Category: Programming

Categories
Podcasts Programming

What’s on Tampa Bay’s sci/tech podcasts?

Once again, it’s time to list Tampa Bay podcasts that you, the Global Nerdy reader, might find informative, interesting, and illuminating!

In the last list, I listed the podcasts from longest-running to newest. This time, I’m doing two things:

  1. I’m listing them from newest to longest-running, and
  2. I’m adding a new podcast to the list: Space and Things, a space news, history, and science podcast. It may not be directly software developer-related, but it’s definitely software developer-adjacent, and it’s a fun listen!

And now, the podcasts…

Space and Things

Space and Things is the newest podcast on this list, and it has the distinction of being the only one here that isn’t about software development. Instead, it’s about…well, you get three guesses. Just read its name.

Space and Things features two hosts:

  • Emily Carney: A veteran of the United States Navy, Carney became a freelance writer back in 2008 and started a blog called This Space Available, which is hosted by the National Space Society.In 2011, Carney founded a facebook group Space Hipsters, of which I am a member. Originally intended to be a place to share news and insights amongst friends, this community has now grown to close to 20,000 members including astronauts, engineers, scientists, historians and space flight enthusiasts from around the globe.
  • Dave Giles: Giles is a singer/songwriter from London, England who has always had a passion for space flight. Since his early years he’s been looking skyward and though he ended up wielding a guitar for a living, space exploration is alway on his mind and one of his most popular songs is about astronaut Gene Cernan, ‘The Last Man On The Moon’.In 2019 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11, Giles visited all of the crewed space vehicles flown by NASA from Freedom 7 to the Space Shuttle Orbiters.

Here are Space and Things’ podcasts from this year. They’ve been busy:

  • STP 29 – This week we talk to author, historian and curator of the Project Apollo collection at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum to discuss her new book, ‘Operation Moonglow: A Political History of Project Apollo’.
  • STP 28 – This week Emily teaches Dave about the existence of possibly the worst space movie of all time… We’d love to know if you’ve seen it, or if you have other films which would qualify for that title.
  • STP 27 – This week we break away from our normal scheduling to bring you a panel to discuss how to best support woman in the space community. Next week we’ll catch up on all the news we’ve missed this week, but we feel that this is a discussion worth having. If you have anything you’d like to contribute to the discussion please do get in touch.We asked three time space shuttle astronaut Mike Mullane and astronaut wrangler Christina Korp to join us to discuss this topic. The full video can be seen on our facebook page.
  • STP 26 – What a week. Two amazing stories this week which we hope will inspire you as much as they have us!
  • STP 25 – This week we preview the brand new season of Apple TV’s ‘For All Mankind’ which premiers on Friday 19th February. We were lucky to be able to talk to show’s creator Ronald D. Moore and we hope you enjoy the interview. ‘For All Mankind’ is an alternative history show which starts with the idea that the Soviet Union were the first to walk on the moon.
  • STP 24 – This month is well and truly Mars month with three separate missions from three different countries arriving at the red planet, so we asked Elizabeth Howell and Nicholas Booth to join us. The pair have recently released a fantastic book ‘The Search for Life on Mars: The Greatest Scientific Detective Story of All Time’ which is well worth checking out!
  • STP 23 – An action packed show for you. Loads to talk about. Chinese rockets, bio fuel rockets, space walks, SN9, mission announcements, private astronauts, Ham the astrochimp, the Apollo 14 50th anniversary, the Apollo 11 Quarantine film, the Mobile Quarantine Facility and a new Apollo 16 movie…. how do we fit it in? Well we just about did it! We hope we’ve done everything justice here.
  • STP 22 – This week we have a very special interview with Ben Feist, the technical consultant for the Apollo 11 movie and the new Apollo 11 Quarantine movie. He also started the Apollo Real Time website and now works for NASA. It’s an amazingly inspiring interview. We hope you enjoy.
  • STP 21 – It’s been another very busy week in the world of space flight and we do our best to bring you up to date, but we also pay tribute to Dr. William Thornton, former NASA astronaut who died aged 91 last week.
  • STP 20 – We love pondering what might have happened if events transpired slightly differently, and it turns out that there are plenty of great authors who have delivered us some fantastic pieces about these very ideas. So this week we have a talk about some of our favourite alternative space histories.
  • STP 19 – In our first podcast of 2021 we spend some time talking about two people from the world of space who we think have been over looked. There are obviously thousands of people who fit this bill, but this podcast isn’t going anywhere soon, so we’ll do our best!

Friends That Code

Friends That Code is hosted by Mike Traverso, whom locals may know from the Tampa Bay Google Developers Group meetup and other Google-y events. In this podcast, he showcases…

…some amazing people I know that just happen to write code for a living. Whether they started off intending to code or just happened into it, we get to hear about the types of people you’ll meet, things you’ll get to do, jobs you’ll have along the way, and advice from some awesome coders along the way!

