CSS Zen Garden

Perhaps lots of people already know about this resource, but perhaps not. I stumbled upon it last night while I was trying to figure out just what it was that I did to completely frog the skunk out of my website design.

CSS Zen Garden

Welcome to a website with general information and a multitude of design options to show just how powerful CSS can be. Each design can be downloaded and the CSS studied. Lots of the designs are also very well commented. The site is a little dated, and it admits that in the Resources section. But the designs are very inspiring, and they encourage using them as examples.

Progress on the Wordpress front has halted. I think it will be an option for another project, or a revise of the website down the road. For now, I'll be focusing on getting the design I have to do what I want without any advanced bells and whistles.

Code is Poetry

I found this on the Wordpress Website. I'm researching what it will involve to include a page on my company's website that will allow me to post updates on a daily or weekly basis. Wordpress has been mentioned in almost every resource I've read recently (that is anywhere near up-to-date), so I'm looking into it now.

Finding this at the bottom of their page was neat and I really like it. Click through the image to visit the Wordpress Codex, where I found this gorgeous little design piece.

Anecdotal Advice

My tunes for the night. This soundtrack is so amazing. The game is great, too. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and I look forward to playing the second game the same studio produced and released recently, called Transistor.

I promise I didn't come here to babble about video games, much as I'd like to. Instead, I want to babble about the furthering of ones' knowledge and skill.

This has been a recent discovery for me. I described it when I first felt it as "a desire so strong to achieve a goal that the relatively unenjoyable steps that need to be taken along the way are no longer unenjoyable". When I questioned my fiancé on what a feeling like that could possibly be, he merely named it "motivation". That's when I realized that I had not been truly motivated to do something for a very long time. Long enough to forget what it felt like.

That was in 2011. At the time, the feeling applied to my artwork, which I was using as an outlet for brainstorming a story that Andrei and I were working on together. I became enamored with the concept of MUDs after being introduced to one, and in 2012, I spent all of my time learning as much as I could about them. The desire I had to learn about them made me voracious for any information I could find, though it was quite thin by the time I started looking (most MUD information was out-of-date by 2007, with the massive popularity of emerging MMOs at the time). As I learned more about MUDs, I only became more fascinated by them. The majority of the old codebases were written in C, so I took the natural next-step and picked up C to try to fully understand them. The knowledge certainly helped when I started trying to script short programs into the MUD I build for!

Progress on that front has been halting, thanks to several projects I have on my plate that have been vying for priority. Now that I've made the overall decision to focus on HTML/CSS, I feel the same motivation driving me forward when I get stuck. I've grown to call it "possibility", personally. If I give up on whatever I'm working on, the possibility of anything coming of it will die. And, really... Anything is possible.

But, enough broad anecdote. What does that kind of motivation look like? Outside of the forward-driving force that is ones' own motivation, it looks something like this:

• Scouring shelves at bookstores for used and new books that could hold useful information
• Hunting for online resources; magazines, white papers, newsletters, blogs... anything.
• Stepping away from the games or TV shows a little earlier at night to fit a little bit of reading in before bed
• Keeping a digital copy open on the phone/tablet/computer on the off-chance that a 15-minute span of time pops up to allow for some quick reading
• Writing a lot of code
• Making lots of mistakes
• Reading or talking about those mistakes and finding industry advice on how to avoid them
• Making more mistakes, and hopefully, some visible progress

At least, that's what it looks like for me. I was lucky enough to stumble upon a used book published in 2004 for $6 that focuses on web standards for HTML and CSS. Inside, the author made heavy reference to his blog, so I went to see what he had to say. The blog hadn't been updated in a year or so, but even so... Thankfully, HTML and CSS haven't changed too much in the past 10 years, and the changes that have been made are very helpfully documented on the W3Schools Website. With that being the case, this blog is a fount of information. Additionally, the author often references a great deal of other resources. While reading through his blog, I found myself bookmarking every other page I visited for the quality of content I read. Some things were a little confusing, being marketed to web designers who have been in the industry for years. But, that unenjoyable feeling of being confused? It didn't last long when I reached a point in those articles when things began making sense. If I had given up and decided to come back when I had more experience, I'd have robbed myself of the opportunity to understand. It took more effort to continue reading something I legitimately didn't get, but the payoff was far greater.

