I’ve been here from Toronto since Sunday and this joint absolutely rocks and it’s cool to be Common in Chicago (Had to toss that in for big C). In 5 days Code Academy has taught me how to be an expert in all things Ruby and Rails (notice I [...]]]>

I’ve been here from Toronto since Sunday and this joint absolutely rocks and it’s cool to be Common in Chicago (Had to toss that in for big C). In 5 days Code Academy has taught me how to be an expert in all things Ruby and Rails (notice I didn’t say Ruby “on”)… Well, ok, the geek noids out there are probably saying whatever and ready to go ape shit on the keyboard, locking themselves into their code monkey cage and preparing to blast me out into the hack universe of “You don’t know jack shitville”. Although, I’d prefer they chill out, relax, work on getting laid for the first time, and hopefully know I am just yanking their nerd chains – they’d be right.  I know squat after a week and I won’t be an expert when I am done.  I am cool with that. It has been one week, and I am definitely not an expert – hell I am not even a beginner, but I have to say the Code Academy crew is awesome and the learning insofar has been fun.

I am fortunate and crazy enough to be doing both the Development and the Design class at Code Academy.  Jeff Cohen teaches development and he is well –  awesome, and the dude loves hockey (more on hockey in a minute).  He is a very patient teacher who knows his stuff and he is able to break things down very easily and explain them in a fun manner and there is no dumb question in his world.  Carolyn Chandler is a smart cookie who leads our design class and she is a design heavyweight who is well respected in that community.

In her class, we get to sketch, think lean methodology, and learn to think about design while listening to some awesome music from time to time on Pandora (Arivn (Pron: Irvin) Dang tees up some trippy beats).  For example… that damn door in our class!  I wanted to pull it the first few times and I found out I wasn’t alone, only to find out the design is messed.  And the bathroom  – well what gives with the paper towel being hidden (almost) under the mirror?  One of my sketches portrays this irritant I have…  anyhoo (yes, anyhoo you coding urban mutants) I need to take a break but here are some pics to chew on.  I am going to chew on some pie (Pizza. ended up being a sub which was good) with my design mentor Jake Downs. Thanks Jake! Oh speaking of mentors – a big shout out to Don Bora of Eight Bit Studios . Don is my development mentor who took me to Burger Bar for lunch this afternoon. Thanks Don!  If you like burgers you should run to this place.  It is a hungry man’s dream right here in Chicago.

The Dyson Hand Dry under the Public Washroom long water and soap dispense.  My drawing… really sucks…. but!

We all need a dispenser sensor man in our life!

My Design brain is kicking in… Maybe Don Norman would be proud! Or not…

Then wildly and unexpectedly I got invited to watch the Blackhawks last night and even more crazy was the fact I landed in the dressing room, out on the bench area (although the bench was removed in preparation for the upcoming basketball game. They move fast at the Madhouse) and I walked out on the ice. Let’s just say we all get to be lucky once and a while, and  I have that good fortune here.  The blackhawks have amazing and very loud fans with an amazing scoring jingle.  Here are a couple pics.

This Dude walks by me with a hat on and lo and behold it was Kaner stopping to sign a jersey and he was off. The man looked busy so I had little desire to bother him.

It’s been a fun week in Chi town alright! My blogging will have to taper off as Code Academy ramps up!

Peace out,

Jaret

These are my notes from Code Academy class.  Keep in mind they are notes and I care little if there are errors (better yet you get to correct me). I am taking the Web Development & the Design class so there will be a mix and mash of both.

These are my notes from Code Academy class.  Keep in mind they are notes and I care little if there are errors (better yet you get to correct me). I am taking the Web Development & the Design class so there will be a mix and mash of both.

Jeff worked for Crate & Barrel for a few years.  Didn’t get .net framework, and didn’t think he was smart enough for web apps.  Found out about Ruby and then rails in 2005. Left a 20 year career and jumped into open sourced.

These are my notes from Code Academy class.  Keep in mind they are notes and I care little if there are errors.

SMSassist sponsored the space in the JHC (show pic you took on iPhone).

Bought Jeff Cohen’s rails for .net devs book for a [...]]]>

These are my notes from Code Academy class.  Keep in mind they are notes and I care little if there are errors.

