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| DZN Interview - RedBldSandman; July 20th 2011 | |||
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| Tweet Topic Started: Jul 20 2011, 07:31 AM (765 Views) | |||
| Eccentric Feline | Jul 20 2011, 07:31 AM Post #1 | ||
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梦想 ツ
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Eye On![]() Interview with RedBldSandman, July 20th
First off tells us a little about yourself. What do you enjoy doing in your free time? Apart from generally procrastinating, I end up relaxing with my family, talking with friends, coding (obviously) and playing my sitar, an ancient Indian instrument. My family and friends take up the majority of my time; I'm always chatting away to my best friend on Skype and get distracted by her extremely often when I'm meant to be doing something important! I guess that's the way of the world though! I've been playing the sitar for about 7 years now and have gradually improved. I've finally reached the stage where I can improvise pretty well and can spend a couple of hours improvising around one particular line of a raag (piece). I don't think I could live without my sitar; it's just so relaxing to sit down and play! Coding we'll get on to a bit later!You recently went on an amazing trip, can you tell us a little about it? Amazing? EPIC is a more suitable word I stayed in Madagascar for 10 weeks, volunteering with a charity. I lived in a tent, eating rice and beans every day for lunch and dinner (breakfast was just rice) whilst I worked along with 12 others to build a school! It was absolutely incredible! The work itself was pretty damn tough, mixing concrete/cement by hand, digging foundations etc. but so rewarding and the people I worked with were absolutely amazing! I loved them all! Since we were working in quite a remote area (with a bushman lifestyle) no locals spoke English or French so we learnt a lot of Malagash so we could communicate! We made some great friends with some of the locals and had amazing times with the kids! Of course, Madagascar is renowned for its flora and fauna so we went on adventures and saw lemurs, baobabs, crazy geckos, snakes, spiders and so much more! It was the best experience of my life, for definite! I'd recommend the experience to everyone, if you want to check out the charity it's called Azafady and this is the link: http://www.madagascar.co.uk/ The charity isn't like many which use up 50% of your donation as admin costs, they really try to use all the money to make a difference. (Had to do a little plug )To Sum up, it was EPIC! ![]() So, on to some more design related questions! What got you started coding and when did you join ZNR? Wowsers, errr, I started coding, errr, wait a sec...I started coding in about March 2009 (just checked my ZBCode post!) since I was helping set up a ZB board and decided I wanted to improve it. At first, I just found codes on ZBCode and used them (thanks to the brilliant coders that were over there!) but then decided I wanted to do it myself! I started looking at online tutorials and then became properly active on ZBCode, looking at codes by others and learning from them before doing lots and lots of code requests and eventually becoming Code Staff after the oldies left for here! During that time I started expanding from just web programming and began to learn other languages too (web based programming languages can get a bit boring if you do them too much! ). It was only when there was the whole drama on ZBCode and it shutdown that I really started getting involved with ZNR. I'd already made an account (after all, it was the best place for themes and I was helping set up a ZB forum ) but then I started filling code requests and answering coding questions. After a while, I got invited to become staff and absolutely love it ![]() How long have you been coding, and do you have any sort of formal training? Ah, a bit of an overlap in my answers but I've been coding for a bit over 2 years now (wowsers, how time flies!) and have never received any formal training. I've taught myself everything I know from the web and a few books about random topics such as database structuring which I mostly end up using as a reference for the odd project which needs them! Coding is all about logic so anyone can learn, just make sure you think logically about what you're trying to achieve and the steps you need to get there. That's all there is to it really. You just familiarise yourself with the language and you're away! ![]() What are your favourite things to code? Least favourite? Quite tricky! Really, I enjoy making any code which is either challenging in terms of the logic involved or any code which ends up being extremely elegant in how it works. That's really when I feel the proudest as a coder, when I write a beautiful snippet of code which is super clean and works like magic! Least favourites would have to be some of the long and tedious codes which require time to code but are very simple in terms of logic. The short ones aren't too bad as you can just quickly whip it up but the longer ones just drag on! Then of course there's all IF codes. Without jQuery it's just a pain to do some things on IF and I'm a bit lazy I refuse to just add jQuery to the page though so I suppose I bring it upon myself!Do you have any project that you've worked on that was particularly special to you? Hmmm, in terms of ZB coding, I enjoyed making my auto-preview code (never released as it was never quite finished, I got lazy!) and my class code. The auto-preview code used logic similar to Reid's (we came up with it independently which is the odd thing!) and worked so well! I also enjoyed coding my little class code, just because I liked the way I did that too (creating the regular expression from the class names given as strings). In non-ZB coding, I absolutely love the Microsoft Silverlight C# project I'm working on at the moment. I'd never looked at C# before so it's something new and I love the structure I've got for the project, using an ADO.net Entity Framework I love using something new in my codes so this has been pretty special! ![]() What types of programming languages do you know? Types can get a bit confusing since it depends which kind of level you look at. Instead I think I'll just stick with a little list of the programming