Pem’s Tech Blog

Plan – make two separate blogs:
1) Pem Tech blog is about anything: opinions / philosophy, computer tips, whatever
2) Pem Code blog is about programming, and nothing else; anything else, even general computer stuff or general game stuff, goes on the other blog; this way, my code stuff stays here

My intent is to put useful programming related stuff in Pem Code blog.  Then if for some reason I have a senseless urge to post random stuff, I can put that on Pem Tech blog.  So the Pem Code blog is intended to be useful code stuff, notes for learning, and potentially related to resume (CV), for non-work hobby-project self-learning programmer examples.  In other words, Pem Tech blog isn’t really work-related or programmer-related, but Pem Code blog is.

There may be some areas of confusion, such as where do I put a computer bug fix thing?  If it’s not a code thing, then it goes in Pem Tech blog.  What about little scripts for AutoHotKey?  I think that’s a code thing, so Pem Code blog.

Another example of gray area is details on the parts I picked for my build-it-yourself computer.  This is sort of career-related, since it shows interest and literacy in higher level hardware stuff, and as of 2011/10/23, I work on a full system simulator (functional simulation, GPU simulation).  But, in the end, that’s not really code, so maybe it should go in Pem Tech blog.

Another example of a gray area is this post itself.  Since it rambles and doesn’t focus on (teaching / explaining, or showing off) a programming thing, I’ll keep this post here, in Pem Tech blog.  In other words, even though this post is about Pem’s Code Blog, it’s a rambling post that adds clutter, so this rambling clutter post can go here on Pem’s Tech Blog.

Examples of what would go on Pem’s Code Blog?  Notes on the Computer Science class videos I’m currently watching (Stanford intro Computer Science, Harvard intro Computer Graphics, Khan Academy Math and Physics).  Notes from the papers or books I’m studying (GPU papers, GPU doc, DirectX / OpenGL doc, Essential Math for Games and Interactive Applications book, GRE Computer Science).  Notes on something I learned for work, such as C++ and OO related or GPU related.

Since I already take a lot of notes in my daily life (for work and for learning) on Paper, in OneNote, in EverNote, in code comments, etc…  Pem’s Code Blog will be one more place for me to put notes.  Hopefully, if do end up putting many posts on Pem’s Code Blog, it will be concise and useful and well-organized.

As of 2011/10/23, Pem’s Code Blog is empty.  I installed WordPress, but I didn’t setup a theme yet, and I didn’t write the first post yet.  However, I did just get off the elliptical.  I did around 370+ calories of exercise while watching a Harvard Extensions School Computer Graphics class from iTunes U, which had some great review info.  I took some notes, and those notes are an example of something I might post on Pem’s Code Blog.

See Pem’s Code Blog

Pem (Admin) :: 2011/10/24 (Monday, October 24, 2011) :: Blogging, Computers / Tech :: No Comments »

Pem’s Tech Blog was an excuse to play a little with another set of web tools (ie, WordPress blogs).  I had lots more ideas of things I’d ramble (or rant) about here…  Such as more Magic:TCG vocab, Philosophy related, computers and STEM related, and other random stuff.

Without even spending that much time on this, I got an idea of how huge a time sink maintaining a blog and writing entries can be.  Doing your own WordPress setup via shared web hosting adds to that time consumption – though obviously not as bad as if I ran my own dedicated server’s OS, PHP, SQL, etc.

I also got some more exposure to a particular kind of writing.  For the type of writing I do in these posts and in emails…  I think it’s different than the kind of writing they like to see for Liberal Arts classes or GRE essays.  Ie, proper grammar and full sentences and eloquent verbose writing styles are bad, or at least less important.  The important thing is efficient meaningful concise useful communication.  A good engineer type email likes to be concise and contain a high information content per word count.  At least for the intro paragraph.  Then you can attach or append something more verbose, or imply to discuss further in person or if they ask for more detail via email.  That’s the type of efficient concise communication I’d like to focus on with emails and blogs.  At least for the initial intro paragraphs, or for quick reference info posts.

I might still put some occasional rambling here…  But I think a more productive thing would be that if I do any more blog posts, they should be stuff like notes related to Programming.  Ie, a work project, a side project, or a study/learning aside.  For this purpose, I am creating a separate Pem’s Code Blog, see ../pemcode

Pem (Admin) :: 2011/10/23 (Sunday, October 23, 2011) :: Blogging, Computers / Tech :: No Comments »

Overall, I’ve mostly failed so far to turn this blog into summaries of my recent / current hobby projects (and what concepts and technologies etc I learned).  It’s a time sink just to do any hobby projects (in addition to the already limitless supply of code work and relevant study for me to do for my paid job).

I tend to keep a lot of notes as I’m working on something (both paper and electronic).  But converting those into concise and meaningful blog posts usually costs resources (time and effort / focus) that could be spent elsewhere.

That said, I’ve elected to at least share a brief one about very basic gcc / g++ use.

Pem (Admin) :: 2010/08/05 (Thursday, August 5, 2010) :: Blogging :: No Comments »

In my previous post, I mentioned how the WordPress “Customizable Permalinks” plugin prevents me from using WordPress for iPad (iPod touch, etc), by breaking the XML RPC.

wp-admin –> Settings –> Permalinks linked to more info here ( http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Permalinks ).  Default uses “?p=N” (post number), while pretty permalinks let you specify other formats, such as “yyyy/mm/dd/post-name”.

