Some people might be a little confused at what the bonus content is, so I’m going to explain each of the options here as well as the general premise. All of the bonus content choices are in video format, but aren’t in the video questions as they’re a bit more special and don’t really fall under a specific language or difficulty. The choices are “How to be an Awesome”, “Writing Plugins for Sublime Text 2″ and “Using the JavaScript Windowing Engine”.

The first of these options, titled “How to be an Awesome”. Is a video series where I’ll be explaining best practices, planning and generally how to think like a programmer so you can think of a decision quickly and get less errors during development. I think I’ll enjoy this series a lot especially as this will be a more personal look on how I develop myself and how I visualise the code.

Second up, is “Writing Plugins for Sublime Text 2″. As python being a precursor to this, it’ll also require python videos and articles. Sublime Text 2 has a great API for plugins, and you can do some neat stuff with it (I’ve written a couple of plugins for my own personal use), and I think exploring the idea of writing things for your own productivity is a good idea as well as introducing people to the idea of plugin development in general.

Lastly is “Using the JavaScript Windowing Engine”. This will be a series unique to DeveloperMonkey, as JWE is the code created and designed for DeveloperMonkey itself, but will be released as a public library allowing people to develop their own window based applications in JavaScript. The engine will be developed further in the future I’m sure to be better and faster, but I would also like to produce some tutorials as well as the general API reference.

So hopefully that’s cleared up a few things, and I hope I get a lot of responses on the poll, have a good year in 2012 and thanks for reading!

de.monkeyz

The theme change is just because I wanted to have something a little bit different (I believe I had a christmas theme back in the day for the v2 of my site – this is v4). And also to try and get me in the winter spirit so to speak. Since I’m now in my winter vacation, I have 3 weeks to relax. But I don’t want to relax, so hopefully I’ll get some work on DeveloperMonkey and PHPVideoTutorials done in the next 3 weeks or so.

On a related note, I’ve started (and hope to complete by Monday) a new project called WebLab. It’s basically my interpretation of the coursework for the Web Technologies course offered at my University (which I took last year – I got the specification from a friend). Now, I have a lot of problems with the way the course is taught, and I don’t know if it’s because of time constraints, laziness or just not knowing enough about that web. But the course needs drastically changing in my opinion, 95% of the content is just JavaScript; and you know me, I love JavaScript and I’m good at it, but JavaScript is NOT all of the web technologies.

The course this year, touches on HTML5 elements, but no CSS3, and doesn’t really talk much about HTML in general either. And even though AJAX is taught (however briefly) the course never discusses or even shows us any PHP and expects us to query a page we don’t know the code to. In addition, the coursework isn’t really anything practical either. It’s just a collection of technologies compiled together with no connection or context, meaning most people’s result is just an odd page full of inconsistent JavaScript code. Which is why I made WebLab, to kind of take that inconsistency and MAKE it consistent.

I wish they’d let me teach the course to be honest with you. And I’d start off the lectures with this sentence: “If you’re not interested in the web; then do the bare minimum. And I’ll grade you appropriate. If you are; go out there, search for things I haven’t mentioned, or look deeper into the stuff I do. And your grade will reflect it”. I wouldn’t glance over HTML or CSS, I’d be quite thorough and making sure I give good PRACTICAL exercises. Then I’d go into PHP, and quite a bit of it, including some small database stuff. Then finally, I’d introduce them to JavaScript. Not go full force, throwing  jQuery at them, but showing them the power of JS at it’s base level, and then giving them links to my own apps and other cool stuff out there so they can explore newer things.

The final assignment? If they just blindly follow the lectures for their result. Max grade 70% (which is a First). But if they’ve explored, used new features in CSS3, or HTML5, or even implemented some awesome transitions in JS. They can get up to 100%. And one final note: I’d DEFINITELY be testing it in Chrome/Firefox/Safari/IE/Opera. As it stands, their code only gets tested in Chrome. Which is just ridiculous in my opinion; we still have a large IE userbase, we still have a large Firefox userbase (including me); so testing in just Chrome gives nobody any real world experience. And I want to not only try to inspire them to look further, but reward them for it.

Anyway, that’s my rant over, thanks for reading as always, de.monkeyz.