SMSassist sponsored the space in the JHC (show pic you took on iPhone).

Bought Jeff Cohen’s rails for .net devs book for a friend at my last job and now he is teaching me. Crazy. I didn’t know who Jeff was when I bought the book. Small world!

Learn as if you own the code
Blog lots about what you are doing at CA
Trust instincts and what you discover
What you go back & read will have a significant impact.

Vince Cabansag:
First thing he built was a blog. Blog is a great first app project. Student in inaugural class.

* I may miss a couple here as I didn’t know the logo’s.
Pathfinder
SPARK
Code Mountain
OCA ventures
Hydepark angels
accelerate labs
sand box industries
startup weekend (SUW is amazing.  I worked on a SUW project called Stokfridge in Toronto).
new world ventures

chicago land
built in chicago
illinois tech association
techweek
tech.li
technori

devmynd
gtrot by Code Academy Alumni Br_ttany
enovafinancial
doejo
tribeca
8th ligth
lightbank
obtiva a Groupon Company

geekfest (tuesday at noon’s at Groupon). Free food. Can’t attend because I am in design class
refresh chicago
chicago ruby
chicago heroku user group
code and coffee (Franklin & Chicago Starbucks).
code retreat
gathersus
chicago js
windycityrails

Dave Hoover‘s Apprenticeship Patterns book : Emptying your cup (Dump your learning now. Programming wise. Don’t be afraid to ask questions).
Mentors are excited.

It is on you to contact you your mentor.. Find them and get them, reach, schedule. It is as important as the class.

37 Signals suite.
Backpack (organize & collect) & campfire (chat). Use Use & Use.

Idea: Everybody blogging should put the others students on their “Blog rolls” or blog a list of other blogs. It will help drive traffic.

Mondays: 6-8pm html5&css (this week Wednesday by Shay Howe). Wednesday: 1pm Entrepreneur session.

Learn to Program (awesome book) & Ruby on Rails 3 Tutorial. Jeff Cohen says it is awesome.

It’s ok to be out of your comfort zone. Jeff makes reference to the moon landing and what they went through. The Run way pic.May feel like a slow start but soon there will be takeoff.

Web Development:
-Computer Science (a little bit)
-Software eng
-Agile Methods

Computer Programming:
Input (instructions + data) > Processor > Output

Hard to explain how we are going to program, we are just going to dive in (~Jeff).

Tom Cullen> Used to be HF trader. Knew nothing. Built out a lot of website he developed. Redo exactly what we did in class but add it to your app/idea/project.
Advice: no substitution for hard work (Thomas Alva Edison Quote). Nobody has passion about your idea. Don’t worry about the NDA (I find this funny. NDA? Seriously?). Fight to pair with Ragu. Cut your illusions of getting a job right away (if that is your goal).

Mike Ebert: Zero programming. Little Html. Race Bikes in Europe. Looking at apprenticeships. Looking to be full time dev. Read 1st 2 chapters of Apprenticeship patterns immediately (free online). Get with people who are better then you (Shouldn’t be tough :) . The 4 hours with Jeff in class will be your best. He is the best at breaking things down in plain english. Throw away your code. Be goal oriented. Have your runway after Code Academy, map & search for your low to no pay job for a bit. Get together on the weekends.

Luis Vega: From Philippines. Knew about it 1 month prior and came. Was supposed to go home and looking for opportunities. He met everybody and anybody in the tech scene. He would go to Hash Rocket. Blog & share that you are constantly learning, and why it is totally worth it. Github is great but they won’t see your thought process so blog about it. Bug Neal and Mike to do a startup weekend (I did one in Toronto & it was an amazing learning experience).

Kevin (RudyonRails) I don’t know how to spell his last name. Programming bat boy. Audited classes he could get into. Worked in IT support, networks but got tired of it.
Try to tee up your mentors ASAP. Don’t put too much pressure to put on yourself. Exercise. @DHH said that when he came in and said don’t work over 40 hours & exercise.

Vince: Bit of C#, CSS, HTML. Real estate broker for 6.5 years. Left job to do Code Academy. Advice: Use your mentors.
In Class: Pair with different person everyday. Don’t let people do things for you. Learn how to build things. Share your ideas. Code into a program into a breakable toy (something that doesn’t matter).

