[CA] Hackathon – Our First App

Posted on May 14, 2012 by kung

This weekend was our first Hackathon, which is basically a portmanteau of “hacking marathon.” It started with a brainstorming session where people threw out ideas. I was the first to volunteer an idea with the Donut Tracker – basically an app that could keep you up to date on the latest and greatest Chicago Donut information. It was mostly a joke.

One of the Tuesday-Thursday students, Nakyum, came up to me during voting and asked, “Are you the donut idea guy? I like it; it’s cute!” Before I knew it, she had recruited Tatsu, Adam, and Frank to help work on the idea.

Hackathon was a lot of fun. I think it helped that most of my teammates came in with the same approach toward the Hackathon – that it should be a fun learning experience. So we basically just goofed off and added features when and where we could. Have you heard of feature creep? That was basically the definition of our app.

We immediately got to hacking. We were the first ones out the gate and working on the lab computers. We set up Raghu’s example code for pulling a stream of information, and then dove into the Twitter API (An API stands for Application Programmable Interface, and it’s how websites communicate data to each other). After a bit of confusion, we found what we wanted and started pulling tweets about “chicago donut” into our app and displaying them.

This was about the time that Adam, a design student, started tinkering with the design of the page. A few minutes later, Tatsu looked up and said, “Wow Adam, good job! It looks like a website!” I also had to leave on Friday night, briefly, and I was worried that I was missing out. Fortunately, when I got back, I just found Team Donut drinking free beer from the Intelligentsia party across the hall.

As Adam said, “It’s been, what, four hours? We spent an hour talking about donuts, thirty minutes figuring out what to do, and two hours drinking. I think we did well.”

It was a lot of fun. It was Friday night when I figured out that getting to say “This is our app” is just as, if not more satisfying, than saying, “This is my app.” I really enjoyed working with Frank, Adam, Tatsu, and Nakyum. It was really great to see our collaborative efforts coming together so quickly, and then to see the elements being arranged on the fly by Adam.

So…with that said, enter the Donut Tracker. Our first app. Hell yeah!

Marvel at its glory. Bathe in its ineffable glowing mist. See if you can make it a Pizza Tracker with one easy switch.

Code Academy Spotlight – Jeff Cohen

Posted on May 6, 2012 by kung

We wanted the best teacher and we got the best teacher.

-Neal Sales-Griffin, 21 Februrary 2012

It’s been a while since I heard Neal say these words during my interview and I have grown to appreciate them more with every class. Jeff seems to have nigh infinite patience with our questions and an incredible ability to explain concepts in just enough detail to keep us hungry for more. It’s a delicate balancing act – too much and we capsize, too little and we grow bored. Jeff hits it perfectly.

As a teacher myself (of tricking, mostly ), I find it fascinating to watch others’ teaching styles. I’m beginning to realize that much of my own learning is dependent on my internal dialogues with a theoretical student. I love explaining things and teaching. I also have a bit of a head start on the class, so far, so I’ve been able to see things coming. The result is that I have been able to see what concepts Jeff is fleshing out, piece by piece, and how he’s doing it.

It’s beautiful.

In our Friday retrospective, my classmate Fernando said he was upset upon discovering a feature of Ruby on Rails called scaffolds. Scaffolds are part of the magic that is Ruby on Rails. They’re essentially a way to manifest an entire site out of thin air, with zero effort. So far, we have been learning to create the contents of a single scaffold. After 4 weeks, we can now painstakingly build a website that takes a single command to generate.

While I understand why Fernando is upset, it also brings a smile to my face. We understand the basics of the Rails infrastructure, we’ve ingrained Routes, Controller, Action, View, into our minds, and we have a strong fundamental understanding of the Model View Controller design pattern. When we learn about scaffolds, we will appreciate on a gut level how much time they save us.

It’s also not “what” Jeff has taught us that’s so valuable, but the context. To take an example from the Chinese language, the words 吃饭 (“chi1fan4″) literally means “eat rice.” Without context, you might think that it means just eating rice, when in fact rice has been such a staple part of the Chinese diet that it actually means “to eat” or “to eat a meal.” So when you are invited to sit at the dinner table, you are invited to “eat rice.” A literal translation might leave you lost and confused.

