This site is pretty awesome. It's apparently designed to help people navigate the country and crash at people's places as they travel. I've signed up and even seen that there are others in the Statesboro area who are in on it, im pretty excited to be honest : )
check it out at www.couchsurfing.com
December 29, 2007
December 18, 2007
Video games, tv and self-worth
This entry is still in "beta"
It all began during summer in my high school years, when I completely cut out TV from my life, under the conditions it'd just be for just one month. Time went on and that period eventually became 2 months, then before I knew it, a whole year had passed without me turning on the television.
I didn't realize at first, but as I looked back, I noticed something interesting. The first thing to replace TV was increased time spent playing video games, watching movies and reading books. However as these mediums each, in turn became increasingly non-interesting, I began to pursue other activities.
It began when I realized the situation I was in at school, my home life, and my personal education. Almost instantly I began to reflect on the decisions I made, the way I presented myself and how I approached others.
I was hopelessly socially awkward, the result of thinking I only needed myself for near 14-15 years, and at first it was rough to get along in social groups other than my own. However, in doing so and learning about others different than myself, I began to see the benefits of meeting people and learning about who they are, and what made them that.
At first, I was startled to learn that the ones I found most interesting didn't play video games, at least play them often. Instead of revolving their lives around games, they instead either seldom played or never played at all. There have been situations where This came as a huge shock at the time, after all to me being good at Star Craft, and having beaten Fallout 2, 40x different ways, was life.
The dynamic began to become more and more apparent. The less time I spent playing video games, the more productive I became, and therefore the more interesting of a life I would lead.
As I became aware of this, my life radically changed overnight, without me even realizing it. I experienced a sharp decline in my time spent on activities such as games and as result a I almost felt the dramatic increase in my feelings of self-worth. Where this came from, I'm still not sure, though I think it has to do with working daily to improve yourself, even if small. And springing from that self-worth, my motivation to accomplish great things in my life became not something I sought, but something I could not contain.
It was from this motivation that I set far reaching life goals and began to pursue them, even if when rationally thought upon, I realised it would be impossible to accomplish everything on my list in my lifetime.
Thinking upon it in that sense however is not the correct approach. For in even accomplishing one, be it great or small, I would be content with my efforts in life.
It all began during summer in my high school years, when I completely cut out TV from my life, under the conditions it'd just be for just one month. Time went on and that period eventually became 2 months, then before I knew it, a whole year had passed without me turning on the television.
I didn't realize at first, but as I looked back, I noticed something interesting. The first thing to replace TV was increased time spent playing video games, watching movies and reading books. However as these mediums each, in turn became increasingly non-interesting, I began to pursue other activities.
It began when I realized the situation I was in at school, my home life, and my personal education. Almost instantly I began to reflect on the decisions I made, the way I presented myself and how I approached others.
I was hopelessly socially awkward, the result of thinking I only needed myself for near 14-15 years, and at first it was rough to get along in social groups other than my own. However, in doing so and learning about others different than myself, I began to see the benefits of meeting people and learning about who they are, and what made them that.
At first, I was startled to learn that the ones I found most interesting didn't play video games, at least play them often. Instead of revolving their lives around games, they instead either seldom played or never played at all. There have been situations where This came as a huge shock at the time, after all to me being good at Star Craft, and having beaten Fallout 2, 40x different ways, was life.
The dynamic began to become more and more apparent. The less time I spent playing video games, the more productive I became, and therefore the more interesting of a life I would lead.
As I became aware of this, my life radically changed overnight, without me even realizing it. I experienced a sharp decline in my time spent on activities such as games and as result a I almost felt the dramatic increase in my feelings of self-worth. Where this came from, I'm still not sure, though I think it has to do with working daily to improve yourself, even if small. And springing from that self-worth, my motivation to accomplish great things in my life became not something I sought, but something I could not contain.
It was from this motivation that I set far reaching life goals and began to pursue them, even if when rationally thought upon, I realised it would be impossible to accomplish everything on my list in my lifetime.
