Want To Learn To Program A Computer?

If you have never taken a computer programming course before I'd strongly recommend picking up python as your first programming language. (version 3 if you are starting from scratch)

Take a beginner's course over at Coursera.  I highly recommend the University of Toronto one, Learn to Program: The Fundamentals, which is just wrapping up it's first semester now (and should be starting again soon) Paul and Jen's approach of teaching functions first, starting with defining exactly what the function should do, including examples of inputs and the expected outputs, in the docstring, then moving on to actually coding the function to do that is much easier to get your head around than the way I learned programming back in the early to mid 1990's.

Of course there is also Google's Python Class that is available on-demand, but not as interactive.There is thenewboston's YouTube tutorials, which are really engaging and perfect for new programmers.
Or there's Codecademy: Python or if those methods don't work for you, there's Learn Python the hard way pick what works for you. They are all free.

Pick up a free e-book, or perhaps several of them, from http://pythonbooks.revolunet.com/

I'd recommend starting with Think Python: How to Think Like a Computer Scientist or Dive Into Python 3.

The main thing that holds a lot of us back from learning how to code is not having an idea of what we would like to do with the code. Sometimes all it takes is just sitting back and thinking about problems that you'd like to solve, tasks you do repeatedly every day, every week or every month that could be simplified because you do the same thing every time, again and again. Those are things that computer programs are good for.

I manage a lot of windows computers. Some of them are on the old side, running dangerously close at times to the limits of what their hard disks can hold. Time and again, I found myself going in and deleting uninstall files for updates I knew I would never be uninstalling, just to free up a little space. So, I wrote a program that looks for those files and checks how old they are. If an update was installed more than 90 days ago it deletes the uninstall folder for it. Launching that program saves a bit of precious time each time I find I'm in that position of having to free up some disk space ASAP.

Sit down and think, what tasks like that could you automate? I bet there are at least a few.

Another one was a program that reads a comma separated list of computers (name, ip address, mac address) and uses Wake On LAN to wake the computers in that list up at a specific time. At first I had it call a command line based wake on lan program I downloaded from the net, but later I revised it to create and send the WOL Magic Packets itself ...The possibilities are basically endless.

Amazon Releases Another Set Of New Kindles

Today Amazon announced it's newest line-up of Kindle devices.


The big news on the LCD tablet side was the Kindle Fire HD with a high definition screen and more processing power than last year's fire, it comes in 7" and 8.9" versions, and the 8.9" has an LTE cellular option. Various storage capacities are available.

and...


The Kindle PaperWhite was released on the e-ink e-book reader side of the kindle lineup, with a crisper, whiter screen, a front light and enough battery to last you 8 weeks even when using the light! It comes in WiFi only and WiFi/3G versions.

New Kindles Announced Yesterday

I like the keypad on the Kindles of the current generation, but the touch would be nice. No mention in this article of whether the Fire uses LCD or the new colour E-ink, but it turns out it is only an IPS LCD panel (IPS is good for LCD, and being a tablet rather than a colour e-book LCD makes sense, but I was hoping to see some colour e-ink this fall.

The good news for consumers is that they're all priced below $200, with the low end, smaller kindle at only $79 USD.

Sadly, no new DX model yet. I like the DX size for reading Adobe PDF formatted e-books (computer manuals, text books, gaming books). Maybe the next DX will be the colour e-ink model???

Here's a link to the CNET story:

Amazon unveils Kindle Touch and Kindle Fire tablet

Xmas Gifts For Techies 2009

Ok, it's already Dec 14, you only have 10 days of Xmas shopping left. If you haven't already got a big gift for your resident techie, here are a few ideas:

1. PS3 slim. One of the first posts on this blog back in 2006 was the PS3 line watch. Back then I was drooling with anticipation of the upcoming PS3. I bought one in the summer of 2007 because I was stuck at home all day for a few months because of a car accident. ...even back then with hardly any games available it was fun. The new slim version is out now for this Xmas season. It doesn't play PS2 games anymore, and only plays PS1 games if you download them from the online store (about $6 each) but there are lots of PS3 games and bluray movies out now so that's not much of an issue, and if it is, you can always pick up a PS2 slim to go with it for peanuts.

2. Drobo. Every techie needs more disk space... constantly. Drobo will manage it all by itself. You just stick a disk in, when you need more space you stick in another disk, when you need more, stick in another. when you run out of slots to stick disks into you pull out the smallest disk and stick a bigger one in in it's place. No config, no copying files around, it takes care of it all for you.

3. ReadyNAS. For the techie that has more stringent requirements for his/her data storage, ReadyNAS is like Drobo on steroids.

4.Amazon's Kindle e-book reader. For a geek or a book lover (or a geeky book lover) this is a great gift idea. It stores and displays (in black and white) books and magazines bought through Amazon or downloaded as PDF. It has a rechargeable battery, but it only needs to be charged about once a week, even when the wireless is left on all the time. You can go much longer than that if you remember to turn off the wireless connection when you aren't actually downloading a new book.