NOVA ARDRONE Hacking.

Yesterday I went to NOVA ruby's "ARdrone Hacking" in which we saw/watched/suggested what code to run to get the drone to fly up or down left or right or what have you, very interesting and informative. My favorite part however was talking to Keith, and Andrew about some issues I was having with the rails console and database, and the problem with lesson 10 in the "gosu" Gem game. Keith was able to find the error in about 5 seconds:) I was missing " , :laser" in the attr_accessor in player.rb. Apparently that's the error in the original code.

 Enjoying Mattan Griffel's Skillshare class, it's supposed to take roughly 3 weeks. but I already finished first of 3 sections. so now I'm on to number 2, it's basically sorta' like a Michael Hartl Rails Tutorial just a little different, at least so far, that may very well change.

We are making a web application as are assignment for the class, I've decided to make a blog for myself, I'm not sure if I'll end up actually hosting it. I think I would have to buy my own domain, which would then be kind of confusing to switch over, we'll see, but I'll put it up on Github by the end of class.

Hey if anyone knows of any upcoming Hackathons in the general D.C. area please let me know, in the next month or so my brother Cody and I are going to try and compete in one, I'm sure we'll lose but, who cares experience is what we want at first.- Till tomorrow-Josh

Day 1 of Mattan Griffel's Skillshare class:

I studied for 3.15 hours today. Watched all of the videos for the Skillshare class, I knew all they went over so far, but I did pick up a couple col things that I didn't really get before, always god to hear a new perspective.Tomorrow-Josh

Finished Chapter 5 of Michael Hartl's Rails Tutorial!!!

End of the week, can't wait for tomorrow. Just finished Chapter 5 of Michael Hartl's Rails Tutorial, totally getting WAY more than when I sped through it before. I 've heard it said by more than 1 person that the Tutorial should take at least 60 hours, I've heard others say 100. after doing it more than once I would say that 60-100 hours seems about right depending on your skill level. The main reason it takes so long besides it being over 500 pages long is how many errors you end up having and how good/quick you are at googling, finding the right answer? I swear that's 50%-60% of your time.

I am getting addicted to errors now though, because every time I figure out another error I feel like I am just that tiny bit closer to knowing more and being a full stack RoR developer, Silly I know but I seriously liked pair programming with my brother Cody the other day and working on errors he got and swap back and forth.

So here's the end of the 5th week totals 19hours this week. 94.5 hours total!!!- Tomorrow-Josh

Why I'm attending Mattan Griffel's "Teach Yourself to Code: One Month Rails.

Tomorrow starts the beginning of an awesome new class on Skillshare by Mattan Griffel, partner at GrowHack. The class promises to teach you to be able make your own web apps after 1 month.

If you have any interest in making your own Web applications, or maybe becoming a RoR developer, then I think it's positively criminal not to sign up for the class, I mean HELLO, it's only $20 for the entire class. $20 to invest in your future in understanding Web apps, learning the Rails Framework more for $20. What on earth can you buy for $20 dollars these days? dinner?, maybe, not much. I think it's a ridiculously small price to pay to learn  a skill that can change your life.

As you all know I want to be a RoR web developer  by my next birthday April 7th, 2013. I view this class as a very small tuition, but a big step towards my goal of being a RoR developer.  For me it was a no brainer, after reading Mattan's Bio and seeing that he won a 300 person Hackathon on his own after just a short time of learning RoR.  I thought to myself  have to learn from this guy and figure out how he thinks, pick his brain of sorts.

