Voyaging Mind

Oh wow! I have actually created a new article over on the main voyagingmind site. It is about downloading stockmarket data from yahoo and you can find it here . I will probably do a couple more runs to proof read it, as I hammered it out fairly quickly and my brain is not in the mood for doing much in the way of proof reading tonight. Still I wanted to push it out tonight just so I don't procrastinate on it. I think I have finally settled on using pycharm as my python editor, much as I like both vim and emacs the zero set up and maintenance that pycharm offers is just too compelling. I am also thinking about doing a reasonable amount of Java soon (starting another game) so having a single editor (Intellij) that I spend most of my  at home coding means less load on the brain. I press vim commands a fair bit when coding in Visual Studio when at work... Having said that I have been playing with ipython and the notebook functionality it provides. I am very impressed.

Things stay roughly the same but also change a fair bit would be a fair way of summing up the past few weeks. First up python has really pulled me in. At the moment I just really enjoy it. I have read though the book Fluent Python and that really help for me to see that I needed to more past the "Yep python, I know it and code in it just like I code C++" stage that many have when learning python, well replace C++ with what ever language you know quite well. I have not put a lot of what is in the book to practice yet but am looking forward to doing so. I suppose I should explain that the goal of the book is to take someone who has a bit of python experience and explain the more advance features of python. It is about 700 pages (I got the ebook) and does a really good job in what it sets out to do. Well worth a read. The stock market is still attracting some of my attention. Just messing with little algorithms is such good fun. I should write an article or two about it. ...

Do excuse the slight break in blogging. It was sort of deliberate. I have been a little busy with a few hobby projects. I took a good dive into the Go programming language and I think I like it. No in a wow this is amazing more in a yep this can feel a little restrictive compared with C++ or others but I get what you are trying to achieve here and can like it. Probably the only thing I didn't like about it was the use of Capital letters to mean publicly accessible. It is weird that I don't like it  - it just feels well wrong. Given a few thousand lines of code I would get past this and if that is the only thing I have to complain about. In terms of development Go is moving pretty quick at the moment, lots of libraries appearing and generally a good vibe about it. I am not planning on committing any more time to it but overall I was left with a good feeling about it. One to watch in the future My other little project involved stocks and shares. After reading a couple of ar...

It would be fair to say I have not been productive during this year. I have done a great deal of learning rather than actually getting on with the project I had in mind for much of this year. We are now gradually heading towards to the end of the third month and all I have is a few abortive attempts at starting something. Yes I have learned a great deal about servers and some about more modern ways of doing client side web apps. I do like that style of creating apps perhaps because servers are still a bit of an unknown to me at least in real use so pushing as much to the client is my safe place. But so far the results are telling, I have produced nothing of note. So I decided to kill it. If a project is not gaining some development momentum after two and a half months then it is probably a good idea to move on. Perhaps I will return to it at a later date but for now it is dead.  It is funny how the decision to kill it came about, I was having a frustrating time trying to figure somethi...

It is fair to say I have written this entry about 4 times and that is kind of funny as it is just one of those what I had for dinner entries. As my previous posts indicate I am taking a bit of a dive into server side web development as it is area I know little about. The Udacity web course taught me a fair bit and made me think seriously about using the google app engine. Something just didn't feel right about it. The lack of control part where it seems very hard to get you data out if you decide to migrate away has just about scared me off. I however liked python and took a look at using Flask. It seem pretty nice but again I didn't really progress with it. Last night I realised that I don't yet know enough about server side webdev to get going on the project I want to create and decided to attack the Node JS book I have again. This keeps in with my only use Javascript of C++ for projects this year, plus it is self contained and should give me the knowledge I need to a...

I have had a presence on the internet for a very long time, having built static sites, run sites on various content management systems as well having written a lot of text in various blogging sites. One thing I have never really is done is getting to grips with server side programming. Sure I wrote a couple of app-engine apps  but I am not sure I understood the concepts. I however had an idea for a site I am thinking of creating that would require a reasonable amount of server side coding. So I decided to learn a bit more about the topic. I signed up the the Web Development course at udacity, the free one as I don't need a certificate at the end. So far it has been pretty interesting. While I sort of recall some bit from previous adventures, taking it from the ground up has been pretty interesting and I am certainly learning a fair bit. I have also brought a book on node js and express. While I am only slowly progressing with this it is touching on similar topics the udacity ...

Well I would not say I have been productive over the past few days. I have been busy but in a distracted sort of way. No simple game has hooked me yet. I like the idea of producing some simple, small games but my drawing abilities let me down and I get disappointed. I am learning towards creating games that are a little bit more off the beaten path so my, lack of, drawing skills are not compared with full time artists. My art skill at art varies a great deal over a period of a year. It is all down to practice and knowing the tools. It would be fair to say I am at a low point at the moment and the only way out of this is to do more art.  The tool I am most familiar with is Inkscape and to be honest it is not ideal for the creation of art I would like in my games, that means I have to leave my comfort zone and learn some more tools. Usually at this point I would head towards something like gimp but this time I am taking a look around as all I really need in a sprite editor. It would be n...