What Jeff has given us is the context to understand rake db:migrate. It takes a lot of patience and consideration to teach the “why” and to paint the bigger picture in broad brush strokes. So that way, instead of being confused by details, we can place them, like puzzle pieces, within that picture.

I’ve been on both sides, as a teacher and a student, and teaching how Jeff teaches takes a lot of time and effort. It takes a good deal of empathy and consideration. And it takes a whole lot of patience. That’s why watching this class unfold under Jeff’s masterful guidance has, itself, been a joy.

Thank you, Jeff. And sorry I’m such a terrible student!

“Teach your student according to their aptitude and provide education for all without discrimination.”
-Confucius

TEDxUChicago 2012

Posted on April 30, 2012 by kung

It was just like TED on YouTube in real life! Except not at 2x speed like I normally watch them...

My sister Alyson and I attended TEDxUChicago 2012 on Sunday and had the opportunity to listen to Code Academy alumnus Raghu Betina, as well as several other notable speakers. The theme for TEDxUChicago 2012 was “Revolution,” and the talks covered everything from social revolution to the revolution of a bike’s wheels.

A few highlights:

The Coding Revolution

Raghu Betina

Raghu’s main point was that programming today is much like literacy in the middle ages. Reading and writing used to be a specialized skill, such that only specialized scribes were able to access the mysteries of the written word. Literacy allowed us to spread ideas quickly and accurately. Similarly, learning to talk to our computers enables us to amplify the use of our greatest asset, our brains, by many orders of magnitude.

Today, we have a wide gulf between developers and “technical” people and non-technical people. As 8th Light Craftsman Doug Bradbury noted in his talk “For All Without Discrimination,” there were 200,000 Computer Science related jobs and only around 40,000 Computer Science majors graduated in _INSERT YEAR_. The skill is in demand, and applicable to all fields involving the transfer of knowledge (read: all fields) and eventually, it will become a necessary skill for everyone to have.

The Design-It-Yourself Movement and DFA

Elizabeth Gerber

Elizabeth talked about the Do-It-Yourself movement and how she believes it is time for the Design-It-Yourself movement’s time in the spotlight. She founded an extra-curricular activity at Northwestern called Design For America that seeks out problems and solves them using innovative design.

Take the White Path

Gary Erickson

Gary talked about the founding of ClifBar and how he walked away from a $60M exit to sell the company to Quaker Oats. It came down to a simple choice – take the white path, or the red path? In Gary’s biking adventures, the red paths were the quickest, the most obvious route, while the white paths meandered through mountains, making them difficult and far less traveled. But they were the ones that were the most beautiful and brought him the most joy.

Also, ClifBar was founded out of frustration with Power Bar. At one point during a bike trip, Gary stopped to buy anything to eat besides a Power Bar and ended up with powdered donuts. He brought a pack with him to demonstrate and threw it into the crowd for one lucky guy to eat:

I’m probably biased because I love anyone who gives me food, but I thought the talk was great!

Revolution in Tunis

Mohamed El Dahshan

Mohamed talked about Tunis and the teetering balance of power between the government and the people. It was really inspiring to see the role hiphop played in revitalizing the people. Graffiti and political rap enabled people to express themselves, to reconcile themselves with and show defiance to the constraints placed upon them by the government. Some great quotes:

“The opposite of fear is not bravery. It’s imagination.”

“Fear changes sides. If it’s not on the peoples’ side, it’s on the government’s.”

As an example of the last quote, the Tunisian government had apparently heard that people were protesting downtown. The solution, of course, was to tell the army, “Go, destroy downtown.”

Brilliant problem solving XD

Combating Aging

Aubrey de Grey

Aubrey’s 18 minute talk whisked by. He is a very engaging and charismatic speaker. He talked about the approaches that Geriatrics and Gerontology take to the aging problem, each attacking it from a different angle – reversing damage or metabolically preventing damage respectively. The third way, he espoused, was to maintain the body by “cleaning up” the damaged parts of the body. It was simpler and easier than understanding metabolic pathways (gerontology) or reversing damage (geriatrics) which is always a losing battle.