I knew I wouldn’t figure out a good name for it, so I decided to go with a good acronym instead. I don’t know why the lion king came into mind, but it did, so I created S.I.M.B.A: Socially Intelligent Mutated Boid Agents. A bit of a mouthful, but it sounds smart, which is what it’s all about. Essentially my project uses the base concept known as boids, which is a flocking simulation where little things have simple rules to flock with each other, meaning they’re completely stupid.

So, my project is exploring evolution of a simple communication method between those little dumb flocking things, to see if it’d help them stay alive in a predator like situation. At the moment not much has been done, basically I’m still on the system analysis stage and I’m about to create the simple boids system to add the communication interface to. So hopefully it will be pretty interesting, and get some good results at the same time.

On a side note, I have quite a few days off from University now, so I should be making some more progress on DeveloperMonkey, so stay tuned to that.

As always, thanks for reading, de.monkeyz

After I’ve added in the content display of a couple of more pages, and the ability to login and change settings (I won’t go into details in that until it’s done) I’ll release a new DMVU. I’ve tweaked the Javascript windowing engine a little, mainly improvements to maximization and the taskbar, and created what I  think is an easy yet awesome way of viewing articles.

Not much is going on at the moment but the next DMVU is going to be big! Thanks for reading, de.monkeyz

Now I’ve been pretty good friends with Trevor for quite a few years now, despite the fact I’m in the UK and he’s all the way in Texas. But we’ve exchanged a lot of ideas in the past, and share similar philosophies when it comes to programming and web development. Even so, I was shocked when I got a proposal from him right after he told me of the transfer of PHPVT to his own hands. He suggested a partnership, a collaboration as you might call it, the new content for PHPVT being produced both by him and myself. Not only that, the new site will bear the marks of not only JavaVideoTutes, but DeveloperMonkey as well.

That in itself is pretty big news, at least it is to me. PHPVT is one of the inspirations that threw me into the world of video tutorials, as well as gotoandlearn.com. As well as those, I always enjoyed looking at Trevor’s Java Videos too, despite having already learnt Java for a computing course at A Level; so I look forward to working with him on it. Over at his website (previously linked) and on youtube, his latest lesson contained a 5 minute introduction to the idea of his partnership with me and a preview of the new PHPVT logo and splash page, created by yours truly.

I think the icing on the cake of the partnership he proposed to me, was his interest in DNN. I showed the concept to a few friends after blogging about it, including to some who aren’t in the developing world; and they all seemed to give huge positive reactions to it, which was a little surprising to me. I always thought of DNN as a good idea, but people have given it high praise, and Trevor in his recent video described it as my way of “revolutionizing” the way we learn through videos. Which I never thought of, but the more I think of it, I guess it’s a somewhat fitting term; I just don’t want to toot my own horn too much on it, especially when it’s extremely experimental and could flop hideously. (Regarding development of DeveloperMonkey, it’s on somewhat of a hiatus at the moment due to other things such as a new semester of Uni and client work).

So I’m ready and raring to go and I’m pretty excited to try my hand and some collab work as well as teaching PHP and shouldering the PHPVT name. As always, thanks for reading, de.monkeyz

I did change a couple of things on DeveloperMonkey, the first was fixing a bug causing the elements not to animate in on the main window (it appears to just appear on the DMVU), this was caused by the fact the elements’ starting position were based on their dimensions. And when I changed my code to split up the components into their own class, I tried to access their dimensions before adding them to the DOM, thus they returned 0 for everything. The second change is I’ve developed a Hash object which allows me to set, get, remove and check for values in the hash tag of the url. This will allow for integration of the back button in the browser later on in the development as well ability to share urls with others to automatically play a video, or load an article for example.

I won’t go into too much detail on how the hasher works or what it does to the hash tag, since I’ll be covering that in my next DMVU. The next DMVU will be released when I do some substantial coding to the site and at least get logging in setup as well as the initial content display of videos/links/articles. I am also working on something related to PHPVideoTutorials.com, the current owner of the site (LeighMac) recently sent out an email to everyone (as well as a video) about the upcoming end of the site. However he announced the domain name is going to be transferred to Trevor Gau, a good friend of mine, and I know a little bit of what he has planned.  I won’t say what I’m working on though, until there’s been a formal announcement from Trevor on the subject. I’m pretty excited however, and it should lead into some good opportunities for DeveloperMonkey to get a lot of visibility.

