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My First Youtube Video

April 6, 2015 / Joseph / 0 Comments

For many years I’ve trolled Youtube, Stackoverflow.com and other sites stock piling information and code on how to do certain things.
So I figured it was time for me to do my part and pay it forward. I decided to so by cranking out some “How To” videos.
This was my first attempt at screen recording and what I found out is that it’s not as easy as it looks.

1st, my audio sucked so I went out and bought some fairly cheap Logitech USB Headsets from Office Depot. btw. Amazon is cheaper but I wanted and needed the headset ASAP.

2nd, Whenever I played back my video it was blurry. So it took me a few takes to figure out that I needed to change the resolutions to 1280×720

3rd, I’ve never used IMovie before so for me something as simple as trimming a clip took hours to figure out. Come to think of it I’ve owned my Mac for like 3 years now and I think this was the first time I’ve opened IMovie on purpose.

Overall it probably took me like 6/8 takes to get to a point where I thought I was done. I’m crossing my fingers hoping that as I do more it will get better.

Soooo my first video is a “How To” video explaining how to download and parse TV listing data using PHP and a very cool API made available by the people over at TVmaze.com.

The site and API’s are free and very easy to use. And like you’ll see from my video you can get something up and running within a few minutes.

So if you find your looking for this type of data, you should definitely see the set of API’s TVmaze.com has to offer.

f.y.i. I have no theme or structured plan in mind for the videos i create. I only plan to do videos on technology I like and use.

New theme New Beginnings

March 29, 2015 / admin / 0 Comments

Well since Google has been tipping it’s hat towards how it feels about mobile in regards to responsive friendly websites I thought I should perhaps change WordPress themes. So here we are a new theme, new beginnings. I was looking for something easy and simple and I think I’ve nailed it with this theme.

So what’s new.

Killing off some websites (getMinified is gone)
Updating my Skills and experience matrix
Really loving Swift so far
And oh I’ve added a new site to the mix (Bigtopnames.com)

I plan to blog more, my goal is to submit a post at least once a week.
I have a few ideas, working on a few new projects so things should start off pretty easily.. but lets see

Thanks,
Joseph

Back from vacation

November 10, 2014 / Joseph / 0 Comments

Okay the title is a joke. I had a hard time coming up with a title.
Come to think of it as of this month I have not had a vacation in over 2 years and 10 months 😉

And it’s been like 6 months since my last update (I’m on twitter alot).
So here’s a few items that I’ve been working on or doing since my last update.

1.) Still in cooperate america
2.) Passed the MongoDB for Developers course (freaking awesome!)
3.) Killing Getminified (well just the control panel part)
- I think I’m gonna start building more small but helpful tools like this. Basically weekend projects.
4.) Working on a new project that I’m petty excited about should be completed by the end of the month.
5.) Trying to learn Swift. Thank God Apple implemented this change. I was having a hard time learning Objective-C
6.) Expanded my portfolio adding a small amount of shares of YHOO, TWTR, TSLA
7.) Shopping for a new wordpress Theme. Looking for something clean and simple

Updated Skills and Experience Matrix

May 4, 2014 / Joseph / 0 Comments

So I’ve updated my Skills and Experience Matrix chart.

http://www.josephtinsley.com/2013/07/31/skills-and-experience-matrix/

I’ve added Twitter BootStrap under the Familiarity column.
I’ve been playing around with it but nowhere near where I would like to be.

For a while now I’ve been trying my best not to follow the herd.
So either I built my own framework or I used a framework that was off the grid (not so popular).

The journey so far has been pretty good.
I purchased the kindle version of “Getting Started with Bootstrap 3” to help jump start things.
You should get it, it’s awesome, plus it was only like $2.99

Anyhow I will have more to come regarding my BootStrap journey soon.

I’m currently re-doing this Domain management site I’ve been working on.

I’m expecting to have this completed within the next two weeks.

getMinified API

March 29, 2014 / Joseph / 0 Comments

After 3 or 4 attempts in building out the getMinified API and its dashboard I think I finally have a finished product.

Everytime I thought things where thought out correctly, I found issues.
Either complexed issues with the code or simple UX issues.

I decided to pared back a bit on the features and focus primarily on the CSS part.
In the beginning the overall objective was to build out a simple but useful website that I could crank out within a weekend.

…Im about two weeks deep now #sadface

Screenshot of the Sign Up/Sign In dashboard

Screenshot of the Stylesheet listing dashboards

Building GetMinified.com – CSS and JS minifier

March 15, 2014 / Joseph / 0 Comments

So this may be a crazy idea but at the time I thought it was pretty special.
I was working on a project and had to minify some CSS code.
I quickly became exhaust of the whole process.

Edit CSS, minify the code, republish to site. Make more changes to the CSS code, minify the code again , republish the code again.

Depending on how often you make these types of changes this process can get a bit tiresome.
So I thought, Oh crap why not make a API !
The idea was to basically allow developers to work on their code and at anytime save the changes. The API will dynamically return the compress version.

Boom! and thats how GetMinified.com was created.

I bought the domain for less then $5 from Godaddy using a coupon code. Then the next following day I crushed out the code.

Right now I’m fine tuning the backend but it seems to work as is.
I’m gonna create a API sign up page to collect emails so I’ll be able to notify users if the API updates.

Skills and Experience Matrix

July 31, 2013 / Joseph / 0 Comments

I’ve been working in the tech industry for a few years now. Most of my career has been split between SEO and Web Development. There’s times when I’m not really aware of the skill sets I’ve picked up amongst the years. So I decided to build this matrix that would easily display what languages and technologies I’m familiar with.

