Setting Up

I started out by finding my old Git Lab account and making a new project. Then added Karl Wurst as a Reporter to monitor my progress. After this I set up Xamarin, the framework I’m going to use to program the app. With the help of Xamarin I will be able to develop for both IOS and Android at the same time. Setting up the IOS portion of Xamarin is a little tricky though. In order to compile IOS code Xamarin needs to have access to a Mac running MacOS 10.12 or higher. Since I don’t have a Mac at my disposal I’m going to have run MacOS virtually in VMware. Fortunately, I found a site which provided instructions on how to do this and a download link to the OS. After getting through that I just needed to connect the VMware running MacOS to Visual Studio running Xamarin which was really easy since it just automatically found the connection for me.

From the blog Location App Blog by Anonymous and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Setting Up

I started out by finding my old Git Lab account and making a new project. Then added Karl Wurst as a Reporter to monitor my progress. After this I set up Xamarin, the framework I’m going to use to program the app. With the help of Xamarin I will be able to develop for both IOS and Android at the same time. Setting up the IOS portion of Xamarin is a little tricky though. In order to compile IOS code Xamarin needs to have access to a Mac running MacOS 10.12 or higher. Since I don’t have a Mac at my disposal I’m going to have run MacOS virtually in VMware. Fortunately, I found a site which provided instructions on how to do this and a download link to the OS. After getting through that I just needed to connect the VMware running MacOS to Visual Studio running Xamarin which was really easy since it just automatically found the connection for me.

From the blog Location App Blog by Anonymous and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Setting Up

I started out by finding my old Git Lab account and making a new project. Then added Karl Wurst as a Reporter to monitor my progress. After this I set up Xamarin, the framework I’m going to use to program the app. With the help of Xamarin I will be able to develop for both IOS and Android at the same time. Setting up the IOS portion of Xamarin is a little tricky though. In order to compile IOS code Xamarin needs to have access to a Mac running MacOS 10.12 or higher. Since I don’t have a Mac at my disposal I’m going to have run MacOS virtually in VMware. Fortunately, I found a site which provided instructions on how to do this and a download link to the OS. After getting through that I just needed to connect the VMware running MacOS to Visual Studio running Xamarin which was really easy since it just automatically found the connection for me.

From the blog Location App Blog by Anonymous and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Setting Up

I started out by finding my old Git Lab account and making a new project. Then added Karl Wurst as a Reporter to monitor my progress. After this I set up Xamarin, the framework I’m going to use to program the app. With the help of Xamarin I will be able to develop for both IOS and Android at the same time. Setting up the IOS portion of Xamarin is a little tricky though. In order to compile IOS code Xamarin needs to have access to a Mac running MacOS 10.12 or higher. Since I don’t have a Mac at my disposal I’m going to have run MacOS virtually in VMware. Fortunately, I found a site which provided instructions on how to do this and a download link to the OS. After getting through that I just needed to connect the VMware running MacOS to Visual Studio running Xamarin which was really easy since it just automatically found the connection for me.

From the blog Location App Blog by Anonymous and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Setting Up

I started out by finding my old Git Lab account and making a new project. Then added Karl Wurst as a Reporter to monitor my progress. After this I set up Xamarin, the framework I’m going to use to program the app. With the help of Xamarin I will be able to develop for both IOS and Android at the same time. Setting up the IOS portion of Xamarin is a little tricky though. In order to compile IOS code Xamarin needs to have access to a Mac running MacOS 10.12 or higher. Since I don’t have a Mac at my disposal I’m going to have run MacOS virtually in VMware. Fortunately, I found a site which provided instructions on how to do this and a download link to the OS. After getting through that I just needed to connect the VMware running MacOS to Visual Studio running Xamarin which was really easy since it just automatically found the connection for me.

From the blog Location App Blog by Anonymous and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Setting Up

I started out by finding my old Git Lab account and making a new project. Then added Karl Wurst as a Reporter to monitor my progress. After this I set up Xamarin, the framework I’m going to use to program the app. With the help of Xamarin I will be able to develop for both IOS and Android at the same time. Setting up the IOS portion of Xamarin is a little tricky though. In order to compile IOS code Xamarin needs to have access to a Mac running MacOS 10.12 or higher. Since I don’t have a Mac at my disposal I’m going to have run MacOS virtually in VMware. Fortunately, I found a site which provided instructions on how to do this and a download link to the OS. After getting through that I just needed to connect the VMware running MacOS to Visual Studio running Xamarin which was really easy since it just automatically found the connection for me.

From the blog Location App Blog by Anonymous and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Setting Up

I started out by finding my old Git Lab account and making a new project. Then added Karl Wurst as a Reporter to monitor my progress. After this I set up Xamarin, the framework I’m going to use to program the app. With the help of Xamarin I will be able to develop for both IOS and Android at the same time. Setting up the IOS portion of Xamarin is a little tricky though. In order to compile IOS code Xamarin needs to have access to a Mac running MacOS 10.12 or higher. Since I don’t have a Mac at my disposal I’m going to have run MacOS virtually in VMware. Fortunately, I found a site which provided instructions on how to do this and a download link to the OS. After getting through that I just needed to connect the VMware running MacOS to Visual Studio running Xamarin which was really easy since it just automatically found the connection for me.

