Open Source: Good or bad for learning?
Posted by Stevieb | Filed under General, Tech
Many years ago, my now wife went on a night out with the girls. It meant I was home alone until the early hours of the morning; so instead of buying handfuls of Columbia’s finest export and drafting in a few high class ladies of the twilight hour, I decided to geek out.
At this time I was quite into dabbling with graphic design, I had my copy of Macromedia’s Fireworks and Adobe’s Photoshop; however it didn’t really grab me. So I decided to look into this web design malarkey. So I trawled the net for HTML tutorials and learning material. Armed with notepad.exe, a bucket of coffee and an insatiable thirst for learning off I went. Within the first few hours I had coded basic wee pages, by the end of the night I had moved onto CSS and I was properly hooked! I got a buzz from sitting down and coding a page, and looking at it in my browser! Soon enough the buzz of staring at my beautiful creations on my own 14inch CRT bad boy just wasn’t enough; I needed to let the world see my awesome skills. So I did the only thing I could think of, I turned to Geocities.
Keep in mind I was brand new to this whole publishing content on the web malarkey, I set about making myself a wee site; a few hours later I publish my first site. Words couldn’t explain how chuffed I was! Something I had made all by myself was online for the word to see! Ok it was only a few basic pages of HTML about me, but it was still my own creation. From that point on, I knew I was hooked totally and utterly.
“But Steve, what has all this got to do with Open Source being good or bad for learning?” Shhhhh child, all in good time, all in good time.
One of the guys I used to work with at the time had his own wee mobile DJ business on the side, and as a result he had made himself a rather funky wee website (looking back it was utterly horrible, but to someone like me it was like looking at a Picaso). He pointed me in the direction of a company that were uber cheap for domain name and hosting packages. I can’t remember their name but they were proper terrible, I had to pay for CGI/Perl access and for individual e-mail addresses. At the time though I thought that this was the pinnacle of my very young web career. So I published my first site, it was great fun digging deeper into HTML and CSS, then Java script came along.
As was the fashion at the time, damn near every site had scrolling titles, floating menus and damn near every imaginable piece of Java script in there to make the page look awesome. Now I had tried to learn a wee bit of this magical mystical coding base, however for some reason it just didn’t seem to stick. This frustrated me somewhat, so I started looking for more tutorials on Java script, and came across www.dhtml.com; this was the beginning of the end for my creative juices. dhtml.com back in the day was a bit of a Mecca for us Java script junkies, you had a search about, copied and pasted the code snippets and you were off! I could have all the shiny shiny Java I could get my grubby hands on without ever having to mess about with coding! YAY! This was my new buzz. Soon my site became a massively bloated mess of various Java scripts, but I didn’t care, all I needed to do was find the cool new feature I wanted, copy and paste and it was live! Soon after I started getting lazy with the designs, I found www.elated.com and their pagekits. I downloaded all of em, and reverse engineered them to fit what I wanted. So my site now consisted of absolutely nothing original at all, I hadn’t designed the site, I hadn’t coded any of the extras; but I didn’t really care.
At the time I was a member of a forum called thedude.org. This was the very first forum I had ever joined, and I loved the idea of running a forum! So instead of going back to learning, I went straight to open source. The first forum I ran was called Cutecast and it was made by some guys over at www.artscore.com. This was written entirely in perl, so I had to go back to learning so that I could set it all up and configure it. After a few hours (yes hours) of uploading (dial up 56k zzzzz) configuring and tweaking, my new forum was live! It felt awesome! Totally amazing that I was now the administrator of my very own forum! Little did I know, this was the beginning of the end. My thirst for learning had done a bunk with the Postman and my new Open Source addiction was here.
To cut a very very long story short, I jumped from open source application to open source application, installing bigger and better scripts to waste my time with. I have never considered myself a designer of any sort, sure my graphic skills have gotten better with time, and I have picked up some skills while working with the applications I have come across, but I’m by no means a real designer or coder. In a way I’m quite gutted that I bailed on learning so easily and so early on, I wish I had just stuck to it a little longer and taken the time to build my skills. Instead of the buzz I got from being creative, I got it from finding plug and play solutions to my problems.
