July 11

So .. yeah. Life.

Life is that thing that gets in the way of a lot of things you want to do. And so it did ... for a while.

Life is finally calming down for me ... well, as calm as it gets around here. I've heard it said that if you want to learn how to swim, don't go into a hurricane to do it. Well, I finally got to a nice calm pool to try to learn how to code.

I picked this up from the local public library the other day.

Not a great help, as it was written for the Windows OS, but ... still it put the idea in my head about a few things.

One of which was to search the Internet for a few ideas, at the end of a "Using C++ on the Mac, I came up with using Xcode.  I did, however, read the fine print. It seems it will only work with OS X.8.4 ... yeah ... I ain't got time for that at the moment ...

I read along and found out I need 7gb room on a HD to get X.8.4 upgrade from my current OS. What a piece of crap I have under my fingernails ... at least it's a POC if I'm trying to learn to code. If I'm trying to teach from it ... it works just fine.

So ...either another HD upgrade to facilitate an OS upgrade ... or I just take that money and upgrade to another laptop. At least this upgrade I could do myself. I'm getting pretty good around the Macbook insides. The fact is ... I just don't want to spend money on gaining these skills.

At least I got this to play with for the next few days:

Man ... stuff I found

So ... yeah ... life is not making this easy. At least I bought a house this week and can start to plan to move my family by the end of May.

In the mean time, I found this on Twitter ... Harvard's Intro to Computer Studies course online.

We are living in some weird times, readers.

Teaching Tree link

I use twitter to gather information and tips on how to learn to learn about coding.

Yeah, that sounded weird, but the little red line is no where to be seen. Drop me a line in the comments if you want me to use smaller words to explain.

Today I used the Free Technology for Teachers website to see this link, all about Teaching Tree, which looks basic in design, but full of help.

Quick post about what's up

I'll be frank ... this is a marathon, not a sprint.

I'm going slow. I know that. In any case, I found this on Twitter tonight and was playing for a bit.

Blocky Maze. Nice way to cover the basics of coding.

Quick post for today

Man, it's Monday which means my regular "Bill paying" job needs to be caught up. Man, and my house is being worked on, which means I need to pay 'dem bills.

I was chatting with a dude I know who codes for a living on Thursday night, and I got this link off of him.

CodeProject.com looks rather cool. Nice. This is a part of what that dude does for a living. No, I won't mention his name, as I never know if someone wants their name out there on teh interwebz. So, if you know who you are and wnat your name out there ... post it in the comment section.

In any case, I got to go and make money.

That kitchen floor aint paying for itself, ya know ....

What have you done today?

Well, I'm just getting back into this.

I was hot to trot on this in the fall, but I guess it took a back seat during the holidays.

Puzzling.

I'm pretty sure this is a way into a work world that has a lot to offer me. But, I know it's going to take some work for me to get there. So ... today. I checked out a coder on Twitter and followed some of their links to pages, posting the more interesting and useful ones on the right.

 I watched this Youtube video, too





I'm guessing after this, I will look into learning something about C language. I'll chat some time this week with people in the know.

I also took a look at xCode in the App store for my Macbook. My Macbook is a cheap pice of crap, but until now, I didn't need a lot of computing power. I mean, how hard does a laptop have to work to show presentations, word processing and some randow lowneeds programs?

It's a shame that I can't save enough money for a Macbook Pro at the moment ... but that is where I'm afraid I have to go. At least ... at least all of the things I have ever done will work on whatever I get next. I get paid this week, and hopefully things work out with my other "house moving" projects, too.

It's frestrating to know that the next step requires money. It's always comes down to that. Hmm... where to get cheap resources .... where to get cheap resources....

What? Another one?

I'm under the impression that people  - well, a co worker or two- don't like the way I'm doing my job. I'm above all of that.

This is my space to learn about fitness.

To use a metaphor from rugby, I'm picking the ball up and moving forward. With support.

Which, in this case, means I'm moving on. I'm going to learn how to code, and I'm going ot use this blog to bring those diverse elements together.

iTunesU, podcasts, online learning places ... all will be brought together here, as this is what I know what to do.

I take the tools I know how to use and I make new tools. I will use this blog to learn about coding.