#nasawa

The 3rd year captain and setter of Nekoma!  For everyone who doesn’t know what those hyper and hypothyroidism things are, read more:

I haven’t been doing much lately. I’ve been living in Montgomery, working as a contractor, but the truth is that my job is not very demanding. It’s the pace of Government, I suppose - I can’t get access to things in a timely manner, and I’ll go weeks without a real assignment. That’s fine, though, as long as I remember to keep myself up-to-date in the industry. It just gets boring.

So I’ve decided to volunteer my skills.

Starting about 4 weeks ago, I signed up to be a mentor for the Hour of Code. Shortly after, I got an email from a teacher asking me to come onto campus to help the students. I was never a great student myself (I rarely did homework, and my social life in school caused me to be constantly depressed), but I know if I had someone to tell me in 7th grade that I, a failure at math, could start programming on my own without even needing geometry, I would have lived a very different life. This is the message I’m hoping to show to these kids.

I remember a conversation with my high-school friend, Jimmie, in my 10th grade General Science class. I was writing this story for a game I wanted to make, and I got frustrated, and I asked him why we were 15 and still hadn’t done anything with our lives. I can’t remember his answer exactly, but it was along the lines of “because we’re just kids, we’re not supposed to.” And I know, that to some extent, he was right - it’s definitely important to learn and to have fun and to not worry so much that you forget to live. But it’s also important to spend your time bettering yourself, finding your passion, and working to achieve your goals. You’re never too young or too old for that.

Some main characters of my imaginated story to try different depths

As a programmer, I'm always interested in the latest tools to make my life and my job a little easier. This post will be a small advertisement to those services that have made my days simpler.

First is Dropbox. If you haven't heard of this, you need to. This awesome tool allows you to store your files for free online. Now you're probably thinking, 'So what? I can do that with anything.' Well, maybe, but not like this. If you download it (Windows, Mac & Linux), you can have it operate just like a folder on your computer. Not just that, it updates with all of your other computers. Don't have any other computers? Not a problem. Dropbox works with your smartphone, too. On top of all of that, you can share your uploaded files with anybody, and even share whole folders with a group. This is great for classes and group projects, and it really keeps you up to date. I personally use it to upload my .apks for Android to my phone to test them without annoying wires. How much is it? Free. Yeah, you heard me. Free for the first two gigs, with options to get more by saving photos and spreading the word. Trust me, this is a tool you need.

Second is one I'm currently working with called Wix. Wix is a website... that makes websites. Simple drag-and-drop Flash or HTML5 goodness. Wix is a bit limited - they assume you don't want any user input, and that's a bit of a drawback, but you can easily add your own HTML, Javascript, and CSS by using a quick embed tool. On top of that, Wix will help you make a mobile website and a Facebook page. How much for this one? Well, it's free too. I KNOW RIGHT?! This is great. Even if you don't try it, give it a look. It deserves your attention.

Another one I'm working with is called Zoho. I'm not too knowledgeable with databases, and it also requires me learning PHP, so it's a great alternative. It makes easy forms that you can fill out and automatically populates a database for you. It's great if you want to get up and running with some dynamic content but don't have the skills or the time to make a database. If you want to make it look your own, Zoho even releases your database as a JSON or XML object for you to do your own parsing. Not for everybody, but cool if you're into that sort of thing (if you're reading this blog, chances are you just might be).

Another one I've worked with recently is called Cacoo. I don't like to use it often, but that's because it's a diagramming tool, and I really hate diagramming. It's great for classes, though, and it has some pretty neat wireframing features good for pre-code web design.

Back to web design, there's a really neat tool called Handcraft. It's not so much drag and drop, but it gives you tools for making streamlined HTML and Javascript, and really takes a lot of the legwork out of it.