Packetfury.net

We live in an interesting world. I'm not quite too sure what sort of world I'll be leaving for my daughter, but sometimes I'm worried. There was a nice joke on Internet a while ago, an image of an iPhone, and on the screen, an alarm application was ringing. Time to wake up! Two buttons below, "Stop", or "Snooze (buy for $0.99)". I think that sums up a lot of what this world is about right now. Everything seems to be around money. When my daughter was born, I was flooded with letters, emails and all sorts of messages about products and services, some of them useful, and some of them... less so. We even had a photographer come into the room to photograph our daughter, and one month later, they came back with our "free" photo, and a car full of other things to buy (ugly photo frames, a scarf with out daughter's head on it, a wrist watch, etc.) We had so much pressure on us, that yes, we ended up signing for a lot of things, but thanks to French law, we had 7 days to change our mind, and change our mind we did. Even the original files were copyrighted by the photographer, we couldn't even get hold of the original files, but if we wanted a reprint, sure, they'd do it for us. Great.

Well, that isn't really that bad, compared to what else could happen. I'm a firm believer in books (the paper version, even if I do like eBooks, nothing compares to paper). Prices just seem to go up and up, to a point where education has a heafty price tag. The more I earn, the more it looks like I have to pay for every day services, and I don't actually mind that, most of the time, it just depends on what. I'm already a great fan of Open Source software, and I try to contribute whenever I can. But how can you do the same with education? There is no open-source education, right? Wrong.

Meet The New Boston, a project by Bucky Roberts. Bucky Roberts is a great guy who is obsessed with teaching others. For free. As in really free.

Don't ever believe a developer who says he knows everything, it isn't true. I've been a developer for over 10 years, and no, I don't know everything, far from it. I was looking for some Android development tutorials at one point, and I came across some of them on The New Boston, made by one of Bucky's friends, Travis, from mybringback. Links to YouTube videos were on Bucky's site, and they were really, really good. Anyone new to Android development should try, and I'm pretty sure that experienced developers will have something to learn too. So then I became curious... I started to look around on his site, a deeper look at all the tutorials. Once again, no fee. When I say no fee, I'm not talking about the first 3 free then you have to pay to get the others. I'm not talking about free as in I only had 5 minutes to do it, and I haven't finished yet, and probably never will. Bucky is serious, and does tutorials very, very well. The subjects are multiple; not just programming, but computer science, maths and surviving the wilderness. Oh, and how to build a go kart. That one is fun! Even if I have been a developer for a long time, I still learnt lots of stuff; some things that I had forgotten a long time ago, and some techniques and ideas I never learnt.

Free education. Free. Not only does he not charge for viewing his lessons, but even worse, he gives out hundreds of presents. Free t-shirts, by the hundreds (last time I think he gave out 200). This time it's more t-shirts, and even a few copies of Diablo 3. Ok, I'm curious, this time I'll enter, but I'm still convinced I should send him something, and not the other way round...

So think about following Bucky, he's pretty active on Google+, and a visit to his page is always worth your time. Just remember to visit the home page from time to time, there is a "donate" button. Remember, making tutorials is full time for him, so it's a little thankyou for the time he spent. Also, take a few minutes to visit mybringback, and help out Travis (and his awesome rugby-playing grandma) with his Bringo project. Guys, you rock! Thanks for everything you did for me, and for everyone else.

Last night, I was invited to a conference on Google Anayltics, AdSense and AdWords, by Ronan Chardonneau of inextcom, and held by the Nantes GTUG group, hosted by Epitech Nantes. An excellent conference, many thanks Ronan!

Ronan spoke in length about Google Analytics, and how to use it effectively to see what is happening on your website. There were lots of tips, ranging for a nice integration of Analytics, first steps with AdWords, how to fine tune the results to know exactly what is going on, as well as some of the more recent developments by Google (real-time information, for example). There was even a joke about Singapore, much to my amusement.

This is going to be useful for me for several reasons, even if my current occupation is embedded systems, it is always useful to know how to market your website (including this one!). I still have a few secret projects up my sleeve, and this could be very useful for some of them. Wait and see...

Many thanks to everyone involved, and to everyone who spent time and money so that this conference could take place.

On the 23rd April, 1982, Sinclair Research launched the ZX Spectrum. Named the Spectrum to fully illustrate the color capabilites compared to its predecessors, this tiny little machine made a huge impression on the UK. And yes, I had one of these. I also had a ZX81 and a Spectrum +3. I can still remember trying to program it, but at the time I didn't have a cassette drive. I was forced to read magazines, enter in lines of code, and then run it to figure out I made a mistake somewhere. Also the keys were "surprising"; they were rubber, much like in remote controls, and in order to type 10 PRINT "HELLO"; you actually had to find the key that corresponded to PRINT. Each key had a function, so instead of typing out each letter, you just pressed the key and the entire word came up. Useful for people like me that didn't have a programming manual but wanted to figure out what could be done; every possible instruction was written there, on the keyboard!

The games were fun, too, even if the selling point of these machines was to "halp with homework". Homework? What homework? Ok, let's play Elite.

It wasn't the Spectrum that made me into a software engineer, but it was one of those machines that were magic; anyone looking at me at the time probably laughed when they saw me open-mouthed infront of a TV screen, looking at "SINCLAIR BASIC". 48k of RAM... I never managed to use it all up!

Fond memories...

So here we are, I'm 35 years old. As someone pointed out, 5 years to go until I'm 40, and then things go downhill. Senility, retirement, having false teeth, only eating soup, etc. Well, whatever. In the mean time, I'm making the most of it!
The very first person to wish me my birthday (without cheating) was Aurore. A quick SMS message this morning. Thanks! Then the rest of Anne's family. Strange, no wishes from my mother or father... My father, I can understand... He's probably on the other side of the world on some secret project and can't call. My mother? Well, long story.

Time to reflect on my previous year, and the major event is Eléna. I'll admit, it feels strange to be a father, I'm still not quite used to it, but she's a bundle of joy, and I'm loving every second of it!