CodeCall Programming Forum - Blogs - Brandon W

My Revoltution

Brandon W — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 11:33:33 GMT

NOTE: THIS IS NOT A SHORT BLOG, IT MIGHT NOT EVEN INTEREST MOST OF YOU!

My Revolution

For reasons that are too long to explain, starting next week my life is going to be totally revamped. The main reason is school and how interesting my subjects are getting. It makes no sense so let me explain in greater detail.

Recently, I got offered a scholarship to a University highly respected in my area (www.uq.edu.au). I never really thought of attending this University, I did but it wasn't looking too good. I knew quite a few people that had attended this UNI and still are enrolled now. They recommended it to me but it didn't really offer the courses that I wanted to study. So I was looking at another University (www.qut.edu.au). This UNI seem to offer everything I wanted to study but as I got more interested into Mathematics in Senior, my mind had drifted off into a entirely new world.

I changed from going to designing and programming Operating Systems, to Software Developing, at this time I was still going to do IT. I constantly changed my mind for which career in Information Technology until I started my senior years of schooling. This is when I started to do the hardest Mathematics class at my school. I have had a passion for Mathematics for as long as I can remember, in some way my Father had something to do with this. When I started to think about Mathematics, I changed to Game Developing. Time after time, I changed my mind until I sticked with Mathematics and was leaving it at that.

Yet again, my mind had drifted into all different careers involving Mathematics. Now I'm sticking to doing a career that involves Maths but what? I started to do a class called Aerospace, only offered in 21 schools in my State. We do all the areas of the Aviation industry, Business, Engineering and of course Physics. This class really had me interesting, well not really the Business but yeah haha.

Back to the original discussion however, I got offered the scholarship which I will only pay AUD$500 for. This will give me many benefits, some being;
- Help through my final year of high school
- Days through out the year which I visit the UNI
- 4 Day trip to the UNI over the holidays, accommodation included
- Easy transaction from High School to UNI
- Presentations and lectures by Australia's best teaching and research staff
- Guaranteed overseas study scholarship
- UQ Library access
- Online community with other scholars

This is something I really wish to take up so I'm studying my butt off to get there. On top of this, one of my Aerospace teachers approached me the other day with another opportunity with this University. If I can get 5 HA's (High Achieving) marks, I can get straight into a Engineering or Information Technology UNI course without an OP (Overall Position, required to get into UNI).

The best thing about these two opportunities is that it helps my future which is something I really can do with. With all this extra work, I need to try and keep up with all my other subjects at school. On top of that as well, the other day I had an interview with the Principal of my school, he requested one with me. When I went down to see him, it amazed me with what he had said. For the past 2 years at my school, he has been watching me. Watching how my marks go, my behaviour, what my teachers think of me etc etc. It turns out that every single one of my teachers over the past couple of years has said something to this Principal about me. Which really had pleased me. He also mentioned that he would be highly disappointed in me if I did not run for School Captain. That's why I'm going to run for it, when I spoke to a few of my teachers about this interview. They all had agreed with me and they stand behind me. They'll give me the support I need to achieve my goals, help me to get this position of School Captain. Some of you might know it as School Leader?

With all that above going on, I have realised I don't have enough time in the day for anything. For the last two weeks, I have been working Saturday mornings. I work with car trailers but thanks to my brother, he told me boss that I'm a computer guru so I spend most of my time in the office fixing his computer for him. I'm not really a guru just to him, he doesn't know much at all so to him I'm a genuis haha. Finally getting some money coming in from this job now so I have gone out and bought two books I want to read. "Einstein for Dummies" and "A Brief History of Time" by Stephen Hawking. To get some inspiration and some insight to Physics and Mathematics. I wish to read more of these books so I went down to the shops today and got a long list of books I want to read about Science. The problem is, they are expensive and at this moment of time I can't afford to buy them. Which is why, I'm building my boss a new website (currently www.economytrailers.com.au). If he was silly enough to pay AUD$3500 for that, I wonder what he would pay me if I were to create something a lot more attractive. Code some programs that will help them with their work and satisfy more of their customers, I should get a bigger payout. Which if that time comes, I will build more sites for local startups and bring in some more money. With this, I can finally go out and by the books I wish to read.

