Whatcha Been Doin? A Conversation

It's the holiday season and we are visiting with family and friends. We are out gathering with people at parties or games or whatever. While hanging out with everyone we talk to each other.

One of the early questions asked to begin a conversation is "what you been up to lately" or "what do you do." I've participated in and listened to some conversations that began this way. Over the past month I have engaged in a dozen or so conversations and listened to a bunch more that began this way. I will note that I am not the best conversationalist.

When family, friends, or strangers came up to me and ask me that question, I fill them in on the hacking and trading I've been doing. I get two responses to my answer, "that's great" and they walk away or "that's great" and they change the subject. I did not get one person to pursue further into what I'm doing or exhibit any interest in what I've said. I've come to the conclusion that it could be one of two things, 1) hacking and trading are not interesting for the people I talked with or 2) my delivery in explaining what I'm doing was not clear and understandable for anyone to continue with that conversation topic. I believe the problem is with the latter.

In listening to other similar conversations, the response was much different. The questioner was engaged with the answers and continued with follow up questions to gain a deeper knowledge of the subject. I too became fascinated with what people are doing.

So, I've been trying to figure out why my delivery failed. As I noted earlier, I am not the best conversationalist. I don't participate in many conversations because I have a weak and soft voice and many people have a difficult time hearing me, especially in loud areas. I wing it every time I tell people what I'm doing so its probably not succinct and a little confusing. I need to practice.

I'm looking to improve in this area. In my research I've come across the concept of Branding. I will be working on Brand Me. I want to be able to articulate what I'm doing better. Maybe then I will get people interested in learning more.

The Past Couple of Weeks

My mom came up to me and said, "do you realize for the past couple of weeks you've been on the computer from the moment you get up until the time you go to bed." I did not realize that. I've been so focused on what I've been doing, time has flown by. I am enjoying the work I am putting my time and effort into. All I've been doing is trading and hacking. I want to get better in these two disciplines.

I spend time on my trading looking at charts for patterns, support and resistance levels, and direction. I look back at my previous trades to check if I'm following my trading rules. I do research for my trading journal project.

I spend time on my hacking working on my project. I'm teaching myself Ruby on Rails. My Rails web application is for a youth club basketball team. I can add players with an image and their information. I can add leagues with each league having many games. I can add albums with each album containing many photos. I have a calendar that shows the current month that I can add events to which will show up for that day. I can add stats for each player that corresponds to a game. I add basic stats and the model does the calculations for individual and game stats. I am currently working on adding videos to my web application. I've used plugins and gems. I'm also learning and using CSS. When I encounter a problem I search for a solution, which can happen in a day or a month. This is FUN!

I wasn't actually on the computer all day, it just seems that way. I took some time to watch the Blue Angels. I took a couple hours here and there to go watch my nephews play basketball and football. But then I'm back on the computer. So much fun.

The Process of Finding Standout Ideas

How do you know if you have a blockbuster idea? As an example, is my Trading Journal idea a standout idea?

Some people have said to "just get started" on your idea and you'll discover if it's a blockbuster idea. Is that the best move? I read an article The Idea Virtuoso... that touts the process that university professors of research labs use to find the best idea. Having deep knowledge and expert feedback can differentiate between mediocre and great ideas. This reminded me of Dr. Johnson being awarded a grant to research the smart grid. What was his process to settle on that idea to get awarded that grant?

It seems like meeting with a group or team to brainstorm and discuss all ideas are needed to identify the best possible projects before getting started. This commitment to understanding the idea and seeking feedback will help you follow ideas you feel have a strong possibility for success.

It's called the idea-centric approach. You research your ideas to discover if there is an audience out there that sees value in an idea. When the standout idea emerges, the focus of your efforts goes toward implementing that idea. In this approach, you need to learn or know the field and seek expert advice.

Adding Video to my Rails Web Application

My Rails web app has been going well. I've been able to figure out some things and get them to work. My current task is adding an upload and convert video function. I want to shoot video then edit the video and upload the video to my web app. I consulted google and was told FFmpeg was the way to go. FFmpeg is a complete, cross-platform solution to record, convert and stream audio and video. I consulted google on how to combine FFmpeg with Rails and was lead to Converting Videos with Rails: Installing FFMPEG. The problem is, this is an example of how to install FFmpeg on Ubuntu. I don't have Ubuntu. I'm on Mac OS X 10.4. I found Installing and Using FFmpeg on Mac OS X and followed the instructions with no success. This is where I'm at and what I'm doing.

Check - It Works!

I figured it out. I have attributes in my Stat database table that the user doesn't provide input for. The value, for the hidden attributes, is gotten from the other attributes that the user does provide input for.