 My younger brother Cody signed up for the class as well, so we will be learning together. This is a great opportunity to learn and invest in your future, look at the class, here's the link : http://www.skillshare.com/Teach-Yourself-to-Code-One-Month-Rails/1289605848/826005199

This is the last day to join the class, seriously think about it. As always I will be blogging daily keeping you up to date with how the class is going and the rest of my learning journey to become a RoR developer .-Josh Kemp
http://this is the last day to join. I'll be keeping you up to date on how the class goes as well as the rest of my RoR learning journey.-Josh Kemp

Turkey Day fail:(

Good news and bad news. Good news is Wednesday my brother Cody and I did pair Programming for 7 hours, it was AWESOME!!! learned a ton. Bad news I didn't study any on Thanksgiving. I did 3 .5 hours of pair programming with Cody last night. and have determined to give up on the 'gosu' Gem game, we have decided their are most certainly coding logic errors, we even copied and pasted the author's code to no avail, we stayed up till 1:15a.m. working on it. We are moving on to the Michael Hartl Rails Tutorial, I'm on Chapter 5.

The other bad news, I am not studying tonight, I am exhausted from last night, my little 11 month old was sick and got my wife and I up every hour, I'm not super proud of this week, but I still love coding I'm just so tired, tomorrow I will hit the ground running.

So excited to be doing Skillshare's "Learn Rails in a Month." it starts on the 26th.-Tomorrow- Josh

Installing RVM on Ubuntu 12.04

Hey all, spent most of today googling errors while trying to install RVM on my brother Cody's Windows machine. Good practice at looking through places like Stack Overflow for errors. We're about to start continuing on the 'Gosu' Gem game.

Life's good, almost done with all the errors, Panera's is about to close, tomorrow is Turkey Day...I love coding!!

Till tomorrow, have a great Thanksgiving tomorrow! - Josh

Working on 'Gosu' Gem

I'm back to working on the 'Gosu' Gem game. I'm on chapter 7. I've found one error in chapter 5 missing 'If' statement. studied 3 hours yesterday, got too tired forgot to blog. Studying now at Panera's.
I'm working on an error in lesson 7, can't figure out what it is, I'll let you know when I do. -Josh

Can you quit your job and become a ROR developer?...this guy is doing just that!

If you want to become a RoR developer or are in the process of learning, then you need to read this guy's blog: http://www.andrewkkirk.com/2012/09/quit-my-job-learn-code/. It's awesome and inspiring to see someone take a risk, quit their job and work hard at a goal, and I'm sure ultimately achieve it:)

Well it's the end of another week, I feel pretty good about my overall understanding and growth. I've been learning ROR for 26 days now, almost 1 month, I decided to post my official Mac Stickie notes, showing how I've been logging my time, since it's been basically 1 month.

1ST Week Oct. 23rd-Oct.28th = 14hrs.

Monday = the 29th =                         1HR.

TUESDAY = the 30th =                     2 HRS

WEDNESDAY = the 31st =              3 HRS

Thursday = Nov. 1st. =                     2.5HRS

Friday - November 2nd=                  3HRS

Saturday- November 3rd =             0.5hrs

Sunday- November 4th =               2.5hrs

2nd week Oct.29th-Nov.4th = 14.5hrs

Monday, Nov. 5th =                       6hrs.

Tuesday, Nov.6th =          2hrs

Wednesday Nov. 7th =   3hrs.

Thursday Nov. 8th =     2hrs.

Friday Nov. 9th =     3 hrs.

Saturday Nov.10th =                       4hrs.

Sunday Nov. 11th =                        3 hrs.

3rd week Nov.5th-11th =              23 hrs

MONDAY NOV.12TH        =     5HRS.

TUESDAY 13TH = 3HRS.

WEDNESDAY 14TH = 1HRS.

THURSDAY 15TH = 4HRS.

FRIDAY 16TH = 2.5HRS.

SATURDAY 17TH = 4.5HRS.

SUNDAY 18TH = 3HRS.

4th week total nov. 12th-18th = hrs. 23 HOURS

*************TOTAL HOURS =  75.5 HRS**************

                26 Days = 75.5 hours Total

                              OR

                    2.90 Hours per day

Sorry, I apologize if it looks kind of weird, this is exactly how it looks on my Mac. 