For yahoo web hosting, this didn’t work, and I think it has something to do with the .htaccess file, or yahoo’s particular web server.  The Yahoo “Customizable Permalinks” plugin makes the permalinks work, but it causes the XML RPC to break.

In any event, I ended up going to “wp-admin/options-permalink.php”, and changing it to Custom Structure “/index.php/%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%postname%/”.

This allowed me to have the prettier custom url structure permalinks, yet still have XML RPC work.  There may be a way to take out the “index.php”, even with Yahoo web hosting, but I didn’t look very hard yet…  So maybe someone else knows the answer?

Pem (Admin) :: 2010/05/21 (Friday, May 21, 2010) :: Blogging :: No Comments »

I’m writing this using WordPress for iPad.

Overall, it’s very good news just that it works. Although, it didn’t work instantly, since when I tried to connect to my wordpress blog, it gave me an error relating to the xml rpc xml protocol. This had happened when I first tried WordPress for iPhone, so I knew to try disabling plugins, which fixed the problem. The offending plugin was "Customizable Permalinks".

Unfortunately, the app is pretty bare bones, such as compared to Windows Live Writer (a Windows desktop app).

Sadly, it’s frozen and crashed, and even had the save button disappear while editing a post… All within 5 minutes of using it. Since you can save drafts, it’s not the end of the world, but kind of annoying.

For editing an existing post, it’s only edit mode shows the HTML – no WYSIWYG.

Overall, it’s awesome that there is a WordPress app for iPad, and it at least has the basic functionality working. The functionality is not particularly amazing, but it has some reasonable basic functionality and a nice iPad UI.

If you type "http:", a popup box asks if you want to make a link.

To publish, you tap "Status" and change from "Local Draft" to "Published". You can also choose "Draft", which is awesome, since that syncs to my WordPress blog, which allows me to continue to edit the post from somewhere else (before I publish), such as Windows Live Writer (on Windows 7 desktop OS).

It lets you attach photos, which is great.  Although what I did for this post was attach the photos, then copy/paste them using the Windows Live Writer plugin “Clipboard Image” (Clipboard Capture).  This is so I can more easily use (or tweak) a standard size for (the thumb image and the larger image).

The ability to moderate posts (ie, mark as “Approve” or as “Spam”) is also very useful / convenient.

Finally, the bad news is that disabling the WordPress Customizable Permalinks plugin caused my page’s post links to no longer work… So until I fix that issue, it’s not very convenient to blog from the WordPress iPad app.

Pem (Admin) :: 2010/05/20 (Thursday, May 20, 2010) :: Blogging, Mobility :: 2 Comments »

I’ve reorganized my categories, with an emphasize and 4 main categories (with sub-categories): Software Development (programming), Computers / Tech (that’s not software development), Games (as opposed to game programming), Other (anything else not related to the other 3 categories).

Depending on what direction this blog takes, I may later revisit the categories.  For example, if it ends up being 90% software development (or 90% games), then I would be likely to end up merging the other categories.

Pem (Admin) :: 2010/04/11 (Sunday, April 11, 2010) :: Blogging :: No Comments »

I’ve installed the Merge Tags Plugin.  Inside wp-admin, I just went to Plugins –> Add New, and searched for “merge”.  The plugin says to go to

/wp-admin/edit-tags.php?taxonomy=category

I used this to merge my old categories “Travel” and "Mobile Devices / Services” into my new category “Mobility”.

Pem (Admin) :: 2010/04/11 (Sunday, April 11, 2010) :: Blogging :: No Comments »

Here’s all I did (from 2.9.0 to 2.9.2):

1) click “Upgrade Automatically” button (from inside the web page wp-admin controls).  This overwrote my WordPress theme.

1a) Last time I did disable plugins, then upgrade automatically, then re-enable recently active plugins.  I didn’t do that this time (luckily, nothing broke)

1b) At this point, all the links were working correctly

2) The new default theme gets changed with the upgrade, so I renamed the ftp folder /wp-content/themes/default/ to default_2.9.2, then uploaded (from my hard drive) my existing folder \wp-content\themes\default\ … to get back my old wordpress theme (web page style)

2a) At the moment, I’ve been using FileZilla for the FTP (on Windows)

2b) Everything worked as expected

I also clicked “upgrade automatically” for a plugin (WPtouch iPhone Theme)

Pem (Admin) :: 2010/04/10 (Saturday, April 10, 2010) :: Blogging :: No Comments »

I’m adding a new category…  Probably what I should do is create a separate blog (or page / area) that is for software development (programming, computer science, graphics programming, game development, virtualization programming, code tools, application development, etc) related stuff.  In fact, probably what I should really do is just delete this blog and focus on development topics O:-).  But for the moment, I’ll just make this a new category: Software Development

Pem (Admin) :: 2010/01/10 (Sunday, January 10, 2010) :: Blogging, Misc :: No Comments »

Here’s all I did:

1) Disable all plugins, use the automatic upgrade link inside wp-admin/upgrade.php, re-enable recently active plugins

2) I noticed that my Categories and Archives URL links were broken (actually, since before this upgrade), but this was fixed when I reactivated the plugin “Customizable Permalinks”

3) The new default theme gets changed with the upgrade, so I renamed the ftp folder /wp-content/themes/default/ to default_2.9.0, then uploaded (from my hard drive) my existing folder \wp-content\themes\default\ … to get back my old wordpress theme (web page style)

Pem (Admin) :: 2010/01/01 (Friday, January 1, 2010) :: Blogging :: No Comments »