Thinking upon it in that sense however is not the correct approach. For in even accomplishing one, be it great or small, I would be content with my efforts in life.
December 10, 2007
Back on track and chugging along
So, I've managed to (downgrade) to a different version of rails for the moment, from 2.0.1 to 1.2.6 and this has allowed me to continue progress. I should be able to update once again soon, but for the moment I will wait.
(In addition, forgive the pun)
I went ahead and signed up for basecamp, which is sort of a project management site. They have extended settings designed so that you can host multiple projects, files etc, but I only really need one. For free I can't beat it to be honest.
This weekend has proved to be very fulfilling as far as development on the Reflector site goes. I've managed to rewrite the internal code and improve some of what I had before. In addition, I've learned a ton about some of the Rails methods and how they work for the most part. Especially the find() method.
In the previous version of the site, you would go to a URL such as mysite.com/podcasts and you'd see all of the podcasts. If you wished to comment, you'd be directed towards mysite.com/podcasts/display_podcasts/(id).
Honestly this was ugly and a waste of code, so I've changed a few things about the structure.
First when the site goes live, it will be a sub domain for its "parent" site gadaily.com. So right off the bat, our URL will be gadaily.com/reflector. I've updated the code to reflect this and so now when you browse to the "Podcasts" section, you'll see the URL as being gadaily.com/reflector/podcast. In addition, if you look to see comments, the URL is now gadaily.com/reflector/podcast/(id).
Works quite well all in all. In addition I am still really impressed with how rails handles the tiny bit of code I have to achieve all of this.
(In addition, forgive the pun)
I went ahead and signed up for basecamp, which is sort of a project management site. They have extended settings designed so that you can host multiple projects, files etc, but I only really need one. For free I can't beat it to be honest.
This weekend has proved to be very fulfilling as far as development on the Reflector site goes. I've managed to rewrite the internal code and improve some of what I had before. In addition, I've learned a ton about some of the Rails methods and how they work for the most part. Especially the find() method.
In the previous version of the site, you would go to a URL such as mysite.com/podcasts and you'd see all of the podcasts. If you wished to comment, you'd be directed towards mysite.com/podcasts/display_podcasts/(id).
Honestly this was ugly and a waste of code, so I've changed a few things about the structure.
First when the site goes live, it will be a sub domain for its "parent" site gadaily.com. So right off the bat, our URL will be gadaily.com/reflector. I've updated the code to reflect this and so now when you browse to the "Podcasts" section, you'll see the URL as being gadaily.com/reflector/podcast. In addition, if you look to see comments, the URL is now gadaily.com/reflector/podcast/(id).
Works quite well all in all. In addition I am still really impressed with how rails handles the tiny bit of code I have to achieve all of this.
December 8, 2007
Rails 2.0 woes
Well, seems like I've learned a lesson when it comes to new versions of languages and frameworks that you use.
The newer version of rails apparently has removed dynamic scaffolding and it seems that the regular scaffold code has changed as well. Time to downgrade (for the sake of learning this material at least)
The newer version of rails apparently has removed dynamic scaffolding and it seems that the regular scaffold code has changed as well. Time to downgrade (for the sake of learning this material at least)
December 6, 2007
November 13, 2007
A new day
Well, plunging into some more Ruby on Rails and I've managed to whip up this latest iteration of TSR (not really a pun, but still I like that I can say TSR :] )
- I've cleaned up how the podcasts display. Put in a color that's less abrasive and eye gouging. Added some boxes and borders to make it more snazzy!
- Changed how some of the internal design on the podcast section worked. Now you see all of the latest podcasts and can click on the "Comment" button to see all of the comments.
- Made it possible for users to now download the correct podcast for the date they desire.
- Added the comment section view, so that users can see what comments are already there and add their own. I still haven't implemented the commenting ability yet, but it's on the list.
