Plan and Take Action - Finals Week!!

I have a final later today at 10:30 a.m., and I didn’t study yet. Am I going to pull off an all-nighter? Probably not, it’s not worth it. Anyway, I decided to blog instead of studying because I’m pretty overwhelmed with the amount of things I need to do before I move to San Diego this January: (1) finish finals and school projects, (2) sell all my furniture by the end of December and move out of philly, (3) work on my side-projects and volunteer work, (4) find an apartment in San Diego, (5) spend time with friends and family, (6) and finally, plan my road trip to the west coast. Yup, I’m going on a frikin’ road trip! I can’t wait to go sight-seeing in Washington D.C., check out a vineyard in Virginia, grab some ribs and pull-pork sandwiches in Tennessee,  try some Creole and Cajun cooking in Louisiana, check out Texas (not really sure what to do there yet… haha), meet some aliens in Roswell, New Mexico, camp out by the grand canyon in Arizona, gamble in Vegas, and finally surf my way down to San Diego – my soon to be hometown. What excites me the most about this trip is not really the trip itself, (although it is very exciting!) but instead, it’s the fact that it’s something that I’ve always wanted to do, and I’m actually about to do it. Another crossed-out item in my EXTREMELY long “list” of things-to-do before I die, before I kick the bucket if you will. I’m certain that each one of us has this “list” of things-to-do, maybe not necessarily written down but I’m sure it’s in the back of our heads. So my question is to you… are you actively trying to cross each item out on that list? Or are you instead passively waiting – maybe for some external force to come help you out with that list (aliens maybe?). In my opinion, the latter is a VERY sad and scary way to live life, no offense. Not having the time is never an excuse. If it’s something you want to do badly, make time! Maybe it’s also about time to “refactor” your priorities and adjust accordingly. It’s also understandable that money can be an issue (esp. for recent college grads with a shit load of loans!), but with the proper goals set in mind, it’s usually not. A typical road-trip around the U.S. could take about $1000-$1200. I know that seems a lot, but if you save instead of spending on useless junk not consistent with your goals – such as splurging every weekend at bars and clubs (I have nothing against that, just an example) – then eventually you’ll have that amount of money. Our brains are such interesting objects, and if you think about it from an evolutionary stand-point, we make excuses because it is the most immediate and comforting thing to do – it actually makes sense! Unfortunately. We blame not doing something to something or someone else to convince ourselves that it was out of our “locust of control.” In a way, diffussing the responsibility. It’s so much easier to stay home and sleep all day as opposed to running 10 miles each morning to train for a marathon. I could come up with so many examples with this topic because I personally made those excuses not only to others, but also to myself. “I can’t do it because of A, B, C, D, …, Z” and a bunch of other alphabets that don’t even exist. So what’s my point in writing all of this (aside from me trying to convince my brain that I’m doing something productive to avoid studying for my final)? Well, I just hope that if you’re reading this and it’s something you can relate to, my words of advice are very simple. If you want to achieve/do/try something, plan and take action. Internalize that statement. Your mother probably told you that when you were a kid but you didn’t hear it because you were too busy playing games. My mom did… and yes, I didn’t hear it because I was too busy playing games – I don’t regret it, final fantasy is frikin awesome! But anyway, today might just be your lucky day because I’m reminding you of that statement. Plan and take action.

Quick Git Tutorial

I just recently picked up Git and I realized that there is no simple way of explaining how to get started using Git so I decided to put together a VERY SIMPLE tutorial. (Check this video out, the best video tutorial I’ve found on how to get started with Git) And when I mean simple, I mean you can only do basic commands but it should help get you started. =] Sometimes in life, you just need that ”initial push”. Haha!…. To learn about pushing to a remote repository, check out github. It’s amazing. You can download Git at: http://git-scm.com/ For those of you who don’t know what Git is, it’s basically an excellent open-source version control system. It’s especially helpful in collaborative projects but you can use it for yourself to keep track of different changes you make during a program’s life-cycle. Git lets you manage different “branches” of a project – let’s say for instance at any given point you have 2 different implementations in mind but you’re not sure which one is the best. At that point, you can create a branch to work on the 1st implementation and if that doesn’t work, you can simply back-track to the branching point and work on the 2nd implementation. Git essentially manages a tree-structure of your program wherein the “master branch” or “trunk” is your primary path and each node represents a “commit-point” of your project (You can think of commits as an image or snapshot of your project). After experimenting with multiple branches, you can simply merge different branches to put together your different implementations. Ok, now for the tutorial to get you started…

• To create a git repository, navigate to the project directory (ex. cd ~/workspace/project_name) and use the command ’git init’
• When adding files to be monitored or “staged” by git, use ’git add filename1 filename2 ..’ or simply use ’git add .’ to add all files (notice the space followed by the period) if you want to index all of the new files
• To create a snapshot or a commit point, use ’git commit -m msg’ wherein ‘msg’ is the commit message. You can also use ‘git commit’ and you will be directed to a text editor where you can enter your commit message. Only files tracked via ’git add’ will be in that snapshot.
• To create a branch, use ’git branch branchname’. To switch between different branches use ’git checkout branchname’. To delete a branch use ’git branch -D branchname’
• If at the current branch you decide you want to merge it with the master branch, use ’git merge branchname’
• To obtain a graphical representation of your working tree, type in ’gitk’

… and that should be it! I know it’s very simple but I hope this gets you started with Git. It significantly boasts your productivity and I feel every programmer should use it (at least the ones that like saving time). For more info, check out: http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/gittutorial.html and http://gitref.org/

Startup Weekend Recap

Got back to philly 24 hours ago after being part of startup weekend at NYC. Met a ton of very interesting people, honed my programming skills, and had a SHIT LOAD of fun! Our project, “Artmented”, is an augmented reality (AR) mobile application wherein a user can place digital art, or paint art using a finger-paint application, in a location wherein it can be viewed using your phone’s camera. Think of a virtual reality layered on top of the physical world. Imagine placing digital graffiti on your favorite wall, or placing a photo of you and your loved ones in a meaningful place, or even placing a photo of a beautiful beach with coconut trees and turtles in the middle of a dessert (ok, now that’s just mean). But you get the point. Our team won 4th out of a total of 15 teams which is pretty good. We got 2nd most votes but unfortunately the judges didn’t favor us because of our business model – I guess in the end it’s still about the business, oh well, our app was still frikin awesome!