languages I know quite well (another lazy option one could say!): JavaScript, PHP, C++, C#, Java, Ruby and Python. These are the languages I'd be able to write a code in pretty quickly and smoothly without having to check a reference somewhere every few minutes as I would with some of the others I know! ![]() Can you give any advice to someone just learning to code on how to get started? Getting started is pretty simple. Just find a nice tutorial website and follow them through! The trickiest part of learning is when you've finished all the basic tutorials and then don't understand the more advanced tutorials. There seems to be this gap when learning most programming languages from what I've experienced! This is the time when you just have to plod on, keep on looking at other people's codes and learning something whether it's how you should/could/shouldn't do something. The most important thing is to not rush, suddenly jumping into a 1000 line code after you've finished the beginner tutorial and trying to understand it isn't going to go well at all! Look at simple codes and work your way up, asking questions if you need some help. There's always somewhere you can ask for help whether it's here on ZNR or on another forum perhaps dedicated to that particular language (they exist for most!). So in essence, just plod on! ![]() Quick Fire Round! Favourite computer game? Guild Wars! (It's free!) Favourite thing to cook? None, I just experiment with anything we have in the kitchen! Favourite Quote? "Do or do not. There is no try." - Yoda (Got to love some Jedi Master wisdom!) Orange or Purple? Orange Coke or Diet Coke? Coke! Playing a solo sport or playing a group sport? Group sport (blame failure on your teammates )Harry Potter or Twilight? .........both so bad...but it has to be Harry Potter Lastly... Mr. Fluffinator, the man eating, pink polka dotted teddy bear ninja OR Captain Scalawag, the one-eyed scowling giraffe pirate? Mr. Fluffinator for sure!
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| Swim-ZNR | Aug 13 2011, 08:35 AM Post #2 | ||
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Gaga for Gaga
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I never would've known any of that. ![]() Great interview! |
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| Espada' | Aug 13 2011, 10:08 AM Post #3 | ||
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Are we still allowed to ask him questions in this topic? | ||
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| RedBldSandman | Aug 13 2011, 02:34 PM Post #4 | ||
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Asante sana Squash banana
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Go for it
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| DaPizzaMan | Aug 13 2011, 06:37 PM Post #5 | ||
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#TeamSupport
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How experienced would you say you are with CSS? | ||
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| RedBldSandman | Aug 13 2011, 08:16 PM Post #6 | ||
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Asante sana Squash banana
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I use CSS all the time since I code websites quite regularly. I learnt it straight after HTML so I've known it for a while and am extremely experienced with it. It's pretty simple and doesn't really take much work to learn I'm just excited that CSS3 selectors and properties are finally being implemented which makes styling much easier (cutting down the number of images/codes you need etc.)!
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| Cory | Aug 13 2011, 08:22 PM Post #7 | ||
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What's your favorite CSS property and HTML tag?
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| Espada' | Aug 13 2011, 09:33 PM Post #8 | ||
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I've got to ask, how did you come up with that name?
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| RedBldSandman | Aug 13 2011, 10:36 PM Post #9 | ||
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Asante sana Squash banana
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Favourite CSS property, hmm, that has to be the new CSS3 property "transition"! It provides such a nice smooth effect and cuts down on effects which would otherwise rely on JavaScript. It's brilliant! ![]() My favourite HTML tag is more difficult, mostly because HTML isn't exciting (CSS can be slightly exciting) HTML5 is coming out but I think I'd pick the trusty "div" tag. It's just so versatile and easy to use whether in the layout or in a code!Haha, it's actually quite a lame story I started playing a game called "Battlefield 2" and needed a player name. At the time I was in a bit of a Lordi craze (don't ask me why) and my favourite song was "Blood Red Sandman" so, in a moment of pure utter genius, I switched the first two words around and my name became "RedBloodSandman". Then "Battlefield 2142" came out and it restricted the length of your player name so my favourite shortening was "RedBldSandman". I then became part of a clan and used my player name as my username on the forum and just haven't changed it since
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| Cory | Aug 14 2011, 09:10 AM Post #10 | ||
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I would have to agree with you on the DIV tag, it's so versatile and simple to use and requires so little coding. | ||
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10:47 AM Jul 11
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![]](http://b1.ifrm.com/0/1/0/p601690/pipright.png)


Coding we'll get on to a bit later!
I stayed in Madagascar for 10 weeks, volunteering with a charity. I lived in a tent, eating rice and beans every day for lunch and dinner (breakfast was just rice) whilst I worked along with 12 others to build a school!
). It was only when there was the whole drama on ZBCode and it shutdown that I really started getting involved with ZNR. I'd already made an account (after all, it was the best place for themes and I was helping set up a ZB forum
) but then I started filling code requests and answering coding questions. After a while, I got invited to become staff and absolutely love it







10:47 AM Jul 11