Also, I asked Aubrey a question on behalf of my friend, Michael Looby, while we were in the sidelines. The question was “What is the value of eternal life?” and Aubrey’s answer was very surprising. He is often seen as an advocate of immortality, which is contentious. His answer was far less contentious: he sees no value in eternal life. He just doesn’t want to get sick, which is something everyone can agree with. As a side effect of combating aging as a sickness, we might attain eternal life, but there is no objective value to living forever.

It also gave me an interesting thought – contentious ideas can be far less contentious when you focus on just one facet of them.

Relief 2.0

Carlos Miranda Levy

The host introduced Carlos Miranda Levy as the man who wants to end charity. As shocking as it was, I think a great deal of the audience agreed with his assessment of relief as it stands today, and what it could be.

Basically, Carlos advocated peer to peer relief, as opposed to the centralized relief efforts we have today. It might best be expressed in his quote:

“It is the conventional relief system that turns survivors into refugees.”

Survivors are hardy, resourceful, and proud. Refugees are cared for, babied, and useless – a burden on society.

“Engage, Empower, Enable, Connect.”

So Carlos invented Relief 2.0, which uses small, mobile teams of relief volunteers to find and address survivors’ problems using peer to peer technologies like twitter. Solutions are nearly self-organizing and self-solving with greater connections. Furthermore, empowering survivors enables them to boost the local economy through businesses that aid in recovery.

Carlos’s talk was incredibly inspiring, and definitely and idea worth spreading.

TEDxUChicago was a great experience, and one I’ll repeat next year. Hopefully as more than an attendee ;p

Code Academy Week 3 – The Model (Student)

Posted on April 28, 2012 by kung

Neal tells me to be quiet all the time :’(

I may not be the model student when it comes to class, but I did manage to pick up a few things this week. Models, classes, the 7 routes for addressing resources. The concept of resources.

I’d elaborate, but I’m far more concerned with how the gap between where I am and where I feel I should be is stressing me out.

I worry that I’m not devoting enough time or working hard enough, focusing well enough. It hit me especially hard this week. My classmates all seem to devote more time and get more results than I do. They are doing tutorials and launching apps. Meanwhile, I stare at routes, controllers, classes, and views, and wonder why I can’t seem to do anything I want to do.

Especially at my internship, where my manager has already said the dreaded word “results.” I feel rushed, thrown in the deep end. The consultant who’s helping me focuses in like a laser on fine details when I need broad overviews, tells me to do three things in order to accomplish one thing.

A wise man once asked me, “what’s the worst that can happen?” and shocked me out of a lifetime of guilt and self-blame. Thankfully, now, as then, the worst that can happen really isn’t so bad. Worst that can happen is already happening – I feel useless – but it can only get better from here. I still have a list of tutorials I have to get to. My internship is a wonderful opportunity, I just have to make sure everyone there understands my capabilities, the optimal way to manage my projects, and my primary focus: Code Academy.

It’s been a stressful week. But in the end, I am the source. I can grow beyond the stress, beyond the self-criticism, and still learn and accomplish what I need to.

Build. In the end, that’s what matters.

We Are Builders. We Are Chicago.

UPDATE – …and then the linux box I spent hours updating and setting up started billowing smoke:

Finally got my Ubuntu Rails development computer set up! Wait, why is there smoke coming out of it?

— Brian Kung (@briankung) April 29, 2012

How I became a web development intern with zero experience

Posted on April 23, 2012 by kung

About three weeks ago, I started my web development internship at the Chicago Teachers’ Pension Fund with zero career experience. If this sounds like a curious turn of events to you, trust me, it was surprising to me as well. It’s an incredible opportunity for which I am very grateful to Eric Morel, the IT Manager at CTPF. He essentially created the position for me.

I’d put it down to luck as to how I got the internship – you can’t always predict the opportunities that come your way. But you know what they say about luck: it’s what happens when preparation meets opportunity. And I was prepared:

My LinkedIn profile tracked concrete milestones
I had been applying and networking rabidly
I had begun to blog weekly

I’ll take you point by point on how each was important to getting the position.

But before all that, I had to know exactly what I wanted.

Knowing what I wanted – an entry level Ruby on Rails position where I could learn – dictated everything else. The rest was a natural extension of moving toward that singular goal.

(Internet) Networking

First of all, I love adding friends, on any social network. It’s neurotic, but it gives me a thrill to see that my connection count is higher than someone else’s.

