Wayne and Rebecca Madsen

We had quite a full week, mostly full of play time and celebration. :) Summers are nice. We made it over to play games with our friend's Chris and Alyssa Sunday evening, and Wayne played some World of Warcraft with artist friends Monday evening while I read. We played games with Karl and Angela both Friday and Saturday (and probably tonight) since they were in town this week. It was fun, especially all the bunny mayhem that happened when we played Killer Bunnies. Some bunnies tragically died in horrific ways (in the game, of course), and we all had a good time.

Before Karl and Angela arrived Wednesday, we did a little canning of some homemade strawberry jam on Tuesday evening. It was fun! And tasty! It was my first experience that I can remember making and canning jam. I'd done a little freezer jam before with a roommate once, but this was a different experience entirely. We're hoping to find some good berries to make other varieties of jam this summer too (maybe in Oregon or Washington when we make our 4th of July trip?), so this is just the beginning!

Thursday we celebrated the summer solstice with a picnic and some kite flying at a park. A little bit of frisbee tossing probably happened somewhere in there too. And then later that evening Chris and Alyssa shared a really funny Japanese movie with us (University of Laughs) and Karl and Angela. Friday we celebrated the day after the summer solstice by visiting Wayne and Karl's favorite "toy store" (aka Fry's electronics) and an ice cream shop. And Saturday we celebrated...Saturday...by heading down to a couple of Santa Cruz beaches. It was lovely, and only a few spots were missed by sunscreen; we know this, of course, by where exactly the small sunburns are located today -- but at least they are in isolated spots. :)

Teaching in primary went well today...better than most days. Of course only three kids came to class, but I also had done quite a lot of thought and preparation to try and keep the class in control. We'll have to see if some of these new strategies hold up when more people are in town...though we're preparing to be out of town for the next couple of Sundays, so it will be a little while. We will be leaving for our big camping trip to the Olympic peninsula this Friday evening or Saturday morning. That means this week we're looking for camping supplies (maybe a cooler and stove?) so we can eat something other than pb&j during the week we're gone (any suggestions for good camping food, anyone?), and planning out what we want to see while we're there. More fun times ahead!

Here's a short video we did last Sunday of Star cat doing some of her more recent stunts and tricks. It's silly to watch, but we just wanted to make sure we had a video of the cat at this age. Plus, it gets us into good practice for when the kid gets here and we'll have tons of video footage to edit then!

package ralph;

/**
* My first java file.
* @author wayne
*
*/

public class TheCode {

/**
* @param args
*/
public static void main(String[] args) {
System.out.println("monkey " + getNumber());
System.out.println(getNumber());
}

public static int getNumber() {
return 3;
}

}

This was my "first" written java class taught to me by my wife, Rebecca.

I am an artist. Or a non-artist. Or whatever. My wife got her master's degree in computer science and programs full time in java programming language for Magma Design Automation. When we moved out here, she specifically wanted a job that used java because it is her favorite computer language. Me? Besides my brief career in programming with actionscripting for flash presentations to children, I don't understand anything about computer programming.

My last "real" job was designing flash language tutorials. Six months before I left the job, they installed flex 2.0 on my computer at work and asked that I start programming my activities in flex. I spent 6 months hating work because I couldn't teach myself flex. The funny thing about learning anything in today's world is that it should be all on the internet. I strongly believe that everything is on the internet - all information exists somewhere in digital form and can be transferred through bits, insignificant ones and zeros. However, as I have found, it is next to impossible to find anything anymore because the internet has become so massive and the search algorithms for major search engines are outdated beyond resolving the burgeoning world wide web.

I realized that the only way to learn anything is by going back to the most basic elements of learning - passing information from one person to another. The personal touch. It has become out-of-style in the information age to get information directly from one person, but I am realizing that it is essential in order to learn anything. I'm not just talking about the personal touch in a physical realm - one of the greatest beauties of a digital world is the non-presence of others through digital means. I am hoping that this experience I am putting myself through can be a part of myself - my learning - which I have plugged into the internet and exists as a personal one on one learning process which might help others.

Realistically, I don't expect anyone to learn anything from this documentation. I do, however, expect to get something from it besides a better understanding and ability to program in java: I just want to understand what my wife is talking about when she explains her job.

My head hurts after today's session. I think I understand what classes are now. I vaguely knew what objects were before. I am still frightened by trying to find code to do what I want. Rebecca told me that what I need to do is first decide what I want to do in java and then work backwards to learn how to do it. That seems easy enough. I'm used to the way things were in flash coding: I knew a good chunk of the commands that existed so I could easily call them to memory to write my code.

Session one:

Set up eclipse. This is easy to do on both windows and linux platforms. We had some problems getting java 5 working on eclipse in linux. We're still working on it.

Create a project. I named my project "helloworld" because that was the name of the exercise. The java libraries are loaded into this project.

Create a package. I remember strange names. I named the package "ralph." See attached files for .class and .java files.

In the package, create the code .java file "TheCode." Make a main method "public static void main..." within which we call a method from the java library.

System.out.println("whatever your message is")

[see the code at the beginning of this post]

The video follows our session; I learned how to print "monkey."

Now my cat wants to play. I don't have time for this. But in order to make "better quality time" for my wife, I need to do this.

/** * */ package tutorial;

import edu.byu.phun.*;
import edu.byu.phun.body.*;

/**
* @author Wayne
*
*/
public class TutorialMain {

/**
* @param args
*/
public static void main(String[] args) {
// TODO Auto-generated method stub
Win3D win = new Win3D ("Tutorial", 100, 200, 400, 300);
Floor monkeydancefloor = new Floor (10);
SphereObj monkeysphere = new SphereObj();
Axes myaxes= new Axes();
win.add(myaxes);
win.add(monkeydancefloor);
win.add(monkeysphere);
monkeysphere.setLocation(1, 2, 0);
win.setLookFrom(10,1,10);
}
}

I'm still not sure I understand what a class is. Or what an object is.

Method makes sense to me. A method is a group of code which is called with a single line of code anywhere else after the declaration of the method. I used a lot of functions (the equivalent of a method in actionscript) when I did flash designing.

The beginnning of a cultural introduction revolves a great deal around language. And rightfully so, according to Jacques Derrida. Over the summer, I read a translation of his speech and discussion of his speech entitled Ethics, institutions, and the right to philosophy, among other books on the philosophy of language/grammar. I've become more interested in the cultural structure of a language and the symbols which that culture takes on which give support to conscious philosophy.

I don't understand the language of the programming community, thus I am on the out group. I got a little frustrated with this because my wife and I don't talk the same way about code and although I thought I was asking a clear question, I obviously wasn't because her answers weren't clear to me. This is very important to note because communication between the in-group and communication from the in-group to the out-group is one of the primary keys to understand how to become apart of the in-group.

I get really frustrated because she says "directory" and I have no idea what that means.

First brief edit of the KONP. I'm playing this for style. Brief one minute teaser to show battle sequence.

Please download Quicktime 7 before viewing this video.