Alderin.com

I managed to post some of the JavaScript tutorial pages I’ve written for my daughter. They are aimed at those with no programming nor HTML experience, and the intent is to teach programming concepts in JavaScript enough to write web-based games.  It might be ambitious, and what is posted may need a large amount of polish, but I think it is a worthy endeavor.

The link to the Index of these pages is “JavaScript” at the top of the page next to “About”.  Or just here if you want.

I know there is much reformatting to be done due to the move from my private wiki to this blog, but that is part of the polishing.

This week went by like a blink. My current and quite engrossing project is teaching my daughter how to program using JavaScript. I’m likely to edit and post the lessons I’ve built for her here, since I’m short on content and a lot of people ask me how they should start programming. I always tell them to learn JavaScript first, because just about all aspects of JavaScript can be learned from online sources for free, and the tools needed are a web browser and a text editor, which every modern computer has already.
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I broke through the 6 digits in rank! As of this writing I’m at 98,089.

“But, what is it?” you ask…
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Well, I wish I was that excited about it.  Sadly, for me, the day of the week means very little.  My schedule at work has me working every other weekend, and that weekend being this one.  Friday then is just another day to trudge through.  Ten hour shifts offer the promise of one more day off per week, but for graveyard shift one day off between two working days is almost worthless.

More boring personal life stuff below.
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It isn’t like waking up. Waking up is usually pleasant, but the sudden realization that time has gone by and I’ve just become aware that something happened that I missed. That is disturbing.
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All I seem capable of lately is lists.  Not actually accomplishing anything on the lists, just making them.  “These are the things, these are the steps, those are the guidelines,” but no progress toward checking things off of those lists.  No money for the things, no focus for the steps, so no need for the guidelines (because if you aren’t going anywhere, you don’t need the roadmap).
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School for the kids is ending this week.  Summer break is here already (wish I got one), and sadly the adults of the house don’t get the same break.  I don’t want my kids to be either bored out of their skulls, or constantly sucked into the cheap crap marketing tool television.  My daughter has set goals for the summer, to learn to program is the one I think she could actually achieve this summer.  (Learning Japanese is another of her goals, but I don’t quite have the resources to help with that yet.)

We saw the billboards for Pixar’s new movie “Wall-e”, and we all thought (well, the kids and I thought) “I want one!”  Now, I’ve wanted to build a robot for a long time, and I’ve had more than a few false starts.  I am hoping that, with the help of the two munchkins, we’ll be able to come up with something functional this time.  That’s the big idea.

Good big ideas spawn lots of little ideas.
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I really don’t know.  The increase in dosage that my doctor put me on did not increase my focus.  It did increase the intensity and regularity of my headaches, turn up the volume of the ringing in my ears that I used to only be able to hear in near silence, and I think it might (maybe) be effecting my eyesight.

The question is: Is this dosage actually effecting the opposite of the intended effect?

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It’s a strange and wonderful thing to go to a family reunion. It is the 50th anniversary of my Great-Uncle Bob and his wife Mary’s wedding, so a large portion of my mother’s mother’s brother’s (Bob’s) family were gathered. Fun and odd to see people you’ve only seen when you were at most 12 now 20 years later. Older cousins you remember looking up to and younger cousins you can’t believe are old enough to drink. One younger cousin with a kid, makes me a … cousin?

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I have enjoyed it’s run, and I’m sad to hear that Here There Be Dragons webcomic is ended.  It ended without fanfare, without a finale, and with a cliché closing quote, “It’s not you, it’s me, I just can’t do this anymore.”

That said, it was relatively new, the characters were just beginning to develop personalities beyond the judge-a-book-by-its-cover level, and this happens in a relatively plotless time in the storyline.

What surprises me about this situation is the lack of anger or frustration, and I think it boils down to the fact that in my life, when channels change, projects CAN’T be worked on, and if he understands himself well enough to know that he can’t continue, I can understand and respect that.  This isn’t like Firefly, where someone else’s mishandling of the art caused the failure and forced the artist to move on, though the other parallels of short season and no season finale do strike a chord.

So, Charles Trickey, aka sparkforge, I wish you well in your endeavors.  Maybe I’ll usurp that juicy domain name from you, make it a video game… maybe.