Overview forbooks

Ground level learning

My job has begun the transition of having me work more in software development and less with product support which I have been doing for most of my time while being there.  This is an advantage for me since programming was my college major.  Sure I dabbled in programming from time-to-time while at work, but the projects were very small in scope and served as a solution for very niche tasks.  So they were nothing worth bragging home about.

The programming language I’m most familiar with is Visual Basic, and sure, some of you are probably snickering about that, but it was a popular language to learn at the time when I was in college.  Windows computers dominated the PC landscape, and with VB's focus on rapid application development, it made it all the more tempting to learn, especially when it came to creating graphical form applications.

When I needed to get back into programming for those minor projects I mentioned earlier, I needed a quick intro course to get me back into the swing of things, and that’s when I found Patrice Pelland’s series of books tilted Build a Program Now!  I got the Visual Basic edition and it is basically a crash course on learning the basic syntax of the language, a tour on the development environment, and shows off some new tricks for the -- at the time -- latest version of the language had to offer.  It’s a fantastic book that includes great examples of practice projects from building your own web browser, to dealing with references, to database handling, to pulling information from the web.  Of course keep in mind it’s a crash course book so it’s not a detailed, all-encompassing book, but as reading material to quickly get you going, it’s totally the book to get.  I liked it so much that I got both editions that came out for Visual Basic.

Since graduating from college, C# (pronounced “C Sharp”) took over for VB as Microsoft’s programming language of choice.  It’s been something I’ve wanted to learn for a while, but never had a reason to learn it.  A few years back I tried to get into it when I bought a book on developing XNA games called Learn Programming Now! Microsoft XNA Studio 4.0 (boy, I guess the people at Microsoft Press really liked using that same color theme over and over again for this series of books) which used C#, but as I began reading the book, Microsoft announced they were going to begin sunsetting the whole indie project and were going to shut down the community sites.  Hearing this really took the winds out of my sails and I just stopped reading the book; which in hindsight I kind of regret doing.

But now for the current project I’m working on I realized I needed to build the software with C#, so it became a worthy excuse for needing to learn the language, and fast.  Luckily Pelland wrote a C# version of Build a Program Now! so I bought that to get up to speed with the syntax.  For me personally, C# is a little trickier to learn, but that may be due to the fact that I’m coming from a VB frame of mind, so it could be hindering my learning that language than if I hadn’t already knew VB.  But I’m getting there and the project is coming along.

It is cool, though, getting back into programming.  I should try reading that XNA book again to balance some fun stuff with the business side, even though Microsoft doesn’t allow games to be published to XBLA or to build games for the 360.  At least I can still build games for the PC!

No Matter How I Look at It, this is a very long title

Slowly I’ve been catching up to the manga series No Matter How I Look at It, It’s You Guys' Fault I’m Not Popular! I just finished volume 4 and, as of this writing, I only need three more to go. It’s a series I’ve been enjoying a lot, and so far, keep looking forward towards to the next volume.

Even though the manga debuted first, I originally became aware of this series when I came across the anime that’s based on the manga. I wrote about it a few months back and absolutely loved it. It’s been a while since a show has caught my attention the same way the anime series did, but the reasoning could be that the story hits a little too close to home of when I was in high school.

The anime series titled WataMote is based on the first few books of the manga. I’ve started coming across a few chapters of new material that I don’t remember being in the anime, so I’m glad to be reaching new content I haven’t seen yet. I’m planning to go into more details regarding some of the characters and story. I don’t plan on spoiling anything, but just in case, I’m placing the rest of this posting behind a link. More to come after the jump.

Delineation

Christmas was pretty dope.  Christmas eve was spent with my immediate family as we watched a number of Christmas movies like Elf -- which is funny, but don’t really care for; A Christmas Story -- a tradition to watch with my family; and National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation -- my all time favorite Christmas movie.  We broke holiday traditions and had enchiladas for dinner.  We normally would have a giant sandwich or, from earlier times, tamales.  But yeah, it was delicious!  I haven’t had a good plate of enchiladas in a long time.  They were jammed packed with meat and cheese with a good helping of spanish rice on the side.  After two full plates I was in a food comma; trying to sober up with a balance of salt with sweet by consuming a good helping of cookies afterwards.

