tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-75527274826546934872024-03-12T21:24:28.985-07:00Random ThoughtsPhil Corbetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09508312076885017257noreply@blogger.comBlogger14125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7552727482654693487.post-39092692095508756672021-05-10T07:01:00.003-07:002021-05-10T07:01:28.313-07:00Deeper Relationships<p>I had a long talk with a good friend the other day about the <i>need</i> to have more friends on Facebook/Twitter/etc. and what it means to have more friends. We concluded that there's something instinctual about the desire to make your <i>tribe</i> larger. Our ancestors oftentimes survived by the size of their tribe and so we now continue to carry this base instinct to have a larger group of friends, family, and acquaintances just in case a saber tooth tiger decides to roll up and try to eat one of our babies.</p><p>I've decided that I'm much more interested in having deep meaningful relationships with a few people that are extremely important to me than to have lots of tangential friendships where we bond slightly over a delicious looking cheeseburger that I <i>like</i>. Because of this, I'm starting to use Facebook much different, I've removed all of the people that I don't talk to routinely unless I'm going to make a conscientious effort to improve our current relationship. Before doing this I had 316 "friends" on Facebook and I've now carved that down to roughly 40 people.</p><p>Will this get me to use Facebook differently? I hope so. I'd like to think of Facebook as an ongoing party of my most cherished relationships where I can jump over there to encourage and share in memories. I'd like to use it as a congregate of opinions that carry merit and where I'm open to the criticism of my ideas. I hope that I'm able to use it as a place to grow with my friends instead of a place to "improve my reach" or "promote a product".</p><p>I've you're reading this and we're no longer friends on Facebook it isn't at all because I hate you as our culture would have you believe. It's just because we don't talk often, if you'd like to be my friend again just let me know.</p>Phil Corbetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09508312076885017257noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7552727482654693487.post-37207088214338465792020-06-03T18:07:00.001-07:002020-06-03T18:07:15.203-07:00Enough ExcusesToday I'm starting something a little different, I'm keeping track of my excuses.<div><br /></div><div>There are so many times that I've tried to create new habits or start new things and fail for one reason or another. I almost always start this process by looking at my available free time, trying to optimize my schedule where I can, and then putting that schedule into a calendar with notifications. All this effort put forth and then when the rubber hits the road I just ignore the calendar and swipe away its notifications.</div><div><br /></div><div>I'm starting the same way I always do but I'm adding one more thing to it. I want to make myself write down why I didn't do a thing that I've scheduled for myself; I'm trying to outsmart my future self. I'm adding to this a list of things that I want to make sure I do like running a few times a week, writing (like this blog), connecting with friends, and yoga almost every day. To help me keep track of these excuse, I've set up a Google form that asks what activity I was planning on doing and then why I didn't do it and added this link to each calendar item so that I can just click the link without much effort.</div><div><br /></div><div>What do I plan to do with these excuses? Well, I thought about posting them on Facebook or Twitter but realized that would just keep me from writing them in the first place. So, at the moment, I just plan to look at them periodically and try to figure out if they're real or fake. Ideally, if they're real, then I might just find new times for the activities. I suspect most of them are actually fake though and I want to get that realistic view of who I am so that I can be better.</div><div><br /></div><div>If I had to take a guess why this would fail it's because I'm going to not want to spend the time writing the "why" but only time will tell.</div>Phil Corbetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09508312076885017257noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7552727482654693487.post-80797000952993785082020-05-03T19:31:00.000-07:002020-05-03T19:31:46.910-07:00Tête LearningI've been working on building a free site where anyone can register to be a mentor in specific topics and also find mentors in topics that interest them. I don't have a lot of free time to work on it but I've been slowly plugging away at it for a few months and hope to be able to launch it in the fall.<br />
<br />
If this sounds like something you'd be interested in being a part of let me know. I put up a small page a while ago at <a href="http://tetelearning.com/">http://tetelearning.com</a>.Phil Corbetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09508312076885017257noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7552727482654693487.post-27226649048577799672020-01-11T01:13:00.000-08:002020-01-11T01:13:42.402-08:00Mind, Body, SocialI've been thinking about the way that I frame almost everything that I do. I use this everyday for things like prioritization, self-improvement, and motivation. I wanted to share this not because I think it is revolutionary in any way but because it helps me and I thought it might be helpful for others. I call this way of thinking "mind, body, and social" or MBS for short.<br />
