Javascript – Unused Genius

I haven’t failed, I’ve only found ways that don’t work….

artjynx — Sun, 03 Aug 2014 02:24:40 +0000

Ah, failure. I’m coming to terms with it. I think as a kid, I was one of those people who just caught on to things rather quickly. I didn’t fail enough. Or if I did fail, it was by laziness on my part. Now however, I’m really trying. really. and dammit, this is teaching me how to fail and fail gracefully. As I’m going through this endeavor of learning javascript. Really learning it as Mr. Unused Genius would say not just finding snippets and making them work for me. I’m also looking for a job. I may have a chance to return to my previous job remotely, but that’s up in the air. I made some effort to speak to recruiters which I’ve never really done before. You see, I’ve never had a problem finding a job. Until now. ok, granted I’ve only been looking for a month. I’m a type ‘A’ personality, welcome to my support group. Having this work ethic and trying to change what I do while trying to convince someone I can do the job is a little challenging. I’m used to talking about my portfolio and ow to deal with clients (which I still do), but now I’m having to know far more jargon and buzzwords about coding than ever. Something which I do better by demonstrating rather than speaking about it. Phone interviews…I’m just not that great. I need to learn this skill as well. So here’s to hoping the former job returns as I believe I could turn it into something really great now that I’m more aware of what I should be doing to improve myself.

What’s been happening:

1. Finished Code Academy Javascript Track (they’ve added a new project track which I plan on trying out)

2. Bought this book and have gone through 6 chapters (I’m forcing myself to write the book in order to comprehend) Handwriting is improving.

3. I have access to a Lynda account and will be going through and looking at angular.js

4. I have conceived of a couple of projects to give me a better portfolio when I redo it.

I object!

artjynx — Sat, 21 Jun 2014 02:04:48 +0000

mmmmm. objects. These are quite cool, but the syntax is getting quite complex fairly quickly. I think if I do like 100 of these in a row, I’ll get it. Mr. unused genius tells me this is where all the cool javascript code hangs out and switch statements are basically useless.

On another note, Mr. Unused Genius and I went on a date to the IBM campus to visit Watson and hear more about their new endeavors to put Watson to work for them. I met one of the guys who works in the design team and he inspired me as to what I can do for actual projects for javascript once I’m done with tutorials. He told me about the use of Unity3D and processingJS to develop 3D “Iron Man” type interfaces. Here’s some of the clips from the movie.
http://youtu.be/mbj3XSvDyw8, http://youtu.be/-KPhqy7ZwHU, and http://youtu.be/wKyQhriOrD0

What was really crazy was that my thesis was based on motion graphic title sequences of film. However, as special effects in the movies has progressed, these same title effects houses have also been asked to produce these types of “interfaces” for the movies. This is one of the artists who created this (http://www.johnkoltai.com/IRON-MAN-2-User-Interface-Design) for this company: http://www.perceptionnyc.com/

Cool TED Talk

https://www.ted.com/talks/james_patten_the_best_computer_interface_maybe_your_hands#t-225672

Google UI Engineer’s blog on UI in film

http://www.pushing-pixels.org/

Controlling Flow in Javascript or Kiss mah grits.

artjynx — Wed, 18 Jun 2014 18:20:18 +0000

Yes. I’m dating myself there. To be fair, I was very little and my older sister had a weird obsession with the sitcom Alice. I was forced to watch it. So after missing a day due to a day long excursion back to College Station to visit clients…and then the next day being devoted to toddler time. I’m back on the path. I’m done with slaying dragons, but have started a new lesson on workflow. It’s starting to get a little more difficult in that I’m now not getting the awesome hints I was getting before. I’m happy to say I solved this one with only having to look up the component once.

Slaying Dragons…training is pointless

artjynx — Sun, 15 Jun 2014 17:00:44 +0000

So code academy is having me create a little script for a game that involves slaying dragons and what not. This is more really for learning to work with jsFiddle. I intend to keep track of my code projects using this as I go. It makes me feel like I’m really accomplishing something by keeping track. Yay! So here’s the first attempt:

Javascript and abandoning all hope full speed ahead…

artjynx — Sun, 15 Jun 2014 02:00:49 +0000

Time Flies. I left my very first blog post on here to just remind me what a dork I can be and that really for a blog to be a blog, one must actually write and contribute to it. An update to the first post dated in 2011, I am now married with a little girl and we’ve moved to Austin where we pretty much are going to stay. I’m freelancing under my own company, and it’s worked well but now the spawn is getting older and takes less naps. She attends “school” 3 days a week but we’ve decided to put her in full time starting this coming July so I can focus on getting a full time job somewhere. However, I’m really wanting to try something different and coding in Javascript, Angular.js, possibly Swift will be the key to achieving this endeavor. I learned AutoCAD by forcing myself to write down the manual. Yes, you read that right, I wrote the book in a spiral notebook. It forced me to read every word as I HATE reading boring things. But it worked for me and I now have really awesome penmanship. So the purpose of this blog literally is to write down everything I learn each day and to document my progress, frustrations and maybe some little cartoons for fun.

What I’ve already been up to is going through the javascript tutorials on code academy. I’m about 41% through and working on a small game tutorial. So far, the tutorials are jogging my memory quite a bit. I’m not a stranger to coding, but as a designer unfortunately, you don’t get to practice this skill everyday. For some reason, people think designers are all encompassing unicorns who know everything. Jack of all trades, master of none. So this is my opportunity to master something by just doing it every day. Even if it’s only 30 min.

After I’m through with the basics on javascript, I plan on moving on to one of the frameworks. Angular.js in particular. There are so many places to learn this though I’m getting a little paralyzed. While Code Academy is free for the most part, I was considering paying for the tutorials online. Mr. Unsed Genius tells me I’m better off just reading the tech docs and suffering through a project. yay! Mr. Genius is a developer btw and giving me advice on what’s best to learn.