R U Experienced?

As mentioned in the past blog, R and U (as well as many other letters in the English alphabet) are programming languages.

In my current work environment, our primary programming software is a pretty nifty composition and layout tool which is customizable through a C++ based scripting capability. The scripting is often utilized to create sample pieces or to compensate for data which- for whatever reason- does not perform as expected.

Like most things, the best way to learn something is to do/use it. In my role- working at night- there is some opportunity for programming, but for reasons which should be obvious, not a great deal. As a consequence, I do a small amount of programming (actually creating jobs), a lot of quality control, and some break-fix. I've acquired a great deal of QC experience over the years, and have gotten quite good at it. My programming skills- in this particular environment- are below many, but not all, of my peers. I'm not bad at break-fix, and rather enjoy this particular aspect of my position, because it involves both the "hard" skill of actually working with a program and coming up with a solution, as well as the "soft" skills of interfacing with imaging techs, press personnel and/or supervisors and becoming an integral element of keeping a project on time. And, in direct mail, time is an element which cannot ever be ignored. Our clients spend time and resources on creating campaigns that will execute within a certain timeframe. In military terms, we and the client combined are like artillery: we're most effective when we're on time and on target!

I've mentioned my peers here once or twice, and like most industries, not everyone arrives at their current position via a straight path. Some actually studied programming in school and have a degree in it. Others worked in some capacity in either direct mail or printing, and made their way into programming. One of our programmers started out as a minor league (professional) baseball player who had a degree in graphic arts and came to us via the prepress department. My background is sales, databases and spreadsheets. Go figure.

But... as I don't have a programming background, I thought it would be expeditious to beef up my programming skills. I had initially poked around in Python- and will get back to that- but right now I am trying my hand at R. And yes, for those uninitiated, R is indeed a programming language. R has been around for awhile, and was developed out of S. In any event, this is a mountain for me, for a number of reasons.

For starters, R is designed with statistical computing in mind. Statistical computing is the bailiwick of the likes of my good e-buddy Prof. Dr. Diego Kuonen, not a former math-as-a-last-resort sort of person such as I used to be. On top of that, I've NEVER had a stats course at any level, and do not regularly use it. And, my job has absolutely nothing to do with stats.

Still, I took it up as a challenge. Languages one does not regularly speak, read or write are not called foreign without reason. And here's where it gets interesting: I've got a metric ****-ton of experience with foreign languages. I speak English natively, but have studied at least four Slavic languages, two Romance languages and one other Germanic language. One of the languages needed the learning of a new alphabet.  So, why not a computer language?

I've found, as I look at languages, that the more one studies, the closer one looks, and starts to see similarities and patterns that may have been seen before ... and so, I find myself looking at R.

As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.

Git outta here! "U" is a language?

Straight up, bro. U is indeed a language, as are R, S and T. Really? Yes- google any of them. They are all real programming languages.

And I bring this up ... WHY?

There are a couple of reasons. For starters, "coding" is still considered to be an arcane skill. In many ways, this can be seen as true.

Next, for some reason, coding in one language is sometimes held in a higher esteem than coding in another language.

Lastly, among programmers, even environments and specialized interfaces can cause a certain amount of elitism. If one cannot code a certain task in a certain IDE, one is an a**tard,

So, one attempts self-improverment after well-intentioned coworkers have slammed one to the ground.

Their myopia damns them and in the end does nothing to assist their coworkers.

I tire of some of my coworkers' belittling my efforts to me become a better programmer- their petty complaints and insults have been relegated to "mosquito" stage- annoying, but ineffective.

Sorry about the negative tone here. The next post will be more interesting!

As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.

The ABC's of programming

This past Thursday/Friday started out quietly enough at the office.

We were short-handed this week, as the Fresh Prince of Data Services was on vacation. He-Whose-Name-Shall-Never-Be-Mentioned (HWNSNBM) therefore reassumed the mantle of command on Thursday night and guided the projects ("The Big Show") to fruition that the Fresh Prince normally has a major hand in.  For the first time in as long as I can remember, though, none of these projects was "HOT", and during our Friday morning impromptu turnover meeting, I informed both the Stig and the Princess that if they were not able to get to The Big Show, then HWNSNBM and I would take care of it on Friday night.

I worked late on Thursday, so I came in later on Friday night, which is pretty much the norm for our office. When I arrived, HWNSNBM and I had a brief meeting, and someone had done one production QC on the Big Show, and he had done one on all of the others. So, as I had also done one on Friday morning, this left me with two to complete, along with two other jobs. Friday night was shaping up to be quite uneventful.

It would have stayed that way except for printer drivers. Our I.T. department has been optimizing the drivers for one of our printers, and I've been doing some testing of these drivers. The easiest way to test them is to print out .pdf's. The results of a particular test were not great, so the Lurker suggested using a different printer.  I did this, and discovered that when the Man-With-Three-First-Names (MW3FN) created this particular file, he did not account for white space at the top of the document. Normally, this would not be an issue, but for this particular job we needed to do a type of duplexing, and although the program was set up correctly with the imaging falling in place nicely, the white space (~2.5", or 5cm) that had not been cropped off the top of the background overlapped when duplexed, causing 2.5" of the bottom of one page to be obscured by the top of the second page.

Bottom line: it took me close to 2 hours, but I finally got the background cropped properly and outputted acceptable proofs.

That's it for printers and Thursday night drama. Next up: taking a chance on programming.

As always, I an hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.

Windows 10, PCs 4

In my world, today is August 6  August 14. My last post was on the 24th of July, and much has happened since then... more in a following post!

For starters, on the very last day that the free Windows upgrade was available (July 29), I upgraded one of our PCs in the SUL. I might have upgraded more, but only one of the PCs we tried actually worked.

I'm very happy with the upgrade.As it was a workday for me, Mr. T had the privilege of babysitting the install process. It  was very smooth, according to him, and seemingly unlike every other new OS install, the HDD was untouched save for the OS. Had I the slightest clue it would be this easy, I would have installed it on at least one other machine. Alas, that time has passed.

So,how is performance?

The machine in question is an HP/Compaq DC7600 Pentium 4 3.4 GHz with 4GB (max, I believe) and a 1TB HDD.  

From a cold start, I think I get a login screen in 10 seconds or less. This is a 50% or better improvement. The interface is very nice- Win 7/8 users should have no problem transitioning to this OS.

On the minus side, MY experience with the new Edge browser has not been good. It is no better than the last iteration of IE, which is VASTLY inferior (that's the polite way of saying it absolutely SUCKS) to Chrome, Pale Moon or Vivaldi. As a side note- if you've never tried the Pale Moon or Vivaldi browsers, give them a try.

That's it for now- just a few notes on Win10.

AS always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.