<br />
Another note, I apologize if this is rather dry to read, I basically just wanted to get these thoughts written out and published so that other people could start using and criticizing it.<br />
<br />
<h3>
What is mind, body, and social?</h3>
The very basics of this is that I believe there are three aspects of every person. There is the mind which is most easily defined as the inner self, the body is the physical self, and the social which is the version of you that exists within the minds of other people. Each of these plays a role in how we interact with other people and how effective we are at improving the world around us. They give us a way to categorize activities and skills to help focus your time where it's most necessary.<br />
<br />
<h3>
What is the Mind?</h3>
Digging deeper into the mind and isolating it from the other two aspects we find that our inner self is the source of our ideas, personality, and education. We can improve the mind by learning and understanding how our inner self works. I like to think about this as being who I see myself as. Am I a funny person? Do I know a lot of facts? How quickly can I do addition? There are many pieces that make up the brain and its functions and those would all fall under the Mind. Anything that goes on in your head without directly connecting with other people would be considered part of the mind.<br />
<br />
<h3>
What is the Body?</h3>
The physical self is probably the most obvious aspect because it consists of the body itself. There is nothing here beyond what you literally are made up of. You could also call this your “health” but it is made up of anything physical in your body. Things that readily come to mind are things that are easy to improve and are malleable over time like your strength, endurance, immune system but digging deeper this could also be much more difficult things to change and even impossible things like your genetics even though it would not make much sense to try to improve your genetics at this day and age.<br />
<br />
<h3>
What is the Social?</h3>
Your social, which is admittedly an odd phrase because the word social is typically an adjective and here we’ve turned it into a noun, is more to this than just the people you socialize with. Parts of social include communicating, even though the skill of communication is from the mind, the act of communicating is purely social. You could see the act of socializing as a way of trying to spread your idea of who you are and make it match up with how other people see you. This goes both directions, sometimes you learn more about your social self and it adjusts your inner idea if who you are but more commonly you’re expressing your feelings, beliefs, and ideas to other people and they’re changing their mental model of who you are, this happens millions of times a day with lots of people.<br />
<br />
<h3>
What do I do with this?</h3>
<div>
I typically think of this as it relates to activities or skills. It's very easy to say that reading a book, as an example, is an activity that engages the mind primarily. I like to think of each of these aspects as a stat that has an unknowable and incredibly complex score and by performing activities that align with an aspect I'm improving that score. If I take 15 minutes to meditate then I'm likely improving my mind score in some way. Alternatively, if I'm eating an entire bag of candy that probably takes points away from my body score. When I frame things that I do in this way it appeals to my natural urge to improve myself and motivates me to act better.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<h3>
Thank you</h3>
<div>
Thank you so much for reading all the way down here. I really appreciate it! I've been thinking about this for a long time and there are so many other facets to this that I'd like to explore. If this is interesting to you please let me know.</div>
Phil Corbetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09508312076885017257noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7552727482654693487.post-62911422466687595652015-01-29T18:37:00.000-08:002015-01-30T03:53:16.248-08:00Toasting Marshmallows Around the IndieWebCamp FireHave you heard of <a href="http://indiewebcamp.com/">IndieWebCamp.com</a> yet? I hadn't heard about it until a couple weeks ago, but as soon as I started digging into what it is I really liked what is going on there. Basically, what you're looking at is the beginnings of a federated social web. It's the idea that blog posts and comments shouldn't belong to a single central company but that they should be built into the web's infrastructure. The best part is that it's already working. Let me take a moment to slow things down a bit and explain it as I understand it from the ground up.<br />
<br />
Facebook owns your account; I mean, it's your account but it belongs to them. If one day Facebook decided that they wanted to pack up their website and make a restaurant chain that serves cheeseburgers instead of crappy BuzzFeed listicles they could do that and you wouldn't have a Facebook anymore or a way to send messages to your friends. You might say, "So what? I'll start using Twitter, Google+, or whatever then!" Sure, you can do that but there is nothing (except revenue and business reasons) that ensures they're going to stick around either. What you would have to do is make your own social network and then get all your friends to join it. That's a lot of work! What if there was a way that you could make your own website that you own and use it as your online social account that interacts with your friends' websites in a way very similar to Facebook, Google+, or Twitter. There is and it's called the IndieWeb!<br />
