After putting down World of Warcraft for over a week, I decided to start looking into more productive uses of my time. Of course, the biggest thing right now is sending my mom to acupuncture. It takes out a good two days of the week but I do see a lot of progress, compared to where she was just over a month ago. Today, my mom demonstrated more flexibility in her right leg and having slightly more strength where she can hold up her left leg. Sitting on the wheelchair though, it’s still a struggle but most of that is due to her needing to re-build her leg muscles in her knees and calves on the right side. Once she’s able to do that, she might be able to do some limited walking with the aid of a walker. Also, her right shoulder demonstrates more looseness. Our acupuncturist is having her work little by little moving down her right arm to get my mom to re-build her muscle. Of course, we want to have my mom be able to grip once again, but she needs to first build downward to the point where first her elbow joint can move once again, then wrist and hopefully down the road her fingers. It’s very impressive seeing all this in action.
Usually, while my mom undergoes therapy, I’m at a local coffee shop working on things like writing or coding. Yes, I’m trying to get back into coding. Once in a while I get a serious call from a recruiter. I keep my price high to see if they can get me a serious offer. But at the same time I’m slowly testing the waters in preparing to re-enter the workforce. Still, I want to keep my hunger strong for technology and am starting to look into adding a few pieces of technology into my belt.
The primary two I’ve been going back and forth on are Ruby and Python. I feel that PHP is slowly running its course with me and that I no longer want to use it as a crutch, much like how I felt Perl was a crutch for the longest time. While there are still plenty of jobs for Perl and PHP, it’s always good to increase the variety of what you know. Right now, we’re seeing Ruby and Python make pretty big strides into the industry.
Python is something that I dabble in on occasion. The big thing about Python is that many universities are now using Python as a teaching tool. The readability and “one way to do things” methodology make Python an appealing language to teach students. However, the real impact of Python in the technology industry, for me at least, is seeing the number of jobs out there.
Recently, I did a quick job search comparing PHP, Perl, Ruby, Python, Ruby on Rails and Django using Dice.com to see the numbers. The big surprise for me is that Python, at least according to my search, resulted in a greater number of total opportunities compared to PHP. Perl still dominates in the language area, but this move to Python may be because of its connection to universities. However, Rails still exceeds Django when it comes to the framework side of things.
For myself, I felt myself at a crossroads. I want to learn Python because of the mass appeal and longer term potential. However, Rails does have a significant number of pluses beyond job opportunities. A few that I perceived are the community backing rails, the number of solutions and the wide support. Also, when I hit the bookstore, I only could find a single Rails book so it pretty much cemented my decision. Oh and the “cool” factor that seems to encompass the brogramming groups.
That isn’t to say that I’m unwilling to learn Python nor scorn Django. In truth, I did pick up Django a while back. I really like how Django nicely can integrate with Google Apps Engine. From what I’ve seen Django has some nice features like the admin tool, which is similar to a kind of scaffolding for your models. But my gut instinct tells me that just the number of job opportunities and the community support and possible solutions make Rails a better short term solution just to give myself something to chew on. I might, from time to time, return to Python but I would like to master the Rails framework first.
I ended up picking up the Learning Rails 3 book from O’Reilly. There were some elements that really appealed to me like migrations and unit testing. Also, I read about other integrations such as coffeescript, another thing I very much am looking to learn. So right now, I’m trying to set myself up with Rails and am doing some basic tutorials.
One thing I have noticed about Rails, at least on my Macbook Pro with OS 10.6 Snow Leopard, is that despite being installed, Rails did present some problems. The main issue seemed to be that Rails was not properly upgraded. So I spent most of the day trying to upgrade Rails and Gems to get it to work. Using a few online tutorials/guides, the Gems/Rails upgrades were not that easy and I often found a large number of dependency issues that required me to do repetitive upgrades. I’m not sure if I’m just a noob at all this but that didn’t impress me.
