automaticable

It has been a while since I’ve posted on automaticable, so let me catch the world up on a few things.

First, I’m still doing SEO at BKV in Atlanta. And by that, I mean it is taking over my life. Because of the life-takeover problem BKV graciously hired me an assistant, Tom. He is brand new to the SEO world (just as I was) but will become an expert shortly since I’m kind of throwing him in the deep end. Sink or swim, baby.

Not only am I (and Tom) working on SEO, but we’re also in charge of everything social media at BKV. That means we get to spend most of our day on Twitter, Facebook, and every other site most companies ban access to. Sweet deal. If you have Twitter and want to follow me, you can find me at twitter.com/kwegner. Make sure to @me so I know you are automaticable fan.

I don’t usually like to pump work stuff on personal posts, however we are doing social media work for a non-profit right now that is totally awesome. We are working on promoting an event for the March of Dimes called “March for Babies.” It is an event to help raise money to support research into premature birth & other birth problems. If you want to help out the cause, check out www.marchforbabies.org or follow March for Babies on Twitter at twitter.com/marchforbabies.

That is it on the update. Expect more posts from me in the near future, as I’ve recently been reinvigorated by the fact that automaticable just suprassed 100,000 total views.

My name is Scott Wegner, and I’m a Computer Science major at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

I’ve had Linux installed as my primary OS for about 3 years, and as a computer science major, it’s certainly my environment of choice.  Not only does Linux deliver a rich desktop environment, but also the command-line and its vast number of utilities are indespensible for any sort of development.  It still suprises me, then, when I see other CS majors at my university who are so unfamiliar with Linux, and who cringe when any programming assignment requires Linux for one reason or another.  It got me thinking.

Our computer science department also has a number of computer labs with Linux machines, accessbile remotely and for physical access.  There are also a few Windows machines for those who prefer Visual Studio, although these machines are generally inferior when it comes to speed and stability.  So why do students still flock to them?  I think it’s because the courses at our university only give a terse introduction to Linux and the utilities that the course will require.  What we need is something that will really show students the ease and the power of Linux.  Maybe a 1-hour tutorial, perhaps a half-day workshop, or even a 1-credit hour introductory course.  Yes.

This wouldn’t be the sort of tutorial you see on the internet that praises Ubuntu for it’s robustness and claims that users should never need the terminal.  CS majors need to embrace the terminal and its utilities.  I asked earlier on identi.ca / twitter what people would talk about, and received a number of great responses.  There’s a whole list of tools that students need to be familiar with to really be productive.

• grep, less, head, tail
• vim, emacs
• make
• svn, cvs
• ssh
• man
• awk,  sed
• diff,  sdiff, colordiff

There’s also a lot of tools that would simply make their experience more pleasant, such as screen, rsync, latex, etc.  Having an understanding, or at least a crude familiarity of these utilities would certainly improve a student’s experience on projects which require them.  It may even convince them to try the faster Linux machines next time they visit the computer labs.

But how would one structure such a course?  I think a 1-hour weekly lab workshop would be the best setting.  The course could revolve around some simple in-class project that utilizes each of these tools.  Each week could introduce a new command, looking into it’s basic syntax and functionality, as well as providing links and resources to explore its advanced usage.  The majority of class time would be spent working on the project, trying each new command and using it to solve some basic problem.  The hands-on section would be crucial, as this is will instill the basic familiarity that students will hold with them for later courses.  I also think it would be useful to have extra time after class for “install-fests”.  This would give students the opportunity to install Linux at home and see if they would like it– either in a virtual machine, via Wubi, or on a physical drive.  They should be offered, optionally of course, once at the beginning of the semester, half-way through, and towards the end.

So what do you think– could something like this work?  Would it be helpful?  Have you heard of a university that provides something similar?  And what applications would you add to the list?  Let’s hear it in the comments.

So within the last couple days I’ve really been reminiscing about the past and I’ve come to the conclusion that I truly miss my childhood.  All this growing up and making adult decisions really isn’t something that I want to be doing.  I’m sitting here drinking coffee out of a mug the size of my head that’s decorated like Jack Skellington from The Nightmare Before Christmas and watching my roommate and my neighbor putt in my family room.  This sort of relaxation and carefree lifestyle reminds me so much of when I was 10 years old and would gather all my friends on the street to play hide-and-go-seek or flashlight tag.  Twelve people all around the age of ten gathering around a cul-de-sac at 8 o’clock with a curfew of 10:00.  Being a seasoned veteran of the game, I knew exactly where to hide, when to pop out, and when to run like hell to try to tag safe.  Of course people began to catch onto my plan and began to look specifically for me, but that’s when I would start working as a team with the other hiders and tell them to all hide together and where, and they would all come out like thirty seconds after the seekers pass them up.  Oh I miss the old days.

Wow this coffee’s strong….

But yeah, that doesn’t really keep you updated with what I’m doing down here, but that’s alright, because I don’t even remember what I’ve done within the last couple days.  I know I went to the theme parks and saw more of Hollywood Studios than I’ve ever seen before, I started up my new classes (they were just general information days, no real work yet), but other than that, it’s been a pretty mellow week.  I’ll try to see what I can do about posting more often, or waking up earlier to post, because so far it’s looking like I’m only really going to be able to post on days that I have off, just because I’m too busy otherwise.  I’m off to go bake in the sun, rotisary style, catch ya’ll later!

I want to formally apologize to all loyal readers of Automaticable for my lack of post last week.  It’s been a very crazy past couple weeks for me with lots of work, very little down time and crazy parties that last ’till all hours of the night I just haven’t found time to sit down and just be able to collect my thoughts.  I’m in the process of trying to remember things, and really, all that’s coming up is a giant blur. I know on my days off I went to Blizzard Beach and had a blast.  There were next to no lines for any of the slides, so I was able to do the entire park with my roommate in under 3 hours.  It’s nice being a Disney cast member because you get free admission to just about everything, and when you tell people that you’re a cast member, you notice their eyes light up in a special way that you don’t really see in many other cases.  Immediately following this you’re bombarded with questions about the parks, your job, your experience and how many Mickey’s are there?  (There’s only 1 by the way)

The other days were all work days, and there was either a softball game, soccer game, or some sort of dance competition going on where they stuck me in the Stocker position.  Being a stocker you do exactly that, stock.  You make sure that the stand, and possibly surrounding stands, have completely full stock, and if they’re running out, you have to go get it.  The only problem with this is you’re either stuck at a stand completely too far away from the stocking kitchen, or stuck at a stand where people only tell you one thing at a time, so you’re running back and forth to a kitchen all day.  That’s all I’m going to complain about with that, because frankly? I love my job.

I would much rather be working at the Wide World of Sports any day then one of the main theme parks because last week I was stuck at Hollywood Studios (formally MGM) for a day, and I was kicking myself in the ass because of how difficult the job was.  I give major props to all the concessions people in the main parks because of how many people they have to deal with on a regular basis, as well as dealing with the stress of doing no less than four things at a time.  I have to work there again tomorrow and possibly wednesday (I’m trying to get it off because I have class earlier that day and won’t have time between class and work).

So, tonight I made enchiladas for dinner and, basically, they were very delicious to say the least.  I fed about 8 people with them and each and every one of them all agreed that I need to cook for them more often.  I tried a few new things with it that I haven’t tried before, like using a canned Enchilada sauce than just making it from scratch, as well as adding a few spices in there that I’ve never thought of putting in there.  All in all, I was very pleased with how they turned out.

Again, I wish to apologize to you all for the late update, but trust me, you’ll get another one by Sunday morning!  Enjoy the snow Chicago!