<br />
If you've already got a personal site it is extremely easy to get started. I set up my site with the most basic features in about 10 minutes; it would have been quicker if I didn't want to take a Photoshop break in the middle of it all to make a new picture for my new social profile. I don't want to go into super long detail here but I definitely recommend checking out their site, they've got a really helpful and easy <a href="http://indiewebcamp.com/Getting_Started" target="_blank">getting started guide</a>.<br />
<br />
There are two really simple basic things that you can do to get started and they are your rel=me links and your h-card. Basically for every URL on your site that links to another page that is also you simply put a rel="me" on your a tags like this.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"><a href="http://philcorbett.net" rel="me">My Website</a></span><br />
<br />
This tells any other sites using IndieWeb markup that these links are also owned by the same person that owns this current page. The next step is to create your h-card. This is a small amount of markup that will tell other IndieWeb sites various bits about you; essentially, these make up your profile information. The markup is pretty easy but I'll link to the <a href="http://microformats.org/wiki/h-card" target="_blank">h-card microformat page</a> for it because there are a lot of options.<br />
<br />
I'm not an expert at this at all but I really like the idea and wanted to write this up to help get the word out. If you're interested in seeing exactly how I updated my site for it check it out at <a href="http://philcorbett.net/">http://philcorbett.net</a> or view the code on GitHub at <a href="https://github.com/PureMunky/philcorbett.net">https://github.com/PureMunky/philcorbett.net</a>.Phil Corbetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09508312076885017257noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7552727482654693487.post-49398763341946375992014-08-30T09:52:00.001-07:002014-08-30T09:53:28.977-07:00Push-up Experiment: The Nerdy PartsI wrote <a href="http://blog.philcorbett.net/2014/08/the-push-up-experiment-or-how-i-learned.html" target="_blank">The Push-up Experiment</a> earlier and got enough responses asking about the nerdy parts that I'm now writing this one. So, buckle-up and hold on, this could be a long nerdy ride.<br />
<br />
<b>Tools</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
Here are the tools that I used with links:<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li><a href="https://drive.google.com/" target="_blank">Google Drive</a></li>
<ul>
<li>Forms</li>
<li>Sheets</li>
</ul>
<li><a href="http://ifttt.com/" target="_blank">IFTTT</a></li>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://ifttt.com/date_and_time" target="_blank">Date & Time Channel</a></li>
<li><a href="https://ifttt.com/pushover" target="_blank">Pushover Channel</a></li>
<li><a href="https://ifttt.com/recipes/199213-daily-push-up-notification" target="_blank">Daily Push-up Notification</a></li>
</ul>
<li><a href="https://pushover.net/" target="_blank">Pushover</a></li>
</ul>
<b>Collecting the Data</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-R4AOOyr4DNk/VAHxLwG8tqI/AAAAAAAAfAA/Eixu2LZt35I/s1600/My%2BDrive%2B-%2BGoogle%2BDrive%2BNew.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-R4AOOyr4DNk/VAHxLwG8tqI/AAAAAAAAfAA/Eixu2LZt35I/s1600/My%2BDrive%2B-%2BGoogle%2BDrive%2BNew.png" height="309" width="320" /></a>Google Drive allows you to build surveys and send them out; it's called "Google Forms". Your drive options might look a little different than mine but here's the gist of it. Create a new form and make a question for it. For the push-up survey I simply asked "How many push-ups did you do?" and left it as a "Text" type question. When you do this it shows up as a simple text box on the survey and when opened on the phone brings up the keyboard. One other thing I did was only allow for numbers to be entered into the text box because obviously I can't do "abcxyz" number of push-ups. This also has the added benefit of simplifying the Android keyboard so that it only displays the number keys; a simple thing but it makes life just that much easier.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-dSaVB9mH3h8/VAHztnOFCEI/AAAAAAAAfAY/WjJgCOt_fw0/s1600/Daily%2BSurvey%2B-%2BGoogle%2BForms.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-dSaVB9mH3h8/VAHztnOFCEI/AAAAAAAAfAY/WjJgCOt_fw0/s1600/Daily%2BSurvey%2B-%2BGoogle%2BForms.png" height="238" width="400" /></a>When you're done with your form click the "Send Form" button in the top right and copy the URL from the dialog box, you'll need this later. Google will now take any results from this survey and drop them into a sheet that has the same name as the survey with "(Responses)" after it. It will also time stamp every response. It's inside this sheet that I set up the graph. I chose an easy to read area chart but you can play with that to make it fit with how you want it to look. After your chart looks good you can publish it which gives you two options "Interactive Chart" and "Image". I'm a fan of the image option but it doesn't really matter which one you go with honestly. Now that you've done that you can copy/paste that embed into any web page or you could probably get creative tweet it out or whatever, sky's the limit! Alright, now that we've got this all set up there is on more important thing to do, remind yourself to do push-ups and make it easy to record that I used IFTTT for this.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<b>Reminders and Magic</b></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<b><br /></b></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
