And Now Back to Our Regularly Scheduled Programming...

So about that long post that I was going to publish...yeah, that's not going to happen. :)

I had a little adventure going that didn't quite work out, but now I'm back to focusing on Ruby, Ruby on Rails, and the STE(A)M Truck app, which I plan to deploy for the initial test run at the end of the month. To that end, I have restarted my reading of  Pragmatic Agile Web Development with Rails 4, from the beginning and I'm on Chapter 4. I have also restarted reading Beginning Ruby From Novice to Professional, from Chapter 6. Because I've been learning so many different languages, I just want to make sure I have everything straight, before I start the actual coding on the STE(A)M Truck app, so I'm doing little small apps, exercises, and programs to test out my ideas. I'm pretty sure that I have it under control, the only thing that's really giving me a little trouble is allowing the users to add images to the projects and how to display them, but that's something that I'm going to work on after I get everything else in order. It would be cool if I had someone around my level to work with; It would be better if I knew someone who was already good at Ruby and Ruby on Rails that could answer my approximately 13 billion questions. Sometime I go on IRC to ask questions, but it's a little bit frustrating trying to get answers on there. Always helpful...but still, a little bit frustrating. Sometimes I think that people may not like that I only come on when I have a question, so that's a thing, too.

I started catching up in my Algorithms class, this weekend. I had only watched the intro lecture before yesterday, but I'm over half way through week one. I think that I'm learning a lot and some problem solving things are starting to clear up, but there are some math concepts that I really need to brush up on. I've also realized that I don't know enough Java to actually do the programming assignments for this class, but I'm going to still work through the class for the exposure to the material on algorithms and Java. It's not that I don't understand what's going on, I would just have to stop the video and figure it out, and I would rather start learning Java by reading books and doing tutorials, and take what I can from the class. I learned about Koans about a week ago, so I'm going to try those, as well. At this point I can take my time learning Java and just do the class for fun. I'm actually learning a lot about algorithms. I signed up for another Algorithms class at Stanford that starts in October, though. So I should definitely be ready for that. I just looked at my Coursera schedule, I have two more classes that start in 8 days. It's probably best that I'm not going to try to do the programming assignments and learn Java, too. I have a few Java books that I'm going to read. I'll probably start reading the first one on tomorrow; I want to spend today getting set up to get the app that I'm working on done in time.

OT: I don't know how I feel about the iPhone 6. I think that I have a free upgrade, but I'm just not excited about getting a new phone. For one thing, I don't know if I want the 6 or the 6 plus and I know, for sure, that I don't want anything that takes my fingerprints [pic related]. I don't really understand how people can still be so trusting of this kind of thing in the wake of the Edward Snowden leaks. Regardless of how you feel about what he did, we now know the types of things that our governments are doing with technology and surveillance and how companies are cooperating, forced or otherwise, with these efforts. While it may be unavoidable, I'm still not super comfortable with supplying bio-metric information to a large corporation that supplies governments and other companies with my personal information, know what I'm sayin'.

Another issue, is that Apple has been disappointing me since Steve Jobs left. It seems like I've been having all sorts of problems with my upgrades and iTunes. Last night, I upgraded to iOS 8. In order to do that, I had to erase all of my music...since the update required over 4 gigs of memory. I was okay with that. The problem was when I went to load my music back onto my phone, iTunes, on my computer, just assumed that I no longer wanted to enjoy that 4 gigs of music and deleted the whole playlist. So I would just like to thank the good people at Apple for allowing me to spend my Sunday morning rebuilding my playlist for the gym today: 'preciate that.

I don't know anything about Android phones, but I do know the frustration of trying do things on my friend's phones. I think that I'm probably not going to worry about trying to change phones, right now. I'm relatively happy with what I have since I got my music back on this one, for now.

In other news, this was pretty funny...so now I'm also reading The Soul of Man Under Socialism, by Oscar Wilde. I like this guy.