#309 - Intent: Android

Motto: Sentences that Begin and End with the Same Word are My Favorite Sentences.

Before this 30 Day Challenge I wouldn't really have understood the title I used for this Column.

Writing an Android App. That's the goal for March. Technically I accomplished that within the first day, within the first hour. Although "Hello World!" isn't much of an app. I've been working through Udacity's Android Basics nanodegree. Well, the coursework that one would do to earn said nanodegree. I'm more interested in the knowledge than the resume boost. 

Anyway it's been really good! It's aimed at people who have never coded before - so parts of it are definitely too easy... but that means I'm not getting left behind, like I did last time when I tried going straight into the Android Developer nanodegree. I'm now starting to get comfortable playing around in the IDE, making my phone do stuff I want it to do. It's my goal to write an app that's actually useful by month's end. Even if that use isn't my final goal. Ultimately, I'd like to create some form of the Life Tracker in Android. For now, I'll settle for something to supplement it.


Udacity is one of the coolest things on the internet, by the way. Free education for anyone who wants it. That's alright by me. 

Completely shifting gears:
My first world problem for the day - I feel guilty. I feel guilty for shopping smart. 

A while back, when I got my first job, I decided I was going to be high-and-mighty & never, ever, shop at Walmart. Radical. I know. This was because I worked at Walmart for a summer. It sucked. I found it degrading, physically demanding, and low-paying. I was lucky, at least I had a light at then end of a tunnel. I was a college student getting a financially lucrative major, with a safety net in the form of my ever-supporting parents in case everything went to hell. Not everyone there was so lucky. I had more coworkers who had no future prospects than those that did. Walmart to me was exploiting its workers and raking in billions.

So I started shopping at Target. Amazon.

Am I a moron? Are they any better, at all? No. There's a problem with these huge, buy-anything-you-want conglomerate stores. They are cheap. They are ever-present. They are a consistent source of the basic necessities and they will not be undercut.

I found myself in a bookstore today. I stumbled across the graphic novel "Fight Club 2". Chuck Palahniuk's follow-up to his smash hit "Fight Club". Now, I'm a walking cliche - so I liked Fight Club. I was interested in the sequel so I picked it up off the shelf. It's a graphic novel, so the book was wrapped shut. Not a big deal, I was going to buy it... until I saw the price. $30. I thought "wow that's a bit steep for a book", so naturally I pulled up the Amazon app on my phone. Amazon has it for $20. It will be at my house in 2 days.

I suck. Not 3 minutes prior I texted Melissa "I just found the coolest store. They sell everything we like." To thank them I've done them zero good. I've given them zero support. They are a specialty store, therefore they cannot afford to make fractions of a penny on things they sell. For that reason, I don't buy stuff from them. When their business dies, it will be the fault of me and people like me. I am the guilty middle class consumer.

I was going to write about budgeting and the benefits of not buying crap... but I'm out of time. BYE HAVE FUN SEE YOU LATER.

Top 5: Website I Would Pick If I Could Only Go to Five for the Rest of My Life
5. Google Docs - creating new content.
4. Facebook - for communication.
3. Google's Search - even if you can't click on the links, you can learn a TON from reading link synopses... also you've got a calculator and the knowledge graph. Most of Google Maps is accessible without actually going there.
2. YouTube - Arguably this should take the #1 spot. You'll never run out of entertainment content. You can learn anything you need to learn.
1. Wikipedia - the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is essentially just Wikipedia. It's pretty much all you need to know. I put it as #1 because I like it; although YouTube is probably more useful for any in-depth learning. Udacity, the thing I opened this Column with, is built on top of YouTube.
Quote:
"Love people, use things. The opposite never works."

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

#258 - Feature: Notetaking Platform Anxiety

Image
Motto: Writing for Me, by Me Melissa is going back to grad school, she's taking her Mac Air & iPad with her & utilizing Microsoft OneNote. While she was setting up her notetaking environment, I started thinking about how I would architect my "idealized system for handling graduate school". Fair warning, this is a bit of an epic. A system for succeeding in higher education is defined in several broad categories: What would I physically bring with me to class? How would I take notes that are relevant immediately and in the future? How do I manage time & tasks? Answering these questions is the purpose of this Column. I'm going to do so both "in general" and given my specific (more interesting to me, but less interesting in general) case. 1. What would I physically bring with me to class? Obviously I would bring with me a bag. I'd probably just keep my current messenger bag for simplicity sake. Anything could work. In all
Read more

#22 - It's my party and I'll cry to get attention.

Image
Motto: Two days ago, I was 23. Then I was 24. I aged one year in a day. Yesterday was my birthday. A few friends of mine helped another friend of mine move from Lawrence to Kansas City. The trip up there was hot and windy and stressful. We lost a pillow out of the back of the truck ( not entirely my fault), but otherwise had no casualties. The rest of this story will be told in bullet-point fashion: We relaxed in the air conditioner. We ate Minsky's pizza. We held the first meeting of my secret society that has been held in probably a year. Nobody knows that but me. We threw marshmallows into each other's mouths. We eventually built a slingshot and started using it instead of throwing them. We walked around a really nice apartment building. We were denied access to the pool or the movie theater room on account of them being previously engaged. We got lost (mildly lost) driving around looking for a convenience store.  We saw what is apparently "the bad part o
Read more

#42 - Life, The Universe, and Everything

Image
Motto: Don't Panic. BSOD My current computer is crashing on a multiple-times-per-day basis now. It's a little over 4 years old and has been needing to be put to rest for a while. Given that I know technology and what-not, I've decided I am going to build my next computer myself. Seems obvious now, I don't know why I didn't think of it before. It's going to be built specifically to suit my needs. This essentially means I'm going to build a computer specifically for video editing. There will be more on this at a later date... I have a couple of Nexus devices I want to get before the computer time ever comes. Having a job and money is so much better than college was it's not even funny. Whoever said "college is the best time in your life" must have not went through an engineering program. Don't get me wrong, college as great... but would I rather be doing that than what I'm doing now? No fricken way. Most negative words seem to st
Read more