November 11, 2007
Ruby on Rails, CSS, and Javascript
It's got a long way to go, but here's the current build on the website that I'm creating for my school's magazine. (They're picking these colors -- I'm gonna see about getting a designer to look into making them not so ugly)
(Click for full size)
(Click for full size)
August 29, 2007
Planet Georgia & Ubuntu Desktop
Woot! Thanks for the add to Planet Georgia guys! I know I haven't been around as often as I'd like, but it's been quite busy here. :D Hopefully you will find my posts to be entertaining, thought provoking or maybe more ;)
I enjoy my current Ubuntu desktop, but I feel like there are areas of improvement I can make, though I'm not sure on what they could be. Any ideas? [And yes I do enjoy posting desktop screen shots :) ]
I enjoy my current Ubuntu desktop, but I feel like there are areas of improvement I can make, though I'm not sure on what they could be. Any ideas? [And yes I do enjoy posting desktop screen shots :) ]
August 23, 2007
Growing Pains
It can be troublesome to give something such as this a title. When I sit down and really think about it, I never really know what I'm going to post when I do write in a journal entry. I have some general ideas of the topics I want to cover, but never the complete thought of what will form this entry in particular.
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Once a week student media at Georgia Southern puts out a weekly magazine called "The Southern Reflector." It's headed by Robert Greene and it's purpose is to basically deliver feature centric material for the students on Georgia Southern's campus. I'm working hand and hand with him on this publication till he can get his feet on the ground. The staff of the George-Anne also helps out with layout and whatever else is needed.
Things were crazy last night at the paper. We didn't have all of the content in and some of the people who we needed to talk with about their sections weren't available. It happens, but when I'm working at the office at 2 am, it doesn't do much for my patience, outside of make me a bitter old man at the age of 21.
We finished it though and it should be available on the website pretty soon. We need to develop a better system however for getting that information to the web sooner, rather than the later that's the current cliche right now. Despite the moan and groan, there was a lot done right this edition. It seemed like each story was at least edited for content twice and we even had some discussion about the relevance of one of the stories. While not everyone may have agreed with the call, it's good to know that people are looking out for things such as that.
All in all, things are looking better, we still have a lot of room to grow out and expand our ability to cover student life. We're experiencing the pains of a virtually whole new staff, but we'll pull through.
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Once a week student media at Georgia Southern puts out a weekly magazine called "The Southern Reflector." It's headed by Robert Greene and it's purpose is to basically deliver feature centric material for the students on Georgia Southern's campus. I'm working hand and hand with him on this publication till he can get his feet on the ground. The staff of the George-Anne also helps out with layout and whatever else is needed.
Things were crazy last night at the paper. We didn't have all of the content in and some of the people who we needed to talk with about their sections weren't available. It happens, but when I'm working at the office at 2 am, it doesn't do much for my patience, outside of make me a bitter old man at the age of 21.
We finished it though and it should be available on the website pretty soon. We need to develop a better system however for getting that information to the web sooner, rather than the later that's the current cliche right now. Despite the moan and groan, there was a lot done right this edition. It seemed like each story was at least edited for content twice and we even had some discussion about the relevance of one of the stories. While not everyone may have agreed with the call, it's good to know that people are looking out for things such as that.
All in all, things are looking better, we still have a lot of room to grow out and expand our ability to cover student life. We're experiencing the pains of a virtually whole new staff, but we'll pull through.
The Inevitable
Well, here it is.
What you've been waiting for.
My first post in this new ripe blog, located smack dab in the middle of a server farm way far away from where I'm sitting right now. Kinda crazy when you really think about it.That aside, hello!
My friend Dan told me, a long long time ago in 2004, that too many inane blogs existed and it just wasn't worth looking for good ones.
I hope to prove him wrong : )
So strap in as you hear about my experiences as the executive editor of The George-Anne Daily, my exploits as a 21 year old computer science student at Georgia Southern, and my descents into delusional dreams of dastardly deeds.
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