Razer BlackWidow Ultimate Stealth Mechanical Keyboard

This is the keyboard that I have been using recently for work. I would say that this is a nice keyboard that is true to its name. The stealth part of this keyboard is very accurate and the keys make no noise. This may not be what you want if you like that click noise, but in a work environment no one should have an issue with you using this keyboard. The one thing that I do not like about the keyboard is that all the settings for the lighting effects are in Razers own program that you have to download and not just programmed into the keyboard directly. Also the lighting effect that is default is the breathing effect, which I am not a big fan of this lighting effect. The keyboard itself seems sturdy enough and the keys feel really nice. It does have a usb port and a headphone port on the keyboard itself, which comes in handy sometimes. Although, I am the type that likes more click noise and pressure on the keys. Overall this is a nice mechanical keyboard.

You can get the Razer Stealth Keyboard on Amazon.

The New Broly Movie

This is a different kind of post then most of the ones on the blog. That is because I have always been a fan of Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z. It was incredible when I found out that they are making a new movie that broly will showcase one of the characters everyone liked: THE LEGENDARY SUPER SAIYAN, BROLY. I think most people really liked the character of Broly, but didn’t like his motivation or back story. This means the new movie has a change to right these wrongs and make this character truly a legend. It will also give a lot more backstory on the Saiyan race, specifically with Goku and Vegeta’s family. The other thing about the movie is that it will not take long before the movie is available in America, since it is supposed to come out in January 16th of 2019. If you are a fan of Dragon Ball then this is a movie that you can not miss.

Don’t forget to re-watch the classic Broly movies. You can get the complete set of all the Broly movies with: Dragon Ball Z: Broly Triple Feature (Broly/Broly Second Coming/Bio-Broly) on Amazon.

(1/30/2019) Review: I finally got to see the movie and overall I liked the movie. I like how Broly has a better back story then in the old movie. He also is not a psychopath in this one, but actually a Saiyan with a pure heart. I am not a huge fan of when the animation changes drastically from one moment to the next. I may just be a little biased but I think sticking to the old animation style would suit them better. There were a few moments though of the faces looking really weird, and I don’t know if that was on purpose but it definitely wasn’t for me. The pace of the movie was good I think. I wish they would have tacked on an extra 10 to 15 minutes in order to explore planet vegeta or Bardock a little more at the beginning of the movie. Other than those few things the movie was great and I can’t wait for the new episodes to come out. Now we have Broly cannon, which means another full-blooded Saiyan that has enough power to be relevant to future stories. I hope they do not waste the opportunity that they have made for themselves on involving Broly in the new series.

What is the salary of a software engineer?

This is a big question for any field that you go into, but it is a question that a lot of colleges like to answer. Most colleges will tell you that you will automatically make $70,000 as an entry-level software engineer anywhere you work. However compensation varies greatly depending on where you are and what company you work for. This means that like any other profession depending on where you want to live can be a big factor in compensation. Although having more compensation may not always be better, especially if the cost of living is much higher. There are other benefits that a job will offer and those must also be taken into consideration when determining what kind of salary you get. Depending on your health you may look into the jobs healthcare coverage before the salary. This is because healthcare coverage varies greatly from business to business and the cost from procedures and tests can outpace the amount of money you make easily. The next most looked at benefit would probably be how much paid time off you get. Some places will offer almost none when you are first hired and some will offer 10 or more days. Tech companies now are also offering many different benefits in the workplace. This may include have a game room at work with ping-pong, foosball, and many other games to play on break. They may also have free lunch or just claim they have the best culture to work in. This just means that compensation is not always straight forward and depending on your situation may mean making less money for better benefits or if you are in your prime with no health risks then going for pure money may be the better fit. So to answer the question the salary of a software engineer varies depending on the type of job you want. Just know that there is probably a job out there willing to pay or give you what you want.

(Although if they try to get you to work for less than $50,000 anywhere then you may be better off finding a different place to work.)

Design Patterns

This is another topic that was not fully covered in my computer science degree and I think it is a very useful topic for when you actually start working. Design patterns are basically reusable solutions to common problems. They fall under three categories: creational patterns, structural patterns, and behavioral patterns.

Creational Design Patterns

Creational design patterns are all about class instantiation.

Names of Patterns:

Abstract Factory
Builder
Factory Method
Object Pool
Prototype
Singlton

Structural Design Patterns

Structural design patterns are all about class and object composition. It does this with classes by using inheritance to compose interfaces and then composes objects in different way in order to obtain different functionality.

Names of Patterns:

Adapter
Bridge
Composite
Decorator
Facade
Flyweight
Private Class Data
Proxy

Behavioral Design Patterns

Behavioral design patterns are more concerned about communication between objects.

Names of Patterns:

Chain of responsibility
Command
Interpreter
Iterator
Mediator
Memento
Null Object
Observer
State
Strategy
Template method
Visitor

As you can see there are many different patterns for each category. Although do not think all of these patterns will answer all of your programming problems. There is some debate on how useful design patterns actually are and when to use them. I would find a pattern that you find interesting and try to implement it in a side project before using it for actual work and be sure that using a pattern is the best way to do things before implementing it in your project.

You can find more information on all of these patterns at Source Making

Book Review: Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton

This was a great book to read and it should be, it is a classic. I also just like how Michael Crichton writes so I may be a little biased. This is a book about dinosaurs coming back to life by human meddling. Now I know what your thinking: “How can things go wrong?”. The thing that makes the book really interesting is the characters that are invited to the park and get caught up in all the excitement. He also does very good research for every book that he has written. This just makes the whole story more compelling in my opinion and it is just fun to learn about new things while reading a science fiction book. It allows you to enjoy the story better by being able to convince your brain that the events in the book actually have a possibility of happening. This makes it easier to get immersed into this book.