In some ways, I'm leaving programming. I do enjoy it very much but I just don't have the time to do it. It doesn't interest me as much now as what it did a few months ago, I'm getting more into the Mathematics, Physics, well Science really, side of things. This is what I wish to pursue and this is what I'm going to continue doing.

After reading everything above, I think a few of you will be thinking "Are you leaving CodeCall, again...". The answer to this is no. I made my promise to Jordan that I'm not leaving and I'm going to stick by that. I might not be as active because I hardly get on the computer anymore. Either working out, running, riding, with my girlfriend, reading, watching documentaries on the TV, speaking to my Father (we share the same passion), studying or at school. These are things lately that I seem to do but I will make time every couple of days to get on CC. I made my promise and I'm sticking by it.

Starting next week my life will be changing. I'm still going to be Brandon but a more productive, healthier, fitter and hopefully more knowledgeable person.

Regards,
Brandon

One Hundred Pushups Challenge - Week 2

Brandon W — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 11:48:00 GMT

The program runs over 6 weeks, each week you do three days of the push ups. They give you a set number to do for the first few sets then in the last set, you do as many as you can but you do the minimum they set you.

Week 2 Day 1
SET 1 - 14
SET 2 - 14
SET 3 - 10
SET 4 - 10
MAX (min 15) - 15

Week 2 Day 2
SET 1 - 14
SET 2 - 16
SET 3 - 12
SET 4 - 12
MAX (min 17) - 24

Week 2 Day 3
SET 1 - 16
SET 2 - 17
SET 3 - 14
SET 4 - 14
MAX (min 20) - 30

This week wasn't too bad actually... Not very happy with the first day but I am actually doing these sets AFTER I got for a long ride. Not straight after, like 30 minutes later.

I started Week 3 Day 1 yesterday and I was very happy with my results :D I'm starting more challenges now, using a different program though. I will start the other programs 100 push up challenge after this one, the other one you battle other people. It's much more fun :D

I'm going to start a thread all about fitness in "The Lounge" so look out for that :)

Hows everyone else going?

One Hundred Push Up Challenge - Week 1

Brandon W — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 11:16:20 GMT

I'm going to be starting a log of my One Hundred Push Up Challenge and this is week one.

The program runs over 6 weeks, each week you do three days of the push ups. They give you a set number to do for the first few sets then in the last set, you do as many as you can but you do the minimum they set you.

Week 1 Day 1
SET 1 - 10
SET 2 - 12
SET 3 - 7
SET 4 - 7
MAX (min 9) - 20

Week 1 Day 2
SET 1 - 10
SET 2 - 10
SET 3 - 8
SET 4 - 8
MAX (min 12) - 14

Week 1 Day 3
SET 1 - 11
SET 2 - 15
SET 3 - 9
SET 4 - 9
MAX (min 13) - 30

This was a bad week for me. Just before I did Day 1, I did my initial test then did the sets after. Just before I did Day 2, I went for an intense ride then when I got home I realised I had to do the sets. So I did them. Day 3, I did it just before I started this blog. Problem is, this morning I woke up with Swine Flu which really affected me and now I can hardly breathe and coughing very badly.

Let's hope Week 2 comes out a lot better than this week!

What comes after Web 2.0

Brandon W — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 09:47:37 GMT

Just for a little history first. Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft the Software Giant, once said that 1MB of RAM would be all we would ever need for a computer. If you look at todays newly released computers, most of them are being released with 2GB+ RAM. You will be very surprised to find a computer that is brand new with under 1GB of RAM installed on it. That's around 20 years later.

Just a few years ago, about 2002. My Dad went out and bought a 512MB USB which cost him AUD$80. Today, in 2009, you go out to your local computer show, maybe even a supermarket, you can buy a 2GB USB for AUD$12. As you can see, technology is growing very quickly. Back in 1990, I believe, the World Wide Web was released with only HTML.

