Posted by Brian Fending on January 30th, 2008 — Posted in Code
Scott Hanselman has been writing an interesting series of posts reflecting on how coding patterns converge and diverge between languages. More precisely, he has been emphasizing how important it is to *read* code, consuming it as we would anything else. How else do you learn a “language”, after all? And there are no Berlitz tapes for F#, trust me. Anyway, The Weekly Source Code 13 hits on how a Fibonacci number generator looks in a few languages.
This subject is particularly fascinating to me, and increasingly so as I run into / work with people who only know or use one or two languages or constructs. Context is everything, I think. Understanding the patterns and syntax of multiple languages can only help.
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Posted by Brian Fending on January 20th, 2008 — Posted in Music, Reviews, Technology
My friend Kevin has been working on a feature for his site, AmishCookOnline.com, wherein visitors can subscribe to a feature at the site to rent a “Listening Station” to hear a couple of yodels for fourteen days. My reaction when he first told me about it was, “Oooooookaaaaaaay…,” but I was pleasantly surprised (a) at the quality of the yodels and (b) that it’s actually selling. People are really, seriously interested in hearing this pair of tracks - no matter that it can’t be downloaded, access expires in fourteen days, and the recording quality is that of an old ethnographic field recording (read: “not high”). Beyond that, he wanted to perform a little experiment and offer it at several price levels, all for the same product. “Pick your own price,” the copy reads. And it worked - many people are choosing to pay more than the minimum. He’s a genius on some level, I swear. And the Amish family starring in the yodels is getting their fair share as they rightfully should. It’s just too perfect.
First, a note about the yodeling that I blogged at his site. It’s seriously fascinating to hear.
Here’s what *you* need to do to make your very own such recording and put it up for sale/rent/lease:
- Find a yodeling family.
- Call them (more difficult for Amish families) and use something like recordmycalls.com to document the proceedings. The quality of the phone on the singers’ end plays a critical role here, but it will never, ever sound like you leased an ISDN and built a recording studio at their house.
- Download the audio from the remote-recording site and scrub it with something like Audacity (free) or Logic (not so free).
- Import into a Drupal site using the integrated Audio, E-Commerce, and a few other modules that escape me at the moment.
- If your singing family is in fact Amish, make sure users can’t download the audio - it will immensely displease your musicians and you’ll be looking behind you every time you hear horses…
- Connect the payment mechanism to either an integrated gateway or a regular PayPal workflow using PayPal IPN.
- If you build it, they will come. Apparently.
In all, a VERY fun, low-budget project. And aren’t those the best kind??
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Posted by Brian Fending on January 19th, 2008 — Posted in Personal
So I started my PMBA coursework this week, starting with Supply Chains & Global Operations. It sounds horrendously dry, but I find the whole subject fascinating. I think every abstraction of the physical world that allows for cyclical analysis and improvement is worthwhile. Cognitive behavioral therapy, business process analysis, data warehousing, reverse material logistics - all scintillating if you keep the big picture in mind. I really like the lecturer, too - I think he’ll be the best I’ve had in years if the first is an indicator for subsequent classes.
Having some time to think during a break in this class, I got to thinking about a class I took in undergrad, Graph Theory. Now, I know what you’re thinking: “Brian! How did you get such interesting course selections?!” Now now, contain yourself. The boiling-down of complex systems to vertices and points - processes and locations, transit types and destinations, asynchronous Web services and data consumers, whatever - is quite possibly the most fun you can have in a cubicle. [Aside from the "shoot staples at pedestrians" game, but you take my point (and vertex), I hope.] I’m hoping to have a lot of this fun for the next 14 weeks. I know, geeked out. But loving it.
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Posted by Brian Fending on January 2nd, 2008 — Posted in Personal
Happy new year! I usually start off the year like gangbusters on my resolutions, leading to sweeping changes and a brand new me - often a new job, too. The more sweeping the better, in my experience. Of course, there are always a few that I fall short on. These would be the also-sweeping-but-more-like-nice-ideas resolutions like, “Get in shape,” and, “Have a great lawn this year,” always a little short on the specifics. So this year, I’ve decided to keep my Top Ten List format and shoot for at least 80% efficacy instead of the 60-70% of the past two years. Most challenging among the new resolutions, I think, are the items that having me finding balance, doing more, and balancing these against “6. Commit to fewer things.” Impossible? I’m hoping only 20% so.
A few in particular are telling of my place in life right now, and I’ll share them here.
More practicing, less Law & Order
I can’t tell you how often I’ve turned on the TV after a long day & the baby’s down for the night, sucked into two episodes of L&O while I casually work while my wife is doing something either productive or edifying in the living room to recover from her also hectic day. On top of the probable fact that I’ve SEEN all of the syndicated episodes in just this year, it seems like a good idea to get into the basement and pick up an instrument during part of that time every evening instead of waiting for a call for a gig to whip my chops into order. I used to be really, really good at keeping a practice schedule. Home and work and baby and healthy marriage are more important, but Vincent D’Onofrio, somehow, is not.
Read more (including novels, technical reference materials, and periodicals)
I haven’t been what one would call an “avid reader,” at least as defined by my wife, in a lot of years. I get by on technical articles online, pick up the paper to (a) learn how close we are to nuclear holocaust and (b) read Get Fuzzy
, and sift through chapters from my reference books here & there. The last novel I read was Dave Eggers’ A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
that I finished (after starting several month prior) on a BART train from Powell Street to Berkeley in November. The one before that? Uh… I cannot possibly remember. My wife and I with more frequency read books together, and it’s a more common occurrence that my “current novel” is actually “the novel my wife is reading aloud to me right now.” (Books on CD? p’shaw!)
I am, totaling issue dates, roughly 12 years behind in the following stack of periodicals: This Old House, Wired, Golf Magazine (do I even GET that anymore?), PM Network, MSDN Magazine, and, well, you get the picture. I need to read these as they come in. Perhaps I should have a separate magazine bin at home so I don’t lose sight of them behind Lucky and Oprah?? Right now, the only thing differentiating our pile from a dentist’s office is the missing copy of Highlights.
START THE MBA
This resolution is, at least in part, padding. I’ve enrolled as a non-matriculated student in the University at Buffalo PMBA program, and my first class starts in a couple of weeks. Once I take my GMAT and fulfill one or two administrative requirements, I will have completed the early admissions requirements for Fall enrollment. It’s a 48-credit program (12 core courses plus electives), so it will be driving part of my to-do list for a few years at least.
But these are sort of indicative of my current state - I want to make music more, maintain some sort of mental acuity, and finally move my career in a direction other than, “Here - code this No no, I meant THIS No no, that requirement has changed… only three people will use this app now .”
I’m hoping to hit 40-50% of the list by the end of Summer 2008 - I’ll try to remember and post a follow-up.
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