating. That makes a really great program, like what Viking provides, feel like breath of fresh air. It’s nice to have good guidance.

One part of the prep work in Web Design Basics introduces a process of tearing down the UX/UI of an application/site to understand the information architecture and how the interface experience meets the needs of its key users.

As I am also re-vamping my portfolio, I realized how many projects (both personal and professional) that could use some more work. After having a tear down party on the suggested practice of Twitter, AirBnB and Amazon, why not start with a teardown of one of my own?

Breaking it down

DailyRecord was created in part as a practice to learn how file uploads work with audio files and as a utility for my return to songwriting and recording. Let’s look at some questions that can help to break down and think critically about how the site meets or does not meet my goals. It should be pretty basic at this point, but this exercise will help me to understand and design the further improvement of the application. Plus I’ll start using it again!

NB: these are quick notes, please forgive the short nature of them. thanks!

1. Who is the key user? This isn't always clear, especially in marketplace sites, so take your best guess.

      - a person who wants to quickly and easily upload, listen to and share audio recordings

2. What is that user's number one critical goal when using the site? Be as specific as possible if there are multiple options here, e.g. "to purchase a red wagon" instead of "buy a toy".

      - to upload audio files       - to listen to audio files

3. What is likely to make that user's experience particularly positive (i.e. provide good satisfaction)?

      - easy & reliable uploader

4. What is the approximate information architecture of the site? (sketch it out)

      | HOME | Auth        |            |                  |       |            | Sign in    |            |                  |       |            | Sign Out |            |                  |       |            |                | Tracks | New Track |

      | USER |          |                                       |       |          | Track |                                       |       |          |          | Title                               |       |          |          | Reflection (Description) |       |          |          | File                                 |

5. What is the flow through that architecture for the user who is accomplishing the critical goal you identified above?

      HOME => Listen/Explore            => SignUp/SignIn => Add Tracks

6. What style(s) of navigation is/are used? Do they answer the key questions (Where am I and how did I get here? Where should I go next and how do I get there?)?

      - simple navigation is always present at the top of the site       - unless signed in, tracks are not present, unclear that home is an index       - navigation buttons do not change to indicate where on the path the user currently visiting

7. What key interactions does the user have? Are they clear and usable?

      - the key interactions available to the user are available from the nav         - Home (Listen to Tracks), SignIn/Up => Create Tracks         - again, "Home" does not clearly convey or encourage a user to listen to tracks

8. What did the site do well to allow the user to accomplish his goal effectively, efficiently and with good satisfaction?

      - the process is straightforward and simple for now, making it easy to accomplish the goals effectively. i would like to keep it this way as the site grows in complexity

9. What did the site do poorly when allowing the user to accomplish his goal effectively, efficiently and with good satisfaction?

      - a user may not know that they can create tracks unless they sign up         - there is a present dialogue at the top "Sign up or Sign in to add           your own tracks!", but it could be more present and wrapped up into a welcome/about message

    So, what have I learned about my application design? 

The application is still at a simple stage. I think that it can remain fairly simple, but I have some ideas for improvement of the UX/UI as well as some enhancement of the sites.

- TODO:

         - add welcome/about messages

         - update navigation to reflect the information architecture of the site

         - modify home to be a welcome page with exploration possibilities, but differentiated from the tracks index

         - add navigation to encourage creation of tracks, featured tracks to guide users to discover other tracks

         - add About/Contact

         - add community oriented features for interaction/participation

         - remove "Home" button, replace with "Daily Record" currently                below navigation

         - allow multiple file types, including open source formats

That was fun! Now to do some work on it!

https://github.com/son1112/dailyRecord

http://daily-record.herokuapp.com

Check it out if you’re interested and let me know what you think!

[vikingreins]

blog 5262016

vikingreins.tumblr.com

http://sonarchdev.tumblr.com/

[vikingreins]

Table of Contents

1. Thu May 26 10:03:40 CDT 2016

vikingreins

Thu May 26 10:03:40 CDT 2016

[ ] step through a problem, loosely

Document my development free work flow (uncontrolled)

uncontrolled, but deliberate

show organizational development

show phases of free flow

sprawling and refactoring VS

planned

There will always be a little bit of both, depending on your personality and what works best for you (timer example)

[ ] document each step

[ ] screenshot with gkwk

[ ] show gkwk

[ ] step through a gkwk issue

[ ] rewrite gkwk with new knowledge

[ ] org => md => tumblr

this document => org-md-export-as-markdown (C-c C-e m m) => tumblr

For example, WATCH

at some point, step through my other

tumblr script prototypes NOT TODAY

[ ] gkwk => gif => tumblr

[ ] create gif from png files

convert -delay 0.5 -loop 0 blog-step*.png $(date).gif

This is incredibly taxing on my system, as well is taking screenshots. It makes perfect sense why video blogs are a thing, but I'm stubborn and the point of this post is a demonstration of flow and process…

http://video.stackexchange.com/questions/7300/how-to-get-ffmpeg-to-join-non-sequential-image-files-skip-by-3s

ffmpeg -r 5 -f image2 -s 1920x1080 -i %*.png -vcodec libx264 -crf 25 -pix_fmt yuv420p test.mp4

[vikingreins]

[vikingreins]

Enjoying the start of a rebuild in AngularJS!

[vikingreins]

Vikingr Eins Sets Sail

Hi! My name is Anderson Reinkordt. I am a software developer out of Lincoln, Nebraska. Self-taught, I’ve spent the last two years freelancing web development for local businesses, primarily using the Ruby on Rails framework.  

I’ve often thought how wonderful it is that, given the proper time and motivation, learning to code has always been within reach of our fingertips. I’ll never forget racking up my dad’s phone bill (in ‘95 we dialed out to Kansas City from Auburn, Nebraska) as I began playing with HTML markup more and more, getting that first taste of making textual changes in the background that changed the face of something that could be used, even if only for static content. 

Oddly enough, it wasn’t until 2011 that I installed my first Linux, had my first wireless card configuration problem, and thus my first breakthrough in understanding the logic behind the magic I had enjoyed for so many years. I saw the open door and I’ve been exploring ever since. 

Though I’ve come this far, I so often crave a structured education that solidifies the foundation for what I really want; to code for a living. I love doing it and I know that, with even greater effort, I can have it. So, I start onboarding to the Viking Code School FLEX program on July 18th.

Having already had a chance to meet and chat with Erik and Dara online, and taken the Prep work and coding challenges, I’m really excited about taking on this new adventure in my development as a developer.

Stay tuned!