With LinkedIn in particular (add me here!), I joined every Rails group I could find on LinkedIn and made sure my profile said that I was looking for an internship or apprenticeship as a rails developer. Basically, if you join groups. you can make an impression on people in comments on group posts and make a name within those groups. You also expose your profile to a lot of people who aren’t necessarily within your immediate network.

I’m still getting leads from people stumbling across my profile, and I’m sure it has to do with it tracking Concrete Progress.

I also applied to just about everything I could find that was Rails related, even positions that I wasn’t qualified. I believe CTPF was one of those positions. I also applied to Groupon and 8th Light’s apprenticeship programs, as well as a few others. I stopped self-filtering and started putting myself out there. I left it up to the employer to make the decisions regarding whether or not I was qualified.

Concrete Progress

I had made concrete progress toward becoming a developer on my own. Much like my friend George Wu, I had started several projects on my own, which showed initiative and a willingness and ability to learn.

I was also able to make it clear exactly what my level of expertise was as a beginner and exactly what I was capable of by posting my progress on various Ruby and Ruby on Rails tutorials in my profile:

Progress:

Apprenticeship Patterns (100%)

Try Ruby (100%)

Learn Ruby the Hard Way (80%)

Ruby on Rails Tutorial (80%)

Ruby Koans (115/280)

Project Euler (4/371)

Agile Web Development with Rails 3.2.0 (Ch 1-12 + 14)

I also stole a page from Ryan Curtin and posted my miniature Twitter clone (from the Hartl tutorial) on my profile. I was unduly surprised with how good it looked and I wanted a similar reaction from people looking over my profile.

What I didn’t do was to try to sell myself as someone I wasn’t. I think my honesty was important to establishing our expectations coming into the internship. The IT Manager knows that my career ambitions lie more in startups, so we are both able to maximize our returns from the relationship. I’m helping the team switch from Rails 2.3.5 and helping whoever among the staff is interested in learning Rails so they’ll have a basic skeleton crew of in-house Rails developers. Meanwhile, this gives me a great opportunity to learn.

By the way, please don’t be impressed by my saying I’m helping them switch from Rails 2.3.5 to Rails 3.2.3. The company Rails consultant could probably get my months-long project done in two days.

Blog

Finally, my blog. The IT Manager said specifically that I seemed to be an interesting person based on my online content. In another interview yesterday, the recruiter was interested in the things I’d been writing about on my blog as well. From my limited experience in the professional world, it seems like blogs really are the new resume, as Fred Wilson says:

http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2010/02/own-your-online-brand.html

In Code Academy, everyone advocates blogging for tracking your learning. The thinking is that you learn better when you narrate what you learned, and then afterward you can look back on your progress for when you need to create a presentation. That’s true.

But it also rewrites the quantitative data on your resume or LinkedIn profile as a human narrative, which is the basic emotional unit of humanity. We have been making and trading stories since the evolution of language. It’s much easier to get top of mind awareness in a recruiter’s mind if you present them with a story rather than numbers, simply because we are all human.

So, that’s basically how I got my internship. I would still say it was mostly a lucky break, because the IT Manager just happened to have this rails project and just happened to want a Rails intern. RoR developers are also in huge demand right now. There are a lot of factors that led up to this opportunity, but I would venture to say that I was prepared for it. I’m incredibly grateful for it – without it, I don’t think I would be able to live in Chicago like I am now.

Hope that helps explain my situation. If you have any questions, ask away in the comments.

Special thanks to Chris Bolton for this post!

Code Academy Week 2 – A Taste of Rails

Posted on April 20, 2012 by kung

Week 2 was our introduction to the basics of rails. I don’t remember what happened on Monday, but on Wednesday, Neal laid the smackdown on our brains with Class data manipulation. Basically, if you have a philosophy background, think of a Class as a Platonic ideal – I am a Man, a Man is a Human, a Human is a Mammal, etc.

Or, if you prefer biology, it’s much like taxonomy. A Man is a Human, which is a Mammal:

Mammal

Has fur
lactates
gives live birth

Human

hair mostly grows on top of head
bipedal
tool user

Man

broad shoulders
protruding brow ridge
deep voice
…

Man < Human < Mammal

Each of the subclasses “inherits” the traits of the parent class, meaning it has the parent class’s traits plus some other ones. The weird part is that we define every aspect of our classes in Ruby, so we’re essentially creating worlds. Each Controller, which I’ll explain later, is a class with traits and specific commands.

