So there used to be this hyper passionate, hyper loyal kid that I grew up with named Toran Billups... and throughout the years his level of excitement never faded...
I took him on as an intern once... and have mentored him throughout his career... and he's been gaining talent and momentum in his core development skills and his web development skills...
So go check out his application, Things to do in Des Moines and vote for him on the Dice site (no registration or email required)...
And if you're looking for a junior developer with amazing potential, he lives in Des Moines and is fluent in PHP, C# (ASP.Net), and VB... and if you can see by his site, he has more design skills than the average web developer (application / system side)...
The Charles Babbage difference engine... used to calculate polynomial functions... by hand cranking and setting initial values, with each column having a decimal value... you could do number crunching and generate large tables of calculations (logarithmic and trignometric)...
The math behind a difference engine is pretty simplistic...
Given a function: p(x) = 2x2 + 3x + 6
And values of x: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
We can calculate the p(x): 11, 20, 33, 50, 71
Then calculating the differences we get the first set to be: 9 (20 - 11), 13 (33 - 20), 17 (50 - 33), 21 (71 - 50)
We can then calculate the second difference: 4 (14 - 9), 4 (17 - 14), 4 (21 - 17)... note the 2nd difference is common
Since we have a common value, we can now use simple addition to generate tables for p(x) very quickly.
Here's how...
Take the 2nd difference, in our case 4 (constant)... and add it into the previous first difference, in our case 25....that gives us the next first difference, value A in the table below.
We can then take A and add it to the previous result: p(x = 5) = 71... to get the value 96, value B.
We have now calculated p(x = 6) = 96 by only doing 2 additions instead of putting the numbers through the function.
Let's double check our work:
p(x = 6) = 2x2 + 3x + 6
p(x = 6) = 2(6)2 + 3(6) + 6
p(x = 6) = 72 +18 + 6
p(x = 6) = 96
w00t!
x
f(x)
First Difference
Second Difference
1
11
9
4
2
20
13
4
3
33
17
4
50
21
4
5
71
A
4
6
B
4
So with one very simple calculation, you can quickly generate tables of values for any given polynomial... pretty interesting huh :).
So the "Java Kid in a .Net World" is back... and with a newer professional position and more family on the way, he's got a lot of interesting things to talk about...
The good ol' boys Mike and El have created a new blog engine using Ruby + Merb + Data Mapper... it's called Feather... and if you had visited the site the last 4 hours or so, you would have noticed it was down and out... and now has a new look (well, for now)
It's pretty sweet stuff.. I imported ALL of my old items from whoisjake.com/blog and thoughtstoblog.com... using my nifty feather-mephisto plugin that you can find in feather-plugins git repo...
It's pretty cool, they got a lot of press coverage up front (read: Ruby Insider, et al)... and have put together a really light weight and unique platform. In fact, this blog is now running off of two merb processes and sqlite3 database...
At any rate, take the time to check out their project and let me know if there are any problems with the site...
So I have decided that I need to have a set of goals for the summer… and to use my blog to help track them and attempt to hold myself accountable for them…
Goal #1 - Read Things - I want to finish reading The World Without Us, Freedom Evolves, and a piece of fiction (does anyone have a suggestion?)…
Goal #2 - Build Things - I want to build a dog house for lucy and some form of a robot from scratch…
Goal #3 - Learn Things - I want to learn more about starting a small software product / service company. My main focus will still be drop.io and probably will be for a few years… but I want something to do on the side and get a taste of what it’s like…
Goal #4 - Code Things - I want to write a concrete example (real world) using my genetic algorithm framework, EvolveStuff
Goal #5 - Write Things - I want to continue to write on this blog, perhaps with some more effort. I also want to think about a book proposal… It’s always been a goal of mine, and recently had a chance, but decided I didn’t have time when we first got Lucy and Becca started school.
I think that 5 goals is quite a bit, but at the same time it will push me to get these done (or at least I hope)…
At any rate, any thoughts on the goals? Should I add some? Change them?
Of course I’ll post images and thoughts about the goals through the summer… so stay tuned.
I’ve read jPod… and enjoyed it, so I figured I’d try microserfs by Douglas Coupland
A really fast read (just like jPod) and very interesting… lots of parallels into the software world for sure. Though I’m not convinced that it was better than jPod, I still think that a bored geek could rip through this in a week or two (in my case).
The basic story (without disclosing it all) is that it’s a diary of a geek in a large corporate world, as a software developer, who tries to figure out life and love, while joining a startup.
Sounds familiar? :) Could I perhaps draw parallels between my own life and the book? I’ll leave that one rhetorical…
With all of this talk lately (from the .Net crowd) about ALT.NET… I think I have to say that it’s all in good if you live entirely in a Microsoft ecosystem… but I don’t. It still has that mainly .Net feel to it, which I can’t live with…
Here’s my new classification: ALT.Developer
The manifesto:
I will always get my work done the best way that I know how.
I will always make conscious choices about the software and platforms I use, to best suite the solution to a problem, while understanding that myself and the solution has to be agile and can change.
I will always enjoy writing software with the platforms that I choose.
I will always be pragmatic.
I will always be scientific with my software creation. Testing, hypothesizing, sharing information, and keeping in mind that my theories / solutions could be proven wrong.
I will always share the thoughts and ideas I have with younger developers looking for more knowledge and with colleagues looking to validate their ideas.
I will always love you… Whitney Houston ladies and gentlemen
Now, I don’t expect this to pick up as much as ALT.Net… and in fact, I’m quite certain that people like @sbellware and @chadmyers are going to laugh in their comfy chairs sipping lattes… if they even get around to reading it, but for those out there who are passionate about software development… Make up your own classification and manifesto! Be creative… stick to it and love what you do!
Wow… it’s been 4 months since the day we got Lucy… and though it started rough, I can say, without a doubt, that it has been really amazing to see her grow up to be a 6 month old puppy with some manors, tricks, and commands that she knows! Quite the intelligent dog.
Here are a few reference shots of when we got her (6 weeks old and 5 lbs):
Here are a few recent shots near the same bowl (6 months old and 50 lbs):
