LAMP Web Application

I've found employment at a small IT firm in Waikiki that services businesses as their own IT department. It's been a different experience compared to programming. My employers do value my programming background though. They've started to discuss what they would want to build in terms of software tools for the company and also for their clients. One of these projects is a web application that would require a web server and code to drive the service.

I have never worked with servers before. LAMP (Linux, Apache, Mysql, PHP) was unfamiliar to me. I had used PHP, Sql server and Apache before, but never a Linux server. It's been a very interesting experience for me. On one side, I want to dive into the project. But I also need to look at this as a project manager. My co-worker has a more firm mind when it comes to project management. She reminded me that we should look at all the alternatives for the type of server OS to use, as well as the programming language. One of the most promising and cheaper choices, Ubuntu, jumped out at me immediately. I decided to follow my co-workers prudence in researching further to determine the correct tools for this project. Nevertheless, we found some information that confirmed our assumption in using Ubuntu to create a LAMP type of setup.

LAMP is used by many companies to host content and it is also the most widely used open source setup for developers. An even more inviting detail is that Ubuntu bundles all the packages needed to get a LAMP setup going very quickly.

As of today September 18, 2011, we are at a preliminary stage of development. My co-worker and I have both setup stations to work on a LAMP Ubuntu server. Everything is ready for us to start developing.

Since this is my first time in creating an application on this framework, I am still learning the nuances of Linux and also for Mysql. At the same time I am very excited, because this was what I was working toward in college. It feels good to know that despite my overall duties at Analyzer-USA, I am also putting my programming background to use.

image from techtickle.com

New Blog: Computer User Essentials

Since my last blog posting, I've been trying to create an Android app game. I've learned a lot from just the development process. A lot of things still haven't been done. The content development process is the most strenuous it seems. Creating art for the game is quite challenging. I've done coding before, but creating something that is fun and good to look at to compliment the game is quite a feat. I think this project will have to be an ongoing process.

Meanwhile, I've started a blog. Unlike this one, I've decided to take a try at creating a website that people would actually would want to visit. This site called Computer User Essentials is hosted by blogger, so technically it's a blog within a site. I've been trying to generate some promotion and connections to this site by pitching solutions to different forums and submitting the blog to different blog directories. The content that I provide is for people who want to learn the basics of the internet and also how to use it effectively. Some of the articles I've written so far are solutions to problems people regularly have. Although some of the answers not entirely original, I've been able to link my articles in forums in order give solutions to those who are asking for them. I think that will be a great benefit to everyone.

I plan on continuing to write this blog for quite awhile in order to learn about internet marketing and generating content. Even now at the beginning, I already see that it's a big undertaking and that people who write blogs for a living certainly have to be quite dedicated.

Bachelor of Science in Information and Computer

It's official. I am a graduate from the University of Hawaii at Manoa. I'm in the processing of applying for positions in different companies and looking for work whatever they may be. I haven't had much time to update this blog the past 5 months, so I have added some information on my profile here. In short, one of the classes I took this fall was in Data Networks. I learned a lot about web servers, peer to peer networks and internet protocols.

In the meantime I've been developing some applications to keep up my programming skills. One of them is a program that uses the YouTube api to do bulk searches. It was a pet peeve of mine that whenever I look at some music blogs, I would need to individually wade through different songs one by one and have to search for the song on the web. Well, I decided to create a program using YouTube to provide those songs in an one page list. Since YouTube hosts so many videos of songs, it was a good medium for me to take advantage of their api. Here is a distribution of that program.

I'm also looking into creating an app on the Android platform or the iPhone platform. I'll have upcoming blogs to share about this development.

Summer Internship

Through the Youth Summer Program , I was offered employment for an internship at the Department of Health laboratory division as an IT trainee. Worked started on Thursday July 1st.

It's really exciting! I've already been briefed on a host of topics that concern the Department of Health. Moreover, I've learned that there are quite a few things that the computer technology can do to help the government. I'm been given a project to create an application processing requests that would have otherwise been processed through paper channels.

A lot of this project has to do with database management and website development. I'm certainly going to have to refresh my knowledge of SQL. It's been a year since I last worked on creating a database. It looks like this summer is going to be a busy time for me.

Summer updates

Now that I'm done with the spring semester at Manoa, I'm taking a Calculus class and working on side projects. I've been steadily reading up on objective-c and iPhone development. The hardest part about that is creating something cool and neat. So far I've made a couple of apps that do very generic functions and it's very slow going. I'm trying to find my own creative ideas and implementing them through the iPhone device.

On another note, I'm continuing to better my rhetoric and so I've decided to do more writing. I found a site called mylot.com. It's really interesting and has a community of writers that do a lot of sharing. A interesting incentive that they use to set them apart from other forums is their monetary rewards. Although it's not much, mylot.com counts participation and contributions to the site and rewards users for sharing their writings.

So I am also adding this blog to the myLot User Profile.

Flash Video Interface: Analysis of the features

Flash video players are a big part of the web environment, and even with the coming upgrades from html5, most websites still rely on the Flash interface to stream video content to users. I thought it was interesting on an aesthetic and design level. So I decided to focus my attention on researching several Flash video players and examining the interfaces for each player. This was an ICS 419 design project. What's surprising is the complete lack of literature and studies for interface designs. I found that most sites had instruction guides that showed people how to install and create your Flash video players, but they didn't really talk about the design aspect of the interface. Most of them just used a premade layout from Adobe.

After looking at several interfaces from well known sites and some not so well known ones, I gave my analysis on what I thought. This analysis was based on design principles from Donald A. Normans books about the same topic, Emotional Design and The Design of Everyday Things. Norman gave general ideas about design in general, whereas I applied them to Flash video player interfaces.

Donald A. Norman was at one time the Vice President of Apple Computer's Advanced
Technology Group. His writings taught me a lot about design, but also about the world we live in.

Here is my paper: here

Week 17: Finishing the video

It's coming down to the final week on the Kukui Cup Energy Dorm Competition project. I've worked on the competition design group and the content development group in the past few weeks. As our group has filmed several interviews, we've been thinking about how to put together the video about Solar Energy. This past week we recorded even more material for our narrative in the video. It's getting even more in-depth now.

It wasn't very easy to create the narrative in the video and piecing together what we would say.

The footage we recorded this past week was of ourselves narrating the story about Solar Energy. What was most frustrating was the narration. We had to really think about the transitions that would lead into the interviews. There was a lot of takes in order to get the words correct.

Since we finished filming, it now comes down to editing and making the video good.

Although this past semester has had very little for me to do in terms of coding, I've learned a lot project management and the process of creating content.