Anyway, long story short, Wednesday felt like someone had mentally socked me in the face three times, but I came out with a good understanding of classes. I was fairly familiar with the concepts at a high level, though, so I feel bad for others who weren’t so lucky.

Today was a much more gentle introduction to Routes, Controllers, and Views. Basically, a Route is the extra slashes in the URL: “google.com/something/here”. The web site server receives that Route from you and interprets it as a command, handing it off to the Controller, which determines what information you’re actually requesting. It then hands that information to the View, which is the final end product that you see load in your browser. If you right click a website and click “view source,” you’re basically looking at a View, but not the logic behind how the HTML was generated (Controller).

Genuinely excited by the new @CodeAcademy students. The diversity of ideas, people, and aspirations increase each quarter.

— Jeff Cohen (@jeffcohen) April 11, 2012

Everything started to click when we built one of those Route -> View -> Controller event chains. Now I understand where to start, how to use error messages to continue forward, and I have a more intuitive understanding of where everything goes. I will probably build some routes for fun, just to explore Rails and really hammer it in.

In other news, I’ve been totally ignoring the homework and doing my own thing. Probably a bad thing because the homework is relevant to what’s been discussed in class, but I’m going through Agile Web Development on Rails at my internship and pairing, so it’s a trade-off.

Oh, speaking of which, I paired with Greg Cardoni, an awesome individual who graduated last quarter. He gave me a tour of Digital Schoolhouse, the project that he and three other alumni worked on together. He also gave me a beer that I actually liked, which was really surprising. What was that beer?

Met up with my Code Academy mentor, Eric Meyer, an 8th Light Craftsman (I believe), and we paired on a simple blog application. There were a few times when I just clearly did not know what I was doing when he expected me to, but that gap will close as the days pass.

Finally, I think I’ll be building a blog as a breakable toy, perhaps with my classmate Dan Kaplan. Either way, it’ll be on github.

@briankung Great things are on the horizon my friend.

— Jimmy Odom (@JimmyOdom) April 11, 2012

On Many Edges

Posted on April 18, 2012 by kung

A young man, Chinese by the looks of him and the neighborhood, gave up his seat for an elderly woman. I shifted uncomfortably and looked around.

“Do you know how I can get to the trains from here?”

The young woman paused, directed me North a few blocks. I passed through idle groups of young people: college students. I was invisible. What a difference a few years and a button-up shirt made.

My coworkers smile at me parentally.

I stepped into dance practice. Some eyes met my mine while others carefully kept their gaze hooded. I smiled and turned to the mirror, my back to a room full of strangers.

I greeted him warmly and sat down to playtest. It was the first time we’d met in person.

1871. A new, multi-million dollar workspace for innovative technology startups. In the corner, a glass partition enclosed a tightly packed group of people working, playing, and typing intently.

I watched them from the other side and wondered why it was I who felt like the one in a cage.

How Being Smart Makes You Dumb

Posted on April 16, 2012 by kung

First, a wall of text. If you don’t like it, skip ahead to the graphic.

“Thomas (a child who scored in the top 10,000th of the population on aptitude tests) didn’t want to try things he wouldn’t be successful at,” his father says. “Some things came very quickly to him, but when they didn’t, he gave up almost immediately, concluding, ‘I’m not good at this.’ ” With no more than a glance, Thomas was dividing the world into two—things he was naturally good at and things he wasn’t.
-How Not to Talk to Your Kids: The inverse power of praise.

Dweck found that children’s performance worsens if they always hear how smart they are. Kids who get too much praise are less likely to take risks, are highly sensitive to failure and are more likely to give up when faced with a challenge.

“Parents should take away the fact that they are not giving their children a gift when they tell them how brilliant and talented they are,” Dweck says. “They are making them believe they are valued only for being intelligent, and it makes them not want to learn.”