Here are Friends That Code’s podcasts since the last time I did a roundup of Tampa Bay podcasts:

The Mike Dominick Show

The Mike Dominick Show is the second-newest of the podcasts in this list, and it has an open source focus.

His most recent podcasts:

The 6 Figure Developer

At the time I’m writing this, The 6 Figure Developer — hosted by John Callaway, Clayton Hunt, and Jon Ash — has posted 178 episodes. It’s…

…a show dedicated to helping developers to grow their career. Topics include Test Driven Development, Clean Code, Professionalism, Entrepreneurship, as well as the latest and greatest programming languages and concepts.

Here are The 6 Figure Developer’s podcasts since the last time I did a roundup of Tampa Bay podcasts:

  • Episode 187 – Agile Conversations with Fredrick & Squirrel — Douglas Squirrel has been coding for 40 years and has led software teams for 15 of them. He is an executive coach and consulting CTO in London, making use of his extensive experience growing teams and advising startup founders and senior managers. His previous roles included founding CTO at TIM Group and VP Engineering at e-commerce startup Secretsales. He has consulted with a wide variety of London startups including Geckoboard, Lostmy.name, DueDil, Kano, and MarketInvoice.Jeffrey Fredrick is an internationally recognized expert in software development and has over 25 years’ experience covering both sides of the business/technology divide. An early adopter of XP and Agile practices, Jeffrey has been a conference speaker in the US, Europe, India and Japan. Through his work on the pioneering open-source project CruiseControl, and through his role as co-organizer of the Continuous Integration and Testing Conference (CITCON), he has had a global impact on software development. Jeffrey’s Silicon Valley experience includes roles as Vice President of Product Management, Vice President of Engineering, and Chief Evangelist. He has also worked as an independent consultant on topics including corporate strategy, product management, marketing, and interaction design. Jeffrey is currently Chief Technology Officer and Head of Product & Marketing in London at TIM, an Acuris Company. He also runs the London Organisational Learning Meetup and is a CTO mentor through CTO Craft.
  • Episode 186 – GitOps with Kelsey Hightower — Kelsey is a seven figure developer and Principle Engineer for Google Cloud. On this episode we discuss the latest with GitOps, what it is and how it can help your organization.
  • Episode 185 – Game Development with Lana Lux — Lana Lux joined us to talk about Game Development with Unity. Lana is a UX Designer and Game Developer based in Toronto. Currently she’s working on Strain: An apocalyptic, pandemic survival game.
  • Episode 184 – Cloud Native with Facundo and Faheem — Faheem Memon and Facundo Gauna join us to talk about transitioning into Cloud-Native (Kubernetes/Docker) as a .NET Developer.Faheem is a seasoned architect with hands-on experience in application engineering, cloud, containerization, automation, and mobile technologies. Facundo is a solutions architect specializing in Kubernetes on Azure.
  • Episode 183 – Developer Velocity with Amanda Silver — Amanda Silver is CVP of Product for Developer Tools at Microsoft. She was one of the primary designers on the LINQ project (Language INtegrated Query) which incorporates query expressions and XML as a first-class types in .NET. She has been involved with Chakra, the JavaScript engine that powers Edge, since 2009 which was open sourced earlier this year. In 2012, her team launched TypeScript – a cross-platform, typed, superset of JavaScript that compiles to plain JavaScript. Her team delivers the Visual Studio platform and Visual Studio Code. Unleashing the creativity of developers is her unrelenting passion.
  • Episode 182 – Application Security with Tanya Janca — Tanya is Founder & CEO at We Hack Purple Academy, Community and Podcast! She’s a Best-selling author of Alice and Bob Learn Application Security.
  • Episode 181 – Marten DB with Jeremy D. Miller — Jeremy Miller is a Senior Software Architect at Calavista Software. Jeremy began his software career writing “Shadow IT” applications to automate his tedious engineering documentation, then wandered into software development because it looked like more fun. Jeremy is heavily involved in open source .NET development as the author of StructureMap, Storyteller, and as the lead developer of Marten. Jeremy occasionally manages to write about various software topics at http://jeremydmiller.com.
  • Episode 180 – Felienne Hermans: The Programmer’s Brain — Felienne (/Fay-lee-nuh/) is a scientist working at Leiden University as an associate professor. Her book, “The Programmer’s Brain” is out now as an Manning Books Early Access Program.The Programmer’s Brain covers everything that programmers should know about how their brains work, to make their work more effective and emphatic. The book teaches techniques for speed reading code, understanding highly complex code and choosing better variable names.
  • Episode 179 – Uno Platform with Jérôme Laban — Jérôme is the CTO of the open-source Uno Platform, and a 4x recipient of the Microsoft MVP award.The Uno Platform is a framework that aims to improve the development cycle of cross-platform apps using Windows, iOS, Android, and WebAssembly using Mono and Xamarin. It is also Open Source (Apache 2.0) and available on GitHub.

