Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Dirtsurfer
On the subway ride home from the class I saw a couple of dudes with these things. I was pretty curious about the boards so I asked them how you ride the things. Seems interesting...I'm not sure that I'd find it as much fun as those guys...
Back to School
I was thinking about going back to school for a while now mainly to take a fluff course to meet some people...particularly women...and get my social life going a little bit. I decided that I'd go to Ryerson University because it seemed like I'd get more value than at Seneca College or a similar college. Then I started thinking that as long as I'll be spending the money (not an insignificant amount), I may as well take something that I'm interested in.
I ended up registering for computer science 1. This may come as a surprise to some, but it's not exactly a field that's dominated by supermodel-type women.
The first class was yesterday. It was a bit of a pain to get down to the campus. I'll have to leave work a little earlier next week because leaving at 5pm put me right in the middle of peak afternoon traffic. I didn't have enough time to grab a small bite for dinner. I pretty much parked my car and hopped on the subway downtown.
Anyways, I'm pondering getting a certificate for programming applications available through Ryerson's continuing education program. I figured I'd try a course out to see if I like it...it couldn't hurt and I can get a bit of a tax credit for the course tuition.
The course itself is an introduction to programming and uses Java as its base language. The first lecture covered the basic concepts of classes and objects. It moved along pretty slowly...in my opinion, the content could have been covered in one hour instead of three, but that's the way courses are.
I got a little amusement out of listening to the professor. He's got a very robotic voice and way of talking that sounds a bit like Stephen Hawking with a Slavic accent. He also lacks almost any form of facial expression except for the occasional blink.
It should be an interesting course anyways...who knows what it'll lead to.
I'm now thinking that if I pursue the programming certificate I should also balance it with some other courses where I'll have a significantly better chances for dates...something like fashion 101 or the like.
I ended up registering for computer science 1. This may come as a surprise to some, but it's not exactly a field that's dominated by supermodel-type women.
The first class was yesterday. It was a bit of a pain to get down to the campus. I'll have to leave work a little earlier next week because leaving at 5pm put me right in the middle of peak afternoon traffic. I didn't have enough time to grab a small bite for dinner. I pretty much parked my car and hopped on the subway downtown.
Anyways, I'm pondering getting a certificate for programming applications available through Ryerson's continuing education program. I figured I'd try a course out to see if I like it...it couldn't hurt and I can get a bit of a tax credit for the course tuition.
The course itself is an introduction to programming and uses Java as its base language. The first lecture covered the basic concepts of classes and objects. It moved along pretty slowly...in my opinion, the content could have been covered in one hour instead of three, but that's the way courses are.
I got a little amusement out of listening to the professor. He's got a very robotic voice and way of talking that sounds a bit like Stephen Hawking with a Slavic accent. He also lacks almost any form of facial expression except for the occasional blink.
It should be an interesting course anyways...who knows what it'll lead to.
I'm now thinking that if I pursue the programming certificate I should also balance it with some other courses where I'll have a significantly better chances for dates...something like fashion 101 or the like.
Ruby on Rails
I started playing with Ruby on Rails. It's a combination of an easy programming language and a web application framework with database linking that allows you to quickly develop web applications. I started looking into it a little deeper because I was interested in knowing how to make e-commerce sites (online catalogues and the like).
A friend of mine in Ottawa had initially told me about and my brother piqued my interest after he explained how it worked. I went out and bought a couple of books (RoR for Dummies and RailsSpace)
In hindsight, the Dummies book may have been a bit of a waste of money, but it may prove useful down the road. RailsSpace, on the other hand is pretty neat. The book has an online portion to it were you can look at the code a little easier and copy/paste to save you the typing.
The Ruby syntax is pretty easy to learn so far. It's fairly intuitive and a lot of the coding is not cryptic at all...you kind of write down what you have in mind. Have a look for yourself: this site lets you try it out.
The person who wrote that tutorial definitely has a unique brain. Obviously and out-of-the-box thinker. He/She wrote the strangest guide book. I'm not sure how useful it is for learning code, but the pictures are pretty entertaining.
Anyways, I'll slowly be chipping away at the RoR stuff. My interest in it got me thinking about what it would be like to be a programmer for a living. I decided to try a programming course to get a better taste for it.
A friend of mine in Ottawa had initially told me about and my brother piqued my interest after he explained how it worked. I went out and bought a couple of books (RoR for Dummies and RailsSpace)
In hindsight, the Dummies book may have been a bit of a waste of money, but it may prove useful down the road. RailsSpace, on the other hand is pretty neat. The book has an online portion to it were you can look at the code a little easier and copy/paste to save you the typing.
The Ruby syntax is pretty easy to learn so far. It's fairly intuitive and a lot of the coding is not cryptic at all...you kind of write down what you have in mind. Have a look for yourself: this site lets you try it out.
The person who wrote that tutorial definitely has a unique brain. Obviously and out-of-the-box thinker. He/She wrote the strangest guide book. I'm not sure how useful it is for learning code, but the pictures are pretty entertaining.
Anyways, I'll slowly be chipping away at the RoR stuff. My interest in it got me thinking about what it would be like to be a programmer for a living. I decided to try a programming course to get a better taste for it.
Cornucopia Regatta
I went sailing at the Cornucopia Regatta at DYC over the Labour Day weekend. I got an email from SimonK who just bought a Kirby 25 for a really good deal and he needed crew to sail it at the regatta. It turned out that the boat had been sitting for a while and was in no shape for a regatta. Fortunately, Undercover wasn't in the regatta yet so he managed to convince Theo to sign up and he organized a quick crew with Derek and myself. It turned out that I had the most experience at helming a boat in races so I was the helmsman by default.
For a crew that was just thrown together on a new boat, we did fairly well. We had some awesome starts, great point and speed upwind, and had some cool downwind battles. We were in the running for a respectable 5th place, but a couple of key mistakes on the Sunday hurt us since we had a DFL finish on one race. We ended up in a tie, but got 7th place since Ruby's best race was better than ours. I've been waiting for someone to post some pictures, but so far nothing yet on the Kirby site.
It was an awesome weekend and it was great to get back in there again. I didn't get out enough this summer. I'll have to figure out something so I can get out there regularly next summer. There's another Kirby regatta in Barrie this coming weekend, but I don't think I'll be going. The Cornucopia was probably my last sail for the season.
For a crew that was just thrown together on a new boat, we did fairly well. We had some awesome starts, great point and speed upwind, and had some cool downwind battles. We were in the running for a respectable 5th place, but a couple of key mistakes on the Sunday hurt us since we had a DFL finish on one race. We ended up in a tie, but got 7th place since Ruby's best race was better than ours. I've been waiting for someone to post some pictures, but so far nothing yet on the Kirby site.
It was an awesome weekend and it was great to get back in there again. I didn't get out enough this summer. I'll have to figure out something so I can get out there regularly next summer. There's another Kirby regatta in Barrie this coming weekend, but I don't think I'll be going. The Cornucopia was probably my last sail for the season.
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