Birdland

Database Number Crunching

When I first started out in my career. I spent several years that I like to think of as my apprenticeship in web design. I was a student web worker at the Department of Family and Community Medicine. Being an apprentice meant that I didn’t get many of the glamorous projects but usually I got the ones that were tedious and no one wanted to do them.

One such project was working on a grant-funded project we called Youth Zyban. The actual clinical study was done years before I came on board. Data was collected in giant binders, 312 of them to be exact (I counted and recounted), one for each human subject involved in the study. The data contained in the binders was needed in a form that could be run through a statistical package (SPSS).

The first attempt at data entry was made shortly before I worked for the department. Due to multiple people entering data and no client or server side validation, the data set was filled with duplicates.

My job, being the only student and a total web newb was to A) learn this thing called SQL and B) learn some tricks and create some queries to root out the duplicates and make sure we were analyzing a data set of 312 unique subjects.

Once that was complete, we realized that not all information was entered, so my next job was to complete the data entry.

Lastly, there was a last bit of additional data entry needed to be in a position to create reports that could be fed into SPSS.

One note on research involving human subjects, the binders needed to be stored behind two (2) locks. That meant a locked door down the hall and a locked cabinet. Binders couldn’t be left out for the casual observer. So that meant taking a couple of binders out at a time, locking up, doing any necessary data entry, then get some new binders and locking up the ones I was finished with.

My last task was to take every bit of SQL knowledge I had to generate some reports on the data set I built.

Finally done, I turned in my reports and locked up those baby blue binders for the last time, hoping to never have to decipher another physician’s handwriting again.

Years later while “googling” my name to see what the interwebs had to say about me. I discovered that an article had been submitted to a medical journal by the department I worked for.

[ Article Link ]

So does this mean I can tell people that I’ve been published?

The Census for Web Geeks worldwide

TR Realty and Investments

I’ll start with my latest work.

TR Realty and Investments is a local (Tucson, AZ) realty company. I was approached by them mid-year. They wanted a clean website created to establish their web presence. I was able to put together a simple website build on the wordpress platform to enable social media expandability.

I really enjoyed working on this part of the project as it was my first integration of Wordpress and a theme build with 960gs. The front slideshow and navigation were built using jQuery.

This is an ongoing project as the realty industry is getting it’s legs back so there are huge possibilities for any company that uses the web and social media effectively.

Evidence that I can create cool stuff

I’ve done a couple of freelance projects over the years but I have yet to organize any of the work in a portfolio that would let others see some of the stuff I’ve worked on.

I also work full time as a web developer in a closed system, so I can’t easily hand off a URL and tell someone to look at it … because they can’t.

So, I hope to be developing a category of posts that demonstrate what I can do and show real life examples and maybe get some feedback on it in the process.

The advent calendar for web geeks

December is upon us again. You know what that means, shopping enthusiasts are having a ball trying to find the best deals on gifts. Cooking buffs are flexing their culinary muscles making tasty meals and treats.

But what about us web geeks? Well hold on to your seats. If you haven’t heard of 24 ways yet, it is the advent calendar for web geeks. Every day from December 1st until the 24th a new article is opened up about topical web issues (expect to see a bunch of HTML5 stuff).

So if you are a web geek and care about web standards, then this site is worth a read. Throw it into your RSS reader and check it out at your convenience.

A little more about this site

Over the years, this site has undergone many changes. I’ve designed, redesigned, cleared the blog posts and even recently moved the posts over to tumblr, and the constant changes are likely to end.

Why do I do this?

Because I am passionate about refining my craft, that is web design and development. I love to read up on the newest trends in this field. I bought this web space to serve as my playground so I can experiment with new ideas before pushing them out live.

By day, I work for a large educational institution and we need to use stable code practices because we need our stuff to work. In my spare time I work with the unstable stuff to see if I might be able to suggest changes to our way of doing things to stay on the cutting edge.

So reader be warned, when inspiration strikes this website often gets a new layer of paint.

Playing video games actually made me a better golfer

The following is a post I wrote back on another blog.

I am totally serious when I say that. It’s been just over two years since I first picked up a golf club. When I first started out, I knew absolutely zero about golf. When I swung the club I made contact with the ball about half of the time and rarely was it good contact as my ball would hook or slice to their respective sides. It was definitely very frustrating as I decided I didn’t want to spend the money a proper golf teacher would have cost. I considered the thought that maybe golf wasn’t for me and that my Blood Elf could sure use some new gear.

Around that time, one of my roommates had purchased a Wii and Tiger Woods golf. First off, I am not saying that video games are a good substitute for a golf instructor. For me however, I grew up playing video games. Tiger Woods PGA captured my attention enough that I was able to learn some things about golf and actually make me want to get out on the course even more.

Because I didn’t make very good contact swinging on the range, I was able to overcome that disadvantage in game. Since my lack of a good golf swing was a source of frustration, I was able to neutralize that source as well and actually learn more about the big picture of how the game is played.

I was able to pick up on some basic characteristics of each club in my bag virtually and learn about some best practices of moving up the hole. I learned about some of the different types of iron shots like the pitch, flop, and punch and when to use them. What the game did was bring me up to speed on the lingo and give me a brief overview through a medium that I was very well acquainted with.

While on the course learning something, I often think, “Ah, I remember that from the Tiger Woods game.”

Don’t be mistaken by the title, I’m not claiming to be some great golfer, but my attention was captured long enough for golf to become a passion of mine and something that I now want to try conventional methods to improve.

What unconventional way did you learn stuff about golf?