Michael Verdi: Didn’t know what the terminal was. Completely foreign. Looking to continue practising and building. The Pair Programming King (Voted the person who was best to code with. His response: Non-threatening. The fact he is Vegan it makes sense (Non meat eaters are less aggressive supposedly according to a former teacher. Come up with an idea. Redo your daily classes from scratch and apply it into your practise app and your bigger app. John McCaffrey is the man. Funny dude.

Arvin (Pronounced Ervin or Irvin not Arvin): Partnered with someone in the Tues/Thurs class. Ditched ideas half way through and started something else. Him & Josh, paired and he learned a lot through him. Have confidence in yourself & don’t be afraid to stop your partner. There is no bad situation in pairing. Usually the person with less experience will be driving (typing).

Tom Brown (Not here): Had a vision of an app & he built it, and saw it through.

Jean (French) Not sure last name. Funny guy who will be doing the entrepreneurial seminars. 12 years of online marketing. Small Running app from Startup Weekend (You tell me when) Running registration app.

My thoughts: Damn am I ever glad to be living next door to the John Hancock Center for this class.
Some students are being paid by their employers. That would be cool!

Bernhard Kappe CEO of Pathfinder Software (Lean Startup MVP) will be speaking tomorrow at noon.

HTML Programming is a language despite what you may hear.

cd dev  (This is just me copying Jeff’s terminal typing. To the geeks out that ready to ransack me saying this is not HTML, I suggest Chilling out).
cd mwf
~/dev/mwf

If you feel lost:
Open (command) so open . (it essentially brings up the Finder in Mac).

Neal recommends Unix for the beginning mage (freely available but this guy deserves beers!!!)

mate (means open textmate if you use it).
mate hello.html (that will open text mate and create the hello.html file so you can start marking it up with html).

Classroom étiquette: Respect the instructor.

Ragu:
Was sitting where we were 12 weeks ago. He didn’t know spotlight (didn’t know spotlight). No such thing as a dumb question. He knows where the class is coming from. Really bad with names but wants to improve.

Evening:
Have my meeting (Friday) booked with my mentor at Eight Simple Bits. Emailed my design mentor Jake Downs  Started yoga at Core Power and hit the gym in the morning.  Need to be fresh to handle both these courses and the various events.  Pumped. Hitting the wrapper (Bed)!

@JaretManuel

I was recently asked to take a look at a dataset on BuzzData that outlined Major League Baseball salaries for all players spanning from 1988-2010.  Before I get into the crux of it, BuzzData is an open source platform for people, companies, organizations to host, converse, post related [...]]]>

I was recently asked to take a look at a dataset on BuzzData that outlined Major League Baseball salaries for all players spanning from 1988-2010.  Before I get into the crux of it, BuzzData is an open source platform for people, companies, organizations to host, converse, post related articles, debate, create visualizations, download, fork, clone, upload and download data on any topic, idea, or event that you can possibly think of. Beers on tap, marijuana prices, forest fires, hurricanes, ecological & environmental concerns, NASA studies, United Nations research… you name it, Buzzdata awaits data from one and all. For coders and programmers, think of BuzzData as GitHub for data. For the non-Github & geeks of the world, think of it sort of as a much simpler sexier Facebook of sorts for spreadsheets (I dislike the fact I am using Facebook to describe BuzzData given I am not a fan of them) - sorry BuzzData please don’t hate me for that analogy but I have to get my point across. One Love.

I will profess that I am not much of a baseball expert.  My heyday of watching baseball was during my punk teen years rallying behind Canada’s then beloved Toronto Blue Jay’s who managed for the first time to bring the World Series title north of the Bars & Stars for two years in a row in 92 & 93 – Back to Back baby! It was an impressive feat and I will never forget the dinger out in left field by Joe Carter that sealed the deal for the back to back title.

One of the original things I looked at from the dataset mentioned was the highest paid players for each year and to my surprise there was only one year where the team with the highest paid player won the world series, and that was the New York Yankee’s in 2009 with A Rod (Alex Rodriguez). I created a simple dataset to outline & confirm this fact because I was in disbelief.