This part isn't too hard but it could vary greatly depending on a couple things: 1. Android or iPhone and 2. the notification service. I've got an Android phone and I'm using a notification service called Pushover but IFTTT works with a lot of notification services (they even have their own app for Android and iOS) so you don't have to use Pushover. Regardless the steps will be basically the same.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
If you're not familiar with IFTTT be warned, it can be a little overwhelming at first but once you dig into it a lot of wonderful uses start to come to mind. Basically it is a simple service that says when "ABC" happens on the internet trigger "XYZ" to happen. It has a list of triggers and a list of actions for all kinds of services like Twitter, Facebook, RSS feeds, Reddit, so many more. As a silly example you could have it post a tweet on your behalf every time a Craigslist ad goes up matching the search term "shopping cart". Enough about that, let's get back to the task at hand: reminding us to do push-ups.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-3MRfGUjdmos/VAH8Lvm5h1I/AAAAAAAAfAw/3nOF-Qxc6n0/s1600/Create%2BRecipe%2B-%2BIFTTT%2B-%2BTrigger.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-3MRfGUjdmos/VAH8Lvm5h1I/AAAAAAAAfAw/3nOF-Qxc6n0/s1600/Create%2BRecipe%2B-%2BIFTTT%2B-%2BTrigger.png" height="116" width="320" /></a>Using IFTTT I created a new recipe that triggers every day at 6:45 and when that fires it sends a Pushover notification with the URL to the survey we created earlier. The trigger is under the "Date & Time" channel and I selected "Every day at..." then just put in 6:45 and go to the next step. Select the Pushover channel (or whatever notification service you're using) and in the step after that paste in the URL for your survey. Finish off your steps for creating the recipe and you're done! You'll now get a notification every day with a link to your survey and the results from that survey will go into your Google sheet to be graphed and automatically published wherever you included the publish code.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<b>Conclusion</b></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Yes, this is a bunch of work and a lot of weird tools that may or may not have been created to work with each other but it was a fun problem to solve and now I have an image that I put anywhere and it will always show my most recent push-up progress. What other things can you think of that this might be useful for?</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
Phil Corbetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09508312076885017257noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7552727482654693487.post-52297382567382608612014-08-30T07:08:00.002-07:002014-08-30T07:08:37.274-07:00"The Push-up Experiment" or "How I learned that being able to see progress is motivating..."<br />
<div style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;">
</div>
<br />
I've found that when I'm able to visualize progress it motivates me. I'm not a productivity expert or a psychologist but this makes a lot of sense and I figured I'd share it even if you've heard it before.<br />
<br />
Since March 28th, I've been doing push-ups and tracking the number of push-ups I achieve in a spreadsheet. Yes, I know this completely classifies me as a total nerd, but I'm OK with that; I'm writing a blog post about my push-up spreadsheet, I'm well aware of the overall nerdiness going on here. I won't get into the nirty-gritty about how I used <a href="http://ifttt.com/" target="_blank">IFTTT</a> to send me a Google Drive survey every morning on my phone reminding me to do push-ups as well as providing a convenient place to simply enter the numbers. I won't go into the details about how that survey automatically goes into a Drive sheet and the graph (pictured below) automatically updates with each response. No, I won't go into that because I'm afraid that you will think I'm <b>very</b> nerdy, but if you really want me to then let me know and I'll write that up too.<br />
<br />
In order to make sure that this data actually meant something I wanted to put a couple rules in place for myself.<br />
<br />
<ol>
<li>Push-up until I physically can't do another one.</li>
<li>Do them at roughly the same time every day.</li>
</ol>
<div>
The first rule ensured that I wouldn't be future padding results by holding back now so that I could get a consistent improvement day-by-day. The second rule, since I picked just after waking up, prevents as much outside influence as possible. There is still the chance that a good or bad night's sleep would impact my numbers but I figured it's better to narrow it down to as few external factors as possible.</div>
<br />
<br />