Now if you look around at todays web technology you have CSS3, JavaScript, AJAX, PHP, ASP, Perl, Ruby, Python and you can even make CGI scripts in C++! With the release of all this great stuff what does come after Web 2.0?

Look back at the first websites on the WWW, they were plain and frankly quite boring. If you look around today at sites such as Google, it's simple and attractive but offers a great Web 2.0 tool. Look at Wikipedia, not the greatest looking site but look at what it offers. Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, all these social networking sites are Web 2.0! These aren't the only things that make up this amazing web, you can even find an alternative to Photoshop IN YOUR WEB BROWSER!

Looking around the other night at the Cappuccino Framework and Objective-J. What they have done is taken a application developing programming language, Objective-C and wrote a framework for it in JavaScript which can lead to amazing new Web apps. One for example is something similar to your Microsoft Powerpoint;
http://280slides.com/Editor/

The thing is it's free, you can access it anywhere you have the internet and best of all it offers great features that you would expect software to be written in programming languages like C++ and Java. You can even find an Operating System designed in Javascript for your web browser, well something similar.

With all this great technology coming out where can we go for the next version of the Web? Will it be called Web 3.0? What will it involve? What web apps could we find in this era of the web? When is it coming? Who is working on it?

All these questions are the questions that bug people like me all day every day. Where can we go? If Bill Gates once said that 1MB RAM would be enough, 20 years later modern day applications will not be able to run off this. So what we will expect 20 years later for the web?

Dicuss all this in the comments.

The 100 Push Up Challenge

Brandon W — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 09:17:57 GMT

I know, I know this is ment to be a programming blog so I do apologise for this. However, if you are a programmer and you might have some weight on you or maybe you want to build some muscle? Why not take the One Hundred Push Up Challenge and follow this program with other CodeCall members? So far there is three people doing it, including me, so why not just us and do it for some fun :)

It doesn't matter if you don't reach the goal but it would still be fun just to do. Only takes 30 minutes a week! For more information, view this thread;
http://forum.codecall.net/lounge/190...challenge.html

Gambling - Why?

Brandon W — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 12:33:30 GMT

What is all this discussion about gambling? My mate from work came up to me and said he won $1000 (AUD) from only putting on $100. So it made me think, with what I have been learning in Maths I could work out the chances of winning on a certain game when you gamble.

When you hear about people gambling, its normally you win a lot or you lose a lot. Why is this? Because this chances of winning are extremely slim so you must be lucky to win, unless you can count cards ;) There are many different forms of gambling but the one I am going to show you the chances of are Gold Lotto.

I don’t know if anyone has heard of Gold Lotto? If not, you might have something very similar. You go to your local newsagent, normally, and you buy a ticket with games on it. There is a long list of numbers and every couple of days a certain amount of numbers are chosen at random and if you have those you win money. A lot of it too! Here in Australia it’s called Gold Lotto, Oz Lotto, Powerball etc.

The way you play Gold Lotto is you buy a certain amount of games, each with 6 numbers per game. Every week a machine, similar to Bingo, will roll out 6 numbers. If you have all those 6 numbers in any of your games you win first division. If someone else wins, you split the money but it is still a fairly large amount. Gold Lotto the numbers range from 1-45. So using the permutation formula you can work out the chances of winning first division.
nPr = n! / (n-r)!
36P6 = 36! / (36-6)!
= 36! / 30!
= 1402410240

Which means you have 1 in 1,402,410,240 chances of winning Gold Lotto first division. Now you have to be lucky if you win that! Just think, if you can work that out. You can work out the stakes of winning any gambling games, which if you do you will understand why so many people lose than win when they gamble.

My family buys 36 games each week, which means we have 1 in 1,402,410,240 chances per game, which also can be written as 1 in 38,955,840 chances each week :)
If you have worked out the stakes of any other gambling games, post your results. It would be interesting to see.

Regards,
Brandon

Increase your productivity

Brandon W — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 09:56:16 GMT

G'day there CodeCall members.

I am here to talk to you about how you can improve your personal productivity when you need to work, study, program, write and whatever else! It's not that hard at all, so I will be explaining to you how to do this and I will be showing you how I do it myself.

