So, a few days ago, I announced that all future Coding Math episodes would be released on egghead.io.
The first one was released there, and it turns out that this arrangement is not going to work out the way I hoped it would. Let me say at the outset that there is no problem between myself and the company. I’ll continue to produce egghead.io-specific videos for them. But I thought that moving the Coding Math stuff over there would be a simple matter of uploading it and publishing it there. And that’s not the case. Naturally, egghead.io has a brand and certain standards and style guidelines necessary for keeping consistency when dealing with so many different instructors. Actually, it’s not so much of a “style” as a stripped-down, “just the facts” concept, which is great. I wholeheartedly agree with that concept. But the Coding Math videos, as-is, break too many rules and would have to undergo surgery on a video-by-video basis in order to fit in to that universe. Also note that egghead.io was not refusing to publish them. They were very accommodating, even offering help in terms of manpower to do that editing.
Read more...I’m happy to announce that Coding Math videos will now be available on egghead.io.
Since I started making videos, it has been a great source of joy for me. I love teaching, whether it is writing, speaking or making videos. It’s very fulfilling to spend time learning a subject and then be able to distill that subject down into simple enough terms that others can understand it and actually USE it. And the tons of positive comments I have received on the videos have totally defied my previous views of what YouTube comment sections were supposed to look like. I don’t answer all of them, but I do read every single one and it’s always a nice pick-me-up to get one of your great comments.
Read more...Well, this post has been some time in the making. As I mentioned a week or so ago, I’m back on Linux full time on my main personal machine. That machine, by the way, is a 3 year old Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro. Probably my favorite computer ever so far. The only thing that is showing its age is the battery. It was never that great to begin with, now, you can practically watch it drop by the minute. But since I mainly use it at home, it’s not been a huge issue.
Read more...My computing platform history in a nutshell.
1984 – First significant interaction with a computer. A Commodore 128 I inherited at work.
1989 – Bought my own Commodore Amiga.
Early 90’s – Was given a pc built from spare parts by a programmer friend. This was upgraded and evolved piece by piece, sometimes completely replaced throughout the 90’s / early 00’s. Eventually jumped over to laptops. This saw me through Windows 3.0, 3.1, 95, 98, 2000, NT, XP.
Read more...I’ve been curious about Chrome OS and Chromebooks for a while now. A couple of months ago I replaced my daughter’s dead laptop with a cheap Chromebook and she loves it. The only thing she really misses is Minecraft.
Then, the other week, I got interested in the idea of running Android apps on Chrome OS. This is a recent development that only works on a few specific devices as of this writing, but will be pushed out to a lot more in the coming months. I decided to dive in and get a Asus Chromebook Flip, as it’s one of the devices that do support Android apps out of the box at this time. It’s also got decent specs at a decent price. $260-$280 with 4GB RAM and 16GB storage, plus and SD card slot for more storage. It’s also got the Lenovo-Yoga-type-flip-around thing going on, which means you can use it as a tablet or other configurations. I never use my Yoga like that, but with the smaller size of the Asus, it’s actually workable.
Read more...The other week I got a new Chromebook. Mainly just to see what the user experience was, but I surprised myself by liking it a lot more than I expected I would. But that’s another story.
I started being more interested in Chrome Apps, which work in Chrome on a regular PC or Mac as well, and started looking into the development process of Chrome Apps and Extensions. Pretty cool stuff. So here is my first extension, Chrome Apps Shortcut.
Read more...Did a bit of work on Quicksettings.js recently. Mostly based on some features suggested in issues and pull requests. A quick summary:
All of those have corresponding bind, set and get methods as well.
Read more...The word “amateur” has gotten a bad meaning over the years. Amateur is the opposite of professional. It has come to mean someone is sloppy, or someone who doesn’t care about what they are doing. But really the unprofessional part is more literal – you are doing something that is not your profession. You are not paid to do this for a living. This largely comes from the sports world. A professional athlete gets paid to play the sport. An amateur does not.
Read more...A few people were asking for the QuickSettings Library to be added to a CDN for ease of use in projects. I finally got around to doing this. It’s now hosted on https://www.jsdelivr.com/.
To use QuickSettings in a project, you can directly link to the main minified js file at:
https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/quicksettings/1.0/quicksettings.min.js
You’ll also need to add one of the QuickSettings style sheets.
Plain:
https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/quicksettings/1.0/quicksettings.css
Minimal:
https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/quicksettings/1.0/quicksettings_minimal.css
or Minimal Dark:
https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/quicksettings/1.0/quicksettings_minimal_dark.css
JSBin
You can add QuickSettings to JSBin semi-permanently. While on the JSBin page, open the browser’s console. Emphasis on browser’s console. NOT JSBin’s console section. And paste in this snippet:
Read more...Just a quick tip. I’ve been using Android Studio extensively, daily, for the last year and a half. One minor editing feature I’ve grown to love is the way it handles commenting lines. You have your keyboard shortcut, Ctrl-/ or Cmd-/. This toggles the comment on the current line and then moves to the next line. So if you want to comment, or uncomment a bunch of lines, you can just hit that shortcut a few times and it will move through the lines and do its thing.
Read more...