<a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1e3BpRiRzx6GxBZUV5C3cWbX8Rfu5NCCuHVDQJpsrfYg/embed/oimg?id=1e3BpRiRzx6GxBZUV5C3cWbX8Rfu5NCCuHVDQJpsrfYg&oid=955998829&zx=sooyblb87wrq" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="247" src="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1e3BpRiRzx6GxBZUV5C3cWbX8Rfu5NCCuHVDQJpsrfYg/embed/oimg?id=1e3BpRiRzx6GxBZUV5C3cWbX8Rfu5NCCuHVDQJpsrfYg&oid=955998829&zx=sooyblb87wrq" width="400" /></a>Now that I've been doing push-ups every morning for a few months here's what that information looks like in a graph form. I started at just over 10 with a couple days of exactly 10 and have grown to be able to do over 30 push-ups as of August 30th. I'm not trying to brag because honestly 30 push-ups isn't really a viable bragging right but I think it's interesting to visualize this information which brings me to my main point and title of this post, "being able to see progress is motivating."<br />
<br />
I love looking at this chart, it makes me feel good that I'm improving. It is very simple and very clear that I'm making progress, not rapid progress but it's visual and easy to see.<br />
<br />Phil Corbetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09508312076885017257noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7552727482654693487.post-9872985448848390572014-08-27T18:12:00.003-07:002014-08-27T18:12:39.474-07:00Mentorship Education<b>Disclaimer</b>: This is a work in progress, I'm mostly curious about what you think about this idea. Also, sorry about the wall of text.<br />
<hr />
<br />
As a software developer, I try to identify places were technology can help people. I've had many conversations with a few people about how the education industry is on the cusp of a large reform because of the Internet. I'm not sure if that's true but I'm going to act like it is for the sake of argument at the moment. Many people believe that this is going to come in the form of a centralized education platform or standard that delivers online education. We're already seeing things like this, Kahn Academy (<a href="https://www.khanacademy.org/">https://www.khanacademy.org</a>) and Lynda (<a href="http://www.lynda.com/">http://www.lynda.com</a>) are two excellent examples. I'd like to look at how technology can help education from a different perspective because I think the idea of online education (or eLearning) is flawed in one very serious way; it completely ignores the human aspect of learning and assumes that we're going to learn on a cookie cutter assembly line.<br />
<br />
I'm not denying that education is possible through online resources because I go to Google whenever I don't know the answer to something, but there is a difference between answering a trivia question and understanding the fundamentals of economics, the events that lead up to World War II, or software engineering. The fact of the matter is that, when it comes to learning, each human is different. I think this means that we can't expect that a one-size-fits-all education process is going to be the most efficient method of learning for everyone. We have to tailor education to the individual if we want to make the most out of the time that we're spending learning.<br />
<br />
This leads me to the guess that the most effective education is a one-on-one environment where a single mentor educates a single learner. This way the mentor can adapt to the needs of the individual. We already know that this method works because when a student is doing poorly we give them individualized tutoring. Why should this method of teaching be reserved for when a student is behind? The only real reason I can come up with is because we don't have enough teachers to educate our entire population individually.<br />
<br />
Let's break education up. If we focus on teaching/learning a single topic at a time then, theoretically, we're able to master one topic quickly. Once we've mastered a single topic shouldn't we be able to then pass on our understanding of that topic to someone else? I believe that one of the best ways to learn something is to teach it so what if part of our learning process was to teach it to someone else? Realistically this means we would learn a topic from a mentor and then once our mentor believes we understand it well enough we would graduate to a mentor of the topic and teach someone else. After we've mentored someone we become a reference to that person as they become a mentor. We're not actively engaged in the education of our "grand-learner" but we act as a reference to their mentor, your previous student. This is all done at a single topic level because this is a living educational platform that focuses on a student learning a single topic from a single mentor. In this ideology you're always teaching and always learning.<br />
<br />
Here is where technology comes in, there is no way that this would be possible without a software platform to find mentors across the world who are experts in their field. I envision this working very similar to a pyramid scheme but without the sleazy sales pressure. If the learner were able to rate their mentor on how well they felt they were able to teach the topic then that data could also be applied to their mentor's reference but at a fraction of the impact. This allows us to build a pyramid of data that holds the mentor responsible for ensuring that their student understands the topic well enough to then be able to teach it.<br />
<br />
