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Happy Primes Code Kata

This code kata takes the typical kata to produce a list of primes or check if a number is a prime and puts a bit of a Doctor Who spin on it by producing a list of primes then checking to see if they are happy. A prime number is one that can only be factored by itself or one. A happy number is one that when the sum of the square of it’s digits are added then this method repeated will ultimately produce one.

For example 19 is a happy number:
1² + 9² = 82
8² + 2² = 68
6² + 8² = 100
1² + 0² + 0² = 1

A happy prime is a number that is happy and prime. This kata is designed to iterate through a list of numbers to determine if a number is both prime and happy and therefore a happy prime. It could be adjusted to allow for user input to determine if the number given is a happy prime.

Project Management for a Podcast

We began working on the Complete Developer Podcast in July of 2015 though our first episode was not published until September 10, 2015. Much of this time was spent setting up our website and writing a backlog of show outlines. Part of the process early on involved developing our routines for recording and publishing episodes. We wanted to have it simple enough that anyone could come along and figure out the process but complex enough to get the job done. My co-host and programming mentor Will has a friend that works at LeanKit so he suggested we give their product a try.

I found a natural inclination to using the LeanKit software and we ultimately purchased a license to use it rather than continue with the free service. Over the last half a year of publishing I have become the project manager and defacto SCRUM master for the show.

Publishing A Podcast The Templates

At Complete Developer Podcast we use several HTML templates for our emails and show notes. I developed these templates so whomever is writing the show notes or emails will be able to maintain the same format.

Adding a Contact Form in Hexo

Recently I ported my WordPress blog to Hexo. I became frustrated with the invalid login attempts to my site driving up the costs of hosting on my Pay-As-You-Go plan with Azure. The benefit of a static site created by Hexo is that I do not have to worry about those attacks, however static sites do come with some drawbacks.

The first drawback I encountered was creating a contact form for my site. Since there is no communication between the browser and the server to send an email from the form I used a third-party client FormSpree. The benefit here is they check the message before sending it to me. I have since used their service, which is free for under 1,000 messages per month, for a couple of clients wanting static sites.

March is for Makers

March is for Makers is a movement started by Saron Yitbarek of Code Newbie and Scott Hanselman of HanselMinutes for their respective podcasts. All month long they will be interviewing makers and discussing hardware. Though Complete Developer Podcast is not officially part of the movement to show support we dedicated IoTease to fun family projects that can be done each week. Here are the projects discussed on the show and a few that didn’t make the cut this year.

7 Tips to Understanding Sales

“In some professions such a difference would be obvious. A salesman who sells 10x as much as his peers will be noticed, and compensated accordingly. Sales are easy to measure, and some salesmen make orders of magnitude more money than others.” ~ Joe Cook

Within the software development community there can often times be a lack of understanding for how the sales department works. This disconnect can lead to lack of communication between the two departments which in turn leads to salesmen making promises that cannot be kept by the development team. On the other side it can also lead to a focus on development of features that customers are not interested in having in the product.

The Junior Developer's Toolbox

Tools Every Junior Developer Should Know

First off, many of these were taken and elaborated upon from the Tricks of the Trade segment of Complete Developer Podcast. As such they come recommended by a Senior Developer as tools to help that we as Junior Developers should know about. The format for Tricks of the Trade will be changing to be more advice and coding tricks than tools. I’ve compiled the list of tools that we suggested on the show and added a few that were not mentioned. I’ve also asked Will to review this post before I publish.

Kick The Can Don't Kick The Bucket

Growing up my dad dipped pouches, one grandfather chewed, and one grandmother chewed. I always thought of it as gross as a kid. I never really had the phase of wanting to try it. I tried smoking, I just couldn’t get past the coughing. Occasionally I’ve been known to smoke a cigar but that’s about once a year or less. Therefore I didn’t start dipping until I was out of college. I started off with pouches and moved to long cut because of the variety of flavors.

Well I know this is bad for me and I never should have started but it all came about around the time of my divorce and the nicotine was a nice mood boost. I tried quitting during that time but took such a hit on my mood that I became unbearable to be around which leads into the first point about quitting nicotine.

Resolutions for the New Year

I. Have a junior developer job by the end of February

I’ve been studying for a little over a year learning C#, ASP.NET and front-end development (HTML, CSS, and JavaScript). I have built up a portfolio of projects I’ve worked on and am ready to enter the workforce as a junior developer.