Thunder Nerds

Of the podcasts in this roundup, Thunder Nerds — “A conversation with the people behind the technology, that love what they do… and do tech good” — has been around the longest, with 274 episodes over five seasons to date. You’ve probably seen the hosts at local meetups and conferences; they’re Sarrah Vesselov, Frederick Philip Von Weiss, and Brian Hinton.

Auth0 logoThunder Nerds is sponsored by a company that’s near and dear to me, Auth0! That’s partly because they have a great authentication, authorization, and identity service, and partly because I work there in my role as a Senior R&D Content Engineer!

Here are Thunder Nerds’ podcasts since the last time I did a roundup of Tampa Bay podcasts:

Categories
Programming

Code, notes, and recording from the “Programmers of Portables” Meetup, February 22, 2021

What happened at the first Programmers of Portables meetup?

The first Programmers of Portables meetup took place last night, and we made our first steps towards making our first videogame. We met over Zoom, where I shared my screen and led the group in a “code along with me” exercise as we started writing a simple videogame from scratch.

This article covers what we did last night, complete with the code that we wrote. If you were there, you can use this for review. If you weren’t, you should still be able to look at what we did and follow along.

This article is primarily a collection of the code we wrote and the recording of the session. In later articles, I’ll go over Pygame programming in more detail. In the meantime, if you’ve like to learn more about Pygame, here are a couple of resources:

Prerequisites

The first part of the session was devoted to downloading and installing the prerequisites for writing videogames with Python.

A code editor (such as Visual Studio Code)

Logo: Visual Studio Code

Any application that calls itself a code editor will do.

I tend to use Visual Studio Code these days, because I’ve already done my time using earlier versions of vim (in the late ’80s, I used a variant called ivi, short for “improved vi”) and Emacs (back when the joke name was “Eight megs and constant swapping”). VS Code is pretty much the same across all the platforms I use — macOS, Windows, Linux, and Raspberry Pi OS — and it feels like a present-day app, and not leftovers from the 1970s.

You can download Visual Studio Code here.

A distribution of Python 3 (such as Anaconda Python)

Logo: AnacondaWe’re programming in Python (preferably Python 3.7 or later), so any reasonably recent Python distribution will do.

I like the Anaconda Python distribution because iy includes a lot of useful libraries and other tools that you’ll need when using Python for things such as data science, and the experience is pretty much the same across macOS, Windows, and Linux.

You can download Anaconda Python here.

Pygame 2

The final prerequisite is Pygame, a cross-platform set of packages that supports game development in Python. It’s been around for 20 years (its was first release in the fall of 2000), and it’s a fun, fantastic 2D game programming platform.

To install it, you’ll need to go to the command line:

  • macOS and Linux users: Open a terminal and enter the command pip install pygame
  • Windows users using Anaconda Python: Open the Start Menu, select the Anaconda Python folder, and run Anaconda Command Prompt, where you’ll enter the command pip install pygame

The first version: A blank black screen

With the prerequisites gathered and installed on our computers, it was time to start working on the game. We worked on it in steps, each time producing an improved version of the game.

The first version of the game wasn’t terribly impressive, as it ended up being a blank black window that did nothing. Still, it was a working program, and the code we wrote would function as a framework on which we’d eventually build the rest of the game:

Here’s its code:

# The first version of the game:
# An 800-by-600 black window
# (Don’t worry; it gets better)

import pygame

# Constants
# =========

# Screen dimensions and refresh rate
SCREEN_WIDTH = 800
SCREEN_HEIGHT = 600
FRAMES_PER_SECOND = 60

# Colors
BLACK = (0, 0, 0)
GREEN = (0, 255, 0)


# Initialization
# ==============
pygame.init()
screen = pygame.display.set_mode((SCREEN_WIDTH, SCREEN_HEIGHT))
pygame.display.set_caption("My Game")
clock = pygame.time.Clock()


# Game loop
# =========
running = True

while running:
    # This method should be called once per frame.
    # It calculates the number of milliseconds since the last
    # call to clock.tick() in order to limit the game’s framerate
    # to a maximum of FRAMES_PER_SECOND.
    clock.tick(FRAMES_PER_SECOND)

    # Handle events
    for event in pygame.event.get():
        # Check to see if the user has closed the window
        # or hit control-c on the command line
        # (i.e. Has the user quit the program?)
        if event.type == pygame.QUIT:
            running = False

    # Draw game objects to the screen surface
    screen.fill(BLACK)

    # Update the screen with the contents of the screen surface
    pygame.display.flip()

# Exit the game
pygame.quit()

The second version: A rightward-moving green square

The second version of the game built upon the code from the first, and was slightly more impressive. It featured an actual image on the screen, complete with animation: a green square, travelling from left to right across the screen, and “wrapping around” back to the left side after it disappears from the right side of the screen.

