9 Months later….

Posted by Michael Okarimia in Tech Curriculum on February 6, 2011

Well it’s been 9 months since my last blog post and I’ve been gestating plenty of ideas for posts but other more important commitments have got in the way.
Namely, starting a new developer job in the summer, and then starting my personal coding project. At my new role, the team I’m in uses some rather interesting technologies for this public facing site in the entertainment industry.

As the purpose of this blog is for me to track & improve upon my programming skills, I will list what I’ve learnt in the past 9 months:

Professionally:

    ASP.Net MVC
    having spent my previous web developer experience working with ASP .Net web forms, MVC is a welcome change!

    LINQ
    I now use it much more effectively than before

    NHibernate
    which is the first ORM tool I’ve used

    NServicebus
    a bus for enabling messaging in a scalable manner, it has forced me to rethink how I code

    TDD
    initially I found it disorienting as I’d always seen tests as something to slap on at the end of coding, but now I truly can see how tests can force you to think through what exactly the code must do. Mocking up objects is now part of my TDD routine. Having the VS2008 plugin Resharper installed helps with this process.

    Design Patterns
    It’s also been great to work with design patterns such as Publish/Subscribe and Dependency Injection and to see them applied appropriately in the codebase I work with.

In my own time I’ve decided to learn the language and Framework that inspired ASP.Net MVC: Ruby On Rails

Working off the web version of the Ruby on Rails Tutorial book got my jump started on the project.
Just for the heck of it, I thought I’d do this all on Ubuntu, and which I’m learning two new concepts, why not through in some more?

I found that gVim is useful for editing against huge sql scripts that VS2008 struggled to open or search within quickly enough for me (I’m impatient, which is one of the Programmer virtues)

Having learning the commands using youtube screencasts and cheatsheets I feel fairly comfortable with it as an editor with the Linux terminal, but I still would put myself in the beginner category, having seen the level of expertise others have achieved.

Probably the next learning curve that I’ve attempted to ascend is Git which I quite enjoy using. I’ve set up a github account to demo some of the tutorials that I’m trying out. Ruby Koans is an interesting one.

Well the adventure continues, I’ll hopefully post more frequently this year!

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Bike Ride For UCLH Leukemia Charity

Posted by Michael Okarimia in charity, cycling on May 23, 2010

Today I finished a wonderful sponsored bike around Richmond Park, in aid of UCLH Leukaemia Unit Charity. This charity have been helping my uncle throughout the past 5 years of his treatment for Leukaemia, primarily by supporting his out-patient care and by providing bursaries for the fantastic postgrad nurses who work there.

Edited 27th May: Here are the photos!

The group of riders before the ride

At seven miles long, the ride was short but very pleasant. It weaved it’s way around the perimeter of the park over gravel and for the most part we were riding under the dappled shade of the mighty oak trees. From time to time we spotted the park’s famous deer, and joked that their ancestors must have regularly ended up on King Henry VIII’s dinner table!

I used my android phone to track the route via GPS:


View UCLH Leukaemia Charity Bike Ride in a larger map

For the ride I was joined by a number of UCLH staff members and relatives of current patients. There was even a former patient who had recovered from the chemotherapy received at the UCLH Leukaemia unit. He wanted to express his thanks with his new lease of life the unit had allowed him.

It was an absolutely beautiful day out and it was all for a good cause. Thanks to all who donated via my justgiving page: justgiving.com/michaelokarimia With their help I have exceeded my donation target.

After the ride, the trinkets were handed out!

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My Technology Curriculum

Posted by Michael Okarimia in Tech Curriculum on May 10, 2010

I’ve started this blog is primarily a learning exercise, so here I will lay out a curriculum of topics I intend to study and blog about. This post should also help as a motivational tool and be useful as a To-Do List.

My list of technologies to learn, in chronological order, includes:

There’s a fair amount to learn there, but this is what I’ve currently got on my tech radar and I aim to have some useful knowledge of all of them.

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