I don't have all the answers for this yet but I'm thinking about this at the moment and wanted to hear what you thought. What are some of the stumbling points or gotchas that I have missed? Any suggestions for how this could work better? Am I completely insane and this would never work?Phil Corbetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09508312076885017257noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7552727482654693487.post-51552734368694083742014-08-02T09:55:00.002-07:002014-08-02T09:57:50.492-07:00Looking For: Software MechanicSoftware development appears to be heading in a similar direction as automobile assembly. Before Henry Ford revolutionized the industry every car was unique and complicated. They required specialized mechanics who knew the specific vehicle inside-and-out. This sounds very much like software development today; it is possible for any developer to get into an application and make changes but it is only efficiently done by someone intimately familiar with the specific nuances of the application.<br />
<br />
We're very close to a tipping point in development where applications may be created on an "assembly line". It is already beginning, you no longer (and haven't for quite a while) need to know HTML to create a website because many hosting companies have a WYSIWYG editor that allows you to generate the markup needed to display content on a site. I'm writing this in a blogging engine right now that doesn't require me to change my CSS to alter the look/feel of my post. Using Google Drive you can already create forms that accept data and store it for analysis. When you're talking about a simple application there isn't much left that needs to be automated for anyone without development experience to be able to create an application.<br />
<br />
Many developers (including myself) would say that the last part is probably the most difficult because it consists of what many would call the business logic. These rules around what needs to happen when certain data is entered or certain events occur is where many developers spend their time because it is so intricate and specific. Perhaps the "assembly line" will end up creating everything except for this detailed logic but the possibility for this to become computer generated seems inevitable as well.<br />
<br />
Developers are inherently efficient; we strive to solve a problem only once and allow tools to manage it from then out. How many different tools do you use in your development workflow and how many of them are designed to automate a portion the process? The development for the software assembly line has already begun and it exists in small disparate tools created by individuals to help solve a small problem or annoyance.<br />
<br />
When we finally hit this point where software is generated by more software where will all the developers be? Will developers become more like auto mechanics today only jumping into applications to fix things when normal wear-and-tear as taken it's toll? Should the focus now be on building, maintaining, and updating better assembly lines?Phil Corbetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09508312076885017257noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7552727482654693487.post-59339768183797647992014-08-02T09:07:00.001-07:002014-08-02T09:07:15.567-07:00Gosh Darn It! Writing is Hard!I wandered back to Blogger today after taking a long break (even though I told myself that I wouldn't take breaks) and I realized that I have several posts that are only half finished. I don't think that I'm going to finish most of them because by now the urge that I had when I started them has either dissipated or the information is completely irrelevant. Although, I'm having a very hard time convincing myself to actually delete the drafts. I wanted to make this small post to at least say that writing is not easy. This isn't a, "boo-hoo I'm so busy" post but it is an attempt to kick start my brain into getting used to writing more. I have two large hurdles in my mind when it comes to posting here. One of them is criticism and the other is finding information that I think is worthy of sharing.<br />
<br />
My fear of criticism isn't what you would probably think of at first glance; I feel like the general public looks at a blog as a narcissistic action. Sort of like standing on the tallest mountain and saying, "I have really interesting things to say look at me." My fear of criticism isn't an aversion to people disagreeing with my subject but that they would assume that I'm doing this because I believe that I'm smarter than them. Deep inside, I know that there are so many things that I don't understand and I want to explore them all which is part of why I want to have a blog. Criticism is something that always comes with putting yourself out there and I realize that no matter what you do in public (the internet is definitely public) you'll attract people over time and some of those people with poke holes in your thoughts, I think <i>that </i>is awesome! This brings me to my second goal in maintaining a blog: I want to learn and share what I've learned. If you have an alternate view on anything that I say please let me know, I welcome all feedback.<br />
<br />
I realize that creating interesting content is part of why I want to write to begin with; I want to get better at writing and the only way to accomplish that is to actually write. So, here I am, writing about writing.Phil Corbetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09508312076885017257noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7552727482654693487.post-91416984119314212622013-03-12T03:38:00.001-07:002013-03-12T03:38:20.560-07:00On Internet Webcams<div dir="ltr">