Not much to update on besides that, apart from maybe I’m still enjoying my tablet. Not using it too much at the moment because I haven’t had any classes, or been working with any clients. But I should be able to prove how useful it is tomorrow in the latter regard. As always, thanks for reading. de.monkeyz.

Pardon my selfishness, but I’ll now go into explaining my thoughts on the whole thing. First of all, I’d like to explain a bit more on why I wanted a tablet in the first place. My main reason for wanting one is probably why a lot of people want one.  Reading and size.

Now I don’t claim to be reading novels or grand biographies or things of that magnitude, because to be honest I’m not that well read in that regard, no idea why. I also have some minor issues with the concept of DRM and books, but that’s for another time maybe. What I want to read with it is things like blogs, tech articles, documentation, instruction manuals, you know all that nerdy stuff.

Now the size, I’m a longtime carrier of a laptop. And I’ve dealt with it for years but I can’t deny it’s a nightmare on my neck due to using a single strap laptop back as is the norm. So being able to carry this 600g thing around when I don’t really need a laptop is great, and I hate netbooks anyway!

So, what’s my experience so far? Well, I’m loving it! I can access anything I want: Twitter,  Facebook, and this site as I mentioned. I have pulse news reader installed which looks FANTASTIC, and have a few pretty decent games installed if its a slow day.

Obviously this is never going to take over my day to day PC usage since I’m an avid coder and gamer. And there’s no decent code editors for Android (yet) in my eyes for even a quick simple edit. But with a good camera and office support with Google docs integration its great for quick look ups, notes and even work now I’ve started to branch out to face to face client interaction.

So if you’re a techy or a student looking for a netbook, maybe look into an Android 3 tablet first. They’re extremely fun, but perhaps that’s because I just love this kind of stuff. Who knows.

Thanks for reading, de.monkeyz

Now, if I said I wad composing this post on a tablet PC, I’d most likely grab your attention a lot more. To be honest I don’t know when tablets became so popular, and I’m sure they’ve been around for a while. Some will say the iPad is what made everyone want a tablet, but I remember there being shoot of hype around the HP Slate before then. Sufficed to say, I’ve all become interested in tablets, specifically those running Android 3. Tablets are still relatively new, and Android 3 is even newer still, so I can’t help but want one.

Having said that, I do want one for practical use. I’ve used laptops for a long time, and have recently been using a macbook for a large portion of my time due to work. But none of them really cut it when it comes to reading articles or assignments, which as a student/developer I do a lot of. As such I will be purchasing a ASUS 16GB EeePad Transformer T101 this week. Which is an excellent tablet, and can also come with a keyboard dock (I won’t be getting that however). I recommend you take a look at it if you’re interested in getting a tablet.

When I get it, once I’ve calmed down and customized it to me, I’ll compose a post with it, just as I’m composing it on my phone now, that’s right my preamble was reality! I’m really looking forward to it, and thanks for reading. de.monkeyz

I did the job for free, mainly because it was my own idea, and he doesn’t charge for his videos either (although he does take donations). But anywho, I’m pretty happy with the design, but it won’t be put on my portfolio page since it wasn’t really a client job, just a few hours a night on a design. Check it out here www.mhykol.com, it also implements some javascript of my own to show the videos in a nice inline way when their thumbnails are clicked.

Cheers, de.monkeyz

I enjoyed answering questions for the most part; which is why I also started my own video series teaching other’s various programming techniques ranging from C++ to modern web based stuff such as AJAX. The problem I have with the forum, and ANY feedback I’d get from the videos is people ask the same question over and over. In the modern technological age, a lot of people are lazy, they could mean well, they could really want to learn, but they’re still lazy. We have search engines, we can search for our question to see if it’s already been asked/answered, but people still flock to forums and the like to ask the same questions.

I was younger (obviously) when I was part of the forum, and a lot of people’s attitudes that were like that annoyed me greatly. Whenever a question was asked during the ending time I was active, another member or myself would simply point them to another topic, or an article that we found in 2 minutes via Google. And it got on my nerves, people never looked at your help and learnt from it without first asking simple questions that preceded what you were trying to teach.