Christmas day was spent at my aunt’s place where I mingled with relatives from my mom’s side and caught up with a cousin that still lives in the area.  And speaking of Christmas, one of the gifts I received was on a book I wanted from the Bleach series titled Masked.

The image above is from the back side of the book (which I think is the cooler looking side).  As described in the image, it’s the book that provides profiles for characters that appeared in volumes 21-37, meaning the Arrancar arc of the story.  I really loved this arc and wanted a book that covers the details of everyone who was involved in it.  Just by glancing through the book it looks way better than the previous book, Souls., which provided character profiles for the Soul Society arc.

Hope your holidays were good, too!

Missed opportunity

Aw man!  You stop following something for a few months and suddenly it surges with interest and then quickly goes dormant again.

I love the story of the Mojave Desert phone booth.  You see, once upon a time there was a phone booth that was placed in the middle of a desert, miles from paved road and any signs of civilization.  The thing is…this was real!

The guy who basically made this phone booth known worldwide recently had a Kickstarter that would help him fund the ability to make a book out of his experience regarding the booth.  I so would have contributed to this if I knew about it.  Oh well.  Hopefully I can still buy the book when it comes out.

But in addition to this Kickstarter campaign, the guy also did an interview with NPR regarding the booth.  AND on top of that there's a new documentary that was recently dropped on YouTube of the booth.  I’ve already watched the clips of a canceled documentary of it (it’s a lot of raw recordings for the doc), but this one is fully complete and worth the time watching it – if you’re interested in this amazingly awesome story of a phone booth next to a dusty dirt trail surrounded by nothingness.

Holly crossovers, Batman!

Finally got around to reading the first issue of Batman ’66 meets the Green Hornet.  Not that I’m a fan of the Batman television show of the sixties, but I do appreciate it from a distance.  I know the show somewhat well because I watched a lot of it when I was a kid.

Anyways, the reason why I bought it was because it was written by two people whom I appreciate greatly.  One is Kevin Smith.  Sure, he’s a big fan of Batman and knows the franchise well, but it’s the other writer that caught my attention more, Ralph Garman.  If you don’t know Ralph, his main gig is working on the Kevin and Bean morning show on KROQ in Los Angeles.  He’s is also known for doing a podcast with Kevin Smith called Hollywood Babble-On for Kevin’s SModcast network.

If you listen to either show, you’ll know Ralph is a die-hard fan of the 1960s show staring Adam West.  His knowledge for the show goes deep and I can bet money that he can win at any ’66 Batman trivia you throw at him.  Because of this, I wanted to see how a fan like Ralph would write an “episode” of a show he cherishes so much.  Without out a doubt, he pulls it off well.  From the premise of the story, to the villain, the dialog, and the narration all seem to radiate a similar vibe of what the TV show offers.

I do like the crossover with the Green Hornet.  Seems like a good choice which gives Batman not only a somewhat mirrored reflection of himself with a sidekick (and a car and a secret identity), but someone to have conversations with on the same level.

What was

I’ve been a fan of Bleach ever since the TV series began airing here in the states.  Shortly after it began airing I decided to get into the manga, which is now my preferred way of progressing with the series.  I fell behind a few years ago because there was a time when they were releasing the books very scarcely for about two years.  I’m catching up now and am currently at volume 50.  50!

With the start of a new arc, they’ve been showing single panel flashbacks from scenes as far back from the first few volumes.  Having all volumes up to 50, I’ve been re-reading the first 10 books.  Man, Kubo’s art style has changed throughout the series!

While reading these books, I totally forgot he used to dedicate the last few pages for character descriptions.  I used to love these because he even gave each character a theme from a real song.  I used to hunt down and listen to some of these songs to get figure out the relation of the character to the song.  In addition to this, I loved how the first volumes seemed to have a heavy influence from music in general.  Really subtle things like a t-shirt a character would be wearing.  Even the title of the series -- Bleach!  I don’t know if it has been confirmed in an interview, but the rumor was the name was based on the title of Nirvana’s first studio album.  That would be so rad if that rumor was true.

I’m about 10 volumes behind the current one and hope to catch up to it soon.  The anime series is right behind me and I want to read what happens rather than watch it.