Languages	Databases	OSs	Software	Web Services	Familiarity
HTML	MySql	Win	Neatbeans	Twilio	Python
CSS	mongoDB	IOs	Dreamweaver	Google	PostGRE
JQuery		Linux	PHPAdmin	Twitter	CodeIgnitor
JavaScript			RoboMongo	Yahoo	Twitter Bootstrap
PHP5			MAMPPro	Bing	Swift
SQL			EasyPHP	Facebook
JSON			FileZilia
XML			Git/GitHub
			Mercurial/Bitbucket

The column labeled “Familiarity” are languages/technologies I’ve only worked with for 6 months or less.

Quick PHP Pivot

July 24, 2013 / Joseph / 0 Comments

So I have this quick web service idea that keeps calling my name. I’m sure you know what I’m talking about. It’s that type of idea that keeps you up at night. The idea that makes you call in sick from work so you can work on it. That can’t stop won’t stop idea that for some reason just won’t get out of your head.

Well I have one of those ideas and I’ve decided to make a quick pivot to work on it. So by doing so I’m forced to put the Python scripting on the back burner this week. Not all the way to the back, I did happen to work on a few things that I’m giddy about which I will share with you all in my next weeks update. Which may be my last week that I focus solely on my “Learning Python in a month” challenge, haven’t fully decided yet.

I set out to spend a month with Python and I did it. I’m actually proud of myself. I wouldn’t consider myself well versed yet but I think I at least know the basics. I’m sure if I stick with it for another six month I will somewhere around the Sr. n00b ranks by then.

But again this has not yet been decided. What I’m considering for next month challenge is either Ruby on Rails or IOS Programming, I have always wanted to learn how to make IPhone/IPad apps. But from what I’ve read so far this not going to be a easy challenge. I may chicken out and go the Ruby on Rails route who knows. If I take this challenge it will begin on August 1st.

Yea, next months is going to be real interesting.

Learning Python – Week4

July 20, 2013 / Joseph / 0 Comments

If i had to describe this week it would be Information Overload.
This week has been less about actual coding and more about discovery.

I found a few sites and applications that I wanted to share that I thought were great additions to add to your Python learning arsenal

TheNewBoston Youtube channel. This dudes channel is packed with programming tutorials from Ruby to Java to Android. I actually discovered his channel when I was trying to learn more about Android programming. I love his tutorials because he keeps them short and sweet most are under 5 minutes. Videos that go on for more than 10 minutes start to lose my attention. So if you’re one of those people you learn better by watching instead of reading then this is a great channel to cover the basics. I even think you will get a kick out of sense of humor, he’s kind of funny.

Koding.com. I’m not certain how long this site’s been around, I just received my invite last night but so far this site is really, really awesome. It’s a combination between a cloud IDE and social networking platform for programmers, it’s pretty badass. For me a Python n00b, I love that it gives me more time to focus on learning and writing code. I spent way too much time searching for the right IDE (which I still haven’t found).
Another big feature is their community. They have topics on everything web related like CSS3, HTL5 and etc. Topics are beautifully laid out in a dashboard like grid so you can easily follow topics that you’re interested in. I’m following JQuery, mongoDB, PHP and Python if you’re curious.

Bottom line it’s a awesome site and I really think you should try it. But please note it’s currently in beta so from time to time you may experience a few issues but I can say with confidence I think this site will take off in a major way and become the next big thing.

So whether you’re a Python, PHP, or Ruby developer this site is for you.

Oh and in regards to my Python coding. I did do a tiny bit of coding and I mean tiny.
I’ve never written a Python Class before, this is actually my first attempt.

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#!/usr/bin/python

import cgitb

cgitb.enable()

print "Content-Type: text/html"
print

###################

class PERSON:
def __init__(self):
self.f_name="Joseph"
self.l_name="Tinsley"

def showFullName(self):
return self.f_name +" "+ self.l_name +"<br>"

def add(self,x, y):
total = x+ y
return "The answer is %d" %total +"<br>"

def subtract(self,x, y):
total = x - y
return "The answer is %d" %total+"<br>"

def multiply(self,x, y):
total = x * y
return "The answer is %d" %total +"<br>"

p = PERSON()

print "Hello my name is " + p.showFullName();
print p.add(10,5);
print p.subtract(10,5);
print p.multiply(10,5);

Learning Python – Week3

July 12, 2013 / Joseph / 0 Comments

So I’m 3 weeks into learning Python and overall I feel pretty good about my progress.
But this past week was a bit tricky with the 4th of July weekend and all. So as you can probably imagine how I allowed the festivities to railroaded a few of my plans, but not all of them. I was still able to crank out a few things.

For starters I built this Python Character Counter script for both personal and work use. It’s small and simple so you’re probably thinking “What this about?”. Well at the time I couldn’t think of anything else plus I knew this could be whipped out quickly. But believe it or not something as simple as a web form with a Len() Method will end up being one of the most useful tools I end up using. In my line of work there seem to always be a need for a string or phrase counter. And a tiny script like this surely beats out firing up Microsoft Word each time.

The other part of my week was spent digging through the web trying to figure out how other Python programmers work, what tools they use and what’s considered a normal workflow.

Finding the perfect workflow seems to be the most important thing for me right now. In my opinion if what you’re doing doesn’t feel right, then you’re just limiting your potential.

For example the Python code I’ve been writing was written using VIM text editor and to be honest my VIM knowledge is limited. I can fumble through a few commands but that’s about it. Funny thing, I know some old school hackers who prefer VIM over any other editor and I have to admit these dudes look pretty smart crushing code, but again that’s not me.

So until I run across a suitable FREE IDE to complete my workflow, I’ll be churning along with VIM.