I’ve owned the domain name DeveloperMonkey.com for 2 years now, originally aimed at just keeping my video tutorials stored somewhere separate from here (mainly due to the naming of this domain) and keeping this site just for me. I’ve accomplished the latter of the task, but my tutorial haven has been back seated for a long time, at first it was going to be a simple list of my videos, then I played with the thought of it being a social hub for tutorials and the like. But I ran into a wall as soon as I realised I’d be cursed with the same repetitive questions.

So that problem has been lingering in my life for a few years, my younger self would simply say “Screw them. I gave them this much; they should be thankful”. Which I still think holds merit, but I didn’t make those videos for pure charity or to feel good about myself; I truly wanted to teach others stuff I knew myself. So just cutting out the concept of people asking questions is too harsh and won’t really put any progress towards my aim. So, I opened my text editor this summer and decided to go full force into DeveloperMonkey development; I naively started to develop it as any other website again inspired by social sites.

It wasn’t until I had developed this site that I realised what I truly wanted for DeveloperMonkey and why I could never develop it properly. I never saw DeveloperMonkey as a website, plain and simple, I saw it as more of a name, an idea that represents what I wanted. So, I decided to make DeveloperMonkey an application. That is what has inspired my videos and images being posted about my windowing JavaScript engine, as it’s the driving force or the limbs of DeveloperMonkey. But what I’m proud of the most is it’s heart, the core of DeveloperMonkey, the solution to my problem, DNN.

DNN stands for Developer Node Network, a bit of a mouthful, hence my constant reference to it’s abbreviation. When you first hear it, you might think it’s a fancy name for a social network, and you’d just dismiss it as nothing new. Whilst DNN might not be something new (I’ve never really seen it myself) it’s NOT a social network. DNN does not promote connection between people, but between knowledge. In a book, or a report you will have references to other reports and books, and that concept is being used in YouTube videos too nowadays; and I like that idea. If there’s an underlying concept it’s noted and where you can research it is given to you straight away, no unnecessary question asking or having to bother the original creator.

So, if you read a dissertation on a revolutionary heart surgery , it may refer to previous techniques used in surgery, you would read that article, if it’s still unfamiliar to you, it might refer to some core surgery concepts and so on. Now, obviously these occurrences won’t regress forever you can’t simply pick up being surgeon from reading. BUT the concept of learning from the top down and back up again intrigues me, most people know where they want to end up, but do they know how to start? And how low down? DNN creates this reference concept linking all kinds of knowledge stemming from each other, in BOTH directions. Before I discuss it more, I’ll show a screenshot of the DNN window in development:

DNN Window - In Development

So the window shows the item you’re currently interested in, in the center. In this case, it’s a video (Forgive the poor testing names), and each node (or video/article/link) can link up to 7 nodes with relevant and underlying knowledge. Click a surrounding node, and it’ll be brought to the center, and it’s surrounding nodes will be loaded. So, you open the node called “Advanced Heart Surgery a hands on guide” and think “Umm…. not quite ready for this” and you see a node entitled “A precursor to heart surgery” and you click it, it give it a quick skim or even know it’s still too advanced and see even more nodes linking to easier material, you can go like this until you find something you like or need. Obviously DNN won’t be used for surgery articles, but rather development articles. However, I’m trying to explain DNN as a concept to anyone who knows about teaching, and an extreme case like surgery is a good explanation I feel.

You’ll also notice the “Connect a Node” items, the DNN is also driven by it’s users, if you’re experienced, or a beginner who’s actually searched for information, you can connect a node, submit a link to an article or even write one yourself (to be seen in the DocumentViewer I created which I think is quite snazzy).  Each item is restricted to 7 nodes, which may seem small, but these nodes can expand out into a huge web, a web navigated by user determined relevance, it won’t be huge and complicated to new users, and it’ll be a great tool for the experienced. I have great hope for the DNN, but it won’t be the ONLY way to find material. I haven’t developed what I would call the “main application window” but that will act as a regular site would, displaying recent videos, links and articles, as well as search functions. But the DNN will help people find information related to what they originally sought after, and hopefully teach them something they didn’t know they wanted to learn.

Thanks to everyone who’s read my piece of the DNN, and I leave you with a screenshot of the DocumentViewer object. Thanks, de.monkeyz

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