But once I got the basics installed, setting up a simple CRUD application with scaffolding and model validation was a breeze. I have a few ideas for some projects for Rails that I think will make great learning projects. So I’m really pumped to dig my teeth into more of the advanced topics down the line.
Once I feel more adept with Rails, I will be looking into picking up an IDE. I was recommended RubyMine. However, the cost is a bit high right now so I might wait as a friend mentioned it goes on discount once in a while. If not that, then I might try Aptena as I believe they have a pretty good Ruby/Rails integrated environment.
Also, I mentioned that I ended up giving PyDev a try. Since the recommended IDE of PyCharm also is a bit on the pricey side for me at the moment, I decided to give Eclipse the go motion again. Adding PyDev into Eclipse was a breeze and after seamlessly detecting my Python environment, I was able to get a few simple scripts going. I feel that Python might be one of those things where I’ll have to learn something like a Django to use. The problem is that most of my style of coding revolves around the web. So without a base framework to do all the dirty work, it becomes difficult finding the motivation to learn every little detail about a language. Compare that with Rails at the moment, where I can easily think of a few cool projects to whet my appetite in progressing with Ruby.
Beyond programming, I’m trying to keep my artsy side going by getting back into literature. Along with the Rails book, I picked up Pynchon and Murakami. But before I can delve into those guys, I need to finish up Gibson’s Zero History. I bought Zero History a few years ago but barely made it through 30 pages before recently picking it back up. Most of my motivation for delving back into reading is that I want to do more fantasy writing (in which I’ll talk about in a minute). It might seem strange to read someone like a Gibson for getting inspired for the fantasy genre. However, I’m still waiting for the new Stephen R Donaldson book that concludes the last leg of the Thomas Covenant chronicles and that’s not due until the end of the year (supposedly).
That said, probably some of the best advice I’ve ever received when it comes to writing is that you should always be reading as you write. I can see how this is valid. After putting down World of Warcraft, I honestly lacked inspiration for anything. My mind felt blank and I struggled with writers block for a few days. Although I still have issues coming up with new material, those first few days really were awful for me as I lacked anything satisfying to say. Hence, picking up someone like a Gibson just to get some ideas flowing.
Gibson though is great because he’s very detail oriented and has his own style that compels me to read him. His characters and story plot lack in favor of all those details. But I need the vocabulary, the prose, the sentence structure and rhythm to help resuscitate those dying nerve endings in my cranium.
I won’t do a review just yet of Zero History as I want to finish it up. Right now, I don’t have a solid opinion and am letting him guide me through the story. Most of what I’m getting out of Zero History are the details of how he’s using a contemporary setting to embellish the world. The whole series has been great in that you can see how he’s taking what’s existing and pulling it all together as opposed to guestimating what the future looks like. I still think Gibson struggles because he might sometimes not be able to keep up as fluidly as someone like myself who directly works with technology. However, I think he does introduce a very fresh point of view (like employing Twitter for creating espionage related accounts).
So again this all leads to my fantasy writing. Oh what a struggle that is. I’m never quite satisfied and it’s a real pain to come up with things that might feel fresh for readers. I think part of the problem is that I’m not able to fully immerse myself in the fantasy environment that I want. Possibly, that’s due to not fully comprehending what I want. I always felt that fantasy writing is about being in a place you’d rather be. While the premise is ideal, in practice trying to arrive in that environment is much more difficult than it seems. For me, I want to detail everything, create histories and links to everything. It becomes quite overwhelming after a period because you can go in so many different directions. Some might prove fruitful others are a complete waste of time. And then there are details that are so critical to readers that you take for granted and end up mistakenly leaving out.
At any rate, I decided to kind of skip ahead today because the sections leading up to this point are things in which I’m struggling far too much with. I can’t reveal in depth what I want to write about but I have to say I can completely understand when writers pull elements back into the present. It’s just so much easier to relate to things around you.
I’m going to continue doing this “cool things” aspect of my blog. It might be boring for the more outdoorsy type of reader, but I wanted to share more of the interesting hobbies I’m doing as I try to help my mom recover.