When parents, teachers and coaches label a child, they tell the child that he or she is the label and is judged for this label, not for his actual capabilities. The child becomes risk-averse and doesn’t want to chance messing up and being labeled “dumb.” In other words, a “smart” child often believes that expending effort is something only “dumb” kids have to do.
-Why Praise Can Be Bad for Kids

Through more than three decades of systematic research, [Carol Dweck] has been figuring out answers to why some people achieve their potential while equally talented others don’t—why some become Muhammad Ali and others Mike Tyson. The key, she found, isn’t ability; it’s whether you look at ability as something inherent that needs to be demonstrated or as something that can be developed.
-The Effort Effect

Carol Dweck’s book, Mindset, argues convincingly that having a growth mindset, or the opinion that intelligence can be developed, sets the stage for success. This is opposed to having a fixed growth mindset, in which intelligence is believed to be static and unchanging. Here’s a pretty graphic:

But I think Professor Dweck can go even further. I think it’s perfectly rational to take the fundamental lesson and apply it to more than just intelligence.

If “being” smart locks us into certain expectations, doesn’t “being” anything lock us, and others’ expectations of us, into certain roles? That’s why “S/he’s pretty business savvy for a woman/Latino/kid” is a diss. Are we not all people? Should we not all be encouraged to grow with the same guidelines, whether it’s athletics, academics, or art?

Furthermore, I have heard countless people use the excuse that they are not the “type” of person who could achieve the goals they secretly want. There is a whole field of psuedo-science behind types of personalities, whether it’s astrology or the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. In the case of MBTI, while there is some value to knowing what kind of person you were when you took the test, it’s much more important to know what kind of person you want to be going forward. This way, you can better understand who you were and what you want to change and improve on.

There’s a lot of needless anxiety about being or not being a type of person. “Being” a type of person does not preclude you from being someone different a year, a week, a minute from now. Personality is malleable. The person you were 10 years ago is not the same person you are now. It’s an opportunity to take control of your development. We can all change for the better.

Finally, if we are to benefit from formlessness, we should note that others have the same opportunities and motives to change. It’s an entirely human reaction to explain circumstantial behaviors to personality. If someone cuts you off, it’s because they’re a jerk, not because they really needed to get to that turn lane. If someone doesn’t answer a question correctly, it’s because they’re “a little slow,” and not because they don’t have a background in the subject.

It’s called the Fundamental Attribution Error, or the “tendency to over-value dispositional or personality-based explanations for the observed behaviors of others while under-valuing situational explanations for those behaviors.” Once you believe in someone’s ability to change, they will often surprise you. Two highly cited studies reinforce the importance of expectations: one in which students who were reminded of academically negative racial stereotypes performed much worse, and another in which a group of teachers were told that they had been given the brightest students, who all went on to do much better than the average. In fact, they had been given the regular assortment of students.

So, give yourself a shot at being what and whoever you want to be. Then extend the same courtesy to others.

…if you got to the bottom of this tirade, then I’d be interested in hearing your opinion. What value do you see in typing people, or vice versa?

Code Academy Week 1 – The Beginning

Posted on April 14, 2012 by kung

This is kind of verbose. I expect day by day accounts to meld into weekly accounts eventually.

Monday

Monday was mostly an overview of the Chicago Startup ecosystem and resources specifically for Code Academy students. We went over the rules and expectations for Code Academy and 1871 in particular, and we even met with Kevin Willer, the President and CEO of the Chicagoland Entrepreneurial Center. After a short break, we went straight into an explanation of what computing was (input -> processing -> output) and then some HTML exercises. I sat next to Sheena Gygax, and we fiddled around with the terminal and HTML, via Jeff’s exercises. Finally, we had a Q&A session with four of the Code Academy alumni, including Robert Milner, who mentioned Sinatra. Great! I love Sinatra. Shot him an email later. Afterward, I met up with Mark Lawrence of SpotHero, a local Chicago startup focusing on solving Chicago’s shitty parking. It was very awesome; Mark is a generous soul, and very supportive of the Chicago startup community. Also, Rattlesnakes.

Tuesday

Stopped in after my internship at Chicago Teachers’ Pension Fund to work on Unix for the Beginning Mage. I was originally going to do the “homework” and do TryRuby, but it was way boring.

Wednesday

Went over some basic Ruby and had it output to the command line. Worked on DRYing the “My Favorite Landmarks” output up. Used a function. The homework question was to ask how we could DRY up display_landmark(“Sears Tower”), since we called it on so many landmarks. I had a few ideas (okay, one – an array) but didn’t implement any. I was totally distracted by my phone the whole time, though I did get to sit next to and meet Dan Cardella and go to lunch with him and John at Chipotle. Awesome – the class is full of entrepreneurs!