I studied with my brother Cody today and worked on our game plan for becoming RoR developers and the 'Gosu" Gem, which went well, although not completed. I think we're both basically gonna' finish the Michael Hartl Rails Tutorial, then (or at the same time) do the Rails Skillshare class, then each of us build our own blogs using RoR, then possibly build my wife a custom blog for her blog 'www.gratefulwithtwo.com', then we may make a simple mobile app, and then start doing some low level Hackathons together. That's the our plan roughly for now, of course any or all of it could change but I'm dying to do a Hackathon at some point, even if we finish last I don't care as long as we end up learning stuff from the experience:)- Till Tomorrow-Josh

Michael Hartl's Rails Tutorial: Chapter:5

19.5 hours studying this week, could be better, could be worse. Wednesday after shoeing alot of horses out in the cold, I could only stay awake for 1 hour, that really messed up my times this week, by the way I shoe horses if you didn't know.

I never did hear back about the 'gosu' Gem for the shooting game, I think I'll e-mail Alberto about it this coming week (don't wanna' be a jerk:)) I 've been doing the Michael Hartl Rails Tutorial this past week, I've been going through it painstakingly slow, trying to absorb as much info as possible. I am really enjoying it, I'm just now starting Css, starting Chapter 5.

I 've also got my brother Cody on board with ROR as well, this past week he's started studying as well, tomorrow after church we're gonna' meet up at Panera and study for 2-3 hours, maybe work on the 'gosu' Gem game, not sure yet.

Really enjoying this Ruby on Rails learning Journey. I figure if I can put in enough hours, handle enough errors, and problems while still enjoying it then it's just a matter of time till I can start building some stuff. I'm thinking of making my own blog as my first project, not 100% on that yet.-Till tomorrow- Josh

TDD testing

Hey All, I've been learning TDD on Michael Hartl's Rails Tutorial, made 1 error, just figured it out.
My wife is out on a girl's night out so I'm watching the boys (3,11months) , so they wanted to set up a tent in the living room, so that's what we did. Had a good time but I can't keep my eyes open anymore. Can't wait till 1 day I can make a living as a professional Developer.-Josh

I'm a moron...this was so easy!

So I've spent the last 2.5 days working on this heroku R12 timeout error, reading tutorials on Heroku and errors, and such. So today I realize while working the Michael Hartl Tutorial that he explicitly says: the first app will have an error don't worry about it, we ll fix it later.

and I'm like how did i miss that! The only really  good thing is I feel better reading the heroku logs:)

Wow I am so embarrassed. Anyway, didn't kill me so I'm plodding along, I finished the 1st and 2nd app on the Michael Hartl Rails Tutorial, now I'm on the 3rd which is 3/4 of the book. I've already done the tutorial back in late August but it was mainly copying and pasting, this time I'm writing it all by hand and I will say I'm already picking up a lot of stuff I missed the first time around.

It's 9:50p.m. I've done just over 3 hrs. I'm starting to feel tired, but I want to keep studying, I love when all of a sudden a new idea or concept makes sense...kind of addicting. - I love Programming-Josh

1 LOUSY HOUR!

I  am going to bed it's 12:39a.m. I've only studied a little over 1 hour. I worked outside shoeing alot of horses (which is my full time job), than took my wife and 2 boys up to Tyson's Corner Mall, where we met a guy to buy a Mac book for her. It went well traffic was a mess, I just can't keep my eyes open anymore, being out in the cold all day really tires me out.

I'm still dealing with my app working on the local server but not on Heroku. I've looked at the Logs but I couldn't tell what exactly I was looking for, an error of some sort, hopefully I'll get it resolved by then.-Tomorrow Josh Kemp

Teach Yourself to Code Skillshare class

Just signed up for Mattan Griffel's : "Teach yourself to code: One month Rails" on Skillshare, I can't wait to start the class, if your a newbie like me, you should check it out, he's priced it really affordable, and he's already got like 200+ people attending. Here's the link:  http://bit.ly/PsqMOi

Tonight I'm trying to find out why my app is not showing up after I've deployed it to Heroku, it pushes fine from Git with no errors but then, when I put in the Heroku URL it pops up the page and gives the error:"Something went wrong with your application". I've tried doing it with 3 different apps, and the same thing, so I obviously am missing something, I tried doing a 'rake db:migrate' and it did some stuff but still it's not working so, I'm gonna' read some Heroku tutorials tonight, I'll let you know if I find the error and fix my app:)-Till tomorrow:) -Josh

Wow Git Submodules are wierd, tricky, and confusing...

