Naming things fldsmdfr

Sometimes the hardest part of creating something new is giving it a name. The name of something can greatly contribute to its success. If you have seen "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs" you have watched the plight of engineers illustrated in a humorous fashion. For developing software a badly named variable might confuse support developers. A badly named application might not be purchased. A clear concise variable is a jewel.

Now for a few words on vowels.

Example:
getSampleWidget

Example 2:
getSmplWdgt

Which would you like to read?  What are you saving? Are you using a language that has an unreasonable limit on variable names?

Further Reading:

StackOverflow - maximum length:  
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/425988/maximum-method-name-length

Wikipedia - naming conventions:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naming_convention_%28programming%29


-Carl Burks

Spreadsheet named ranges

A friend of mine had never seen a named range in a spreadsheet so I thought I would do a little public service announcement. Named ranges are a great feature I like to use in my spreadsheets to make reading and writing formulas easier. Instead of reference a cell by the column letter and the row number a named range lets you assign a name to the cell(s).  You could just have looked them up on Google and found the Wikipedia article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spreadsheet#Named_cells

Google Docs supports this feature:
https://support.google.com/docs/answer/63175?hl=en

Apache Open Office supports this feature:
https://wiki.openoffice.org/wiki/Documentation/OOo3_User_Guides/Calc_Guide/Associating_a_range_to_a_name

Lotus 1-2-3 which recently IBM ended support for the product, was first for named ranges.

A lesser known spreadsheet program called Excel also supports them.

Random Facts

If you are a game designer for a complex game which involves pseudo physics and need to know roughly how much Beluga Whale weighs I found a cool website that tells you exactly that:
http://thewebsiteofeverything.com/animals/mammals/adult-weight.html

You can go to the root of the site and read about all sorts of plants and animals. Great for any world designer.

-Carl Burks

TNC Baofeng APRS Droid

A while back I ordered a Bluetooth TNC from mobilinkd.com and it arrived with a 3D printed case I had one problem. I forgot to order the cable, for some reason I thought I had one of the cables that I needed, but as it turns out I didn't after searching the internet I finally found what I thought was the right cable. I ordered it and almost a month later it arrived. The cable was too long and didn't work. I should have just ordered the one from mobilinkd for 9.99 and paid the 9.99 in shipping. Some times it doesn't pay to find a "Bargain".

I had recently rejoined the community of smart phone users after a one year hiatus. I got the APRSDroid app. I had to get a passcode and they got back to me pretty fast. I would have loved to try it out, but the cable was wrong. Its going to probably be a month before I order the right cable get it  shipped. Check back in a month or so for an update.

Starting a new Project

If you love to code even when you are at home you probably have start with an idea for programming something. I have a little flow chart I made which describes my home programming workflow.

If I am programming something for fun and I don't finish within the first month usually I have another big idea and lose interest, for a bit, and start something else. Sometimes I switch up the technologies, but this is my current fallback technologies.  In Windows sometimes I'll switch it up and go for Node.JS. I've also mixed things up and added a Rails project for fun.

End of Carl.BurksBrand.com

After years of paying for a private domain name I realized I wasn't getting much value for my investment.  For several years searching for Carl Burks would take you to my site at carl.burksbrand.com. It will probably take me a few months to get back to the number one spot, but I am sure that I will. Carl Burks isn't that common of a name and there are other pages which utilize the keywords. For example IMDB also lists two different "Carl Burks" and actors seem to be serious about optimization. Have you ever noticed how rappers will drop their own name in a song? It is a serious marketing strategy.  It also reminds me of the Seinfeld episode "The Chicken Roaster" not to spoil it, but if you haven't seen it by now George does a leave behind to keep in touch. Getting to number one is pretty much about brand recognition.

Shellshock

After upgrading all my VM's and computers which are *nix based they release some more updates. I guess I'll have to start over. It is great they are able to patch the problem so quickly after it became a known issue.