Here’s its code:

# The second version of the game:
# An 800-by-600 black window,
# now with a rightward-moving green square!

import pygame

# Constants
# =========

# Screen dimensions and refresh rate
SCREEN_WIDTH = 800
SCREEN_HEIGHT = 600
FRAMES_PER_SECOND = 60

# Colors
BLACK = (0, 0, 0)
GREEN = (0, 255, 0)


# Sprites
# =======

class Player(pygame.sprite.Sprite):
    def __init__(self):
        pygame.sprite.Sprite.__init__(self)
        self.image = pygame.Surface((50, 50))
        self.image.fill(GREEN)
        self.rect = self.image.get_rect()
        self.rect.center = (SCREEN_WIDTH / 2, SCREEN_HEIGHT / 2)

    def update(self):
        self.rect.x = self.rect.x + 5
        if self.rect.left > SCREEN_WIDTH:
            self.rect.right = 0


# Initialization
# ==============

# Initialize screen and framerate
pygame.init()
screen = pygame.display.set_mode((SCREEN_WIDTH, SCREEN_HEIGHT))
pygame.display.set_caption("My Game")
clock = pygame.time.Clock()

# Create sprites and sprite groups
all_sprites = pygame.sprite.Group()
player = Player()
all_sprites.add(player)


# Game loop
# =========
running = True

while running:
    # This method should be called once per frame.
    # It calculates the number of milliseconds since the last
    # call to clock.tick() in order to limit the game’s framerate
    # to a maximum of FRAMES_PER_SECOND.
    clock.tick(FRAMES_PER_SECOND)

    # Handle events
    for event in pygame.event.get():
        # Check to see if the user has closed the window
        # or hit control-c on the command line
        # (i.e. Has the user quit the program?)
        if event.type == pygame.QUIT:
            running = False

    # Update the game state
    all_sprites.update()

    # Draw game objects to the screen surface
    screen.fill(BLACK)
    all_sprites.draw(screen)

    # Update the screen with the contents of the screen surface
    pygame.display.flip()

# Exit the game
pygame.quit()

The third version: The green square, now under user control!

The final version of the game was one where we made the green square interactive. Instead of continuously travelling from left to right on the screen, the square stays put until the user presses one of the arrow keys. When that happens, the square moves in the appropriate direction. The square is constrained so that it can’t go offscreen.

Here’s its code:

# The third version of the game:
# The green square, now under user control!

import pygame

# Constants
# =========

# Screen dimensions and refresh rate
SCREEN_WIDTH = 800
SCREEN_HEIGHT = 600
FRAMES_PER_SECOND = 60

# Colors
BLACK = (0, 0, 0)
GREEN = (0, 255, 0)


# Sprites
# =======

class Player(pygame.sprite.Sprite):
    def __init__(self):
        pygame.sprite.Sprite.__init__(self)
        self.image = pygame.Surface((50, 50))
        self.image.fill(GREEN)
        self.rect = self.image.get_rect()
        self.rect.center = (SCREEN_WIDTH / 2, SCREEN_HEIGHT / 2)

    def update(self):
        # Get the state of all the keys
        keys = pygame.key.get_pressed()

        # Check the retrieved state to see if any
        # arrow keys have been pressed
        # =======================================

        # Is the user pressing the left-arrow key,
        # and is the sprite’s left edge NOT flush
        # with the screen’s left edge?
        if keys[pygame.K_LEFT] and self.rect.x > 0:
            self.rect.x = self.rect.x - 5

        # Is the user pressing the right-arrow key,
        # and is the sprite’s right edge NOT FLUSH
        # with the screen’s right edge?
        if keys[pygame.K_RIGHT] and self.rect.x < SCREEN_WIDTH - self.rect.width:
            self.rect.x = self.rect.x + 5

        # Is the user pressing the up-arrow key,
        # and is the sprite’s top edge NOT FLUSH
        # with the screen’s top edge?
        if keys[pygame.K_UP] and self.rect.y > 0:
            self.rect.y = self.rect.y - 5

        # Is the user pressing the down-arrow key,
        # and is the sprite’s bottom edge NOT FLUSH
        # with the screen’s bottom edge?
        if keys[pygame.K_DOWN] and self.rect.y < SCREEN_HEIGHT - self.rect.height:
            self.rect.y = self.rect.y + 5