Thursday

There was a Book Club where Neal went through the first chapter of Rails. I stayed and helped Ilana edit the student profile handbook. Then we made a trip to Moe’s to meet a bunch of mentors and CA students. Finished the day with a playtest of Octodad: World of Kelp, and finally got to meet Philip Tibitotsky in person.

Friday

Here’s when it started to get fun. We started doing stuff with ruby. Mostly array manipulation, but it was amusing nonetheless. I paired with Laura Stude today. I got the warm fuzzies from being able to help out, but I hope I wasn’t condescending. I was late again. I really need to get out of the apartment 10 minutes before the bus says it’s going to arrive. Otherwise I will end up 20-30 minutes late, and later classes won’t be so forgiving. Went to 8th Light University with Danny Cardella. The talk was on Fountain Codes, which was actually almost understandable. I met Ryan Verner and Eric Meyer, my mentor, and then walked and talked with Eric MacAdie back to the Loop. I also shot Chris Courtney, AKA @designhawg, an email about an “MVP” which ended up sounding like a massive undertaking. This, the video project, the company dating site, and the million other ideas are threatening to take over all of my time. I need to cut back, and I haven’t even started anything. As a side note, I think I will refer to him as the Renegade Mentor, henceforth. Ideas I’ve seriously considered in the last week:

Date My Company
Collaborative Audio/Video
Video comparison
Sinatra personal challenge
Javascript

Alright, buddy. You can choose not to sleep, socialize, and eat…wait, no you can’t. Pick one. You also have to learn Rails. Build build build. Thoughts in audio: http://briankung.tumblr.com/post/21070929612/code-academy-week-1-raw-audio-ah-well

Boston

Posted on April 9, 2012 by kung

PAX East at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center

My trips to Boston are consistently short and sweet. Last time, it was the Fung Wah from New York. This weekend, it was a flight in and a hectic first day at BCEC, having arrived late for volunteering. My trip was plagued with stupid scheduling errors like this. I need a secretary. Google Calendar, as much as I love it, is not cutting it.

In fact, this would go on to mar the rest of my experience as an Enforcer at PAX. Not only did I arrive late, but I left early due to more plane ticketing stupidity. This caused my region’s supervisor to comment that, “If you wanted to be an attendee, you should have been an attendee.”

Ouch.

Considering that I was volunteering to give back to the people behind Penny-Arcade, the web comic I’ve loved and revered since middle school, this was pretty painful. Regardless, I feel that when I was on-duty, I did a good job, both on Spareboard and as an Expo Hall patrol.

I feel as though the process for new Enforcers could have been a lot better in various ways. Regardless, the [E] Chicago folks have been awesome, even if my application for Enforcing at future events is affected by this

Other than that, the atmosphere at PAX was amazing. The work was hard, but worth it:

Cosplayers at PAX East. Can anyone tell me who they're supposed to be?

Who you gonna' call?

Journey!

She was spot on for her character in FireFall. I think they might have based the character around her. This was a professional promotion, not a fan cosplay.

The crowds were thick, but attendees were very chill people. Awesome!

Finally, I stayed with Min Hye in Boston through CouchSurfing. She’s so nice! And makes cute noises that she doesn’t register consciously, then calls it “humbling” instead of humming, haha. Min Hye, I’ll definitely visit again when I go to Boston!

Random:

Boston subways are awesome and full of performers – one was using a cajon, which is the first time I’d seen/heard it.
Let me count my PAX mistakes: Arrived late, left early, entered Expo Hall when it wasn’t open and waited in line. Nobody told me not to, they just tattled on me T_T
I tricked at the Fruit Ninja booth. Apparently, I got massive points, but I was disappointed because the controls weren’t too tight.
Clam chowder and salmon on the pier at the Legal Test Kitchen. Good stuff. I had dinner with some bros. It was tight.
Apparently, there was an Anime convention going on at the Hynes Convention Center at the same time.
I kept seeing Jerry Holkins, but I was too starstruck to say anything to him O.O

Call Me Kung

we're friends, after all