This brings me to today. It got me thinking, did open source “ruin” my learning path? Well no, no it didn’t. I got a different buzz from using open source, and because of it I strayed from what had gotten me into the scene in the first place. I don’t regret it, I have been able to help so many people set themselves up online using these Open Source applications and the knowledge I have for tweaking and customising them, I have found a new passion for the dedicated coders and designers out there. I have been able to pick up on newer skills and coding languages. So after many many years of being lazy with the learning aspect of web design, open source has led me back to it. I feel the need to learn and code again, all because open source software has shown me what can be done with time, patience and bucket loads of skill.
So instead of web design, I have started a new journey with application design. Ok I’m virtually back at square one picking up on the likes of PHP and MySQL. Hopefully I don’t get side tracked again and start being lazy again!
Tips for being married to a gamer
Posted by Stevieb | Filed under Funny, Gaming, General
Here’s the deal. As much as I love my wife, when it comes to gaming quite frankly I could shit myself I get so frustrated sometimes.
She knew I was into gaming when we got married, however just recently she has started to step up an offensive on my beloved gaming time. Now I know it’s not meant to drive me bat-shit insane; however it does. So if your husband/wife is a gamer, this wee nugget is for you.
Anger Management
If we are having a bit of a loud sweary moment given the frustration we experience in some games, the worst thing you can say is “But it’s just a game!”
We know it’s a game, and we know in the grand scheme of things it really doesn’t matter; however when you utter those words (and keep in mind if we are going mental shouting/throwing joypads/head-butting the wall) we are liable to fucking explode. We invest time and effort progressing in a game, and if something infuriates us that much to the point that we are visibly unstable, being condescending about it is likely to end you up in a pool of blood screaming “WHY O WHY FOR THE LOVE OF GOD WHHHHY!”
How much??
“Yes dear, this game cost £49.99.” Do not preach about “expensive” games; EVER. These are small nuggets of pleasure that we can escape away with when the mood strikes. Especially when you spend £70 on a HAIRCUT. O.k maybe that last point is geared more towards me. Anyway, the point is yes, £50 for a wee game may seem expensive (especially if you are guilty of my first point) but the few hours of escapism we get is priceless. Feel free to fuck off to the shops and spend an equivalent amount on yourself, at least it gives us an hours peace to play! 
FEED ME NOW!
On the rare occasion you do let us game for an hour or two, please don’t bring us food or drink while were busy. It’s not that we don’t like nourishment, it’s just that if we want it, we can get it ourselves. If I’m immersed in a game and you put a tin of beer and a plate of fish and chips on front of me it means I have to stop what I’m doing (as not to appear rude) and chow down. If you must provide us with sustenance, the please make it finger snacks, or meals that can be eaten with one hand to allow maximum pwnage.
Can I play?
As far as I’m concerned, you get one chance, and only once chance. I once let my wife join me online playing Rainbow 6 Vegas, after a good 5 minute breakdown of the controls we started. While I fucked up terrorists, she span round in circles staring at the roof/floor saying “This is just shit!”.
On the rare occasion you don’t wander aimlessly like a retarded rhino, and you can venture out of the spawn point, please don’t complain when you get pwnd within a matter of seconds and then proceed to blame it on the game being shit. You are shit, we have skilfully honed skills that only hours of staring blankly at a TV can achieve. Although, at the end of the day you are to be commended for at least trying.
HTC Hero gets ready for Android 2.1 OTA in UK
Posted by Stevieb | Filed under Tech
Waaaaaay heeeeeeey!
About time too HTC! Talkandroid.com last week wrote about the 2.1 update possibly coming to the UK a little over a week ago. Well apparently good things come to those who wait. HTC Europe has begun pushing out groundwork for the 2.1 update OTA to Hero owners today. If your phone receives the update, you will see a notification on the phone and all you have to do is press OK to accept the update, which will download via your data connection or wifi. After installing the update, you can verify it installed correctly by checking the Build number.
From the Home screen, go to Menu -> Settings -> About Phone -> Build Number. Once there, the new Build number after the update will be 2.73.405.93; 2.73.405.94 (Nordic) & 2.73.405.95 (Greece/ Ireland).
I’ll be keeping my beady little eye on my handset today! I can but hope!
[via HTC]
This is me, Steve Bremner. I’m a 29 year old recruitment consultant in the North East of Scotland. I’m happily married to Becky and have been together for 10 years. When I’m not busy being awesome at work, I’m generally being awesome at home doing awesome stuff. Check out the