This has been an incredibly rambly way of explaining why it's a bad idea to give up. If something seems out of reach, there are times that you give yourself an excuse to not work as hard. It is tough to keep the motivation going. But to throw the towel in because something is too hard or you don't get it is the wrong approach -- instead, figure out why it's too hard or why you don't understand, and go from there. And if that is way too much work, then start asking yourself if you've chosen the right thing to take up your time.

Some of the HTML/CSS references I found are listed below, for anyone interested. I wish all a wonderful night or day, whichever the case may be.

---

• SimpleBits.com Archive (aforementioned Blog)
• A List Apart
• ImpressiveWebs
• Smashing Magazine

All Over the Place

It has been a bit of a roller coaster for me lately, except without the rails for guidance. I'm not necessarily complaining, but it is certainly making my head spin.

I'll start by saying that this state of affairs is not a bad thing; it simply is the state of affairs. My direction changes every week, it seems. I don't really like telling people what I'm working on because I know by this point that something will change and I'll no longer be working on that thing I told them about.

This could account for my quietness here, despite having announced my return.

For a little bit, I had a bit of a programming mentor. We shared similar interests, played the same games, and really got along great for a while. During this time, I plunged head-first back into my C lessons. I read information from as many as three different resources, depending on which one was most convenient for the place and time. I also took up Python with an interesting approach of "code this and the instructor will show you why it works afterwards". That lasted until I reached the abstract "object" part of Python, and my mentor spent two hours trying to explain it over chat. I ended up grasping the idea, but I put off going back to the Python lessons. Instead, I read about more C.

This lasted until my mentor no longer had the time to dedicate to helping me. I continued, regardless, but I had a bit of a crisis in the meantime. The work I was putting in to learn C was for some pretty lofty goals -- goals that wouldn't be achieved for possibly years to come. Even the programs I had been brainstorming to automate certain systems at the printshop would have taken an enormous amount of time, and until I had something to show for it, I felt like I was a ship taking on water. The skill I was learning wasn't going to help me or my company by the time I could use it!

I'll take this moment to explain that I am part-owner of the above-mentioned printshop. Since 2012, when I became office manager, I have simply been putting in the time I need to and waiting to punch my card at the end of the day. My job started out being rewarding, but a combination of bad experiences with clients and the daily shifting deadlines had jaded me. The other business owners and myself spoke about selling the business, and since that was the plan, I didn't think too deeply on the details. Now, I realize that no one will pay what we ask if they don't think there is enough worth to justify it. Part of that worth is the online presence my business has.

During this epiphany, I was browsing some free coding classes. It was a Sunday morning. My fiancé was sleeping in. I was either going to find a free class or I was going to pay Blizzard money to reactivate my World of Warcraft account. Since nobody wants to teach C for free (or, if they do, they're hard to find), I was willing to take whatever I could get. What was the first thing that popped up for me?

HTML/CSS.

The course was on Codeacademy.com. They claimed you could learn everything you needed to know about basic HTML and CSS in 7 hours. I knew it wouldn't take me that long. So I completed the course in 6 hours. After that, I did a dummy page for a tabled project I had been mulling over. I showed it to my fiancé and after his outpouring of positivity, I began working on the design for my company's website.

I realize where this path takes me. Jquery/Javascript. MySQL. PHP. XML. There isn't much here that I can apply to C. But, there is a lot of information out there that I can accumulate. And once I learn it, it won't go away. This is a topic I can apply immediately to my work and will also help me immensely down the road.

So that is my state of affairs. In other news, House of Cards is an amazing series and I highly recommend it to anyone and everyone (Kevin Spacey is fantastic). And I'll leave with a note that there could be a slight shift from C programming to web programming.