When I tell people that I bought a webcam it almost always illicits a, "what the heck kinda creep are you?" reaction. I'm going to assume that I'm a fairly non creepy person and that it isn't because of my personality that people think this (I may, however, be completely wrong). I completely understand the inherit fear people have of webcams because it means that, if I wanted to, I could record and post everything on the internet that happens within the private walls of my house. I wouldn't do that because that does sound creepy but none-the-less I have a webcam.</div>
<div dir="ltr">
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<object width="320" height="266" class="BLOGGER-youtube-video" classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0" data-thumbnail-src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-tdPsQG39BhM/UT8EBRKf05I/AAAAAAAAFAY/EFvh56drZWQ/s0/VID_20120904_191202.mp4"><param name="movie" value="http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?videoUrl=http://redirector.googlevideo.com/videoplayback?id%3Da5048bef7968a2fa%26itag%3D5%26source%3Dpicasa%26cmo%3Dsensitive_content%253Dyes%26ip%3D0.0.0.0%26ipbits%3D0%26expire%3D1365676293%26sparams%3Did,itag,source,ip,ipbits,expire%26signature%3D647987D983CD4E84C967BD910B6E290EBEE712EF.3200312AE9B345E3F758F4FCAA44BF921F4542A3%26key%3Dlh1" /><param name="bgcolor" value="#FFFFFF" /><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><embed width="320" height="266" src="http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?videoUrl=http://redirector.googlevideo.com/videoplayback?id%3Da5048bef7968a2fa%26itag%3D5%26source%3Dpicasa%26cmo%3Dsensitive_content%253Dyes%26ip%3D0.0.0.0%26ipbits%3D0%26expire%3D1365676293%26sparams%3Did,itag,source,ip,ipbits,expire%26signature%3D647987D983CD4E84C967BD910B6E290EBEE712EF.3200312AE9B345E3F758F4FCAA44BF921F4542A3%26key%3Dlh1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true"></embed></object></div>
There was a day in the fall where I accidentally left my girlfriend's dog (Ricci) outside all day while I was at work. I felt so bad because I had neglected him and, worse of all, didn't even realize it happened until after I got home. Now, this wasn't an issue because it was spring and a beautiful day, but it sets me up for a worrisome day that winter.</div>
<div dir="ltr">
<br /></div>
<div dir="ltr">
It was especially cold one day and Ricci asked to be let outside before I left for work. I won't leave you in suspense, I let him back in before I left. The problem is that, for the entire day, I couldn't remember for sure if I had let him in or not. I worried about it all day and if it wasn't for back-to-back meetings that day I would have taken off to make sure. I let it get to me so badly that I bought a webcam that day before I left for home. I knew that it wouldn't help me now but it would allow me to solve this worry in the future and that piece of mind was worth so much to me in the moment and I have never been in the same situation since.<br />
<br /></div>
<div dir="ltr">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-c29F7zASkPM/UT8CnsY80RI/AAAAAAAAFAM/3ufwQZJqmDE/s1600/00_12_12_26_00_81_JWEV-001862-SPJJJ_1_20130312045152_7.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-c29F7zASkPM/UT8CnsY80RI/AAAAAAAAFAM/3ufwQZJqmDE/s320/00_12_12_26_00_81_JWEV-001862-SPJJJ_1_20130312045152_7.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div dir="ltr">
The best part about having the webcam is that I set it to take random photos periodically and upload them to my private FTP server. So far these photos have been very boring, but there is some fun at going through them every now and then to see my life as captured by a 3rd party. As an example, to the right is a fairly uninteresting photo taken by the webcam at 6:15 AM on the morning that I wrote this. You can see Ricci staring longingly out the window and a few bits of "teacher scrap" left on the floor from the night before.<br />
<br />
I've been enjoying the webcam because it's nice to know what's going on in my house but it is also an interesting conversation topic. Ashlee loves to ask people if they want to see her puppy and proudly pulls up the live stream on her phone. The only problem with webcams is that they can be very addictive; I think I want a few more, is that creepy?</div>
Phil Corbetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09508312076885017257noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7552727482654693487.post-43485349034797542302013-03-02T04:54:00.000-08:002013-03-02T04:54:17.727-08:00My Life After LastPassI'm sure this post is going to feel like a commercial and I'm fine with that. :)<br />
<br />
A friend (who will remain entirely anonymous) posted a light-hearted jest on Facebook about some password requirements being insane and asking about ways to make up a password that worked within these particular criteria. All of the usual suggestions came up: take a normal password and change some letters to numbers, the algorithm that you remember that turns the url of the site into a password, XKCD's awesome method at <a href="http://xkcd.com/936/">http://xkcd.com/936/</a>, and I mentioned <a href="https://lastpass.com/" target="_blank">LastPass</a>. At this point I hadn't used LastPass, only heard about it and thought it would solve his problem.<br />
<br />
