Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Resources I Recommend and Use

Good day to everyone, and a pre-emptive happy new year to you as well.

I figured that a post would be in order to allow anyone reading to see exactly where I'm learning my stuff from. You can give it a check if you're interested in learning as well, or if you want to validate the source of my learning. I always accept recommendations, if you believe you have another source that is better or more advanced or you just flat-out prefer for no reason.

I started learning C++ out of a book "Teach Yourself C++ in 24 Hours", but that book was very difficult to understand. It skipped over many major ideas. It didn't even cover the "cin.get()" function, which I severely needed in some of my programs.

However, someone on the Ubuntu community forums was nice enough to point me to a killer C++ tutorial. It's in-depth, easy to read, and comes with short quizzes to keep you on your toes. Here ya go: http://www.cprogramming.com/tutorial.html#c++tutorial

Along with that, I've been trying my luck at learning HTML, which really isn't so bad. I say give it a look. It'll help you figure out the web a little more, if you already don't have a grasp on it. It's maintained by the world wide web consortium. The guys who brought to you... everything you see here. Hah. It's got quizzes at the end of the lessons, and even an example page, where you can test out different aspectst of HTML.
Link: http://w3schools.com/htmL/html_examples.asp

The same site has a good tutorial on javascript, located at:
http://www.w3schools.com/js/default.asp

And of course, the first programming tutorial I ever learned from. I have re-read it three times. It's a beginner's guide to Python, with some Javascript and VBscript thrown in there as well. It's really well-written, comprehensive, and makes me just a little nostalgic of 8th grade winter vacation, downloading my Python interpreter and spending hours telling it to pring things like "Eat my shorts!"
Link: http://www.freenetpages.co.uk./hp/alan.gauld/

Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Hello, World!

Greetings, reader. If you don't know who I am, I am certain then that you found this blog by pure accident. I doubt that I have done a good job at advertising myself or this blog. That is completely fine by me. I think this is more of an introspective blog. Something to look back on in the future when I have become successful... or not successful, to see exactly how I manage to get that way.

So supposing you are not in fact Tyler Williams in the future, reading this, I guess I may as well explain why I am using up valuable server space on the internet.

So here we go. Expect long winded paragraphs and slightly out-of-order trains of thought. If either of these factors irk you, I urge you to leave this place and never return.

This post may be quite long. I am not opposed to long posts. You should expect them.

So a little bit of background about me. I promise to keep it short and sweet:
I have always been on computers. Even when I was two, my mother would allow me to type away at our family's old Packard Bell desktop. Since then I have always aspired to work with computers. I have undergone several quests to do it, and my most recent computer binge has proven to be the most fruitful.

Over the course of 3 years, I have sporadically and not quite completely learned how to rudimentally program using Python and C++. Along with that, I have a fairly decent knowledge of HTML. And while I write HTML, I try to keep it strict and up to XHTML standards, without actually using any XHTML elements.

I have recently moved my old emachine desktop into my room and loaded up Ubuntu 8.04 on the machine. I have partitioned my hard drive and I plan on running Arch Linux and Debian linux on it as well. That machine is used mostly for experimentation. I have all my C++ works in progress on it, and I spend a good deal of time messing around the internals of Linux.

While I do spend time on my old, faithful desktop, I also possess a MacBook I use for day-to-day purposes. I spend an unholy amount of time on Facebook, Livejournal, AIM, and a few webcomics. I am writing to you from that machine. It is my mundane machine, considering how expensive it is, I feel it would be foolish to do any mucking about in the internals. (However, I do know a good deal about my OS, and know how to modify it to my likings).

On the subject of computers, I have a plan in the works for the summer. I am saving up money to use building my own machine from scratch. (All parts ordered from http://www.geeks.com, a website I highly recommend). I may end up building it, selling it, and making a small business out of the practice. I am not completely sure of that, yet.

Aside from individual experimentation in technology, I am involved in an Applied Research program at my high school. I am developing a new heat transfer fluid for use in a liquid cooling system. In the process, I have been learning about computer hardware, and the BIOS settings. However, as all science goes, it has been prone to a good amount of setbacks. But alas, failure is success in science, I suppose. I might make that my mantra.

I excel in most other areas of academia (when I put effort into it). But this journal will not be dedicated to anything outside of software, hardware, and possibly my research.

I believe I have addressed all I need to. Beware, this blog may be moving to some serverspace on the debisschop.net servers, run by my uncle. However, I think I want to actually write the code for my own blog on that.