# Initialization
# ==============

# Initialize screen and framerate
pygame.init()
screen = pygame.display.set_mode((SCREEN_WIDTH, SCREEN_HEIGHT))
pygame.display.set_caption("My Game")
clock = pygame.time.Clock()

# Create sprites and sprite groups
all_sprites = pygame.sprite.Group()
player = Player()
all_sprites.add(player)


# Game loop
# =========
running = True

while running:
    # This method should be called once per frame.
    # It calculates the number of milliseconds since the last
    # call to clock.tick() in order to limit the game’s framerate
    # to a maximum of FRAMES_PER_SECOND.
    clock.tick(FRAMES_PER_SECOND)

    # Handle events
    for event in pygame.event.get():
        # Check to see if the user has closed the window
        # or hit control-c on the command line
        # (i.e. Has the user quit the program?)
        if event.type == pygame.QUIT:
            running = False

    # Update the game state
    all_sprites.update()

    # Draw game objects to the screen surface
    screen.fill(BLACK)
    all_sprites.draw(screen)

    # Update the screen with the contents of the screen surface
    pygame.display.flip()

# Exit the game
pygame.quit()

The recording

Here’s the recording of the session:

Categories
Programming

On the Auth0 blog: How to read, edit, and erase location and other EXIF metadata from your photos

Auth0 logoMy latest article on the Auth0 blog, How to Read and Remove Metadata from Your Photos With Python, shows you how to use Python and the exif module to examine, alter, and even remove the metadata that your phone adds to pictures you take.

In addition to picture data, photos taken with smartphones and modern digital cameras contain metadata, which is additional information about the photo. This metadata is stored in a format called EXIF, which is short for EXchangeable Image File format, which is a continually evolving standard for information added to digital image and sound recordings.

In photos, EXIF can include information such as:

  • The dimensions and pixel density of the photo
  • The make and model of the device used to take the photo
  • Zoom, aperture, flash, and other camera settings when the photo was taken
  • The orientation of the device when the photo was taken
  • When the photo was taken
  • Where the photo was taken
  • Which direction the camera was facing
  • The altitude at which the photo was taken

My article will show you how to use Python’s exif module to access this information, as well as how to alter it (I show you how to tag your photos so it seems as if they were taken at Area 51) or erase it.

EXIF data was recently in the spotlight as a result of the January 6th riots in Washington, DC. Many of the rioters posted photos to Parler, which did not strip EXIF data from photos uploaded to it.

When Parler started to shut down as a result of Amazon and other providers kicking them off their services, it opened some security holes that a hacktivist who goes by the handle @donk_enby was able to exploit. They were able to scrape the posts and uploaded photos and videos and upload them to the Internet Archive. Soon after, it was discovered that Parler never removed the EXIF data from the photos and videos, which made it possible to easily identify participants in the riot, see who broke into the Capitol, and for authorities to make arrests. The New York Times used this data to make a timeline of events, which they published in their article, How a Presidential Rally Turned Into a Capitol Rampage.

Graphic from the New York Times. Tap to view at full size.

While Parler’s sloppy security was by and large good news, there’s still good reason to follow good security practices, and part of that is managing EXIF data in photographs. That’s what my article covers, and in a fun way as well!

Read the article on the Auth0 blog: How to Read and Remove Metadata from Your Photos With Python.

 

Categories
Current Events Programming

Global Nerdy’s mega-list of online tech events for Tampa and beyond (Tuesday, February 16, 2021)

This is an experiment!

Creative Commons image from Alpha Stock Images and taken by Nick Youngson. Tap to view the source.

Each week, I publish a listing of tech, entrepreneur, and nerd online events by and for people in Tampa Bay and surrounding areas. But what if I tried expanding the scope and listing online events beyond Tampa Bay?

That’s the subject of this week’s experiment. Each weekday this week, I’m going to provide a list of:

  • the day’s tech, entrepreneur, and nerd online events for Tampa Bay and surrounding areas, and
  • a selection of the day’s tech events for the rest of the world.

Let’s face it — with COVID-19 still raging away, new variants of the disease popping up, and vaccines being slow in coming, we need to step up our online connection game. The way to do that is to look at tech events from beyond our backyard, see what other people are talking about, learn from them, and take those lessons back here to “The Other Bay Area!”

I’ve listed the events below. Check them out, and let me know if this sort of list is interesting or useful to you.

Tuesday’s ONLINE tech, entrepreneur, and nerd events in the Tampa Bay area

Here’s the list of Tuesday’s online events for the Tampa Bay area, taken straight from my larger list of this week’s Tampa Bay tech, entrepreneur, and nerd events.