Just after I gave Github the death blow, it springs back to life and attacks me with a dirty weapon called "Submodules", I feel like I need to be a Unix System Admin. to know how to find the darn right file and then remove not just in one place but several.

I have not conquered this beast, but I will and you will be the first to know when I have conquered.

Also on other fronts, I kept trying to; 'git push heroku master' with no luck only an error. I then decide to close the terminal and try again, BINGO! MAGIC! So I can't explain why, but the whole "Have you tried turning it off and re-starting it thing really works sometimes".

On another note, I just realized I had accidently saved 2 posts awhile ago and never posted, so I did last night. Also crazy stuff happens to your mind around midnight, I'm beginning to realize, like accidently deleting a file when you thought you were moving it, do to your brain not getting enough oxygen and telling your hands to type an entirely different message than the one I wanted.-Tomorrow -Josh

P.s. 5 HOURS of Studying today!!!...and it's only Monday:)...well technically Tuesday looking at the after midnight thing.

Almost done 'Ruby4Kids' 'Gosu' Gem Game.

I've done much better studying this week, I'm currently sitting at 16 hours for the week. I studied 3 hours today. It's amazing how much time you can spend on trying to fix an error or a text editor that's not working, and it's just as amazing how much you can get done when everything is working

YES!!!....Github you are DEFEATED!!!

Ha ha!! You have submitted, you tricky, wily, Github. No more shall I cry late into the night about why something isn't working, no longer will I dread push commits to you old Github. I have twisted your arm into submission, from this day forth thou art beaten into dust!

I'm study right now at Panera and I kept have this issue pushing a rails application to Github, I finally just figured out the simple mistake I was making, and pushed the commit like a seasoned pro. I usually blog before or after I finish studying, but I was so excited I just had to stop and tell others that there is hope after Github:)

Loving this beast called coding, even if I'm in the infancy stages. I'm still waiting to hear back on the 'gosu' Gem errors, so until then I'm gonna work on the Michael Hartl Rails Tutorial.-Till tomorrow- Josh

End of week: Reading "Pro Git"

While I'm waiting tot hear back about the 'gosu' game code errors, I decided to go back to the Michael Hartl Rails Tutorial and try slowly going through that. Well last time I had SSh key errors, turns out I somehow deleted them even though I thought I was just checking if I had some, apparently I deleted them.

So now I'm getting an error while trying to push to Github, so I've decided to read "Pro Git" and really try to understand Git better, instead of trying to avoid it.

On the good side, I did my first ever Github Repository Clone. Needless to say I was very impressed and proud of myself and the mad skills I am slowly developing:)

 When I hear back about the code errors on the 'Gosu' gem game, then I will finish that, I very close to done.

I finished my 3 week of ROR training with a solid 23.5 hours of study, much better than my previous 14.5 hours, which brings my grand total for 3 weeks up to 52.5 hours!!!- Till tomorrow -Josh Kemp

3 hours later...Not done, trying to fix an error:)

So all was going fine and dandy, with the 'gosu' tutorial, till i got an error on lesson 9, yesterday.
I have spent all day today trying to find out how to fix it.

I have deleted my folder and started the tutorial over from scratch 3 times, hoping to get pats it that way, if I had made an error, I even copied and pasting everything from the tutorial into my text editor to no avail. Thankfully Alberto Morales from the Reston Rails Meetup has been so kind as to look at the code and let me know, what's wrong with it.