I’ve been in the process of setting up interviews the past few months with this goal in mind. So it may not be a New Years Resolution but the plan is for it to happen in 2016

Building a Raspberry Pi Computer for My Nieces

This year for Christmas I built a computer for my nieces, five and three to share and use at home. It was a fairly simple build and I was able to include a few educational games and tools for them to learn computing. I decided to go with the Raspberry Pi in part because of the price and I want them to learn on a Linux machine. Throughout their lives in school and working they will be using and learning Windows so this way they learn a little more about computers early on. I’ve broken this down into the hardware for the computer and then the software I installed. The overall cost for this build is around $80 starting from scratch but I already had some of the supplies so I spent around $60 to create a simple, expandable computer that my nieces will be able to use for years to come.

The Customer Is NOT Always Right

But they are NEVER wrong!

Let’s start the upcoming year off right by realizing that the attitude of “The customer is always right” can be detrimental to business. It pits employees against customers and ultimately management. This attitude gives an unfair advantage the most outspoken and abrasive customers creating a hostile environment for employees, managers, and other customers. The corollary to the customer is NOT always right is that they are NEVER wrong. Remember they are still the customer and the idea here is to bridge the gap between what they expect and the company performance.

Free Audio Books On Sound Cloud

As some may know Will and I found our theme music for Complete Developer Podcast on Sound Cloud’s creative commons library. While scanning through some of their other content I found Big Finish audiobooks that has published some full audio books. Most of what they have posted is trailers and teasers but you can find a few full books. They even have Doctor Who books! That’s exciting and fun.

Who loves boobs?

Help Find a Cure for Breast Cancer

Don’t worry this post is completely safe for work. We all know someone with them even if the only person is your own mother.

Breast cancer can affect everyone, every gender, age, religion, and ethnicity. As it occurs in approximately 1 in 8 women, if it hasn’t affected your life yet (directly or indirectly) it very likely will.

Will and I at Complete Developer Podcast are joining up with the Bippity Boppity Boobs team for the Susan G Komen Race for the Cure here in Nashville.

Road Trip To Code Newbie Atlanta!

Networking and Strategic Meetings

Will and I drove down to Atlanta this past weekend for the Code Newbie Atlanta Mixer. That was a great trip. We left at around 5:30 am to get down there by noon local time. On the way I drove while he had his laptop out taking notes. We had our best strategy meeting for Complete Developer Podcast ever. This was in part because we didn’t have anything to distract us and he had created a good outline of topics to discuss.

Time Saving in Audacity

At the Complete Developer Podcast we’ve been using Audacity for our recording and editing. It is an open source audio editor with plenty of great tutorials. I’m learning to use it as we progress with the podcast. It is rather intuitive, though you have to know what you want to do or at least what the functions do to the sound. I had some fun playing around with the speed and pitch when first learning. Try dropping the pitch an octave then speeding it up 2x. It’s funny but not useful.

I edited and mastered episodes 0 and 1 in 30 hours over a weekend. That is approximately 15 hours each though more likely episode 1 took longer as it had more parts to edit and was a longer episode by several minutes. Much of this time was spent learning the program and abilities of Audacity. Also, our first few episodes were not all recorded in Audacity and therefore some had mono and others stereo tracks. When recording in Audacity we use the stereo tracks for better quality. This created extra work to get the sound quality to appear similar across the episode.

Automating the If Then with IFTTT

IFTTT stands for If This Then That. It is a way to automate a basic If statement to connect blogs, rss feeds, and social media. Above is an image of an active IFTTT recipe. In it If a new post comes out on the Complete Developer Podcast (a new episode) it will automatically post to my blog so those of you following me but not the podcast will have a chance to see when new episodes are posted.

Pod to the Cast

We are ready to publish our first episode. It will be published tomorrow, September 10, 2015. Go check out our website and sign up for the mailing list and listen to the first episode of The Complete Developer Podcast.

This has been an interesting and educational experience. We started working on the idea back in June. I didn’t know how much was involved in creating a podcast beyond the recording. Some of the things we have worked on since June include: setting up the website, creating social media campaigns, finding a hosting site, get photos and a logo designed.

This blog post will be about the actual recording and creation of our first episode. I’ll post in the future about some of the other issues. I have a post about WordPress that I’m working on already.