LastPass is a secure password management tool that will generate (and remember) new passwords for anything you want. The passwords tend to look something like this "bQ0SCNPS7Q1c" and are encrypted and stored locally as well as on their servers so that you can access them from anywhere. Your master password is the key to unencrypt your other passwords. The entire service is free as long as you use their site and/or browser extensions but you can pay $12 a year to be able to access it from your mobile device and at that price why not.<br />
<br />
During my research on the service I decided to create an account and begin using it, but not trusting it yet. I enjoyed not needing to remember several of my passwords and the security admin that lurks deep inside my brain kept telling me that this was a good thing. It wasn't until Twitter announced that they were requiring everyone to change their passwords because of a security breach that I really began to see why I loved LastPass. After the announcement, I gladly allowed LastPass to take over from there for just about everything.<br />
<br />
Let me just say that I've been using LastPass for a couple months now and couldn't be more happy. After the Twitter incident, I didn't go out and immediately change all of my passwords to the cryptic ones that it generates but as the opportunity arose I would gladly allow it to provide me with a new one. This thing has made me not worry about my passwords anymore and when security holes rear their ugly head I don't feel too bad about having to change any of my passwords.<br />
<br />
If you've every forgotten a password or had an account compromised then LassPass will certainly help you out. I couldn't recommend it with any higher praise and it's basically free.Phil Corbetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09508312076885017257noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7552727482654693487.post-70226854733068600282013-01-19T08:02:00.000-08:002013-01-19T08:02:00.641-08:00Social Experiment: Live Blogging My Online Activity<div dir="ltr">
<a href="https://twitter.com/PhilCorbettLive" target="_blank">@PhilCorbettLive</a> - That is my live auto-blog twitter account, feel free to follow it if you like but be warned. As an experiment, anytime an app or website asks for permission to post to Twitter for me I say "yes" and point it to this account. I've also used <a href="http://ifttt.com/" target="_blank">ifttt.com</a> to push as much as I can to this account.</div>
<div dir="ltr">
<br /></div>
<div dir="ltr">
The experiment is not scientific in any regards but more of an observation at the amount of data that I am constantly making by using various services. There is also a curiosity about what an account would look like if you were to grant access to post on your behalf for anything and everything that asks.</div>
<div dir="ltr">
<br /></div>
<div dir="ltr">
For reference, my live auto-blog was created September 1st, 2012 and in 140 days since creation this account has tweeted 939 times. Compare this to <a href="https://twitter.com/puremunky" target="_blank">@PureMunky</a> (my real/normal Twitter account) which was created April 6th, 2007 which has in 2115 days tweeted 613 times. Now, I don't tweet all that often but the stark difference in my activity online and the amount of times I've consciously tweeted is quite different.</div>
<div dir="ltr">
<br /></div>
<div dir="ltr">
This is an ongoing experiment and I'll probably have another post about this in the future after I've come to some better conclusions. Maybe I'll even start following the scientific method for this experiment.</div>
Phil Corbetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09508312076885017257noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7552727482654693487.post-63671860706970831212013-01-12T08:56:00.001-08:002013-01-12T08:56:29.736-08:00I'm RestlessI've been thinking about doing a lot of different things lately. I've been wanting to learn the violin, go rock climbing, start a side business, and drive to the west coast, just to name a few. I'm not exactly sure where these urges started or why they're just now coming up but it seems that something in me is stirring.<br />
<br />
Part of this may be caused by my age; I'm not old by any means but in October of 2012 I turned 30. I've been living in the same house working at the same job for roughly 8 years now and I wonder if I'm starting to feel like I'm letting life pass me by. I'm sure this is a very normal feeling around my age and probably every milestone birthday from here on. I want to make sure that when I hit 40 I don't think to myself, "What did I do for the last 10 years?" I want to be able to look back and say "Wow, look at all the fun I had, the people I met, and the work I accomplished."<br />
<br />
I'm going to start right now, right here. I've attempted to start several blogs before and on each of them the very first post is something like, "I've tried this before and it didn't work, here we go again!" So, I'm going to make this blog known to as many people as I can so that if I take too long of a hiatus from posting someone might ask me what's going on. Everything posted here is going to be personal thoughts, projects, inclinations, or whatever else I feel like. I've always been an open book when asked and I'm changing that. I want to become an open book even when not asked but without being intrusive, on this blog.Phil Corbetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09508312076885017257noreply@blogger.com2