So grateful for the help of a seasoned developer to come along side and help a total noob like me:)

I'll let you know what happens tomorrow, or when I hear back. I'm going to play around with the Michael Hartl Rails Tutorial for the next hour, as I am too burnt out from the last 3 hours to fiddle with the 'gosu' gem anymore:)- Till tomorrow - Josh

Almost done 'Ruby4kids' Tutorial 'Gosu' Gem

I've done much better studying this week, I'm currently sitting at 16 hours for the week. I studied 3 hours today. It's amazing how much time you can spend on trying to fix an error or a text editor that's not working, and it's just as amazing how much you can get done when everything is working. I was on Chapter 2 of the game yesterday, and I finished tonight on Chapter 10, not 100% done, because I'm still getting an error, I will figure out what I typed wrong tomorrow.

I'm going slowly through this tutorial, and I'm hand coding it in , not copying and pasting it, cause I'm trying to feel a little better at fixing errors, understanding Ruby a little better and just really learning and not just zipping through something. I like the tutorial so far.

I think after 'Ruby4kids" I think I'll go back and finish 'Learn to Program' by Chris Pine, I'm just finishing Chapter 9 except I still have to do the exercises, there are 15 chapters total, so roughly 2/3 done, that's not too bad.

I forgot to mention, I really need to work on my typing form and speed at some point, one of the most embarrassing things about going to the Rails Meetups is getting left behind, just do to the simple fact I'm "hunting and pecking" and everyone else is actually typing, and not even thinking about it. Not sure if I should start doing that now, or down the road as I feel more confident in actual coding, i usually do better when I focus on 1 thing at a time.

I don't know, let me know if anyone has any ideas or good courses, because I suck at typing:) - Josh

1 file saved = 1 hour...or "Wow that was a waste of time"

Studied 2 hours Thursday (yesterday), working on the 'Ruby4kids.com' 'Gosu' gem lesson, in which you make a little game. I ended up spending an hour figuring out how to save files after changing them.

I use Sublime Text 2 as my text editor and have liked it. However as of 3 days ago whenever I save a file after making a change to the code it says: 'Unable to save 'example file''. I tried googling and googling for the answer to the problem, and have found out that apparently the latest version of Sublime Text 2 has a bug when saving files, and the only way to get around it is to type this code into your terminal: sudo /Applications/Sublime\ Text\ 2.app/Contents/MacOS/Sublime\ Text\ 2.

With that, you should be able to save files as normal with no problem, but it takes up a terminal as you're using it. The best solution I finally found was to: After making a change to a file click on the 'save as' button, then when the box pops up with the file to save, re-type in the name of the file that you want to save (treating it as a new file) and it saves with no problem.

So I would switch from Sublime Text 2 to a different editor but I like ST2 and I really don't know how to use some of the others, I figure the time it takes me to save the file can't take any longer than learning a new text editor, and hopefully a future update will fix it.

The game is going well, had some errors, but I have conquered, now to work on it some more today.-Josh 

Arlington Rails Meetup.

Last night I started the Ruby4kids.com 'Gosu' and finally figured out you can't save a png file using the command line. I just kept trying because I thought that's what they wanted me to do, anyway got it working now, gonna' work on it some more tonight.

Went to the Arlington Rails Meetup for the first time tonight, which was good. Had a great presentation by Guille Carlos owner of http://bitpop.in/ on "Building a Web Framework" using the Gem 'gob' it was good even though I got lost and made a ton of errors, better luck next time:) Thankfully some of the nice developers their helped me out so I learned alot. Met Jim Gay of Saturnflyer.com. He was nice and helped answer me questions and get me unstuck several times.

So all in all, these meetups are well worth the hour + drive, if for nothing more just getting to ask questions and talk to real developers. I would also say the Rails community is very welcoming, I really like that.

Doing much better on study time this week. Now to code.-Josh

First Rails Meetup = Awesome!!!

Went to my first Rails Meetup yesterday. I learned more in 3 hours there then a week on my own! I'm so energized to go to the next Reston Meetup. I've now joined the D.C. Rails Meetup, and the Arlington Rails Meetup as well as the Reston Rails Meetup.

I am taking a pause on Chris Pine's book "Learn to Program" and instead I'm going to: ruby4kids.com/gosu/the-game-window. I'm taking a break, to practice writing Ruby code more, and the reason for that is Ruby expert Alberto Morales recommended it to me as a good idea, so that's what I'm going to do for now.