Tuesday’s ONLINE tech events worldwide

…and here’s a selection of online tech events taking place across the country and around the world. I have no idea if any are limiting attendance to locals, but I suggest you drop in and find out!

Categories
Current Events Programming Tampa Bay

“Programmers of Portables” Meetup on Monday, Feb. 22: Let’s write a game!

It’s high time for the Programmers of Portables Meetup group’s first meeting. It’s called “Let’s write a game (with Python and Pygame)!”, and it’s happening online on Monday, February 22nd at 7:00 p.m.!

In this meetup, we’ll use the Python programming language and the Pygame collection of game development libraries to write a game similar to this “Super Bowl Streaker”-themed parody of the old videogame Tecmo Bowl:

That’s right, we’re going to build a game where the player controls the guy who ran onto the field in a pink leotard during the Super Bowl, and the goal of the game is to dodge security for as long as you can.

While writing the game, you’ll learn about key game programming concepts including the main event loop and collision detection, as well as everyday programming topics including object-oriented programming and data structures.

This is going to be a “code along with the instructor” exercise. I’ll explain a key concept for the game, and then we’ll code it together. By the end of the session, you’ll have a working game that you can play but even modify and improve on!

Register here to join us on Monday, February 22nd at 7:00 p.m., and let’s write a game!

What will you need for the Programmers of Portables Meetup?

Compaq 610 laptop
Even this decade-plus-old hardware (which I own) will do.

Aside from a computer (which could run macOS, Windows, Linux, or Raspberry Pi OS) made sometime in the past ten or so years and an internet connection, you’ll need:

  • Zoom (I’ll provide a link to the Meetup as the day gets closer)
  • Python 3 (version 3.6 or later — I recommend Anaconda’s distribution, although the Python.org distribution is also good)
  • Pygame (version 2.0; once you’ve installed Python 3, go to the command line and execute the command pip install pygame==2.0.0)
  • You favorite code editor. I’ll be using Visual Studio Code.

All you need for this session is just some programming experience, and it doesn’t have to be in Python. If you can code a “Magic 8-Ball” in JavaScript, you’ll understand most of what we’ll cover when writing our game.

Categories
Programming Tampa Bay What I’m Up To

Tampa iOS Meetup is changing its name to “Programmers of Portables” (or PoP for short)!

It’s been way too long since I’ve held a Tampa iOS Meetup. Between the pandemic and all sorts of employment issues arising thanks to the pandemic, I managed to hold just one Tampa iOS Meetup in 2020. It’s a shame, especially since Tampa iOS Meetup made the list of Tampa’s top ten tech meetup groups for 2019.

At the same time, while I’ve wanted to keep covering iOS, I also wanted to expand into other portable platforms, namely programming Android, smart watches, Raspberry Pi, and Arduino devices.

I’m going to scratch these two itches by re-tooling Tampa iOS Meetup into a new meetup called Programmers of Portables, or PoP for short. If you want to know what kind of platforms and programming this meetup will cover, just read its motto: “If it fits in your hand, it’s on-brand!”

Some of the topics I’m planning for this year:

  • iOS and watchOS programming with Swift
  • Android programming with Kotlin
  • Cross-platform mobile programming with Flutter
  • Raspberry Pi programming with Python
  • Arduino programming with Arduino’s C-like programming language
  • Wearables (after all, “portable” is related to the French verb porter, which means “to wear”)

I’m going to keep the beginner-friendly focus with this revamped meetup, but don’t let “beginner-friendly” fool you into thinking that it means “simple”! In some  of my “beginner-friendly” classes, we wrote:

  • Our own version of Frogger,
  • the iPhone version of Google’s Tilt Brush, the 3-D AR “paint” application
  • our own version of the IKEA Place AR app,
  • a machine learning app that tried to identify common objects,
  • a machine learning app that tried to identify the kind of room your were in, and
  • a machine learning app that could identify various members of the Avengers.

My plan is to return to regular meetups, which will be Zoom-based until the pandemic gets under control.

I’ll announce the first meetup shortly. In the meantime, let me know what topics you’d like me to cover at PoP. You can do it in the comments for this post, or on my Twitter or LinkedIn accounts.

Categories
Podcasts Programming Tampa Bay

Lots to listen to on Tampa Bay’s tech podcasts

It’s been a while since I last published a list of podcast episodes from Tampa Bay tech podcasts. So if you’re looking for something technical to listen to that’s also from “The Other Bay Area, on The Other West Coast”, there’s a lot on this list!

In the last list, I went from newest podcast series to longest-running; this time, I’m reversing the order.

Thunder Nerds

Of the podcasts in this roundup, Thunder Nerds — “A conversation with the people behind the technology, that love what they do… and do tech good” — has been around the longest, with 274 episodes over five seasons to date. You’ve probably seen the hosts at local meetups and conferences; they’re Sarrah Vesselov, Frederick Philip Von Weiss, and Brian Hinton.