The original dataset sparked a healthy debate and some interesting visualizations from people like Artful Geek and Gary Storey. From there I wanted to dig deeper and analyze some more numbers by creating a dataset with the team payrolls from 1988 -2010 (Keep in mind there was no World Series in 94 due to a strike).

Over the 22 year period the World Series was won 7 times by the team with highest payroll but only two teams achieved this. The Toronto Blue Jays had the highest paid teams in their back to back titles in 92 & 93, and the payroll king New York Yankee’s won with the highest paid team in 96, 98, 99, 2000 & 2009. If my math is correct the highest payroll during this period constitutes a 33% World Series title win rate. The average winning payroll ranking sits at around 7 but if you look above, no 7th ranked payroll team has won, however there have been three 8th placed teams, and just last year the 9th placed San Francisco Giants earned the crown.  This graph sheds light on a newer trend as well. During the last decade, the highest payroll team has only won once or 10% (Yankees 2009) and the top 2 team won twice ( 20%: Red Sox 04 & 07). What gets really interesting is that the other 7 titles (70%) during the last decade have went to teams ranked 8th or higher in payroll (as high as 24th: 2003 Florida Marlins) with the ten year average sitting at 9.6.  Based on this statistic alone, the 2011 payroll stats has the Detroit Tigers ranked 10th.  Will they be your World Series champions for 2011?  I have no idea but I would love to get more people engaged on BuzzData to join these datasets and discussion.

I looked at some of the most influential and followed “Baseball & MLB” twitter users and it would be great to get them and others dialed in:

Alyssa_Milano (Yeah that Alyssa Milano. She’s a smart cookie & loves baseball)

Keith Law

KFUCKINGP

SFGiants

KashiwagiAkira (BuzzDataへようこそ)

SI_JonHeyman

jaysonst

BillPlaschke

GlobeSox

MLBONFOX

stl_cardinals

robneyer

GIZMONATION

Forestbookuruoi

YESNetwork

ToddZolecki

NickSwisher

espn

SportsCenter

liderendeportes

AmyKNelson

CBSSports

tribetalk

Send these people and other baseball nuts a tweet and tell them about this awesome site.

I see @BuzzData for the serious, leisurely, and humorous alike. It is a repository to store, foster, and grow ideas from data, and I believe such a platform is necessary for us to advance democracy, our environment, ideals, and at the core – our future! Imagine more governments offering up data to the public in pursuit of better solutions, a business looking for help in solving complex problems, an organization looking at ways to improve the environment.  It is happening and BuzzData is setting out to further unleash this open data frenzy.

The use case for sports will be interesting as well.  I believe the networks and gaming companies that truly understand this will harness platforms like these to propel their businesses. Gamification and social engagement around data has huge potential.

Thoughts?

@JaretManuel | Jaret Manuel on BuzzData

This is a fascinating video for all Designers, Engineers, Artists, and startup enthusiasts.

Simply one of the best talks I have watched in some time.

Enjoy! @JaretManuel

There is great counsel in solitude. Seek it from time to time and revel in it’s sheer beauty and insight. To catch a sunrise greeting a new day and listening to nature is a calming experience. Many of us often run from being alone when in fact it is [...]]]>

There is great counsel in solitude. Seek it from time to time and revel in it’s sheer beauty and insight. To catch a sunrise greeting a new day and listening to nature is a calming experience. Many of us often run from being alone when in fact it is sometimes the very thing we need to recharge. Five, ten, or twenty minutes may be all you need.

Don’t you feel the same ol’ same ol’ political wheel is turning?

This country requires fresh passionate thinking and leadership that doesn’t smack of power hungry phoniness. We need to be constitutionally bound from coast to coast to coast where there is equality for all, favouritism for none, and [...]]]>

Don’t you feel the same ol’ same ol’ political wheel is turning?

This country requires fresh passionate thinking and leadership that doesn’t smack of power hungry phoniness. We need to be constitutionally bound from coast to coast to coast where there is equality for all, favouritism for none, and is led by a movement that is open to honest and transparent dialogue. The old way of political wrangling must die where a charismatic leader will arise, and with their party transform this country and set her sails on a wonderful journey into the future.

As the motorized vehicle transformed society so will the Internet and associated technologies.  Why then are we not a world leader in broadband?

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