I studied 6 hours Yesterday, so I'm really happy about that. Excited to go to the Arlington Rails Meetup for the first time tomorrow. I also just signed up for "Code retreat" December 8th, * hours of intense learning.

I'm excited to be learning ROR....time to code:) Josh

Fail yesterday....VICTORY TODAY!

I just finished chapter 8 of 'Learn to Program' (and yes that's all the exercises too:)) I really like the Ruby syntax I see now how people say it "just works". I didn't study on Saturday, I ended up watching a movie with my awesome wife:)

Today I spent 3 hours learning and practicing Arrays. So my total for the week Oct. 29th-Nov.4th was 14.5hrs, I've got to do better, I messed up 2 days, 1 was when hurricane Sandy came through and we lost power, but NO EXCUSES! ...I will do better and conquer! :) -Josh Kemp

p.s. Ruby is a lot of fun so far.

HOLY CRAP!!!

Darn it, I'm like hey I'm gonna use the command line more, I wanna' move around some files and stuff, so I move around files, make a new directory, delete some old files, and it's all good, til apparently I ended up not only deleting the old files and directory, I also ended up removing all the files from the newly made directory, but not the new directory name itself. Man am I an Idiot!...and here I thought I was being careful and felt more confident, apparently pride does go before the fall. I'll have to far more careful, man the command line really is POWERFULL!

Okay....so I lied:(

I did finish reading all of chapter 7 except for doing the exercises, which I naively thought I would breeze through. Which I did except for the 2nd example. Here's that code finished...FINALLY!!

Sublime Text 2: View



puts 'Say hello to your Grandma'


while true
input = gets.chomp
  if input == 'BYE'
puts 'See ya\' later gator  :)'
  break
  end

  if input != input.upcase
  puts 'HUH?!      SPEAK UP, SONNY!'

  else
  random_year = 1930 + rand(21)
puts ' No not since '  + random_year.to_s + ' !' ' ...it was a LONG time ago, as I recall.'


  end
end

Kind of fun actually, I tried coding it on my Droid using the "Ruboto IRB' and couldn't get it to work, kept getting:

 '=> NoMethodError: private method 'chomp' called for nil:NilClass (root) at deafgrandma.rb3 nil

So I see it has a problem with the Method 'chomp', and I see it's on line 3. I don't understand the 'private Method' part, gonna' look it up, and tell you all what I found out tomorrow.-Josh Kemp

P.S. If anyone knows or has seen this before, feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.

'Learn to Program'---just finished Chapter 7

Studied for 3 hours last night, I went from 11pm-1am then I was too tired so I went to bed, got up at 5am studied for 1 more hour went back to bed at 6:12am. So all in all a good day.

angryboss.rb
bigger.rb
calc.rb
elseif.rb
fullname.rb
length.rb
linewidth.rb
Minutesindec.rb
reverse.rb
Secondsold.rb

These are mostly all the basic programs I've made so far. I also made a simple 'Hello what's your name style program' on my Rooted Droid Bionic, it runs 2.3.4 Gingerbread, so it's old but it runs the app for the Ruby IRB. It's pretty cool, you can create and execute programs.

I went and got my Macbook Pro looked at today at the Apple store in Fairfax, Va, the Optical drive wasn't working so we couldn't watch any Dvds or anything, turns out my 3 year old put a quarter in the drive, works fine now:)

Anyway back to studying. Till tomorrow.-Josh

Command Line- Copying and removing files

Studied 2 hours yesterday, made a couple nice little programs. Today I realized I have far too many random .rb files on my computer that I didn't know why I had or what they do. So I decided to make a new folder on the Desktop titled "Learningrb" and move a some files onto there, then remove the original file.

After some trial and error (mainly error :)) I must say I feel much better about the whole copying and removing files using the command line.

I love feeling a little bit more comfortable with the command line and getting better slowly...loving it:)
Josh Kemp