New Program to Oggle

I finally hammered out the computational error in the program project I've been working on this week the past day or two. As with most of the programs out of this book, it is riddled with specific tools the author wants to be used at this point, and arbitrary numbers (which, are hopefully less-arbitrary with the comments I've written). Have a gander:

/* Programming Project #8 Chapter 5                                *
* Write a program that asks the user to enter a time (expressed in *
* hours and minutes, using the 24-hour clock). The program then    *
* displays the departure and arrival times for the flight whose    *
* departure time is closest to that entered by the user.          */

#include <stdio.h>

int main (void)    {

    int hours_entry, minutes_entry, min_since_midn;
                          /* minutes since midnight */

    printf("Enter a 24-hour time: ");
    scanf("%d:%d", &hours_entry, &minutes_entry);
   
    if (hours_entry > 24)    {    
         /* Error message for invalid hour value */
        printf("Invalid hour value; please try again.\n");
        return 0;
        }       
    if (minutes_entry > 59)    {   
         /*Error message for invalid minute value */
        printf("Invalid minute value; please try again.\n");
        return 0;
        }
   
    min_since_midn = hours_entry * 60 + minutes_entry;
   
    if (min_since_midn <= 532)   
           /* 8:00am is the first departure, converted to
            * minutes equals 480 minutes since midnight, plus
            * the equivalent of half of the amount of minutes
            * between 8:00am and 9:43am */
        printf("Closest departure time is 8:00 a.m., arriving at 10:16 a.m.\n");
    else if (min_since_midn <= 631)
            /* 9:43am is the second departure, same as above */
        printf("Closest departure time is 9:43 a.m., arriving at 11:52 a.m.\n");
    else if (min_since_midn <= 723)
            /* 11:19am is the third departure */
        printf("Closest departure time is 11:19 a.m., arriving at 1:31 p.m.\n");
    else if (min_since_midn <= 804)   
            /* 12:47pm is the fourth departure */
        printf("Closest departure time is 12:47 p.m., arriving at 3:00 p.m.\n");
    else if (min_since_midn <= 893)   
            /* 2:00pm is the fifth departure */
        printf("Closest departure time is 2:00 p.m., arriving at 4:08 p.m.\n");
    else if (min_since_midn <= 938)   
            /* 3:45pm is the sixth departure */
        printf("Closest departure time is 3:45 p.m., arriving at 5:55 p.m.\n");
    else if (min_since_midn <= 1223)   
            /* 7:00pm is the seventh departure */
        printf("Closest departure time is 7:00 p.m., arriving at 9:20 p.m.\n");
    else if (min_since_midn <= 1439)   
            /* 9:45pm is the last departure, so all times after *
             * 9:45 will display this time */
        printf("Closest departure time is 9:45 p.m., arriving at 11:58 p.m.\n");
    else
        printf("Invalid entry; please try again.\n");
       
    return 0;
}

Criticisms and advice are both welcome -- just know that I only really have int/float types and if/switch statements with a smattering of logical operators and relational operators in my arsenal at this point in time. Next chapter will be on Loops, and a few chapters later, I'll finally get into Arrays! (I also apologize for the atrocious line-break issue. I did my best to make it pretty and easy to read!)

Is there such a thing as a variable name that is too long? Lol.

I'll make a post eventually to give this a little more context

Jurassic Park: Trespasser

This is a "Welcome back!" post as well as a conglomeration of links to an interesting topic. Jurassic Park: Trespasser was a game I never experienced, but because of its ambitiousness (and the lack of funds and time to properly implement said ambitious design) it was equally regarded as the worst and best game of its time. Here are the resources, of which I have only read through about half:

Wikipedia Article (short and sweet)

Source Code Review (gameplay videos, interviews, and more)

Postmortem by Richard Wyckoff (from the designers, a behind-the-scenes look)

Source Code and More (I didn't link to this)

It is written in C++ which makes it an interesting chunk of code for me after I'm done messing around in C.

Did you hear me right? Yes, you did. I may have disappeared for a year or so, but I'm back! And working on becoming a "crack programmer so my dad can retire". :)