What I did:

In the Model:

before_validation :cache_virtual_columns

def total_points

((twopfgm * 2)+(threepfgm * 3)+(ftm * 1))

end

def field_goal_percent

sprintf("%0.3f", ((twopfgm+threepfgm)/(twopfga+threepfga.to_f)))

end

private

def cache_virtual_columns

self.total_points = total_points

self.field_goal_percent = field_goal_percent

end

In the Form:

%= f.hidden_field :total_points

%= f.hidden_field :field_goal_percent

When a new Stat record is created, it checks the Model and before doing validations does the cache_virtual_columns method. cache_virtual_columns has the total_points and field_goal_percent DB columns equal the value in their method. This updates the Stat record to contain values for each attribute.

“Always two there are, a master and an apprentice.”

“Do or do not... there is no try.”

I'm having a blast hacking away on my project. Rails is a fun language to learn. Lately I've been hitting a wall on the execution side. I will be working and get to a point where everything I do isn't working. I know what I want to implement and have an idea of how it should be implemented but nothing seems to work. I run searches to find an example of what to do but come up empty. Things get dark when I am unable to figure it out.

“Beware of the dark side.”

Here's my dilemma, I have a form for a user to enter stats. The user enters 2 point field goals made/attempted, 3 point field goals made/attempted, free throws made/attempted, offensive/defensive rebounds, and others. I have other model attributes that the user doesn't provide input for on the form. They are total points, field goal %, 3 point field goal %, free throw %, and total rebounds. I'm thinking the model can take the attributes the user entered, obtain certain values and perform the calculations to populate the extra attributes all before the record is saved.

For example, to calculate the points scored for the current stat record being created;

# before record saves, do total_points method

before_save :total_points

# calculates total points of current record

def points

@twopoints = :twopfgm * 2

@threepoints = :threepfgm * 3

@onepoints = :ftm * 1

@twopoints + @threepoints + @onepoints

end

private

# update :total_points attribute of record with points

def total_points

stat.update_attribute(:total_points, points)

end

This doesn't work. I'm in the process of figuring this out.

To Boldly Go Where No Man(Me) Has Gone Before

Captain's log, Stardate 542010.5.

I've been working on my project for week's. The past couple days have been uneventful but I've made excellent progress. I am figuring out the relationships between League, Game, Player, and Stat. I've been learning about nesting resources and nesting models in one form. I've split them into pairs.

League has many Games. Game belongs to League.

Player has many Stats. Stat belongs to Player.

This gives me these routes.

/leagues

/leagues/:id

/leagues/:league_id/games

/leagues/:league_id/games/:id

/players

/players/:id

/players/:player_id/stats

/players/:player_id/stats/:id

Now I am able to create a league with many games and players with many stats. I'm working on getting the players with their stats to belong to a specific game in a specific league. I want to access players on its own so I'm hesitant to nest it. Plus, Rule of thumb: resources should never be nested more than 1 level deep. So I shouldn't do Games to Players to Stats.

I would like to have the form below to create the box score for each game. It will also track each players stats.

It would start with a drop-down menu to choose league. Selecting a league will activate the drop-down menu of games in that league. Selecting a game will do something that will allow me to get the form to choose a player from a drop-down menu and add their stats for that game. And do this for multiple players.

When I view the game I see

May the force be with you.

Secret Society of ...

Greetings to All of my Followers ... both of you ... whom I follow more

Hope all is well in your kingdoms.

I call to order the meeting of the Hackers Guild.

Take your seat at the round table.

First order of business, the rules. The first rule of Hackers Guild is you don't talk about Hackers Guild!

Now repeat the mantra:

I don't know who you are. I don't know what you want. If you are looking for ransom, I can tell you I don't have money. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills; skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you let my computer go now, that'll be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you. But if you don't, I will look for you, I will find you, and I will hack you.

I've been locked up in my room hacking away learning what works and what doesn't work with Rails. I've gotten close with google searching, Stack Overflow, and the API's. I've made friends with different gems and git and github for plugins. I'm learning a lot and getting things to work. I just don't know if it's the best way. I got file upload for images working but not for videos. I got authentication up and running. I got a calendar to contain events.

This is all my deliberate practice to learn what I need to implement my own software. My current task is implementing a basketball stat tracking system for one team with a group of players. I've broken it down to 4 models. The models are League, Game, Player, and Stat. I will be able to create a new League that will contain many Games. Each Game will contain the Stats of each Player for that Game. Similar to a box score but only one team. I also want each Player view to show the career stats for each league or year. I'm working on figuring out the relationships between the models. That will help with the routes. I'm also figuring out how to handle fields that require calculating two or more attributes to get the value. Like field goal %, you take the number of field goals made divided by field goals attempted to get the value.

This is my focus.

Is there anything else to discuss?

This closes the meeting of the Hackers Guild.

Live long and prosper

Social Networking

I am now on Twitter, Facebook, TechHui, and Blogger. I have no idea what to do with them all. How do I utilize them and for what purpose? Facebook asks "What's on your mind?" Twitter asks "What's happening?" TechHui asks "What brings you here?" Are random thoughts alright? It seems like the way to keep friends and family up to date. I guess I'm still trying to find my voice. What do I want to say?