For starters, you need somewhere you can relax. Maybe a study a room, maybe a desk set up in another room, my your fish take, by the TV. Just somewhere you feel comfortable and you won't get distracted too easily. I have set up a desk in my own room.

Might be boring just having an empty desk, even if it is by your fish tank, so you need to spice it up a bit. My Dad has set the family computer up beside our massive fish tank, no one really uses it for relaxing because it is right near where everyone sits. I have added personal things to my desk that I find quite important to me and make me feel better and inspire me to just keep moving forward. As my best friend says "Just keep smiling". Might not fit into the topic but it does in some way, if your angry and stressed you can just look at something memorable and you will start to smile yet again :)

Another way that helps me think is listening to music that is relaxing and inspirational. Just before I got "The Most Relaxing Piano Album...Ever!" which I am listening to now. It's a great album! Has some very old pianists (Did I spell that right?) music in it.

Some days it might get hot, so you will need something to cool down. This is why you set up a mini fan that will cool down you down as you work. It might be too cold, so you might just have a few jumpers or jackets on to keep you cool. If it is dark and you are working on a computer screen, it really can damage your eyes. I know this for a fact because I have had it before. So you could go down to your local markets and buy yourself a little desk lamp that would be bright enough to shine up your desk.

This is everything I do, if you having anything else to add please feel free to leave them in a comment.

Now to show you my desk that is set up in my room, right next to my BIG bed :)

Not the best of images because the only night in the room at the moment is the ceiling light which is very bright at all so I am sorry. Now for an explanation.

As you can see, I have my laptop in the centre of the desk. This is the main point of the desk, you can't see it but behind the laptop is a laptop cooler, a notepad and a pen. The notepad and pen are for writing down ideas as they come to my head and sometimes used to express my feelings towards that special someone. To my left I have three shelves. The bottom one is two books that I got from getting 5 A's in a semester, each time it happens I get one. On top of that are some spare text books for school. The next shelf is really just the junk shelf, which I put whatever in there. The top shelf is all my computer magazines, as you can see I have quite a few, but the latest one filled it to the top. It's about Ubuntu, I brought it yesterday. On top of all this is two of my memorable bears. They each hold a letter, B and C, which I recieved from my best friend meaning Brandon and Christina forever. Next to those are my Rocky movies, at the back of the bottom ones are pictures of my niece and on the top one a bear from my brothers girlfriend. Going across, I have a Miley Cyrus doll. Yes I do have one LOL, my brothers girlfriend was a smart donkey and brought it for me. Normally I have a picture of my recent Grandma there too. Along is a penguin, I love them :) Another little best friend bear from my best friend. On top of the other shelf is my CD case, my computer toolkit and Diablo game discs, haven't played in ages. Then I have my fan and my desk light, behind them is a cupboard for all my iPhone stuff. You can't see it but under the desk is my sub :) For my techno music and a bunch of old school books along with this years text books.

As you can see I am highly organized, which is why I am never angry as if I am. I just look up, see all these memorable bears, my Grandma and my Niece. Soon I will be getting a husky photo hung up too, which will really calm me down.

The main question is, are you highly organized and have you set up a work place that will make nice and calm if you ever do angry? Please post a photo, if you feel comfortable, and explain as I have done. I am interested to see other members ideas :)

Why we all should respect Mathematicians

Brandon W — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 12:04:43 GMT

Why should we all respect Mathematicians?

Well the reason for this blog is to explain why we should all respect and love Mathematicians. It came up at school today, I had two periods then lunch. The two periods were Maths C and Maths B (don't worry if you don't understand, just all you need to know is they are the hard ones) and one of my friends asked me at lunch. Why would you do mathematics? I said because I would like to be a mathematician. He replied with that mathematicians are useless and do nothing. This really got me fired up for a debate :)

If it wasn't for Isaac Newton where would we be today? If you don't know who he is, well you musn't know much. But he is quite famous for an apple dropping on his head, why is that? With the apple falling on his head, it made him wonder what made the apple fall, why didn't it just stay there? This is where gravity was first mentioned. He wasn't just famous for gravity, but also forces, friction and motion. Most probably much more too. But if it wasn't for his mathematical mind we could be sitting there for 30 minutes trying to work out what kg ms^-2 is. Yes this is also known as Newtons (N). He made it simple, F = mass x acceleration. If on Earth, the acceleration, which is gravity, is 9.81ms^-1. We could be there for a long time.

