Protesting SOPA and PIPA

Call your representatives today!

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/01/protesting-sopa-what-you-can-do.ars

Open Handed Blocks - Lesson Learned

Feels worse than it looks!

Update 2012.01.23 


My wife convinced me to have it checked at the clinic. It's a bit more than a sprain - it's fractured at the knuckle. Other than a longer recovery, there isn't really anything I can do about it.


Managed to sprain my middle finger with a poorly executed open handed block at Friday night's lower Kyū belt grading. It hurt as much as rolling my toe on the old dojo's mats. I could tell my partner didn't much care for me trying to drive my finger through his arm either but we both shook it off and continued. Lesson learned. 


First time I've jammed my finger. It really should not be surprising how hard it is not to use your fingers. Especially when they are on your dominant hand. Fortunately, it's not broken, but try typing and using a computer mouse. 

Computer mouse and Ice rig

I've been applying ice, taking Advil, and using KT tape at night. It helps. I'll buddy-tape it for tonight's karate class.


Once it heals, I'll have to work on those blocks. Obviously I'm not practicing them enough.

Javascript Frameworks: turing.js

While looking for resources for learning Javascript I ran across a great series by Alex Young at dailyjs.com called "Let's Make a Framework." In it, he creates a framework deliberately designed for learning Javascript and frameworks called turing.js. 


On the second post, Let's Make a Framework: Classes, Inheritance, Extend he mentions Douglas Crockford's excellent discussion of the classical and prototypal inheritance models. 


These are really great references for someone learning Javascript and why the language is the way it is. There is a long and dramatic history to Javascript. It's been tested by fire and made stronger for it. I think I'm going to really enjoy learning it.

I find this intriguing

Chipotle Mexican Grill

New Year Resolutions

It's that time of year again...


What is my quest: To update my software development skills.
What to study: Phone app development
What kind of apps: Eventually games, but let's start with something simple... 
Possible technologies: Native, Web, Cross platform?


Where to start? Well, I started by poking around the web for a few weeks looking at possible development frameworks and stacks. 


I have an iPod Touch and a Macbook so native Xcode was an obvious starting point. Although I still want to develop native apps with Objective-C, I'd also like to update my web development skills.


HTML5 web apps look pretty good. The cross platform issue is solved by using a web based app, but you run into issues with offline use. Client side HTML5 solves this, but how do you market it?


PhoneGap to the rescue. I can wrap client side HTML5 into a native app wrapper that can target iOS, Android, Windows Phone, etc.


There are a lot of frameworks available. SpineJS is still in the running but I think it needs a bit more work on the mobile side. I really like coffeescript, but as a "classically" educated developer (code for "get off my lawn") I feel it's necessary to understand the foundation layers. So, I'm starting with javascript.


To learn javascript, I'm going to follow a great series written by Alan Young at DailyJS.com called "Let's Make a Framework". 


Here's what my preliminary framework looks like. It's subject to change of course.

• PhoneGap/Apache Callback - native cross platform phone wrapper
• Javascript/Coffeescript - code
• BackboneJS/UnderscoreJS - MVC framework
• Jasmine - TDD/BDD
• Eco - coffeescript template markup
• Stylus - CSS markup
• Brunch - scaffolding (possibly)