What do you think of the book?

Jurassic Park by Micheal Crichton is available on amazon now.

Top 5 Debates Among Programmers

This is a post that I thought would be funny to do, and who knows you may have overheard some of these debates in one of your computer science labs.

Tabs VS Spaces
- This is a common debate among programmers and the debate can get really heated. Who knew that a simple things like tabs and spaces could do such a thing.
First Programming Language
- This is a long-standing debate and usually has a lot of biases. The main reason someone says one language is better to learn first is because it is the programming language that they began with. You can read more about this topic from my article: What is the first programming language you should choose?
Bracket Placement
- This is another one that doesn’t actually seem like it’s a big deal, but programmers have very strong convictions on where they place opening brackets. Some say you place it on the line of the statement and others say it goes on the next line. I personally prefer it on the same line. What does everyone else think?
Best Operating System
- This sometimes is a debate that happens between non-programmers as well, but it is definitely something that programmers have strong opinions about. Granted most of this is just bias. Each operating system has its own pros and cons for the job needed to be done. You can see more about this in my article: What is the best operating system?
IDEs
- All programmers have their personal choice in IDE. It could be sublime, notepad++, eclipse, visual studios, ect. and each programmer thinks that their IDE is better in some way. If you look through my blog posts you will see that even I have a bit of a preference for a certain IDE. There is really nothing wrong with other IDEs and is really up to the preference of the programmer. They are essentially just tools that we use to accomplish our goals.

These are the top 5 debates programmers have with each other, and if you are just getting started in the field you will hear them soon enough. What is your favorite IDE and why?

What is Atom?

If you came to this post wondering what an atom in physics is then I have bad news, I am talking about the text editor Atom. This is a very nice text editor for writing code. It supports many programming languages and has some features, like auto-complete, that makes it great for any programming. It also has several add-ons that can make your life a lot easier, like a nice to-do list add-on. Another thing that I really like about it is that there is a version for all the operating system and they all work very well for each OS. This means that I can be consistent when switching between operating systems. This is just my preference but it is really nice to be able and work in the same environment on all three operating systems. Granted there may be times when you need an actual IDE for the task at hand, but when you don’t require one then I suggest using Atom. There are other alternatives, like notepad++, but it doesn’t work as well with Mac OS as it does with Windows.

Checkout Atom for yourself.

How do you manage your money?

This is a very difficult question to answer and there is no one solution. I can only tell you what is helping me. The main thing that I do is keep track of everything that I spend money on by the use of an app on my phone. So anytime I spend money on something I immediately input that into the app. At the end of the month I export that data to a computer and make a spreadsheet that has my total amount spent for the month and then I input what I made that month. I figure out the difference between the two and see if I made money that month or lost money. The little app has a pie chart that displays how much I have spent on each category. I don’t actually have a budget and that works for me because just the sight of the pie chart gives me an idea of if I need to stop spending money. Some people will work better with actually making a budget and telling themselves that they only have that much money to spend on this certain category. This to me is to restrictive and so I like to just make the decision to buy something or not based on how much I have already spent for the month. This may seem like a simple thing to do, but it is hard to be dedicated to doing it and it has a huge impact on how much you actually spend.

You may also be interested in the post: “How do you build your credit as a college student?”. You don’t even need to be a college student, since it will work for everyone.

Yu-Gi-Oh ForbiddenMemories Walkthrough

This blog post is sort of out of theme for the rest of the site and that is because this is from an old website. It is the best gaming tutorial I have made so far so I would like to put it on this blog so it will still be out there for people to use.

Walkthrough Part 1

The Beginning

This walk-through is Yu-Gi-Oh Forbidden Memories image about the game Yu-Gi-Oh Forbidden Memories. It is a simple game to beat but requires a lot of time. Once you create your account get past the cut scene listen to Simon one time and then run away from Simon. After that return to the palace and he will want to duel you. After the duel with Simon you need to go to the card shop and check your cards in the deck. If you don’t have a Raigeki and a monster with 1400 attack, restart the game to try to get a Raigeki and a monster with 1400 attack.When you get a deck that has those cards you are ready to get started. When you are talking to Simon listen to him once and then run away. After that return to the palace and he will want to duel you.

Continue reading “Yu-Gi-Oh ForbiddenMemories Walkthrough” →

Book Review: 1984 by George Orwell

This is a must read book for anybody going into the realm of technology, especially software engineers. The words that were written in this book in 1949 seem to be even more real today than they were back then. This book is a good reminder that what you create as a software engineer can have many consequences. It is ironic that in the book it is shown that every TV in every room keeps a close eye on you and makes privacy non-existent, and now in the real world we have many devices that monitor what we do all the time. This is not just happening in your own home either it is wherever you go as well, especially with the smart phone that everyone keeps on them. Although the book focuses on this “negative utopia” and you can draw many correlations from the books ideas and concepts to the real world, it does not mean that creating this technology is bad. It does give us a look at how things could possibly be and makes us actually think about what is going on around us. It is scary though how many of the ideas in the book seem to actually be true in real life, and there are more ideas in the book then just a lack of privacy which we are facing today. It is a wonderful read and will keep your attention throughout the whole book. I would highly recommend reading this book when you get a chance.

You can get 1984 by George Orwell on amazon now.