Auth0 logoThunder Nerds is sponsored by a company that’s near and dear to me, Auth0! That’s partly because they have a great authentication, authorization, and identity service, and partly because I work there in my role as a Senior R&D Content Engineer!

274 – 🧑🏽‍🍳 Learn to Cook Code at Hackathons with Vincent Tang
In this episode, we get to speak with fullstack developer, tech educator, and speaker, Vincent Tang. We discuss the value of learning from hackathons, and how to get started in the tech industry. We also discuss Vincent’s new podcast Code Chefs.

The 6 Figure Developer

At the time I’m writing this, The 6 Figure Developer — hosted by John Callaway, Clayton Hunt, and Jon Ash — has posted 178 episodes. It’s…

…a show dedicated to helping developers to grow their career. Topics include Test Driven Development, Clean Code, Professionalism, Entrepreneurship, as well as the latest and greatest programming languages and concepts.

  • 178 – Identity with Christos Matskas
    Microsoft Identity for developers and Security in the Cloud! Christos is a developer, speaker, writer, and Microsoft Program Manager for Microsoft Identity, doing advocacy at scale.
  • 177 – F# and FP with Phillip Carter
    Phillip Carter joins us on the latest episode of The 6 Figure Developer Podcast to talk F# and Functional Programming. Phillip is a software person by trade. He currently works for Microsoft, focusing on .NET languages and compilers and tooling, with a heavy emphasis on F#. He likes doing other things too, like riding snowboards and bikes.
  • 176 – REST APIs with Irina Scurtu
    Irina is a Software Architect, a Microsoft MVP, and .NET Group Community Lead at Endava. She’s also a Microsoft Certified Trainer and founder of dotnetdays Romania.
  • 175 – Dave Glick: Statiq Sites and Open Source
    Dave has been professionally developing software for almost two decades. He is passionate about open source, .NET, and the intersection of the two.
  • 174 – DevOps Engineering with Ken Mugrage
    Ken is Tech Principal for the Office of the CTO @ThoughtWorks. He’s passionate about #ContinuousDelivery and #DevOps. He’s now focused on future tech.
  • 173 – bUnit: A Blazor Testing Lib w/ Egil Hansen
    Principal Developer at Delegate. A Microsoft MVP & .NET Foundation member. Creator of the Blazor Testing Library #bUnit. Egil joins us to talk all about bUnit – a Testing Library for Blazor Components.
  • 172 – Rob Richardson: .NET 5, Pipelines, & Testing
    Rob is a software craftsman building web properties in ASP.NET and Node, React and Vue. He’s a Microsoft MVP, published author, frequent speaker at conferences, user groups, and community events, and a diligent teacher and student of high quality software development.
  • 171 – Jeremy Sinclair: Win Insider, .NET on ARM
    Jeremy is an enthusiastic developer with over 10 years of development experience. He’s also part of the #WindowsInsiders community and a Windows Insider MVP.
  • 170 – Michael Jolley on JavaScript, TS, Blazor, etc.
    From his early days with lincoln logs to building custom ERP systems, Michael has always been a builder. With nearly 20 years experience designing & developing software, he loves sharing his knowledge with others and watching them excel. While still building custom applications for clients today, Michael has been spending considerable time pouring into others via his live-coding sessions on Twitch and talks at conferences & meet-ups. When not in full-geek mode, Michael is a husband of nearly 20 years, father to three awesome kids, musician, and football fanatic.
  • 169 – Welcome Back Ash! Self Care in Covid Times
    We’re so happy to have Jon Ash back! Ash was taking some time for self care, family, and personal projects. In this episode we welcome him back and hear all about what he’s been working on.
  • 168 – Oqtane and OSS with Shaun Walker
    Shaun Walker is the original creator of Oqtane and DotNetNuke, web application frameworks which have the earned the recognition of being among the largest, most successful, pioneering Open Source projects native to the Microsoft platform. He has 25+ years professional experience in architecting and implementing enterprise software solutions for private and public organizations. Based on his significant community contributions he has been recognized as a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) as well as an ASPInsider for over 10 consecutive years. He was recognized by Business In Vancouver in 2011 as a leading entrepreneur in their Forty Under 40 business awards, and is currently the Chair of the Project Committee for the .NET Foundation. Shaun is currently a Technical Director and Enterprise Guildmaster at Cognizant Softvision. Shaun joined us to talk about his newest project, Oqtane, a Modular Application Framework for Blazor, as well as Open Source Software, and The .NET Foundation!
  • 167 – Manage Cloud Cost with Omry Hay
    Omry is Co-Founder and CTO at env0, the first self-service cloud management platform for infrastructure as code (IaC) architecture.
  • 166 – The State of Python with Michael Kennedy
    Michael is the founder and host of Talk Python To Me, a weekly podcast about Python and related software developer topics. He is a the founder and chief author at Talk Python Training where many leading Python developer courses are available online. Michael is an entrepreneur, a father of three girls, a husband, a student, and a teacher. You can find him in his hometown of Portland, OR.
  • 165 – Kode Vicious, George Neville-Neil
    Writing as Kode Vicious, George has spent more than 15 years sharing advice and insights as a “coder with attitude” in ACM’s Queue magazine. He is a software engineer, author and security nerd with other varied interests who speaks several languages including Japanese.
  • 164 – .NET MAUI with Auri Rahimzadeh
    Auri joins us to talk about .NET Multi-platform App UI (MAUI). Auri A. Rahimzadeh is an accomplished technophile writer and author. He has written three books: Hacking the PSP, Geek My Ride, and co-authored Hacking Digital Cameras. Rahimzadeh has contributed to many digital entertainment technology standards, including HDTV and DVD, and is former west coast research director at The Envisioneering Group, a prominent consumer electronics research firm. Having taught side by side with Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple, Auri continues to share a passion for technology education for children and teens. Currently Mr. Rahimzadeh is owner of Auri’s Ideas in Fishers, Indiana, and an instructor at Eleven Fifty Academy, a non-for-profit technology education bootcamp.