Practicing Hacking

I am a big believer in deliberate practice. I've done my research and understand the concept. It is "activities designed, typically by a teacher, for the sole purpose of effectively improving specific aspects of an individual's performance (Anders Ericsson)." It's designed to improve performance, it's repeated a lot, feedback on results is continuously available, it's highly demanding mentally, it's difficult, and it requires specific goals.

Integrating Deliberate Practice

Deliberate practice seems straightforward, but I'm having a difficult time integrating it with learning a programming language. I have no problem implementing deliberate practice with sports or playing a musical instrument. These fields have better rules and objectives when measuring success. It is clear to me on how to improve performance for these fields.

If I wanted to improve my dribbling in basketball I would practice with one hand at a time standing still then while moving slow then by moving fast. After I improve I would increase difficulty.

If I wanted to improve in playing the guitar I would practice each chord individually and then practice transitioning from one chord to another.

Knowledge Work

The previous fields are more on the physical side. Learning a programming language is more knowledge work. How do you optimize performance on knowledge work? I'm trying to figure out a systematic approach for building a deliberate practice strategy for learning a programming language.

My Current Process

I am in the process of learning Ruby on Rails. I want to build web applications. I've been hacking on my application getting things done and figuring stuff out but I do not feel I'm becoming a expert Rails programmer. As soon as I solve my task I have forgotten the process I used to figure it out. I see the finished code but cannot quite remember what searches I did that yielded results and what searches didn't. I also wonder how to repeat the process to deliberately practice that new solution. And if my solution is the correct way to do it.

Will building applications and continuous hacking create an expert programmer?

Self learning

Self learning has been challenging. Building my blog website application from scratch has been fun but has not been the smoothest experience. I know what I want to implement and need to work to implement the features. The problem is that the work schedule is in my head and not written down. My focus is jumping from one thing to another thing. I'll be working on the layout of the comments and notice something in the comment form I want to improve and switch jobs. And neither one gets fixed. I will be figuring out a schedule of work to do and follow it.

Adding Date and Time to my Rails Blog App

For my blog posts and comments I wanted to display the date and time. Fortunately, the models automatically add the attribute created_at of datetime during the migration to the database. This allows me to just call the created_at attribute from the posts and comments table to display them after they have been created.

I got my first problem when I added it to my view. It appeared as 2009-12-14 08:25:51-1000. That's not what I wanted. I wanted December 14th, 2009 8:25AM. And this gave me another problem, the time was 10 hours off. I wanted Hawaii time so it should have been 2009-12-13 22:25:51-1000.

After a lot of searching I was able to piece together a solution. I have rails 2.3.3.

To format date and time I modified config/enviroment.rb. Looking at this file I found config.time_zone = 'UTC'. I didn't know what UTC was but above it had Run "rake -D time" for a list of tasks for finding time zone names. So I ran 'rake -D time' in my terminal and was given 'rake time:zones:local' which I ran and was given Hawaii as my time zone. So I changed config.time_zone = 'UTC' to config.time_zone = 'Hawaii'. This gave me my date and time but not the right format.

I wanted December 14th, 2009 8:25AM. To get this I had to create my format. I eventually found rails module for conversions. I then had to figure out what %Y-%m-%d meant. When I found the meaning I wrote the code below to display my date and time format. I also found to get 1 to display as 1st, 2 as 2nd, 14 as 14th, 23 as 23rd I had to add ordinalize to the day.

ActiveSupport::CoreExtensions::Time::Conversions::DATE_FORMATS.merge!(

:time => '%I:%M%p',

:date => lambda { |time| time.strftime("%B #{time.day.ordinalize}, %Y") }

)

Format Meaning

%a The abbreviated weekday name (“Sun'’)

%A The full weekday name (“Sunday'’)

%b The abbreviated month name (“Jan'’)

%B The full month name (“January'’)

%c The preferred local date and time representation

%d Day of the month (01..31)

%H Hour of the day, 24-hour clock (00..23)

%I Hour of the day, 12-hour clock (01..12)

%j Day of the year (001..366)

%m Month of the year (01..12)

%M Minute of the hour (00..59)

%p Meridian indicator (“AM'’ or “PM'’)

%S Second of the minute (00..60)

%U Week number of the current year, starting with the first Sunday as the first day of the first week (00..53)

%W Week number of the current year, starting with the first Monday as the first day of the first week (00..53)

%w Day of the week (Sunday is 0, 0..6)

%x Preferred representation for the date alone, no time

%X Preferred representation for the time alone, no date

%y Year without a century (00..99)

%Y Year with century

%Z Time zone name

%% Literal “%'’ character

In my view I added:

%= comment.created_at.to_s(:date) %

%= comment.created_at.to_s(:time) %

Now every post and comment has a correct date and time.