Yes this does mean that Mathematicians are lazy in some way, but they cut down long formulas into very short ones to make it easier for future generations. That is a basic formula that was worked out, but imagine how you would solve a quadratic expression before this formula was designed;

As I said, some people are there for a few minutes working that out, others can do it in their head. The reason for this mathematicians were the ones that made it easy for you, that it hard once but then they made it easy.

Just think, these are still fairly basic formulas, just imagine really long ones like Quartic or Cubic expressions! Please respect them if you don't already :)

Regards,
Brandon

*Sits anxiously waiting for Winged's reply*

Why use Frameworks?

Brandon W — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 11:14:41 GMT

From me learning jQuery lately, it has been the first framework I have ever used on any language. I always saw programmers speaking of them and knew
what they did, but I never actually tried to use one.

There are many frameworks available for many programming languages, such as PHP, Javascript, ASP etc. There are not just one or two frameworks for each
but many. It's hard to choose which one that will fit your needs, but I think it would be best to get one and at least try it as it will save you
plenty of viable programming time.

The main objective of a framework is to shorten the amount of typing required to do something. The motto of the jQuery, a Javascript framework, is
"Write less, do more". This is very true as it can reduce this code from this;
Code:
getElementByID('name');
To this;
Code:
$($name)
So in saying this, a framework is basically a list of pre-written functions that will help you while you program. Not always functions, this can also
be a class. If it is a class, you will new to create a new instance of it and then using OOP techniques you can do what you want.

Most probably the most greatest thing I think about frameworks is, it is quicker to learn. Learning a framework is easier than ABC. You might alrady
know a programming language but you wish to use a framework, it might take you a while to get use to it but it will help you a lot in the process. If
you don't know a programming language that you wish to use a framework for, it might be harder to learn based on the framework. But it's always best
to have a fairly brief idea on the programming language.

What is your opinion on frameworks?

Is the Gaming Industry the right area?

Brandon W — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 05:00:00 GMT

Considering I haven't been on CodeCall much lately, computer for that fact. I don't won't to disappear, I just don't have time for the computer. I have also always said I would blog on CodeCall but I never have, so I think this is the best time to write one :)I was at work last night and I just started to think, is the Gaming Industry the right place for me? Why do you say? Well, I have always wanted to learn programming and I first started off with HTML, CSS and JS. Lately, I have been wanting to do some software programming languages. C/C++, Java, maybe even Python and a few others. I have never wanted to get into the gaming industry even though I LOVE Mathematics, maybe that's not enough. I love maths more than Winged :)So recently, my brother got Diablo II -- a game by Blizzard -- for his birthday. I use to play this game a while back, before I started off with programming and building websites. I have started to play but he got a stradegy guide with it, I been reading a bit of that. Magic items have many bonuses like 34% enhanced defence, +2 to a spell, 74% more gold per drop etc. Then there are 7 different classes you can play as and each have 30 spells.I read some where in the book a few formulas that they use for a few of the spells and a few of the bonuses that are based on the level of the character. They seem to be quite interesting. This wasn't got me thinking about the gaming industry.When I was at work I was thinking about it. I use to play a game called RuneScape, quite a while back actually. I got bored of the game so I got into the Private Servers. The Private Servers are the game but they can be changed through the code. Since it's in Java, I didn't do much editing myself but I used a lot of tutorials to change it. I enjoyed it a lot, I liked the outcome of it, the good thing was I never had to do any of the Graphics :) Not as much Maths involved in as Diablo but still had a bit. The reason I quit doing that was I was playing the game more than I was programming.So the question still queries me, is the Gaming Industry the right area for a Programming Mathematecian?