From the blog Location App Blog by Daniel Mahoney and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Apprenticeship Patterns – Record What You Learn

Write it down. Document it. Record it. From my personal experience, it is always better to write things down. This goes for things at home, work, or school. If you have an idea or come up with a solution to a problem, write it down so you don’t have to come up with that idea/solution again a month down the line. It just so happens that one of the patterns in Apprenticeship Patterns: Guidance for the Aspiring Software Craftsman[AP] by Dave Hoover and Adewale Oshineye is about recording information. It is called “Record What You Learn” [AP]. The title of the patter itself explains it all. It discusses how it is very important to record any ideas you have or solutions to problems you have developed [AP]. More importantly, it discusses how these things should not just be written down and forgotten [AP]. I cannot agree more with what this pattern is all about. Your records should become a resource for you to use later on down the line when you are working on something you felt you have seen before and aren’t quite sure what the solution was [AP]. Writing stuff down can save you time and frustration. I have learned this lesson more than once and I’ll probably learn it again a few more times too. I agree with how this pattern stresses why it is important to record thoughts, ideas, solutions, etc. I can’t tell you how many times I have fixed some sort of program or had some sort of idea and said “Oh, I’ll remember how I did that. It was a pretty simple fix” only to run into the same problem 3 months down the line and spend a whole day trying to fix the issue. Had I written it down, it probably would have taken me about 10 minutes to realize I had it written down and another 10 minutes to follow the steps I wrote. The problem is fixed in 20 minutes. Another benefit to recording what you’ve done is it allows you to share it with others [AP]. By doing so, you may be saving someone else tons of time and frustration because they were able to utilize what you shared. The end lesson of all this is simply, write it down. It will make everyone’s lives easier.

Link to pattern in book: https://www.safaribooksonline.com/library/view/apprenticeship-patterns/9780596806842/ch05s06.html

 

From the blog CS@Worcester – README by Matthew Foley and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Customizing a WordPress Theme

With literally thousands of themes in existence, there is sure to be a WordPress theme out there that fits the needs of you or your business. Why spend your own time designing a theme when some generous person has already done the work for you – and posted it  online for you to access completely free of charge? While some themes may no longer be updated or maintained, many receive regular security patches and feature enhancements to ensure your site is not at risk.

The main considerations when choosing a theme for the Massachusetts HOSA website were a banner image and feature area to mirror the appearance of Georgia’s HOSA website (http://georgiahosa.org/). The theme I found that most closely matched this desired appearance was the Trusted theme by uxl (https://wordpress.org/themes/trusted/). The theme was highly rated, installed and active on more than 5,000 WordPress installations, and recently updated to ensure compatibility and security.

No theme is perfect, however. The first changes I needed to make were to the color scheme of the theme. I’ve work with CSS before, but found that Google Chrome’s Developer Tools (https://developer.chrome.com/devtools) made it much easier to isolate a specific CSS attribute or tag rather than digging through the more than 5000 lines of code. I used the HOSA Style Guide to make sure that the colors and images that I was using in development matched the requirements of the organization. This was a new concept for me, but I found it extremely helpful that the organization published all of the approved brand colors, fonts, and logo requirements in a single resource.

The website is now up and running on a development server, and the theme has been modified to match the appearance of the HOSA brand. The next task that I will be working on is implementing a slider in place of the banner image on the homepage that displays conference information with links to register for a conference.

From the blog CS@Worcester – ~/GeorgeMatthew/etc by gmatthew and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Apprenticeship Patterns Blog: Exposing Your Ignorance

Following this link will bring you to the apprenticeship pattern called “Expose Your Ignorance”: https://www.safaribooksonline.com/library/view/apprenticeship-patterns/9780596806842/ch02s05.html

I really enjoyed this apprenticeship pattern because I have always been a strong believer in asking questions. That is what this pattern is about. Asking questions to people who have more experience, sharing the ideas you have and telling them when you do not completely understand.  I also enjoy the emphasis on exhibiting learning ability. I think that the most important part of working is improving yourself and never limiting yourself to the information you might learn.  Being open minded is important to learning. You always have to be looking for another way to solve a problem and work around obstacles. Without proactively learning you will fall behind in no time.

One thing in the pattern that really made me think about my process of learning was the paragraph that starts with “Expertise is a by-product of the long road we’re all on, but it is not the destination.” I never really thought about it that way. I always thought that expertise was my goal, but it doesn’t have to be. Going deeper into the passage, I think what they’re trying to say is that expertise is something earned int he process of learning. As long as you are capable of learning well, expertise will come to you in time naturally in something that is required or interests you.

One thing that I thought about while reading this pattern was “what about those people who hate questions?” In my opinion, I think that someone who gets irritated by (good) questions are close minded and don’t have much to offer. While they might have expertise they probably don’t have the skill to relay their information and therefore get frustrated.  Unfortunately, sometimes those are the only people you have for guidance and you may need to look elsewhere for extra help. Of course this pattern doesn’t take into account the person who you are asking question to and I didn’t expect it to, but it is something to think about.

This pattern has opened my eyes to the true learning process. Both parties learn from someone asking questions, so don’t be afraid to Expose Your Ignorance. I know I will be exposing my ignorance more!

 

From the blog CS@Worcester – Rookey Mistake by Shane Rookey and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.