The Mike Dominick Show

The Mike Dominick Show is the second-newest of the podcasts in this list, and it has an open source focus.

Friends That Code

Friends that Code is the newest podcast on this list, and it’s hosted by Mike Traverso, whom locals may know from the Tampa Bay Google Developers Group meetup and other Google-y events. In this podcast, he showcases…

…some amazing people I know that just happen to write code for a living. Whether they started off intending to code or just happened into it, we get to hear about the types of people you’ll meet, things you’ll get to do, jobs you’ll have along the way, and advice from some awesome coders along the way!

  • 26 – Imposter Syndrome: You Do Belong Here & other affirmations and ways to beat imposter syndrome
  • 25 – I owe a world famous video game designer 70 cents with Graeme Devine
    Video game lover, developer, designer, producer, Godfather of games on CD-Roms, and man partly responsible for a Christmas shortage of gold Zelda cartridges. Ladies and gentlemen, todays guest is Graeme Devine!

  • 24 – Preparing for better opportunities. Oh! and pinball too with Stacy Devino
    Developer, Google Developer Expert, Community Organizer, Conference Speaker, Mentor, Sneaker fan and Mistress of Android. Ladies and Gentlemen, todays guest is Stacy Devino!

  • 23 – Having every job imaginable in technology with Joey deVilla
    Developer, former Evangelist, former CTO, Author, Community Organizer, Conference Speaker, Accordion Guy and Developer again. Ladies and gentlemen, today’s guest is Joey deVilla!

  • 22 – Coding a secure, community driven, open sourced Smash Bros moves app with Kento Kawakami
    Nintendo enthusiast, Video game lover, graphic designer, photographer, App developer and spanking new software developer. Ladies and gentlemen, todays guest is Kento Kawakami!

  • 21 – Mentoring developers & fostering the community with Maggie Negm
    Software developer, volunteer, and mentor to newer software developers and all around good person. Ladies and gentlemen, todays guest is Maggie Negm!

  • 20 – Dialoging with an Android Developer with Huyen Tue Dao
    Developer, Architect, Fantastic Conference Speaker, Google Developer Expert in Android & Kotlin, YouTube Producer and On-Air Talent… Ladies and gentlemen, today’s guest is Huyen Tue Dao!

  • 19 – Stay ready so you don’t have to get ready with Jerome Hardaway
    Developer, Air Force Veteran, Tech Evangelist, Founder and Executive Director at Vets Who Code and Captain America of web development! Ladies and gentlemen, today’s guest is Jerome Hardaway!

  • 18 – Development is just another creative outlet with David Khourshid
    Developer, Conference Speaker, Author, Javascript framework creator, Twitch streamer and moonlighting piano player. Ladies and gentlemen, todays guest is David Khourshid!

  • 17 – Creating creativity, turning static into fantastic with Erica Jacobs
    Designer, Illustrator, Volunteer, Celebrator of women in the design and tech community, Creator of the Neon Swan Awards and Creative Mind extraordinaire. Ladies and gentlemen, todays guest is Erica Jacobs!

  • 16 – ABC’s of success: Authenticity, Balance and Communication with Bill Conyea
    Developer, CTO, Investor, Technology Staffer and Entrepreneur. Ladies and gentlemen, today’s guest is Bill Conyea!