Matt Fielder

Ranch Hand
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since Oct 27, 2004
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Recent posts by Matt Fielder

I'd love to see it!
16 years ago
I work in a sea of cubes and there are only 2 actual offices here for our whole division.
I want a damn ceiling and door. Not that I hate my neighbors, but the noise and annoying distractions are insane. I can handle phone calls etc, but when I have to listen to the total BS that goes on here, it makes me want to cry. I wear my mp3 player all day long with metal blasting in my head just to work.

I have no clue how you could tolerate an open office when you had to watch your neighbors all day long. I need a bit of privacy. Hell, I need a freakin wall just to hand important stuff that I use all day long.

I forgot to mention... I don't do software dev work. I can see how open offices would be beneficial for that, but I like walls. Call me a hermit. Call me a grumpy old man.
16 years ago
go to sourceforge and either search or start a project yourself.
16 years ago
I want to take on a project to teach myself Java. I've been reading on Java for years and have done simple programming. The app I want to develop will be a full GUI driven app to include that side of Java as opposed to pure command line.

Does it make more sense to get a program running command line and add the GUI at the end or to develop the entire program together?

It seems simple when considering writing one class and function for a program and adding a GUI component to control that functionality with listeners etc. When the whole program comes together, it seems like there's extra stuff in a command line that isn't needed.

For instance, I'm thinking about the feedback and interface that would be written for menus in a command line prog. Since those options would be displayed in a GUI, it would seem wasteful to spend time writing those pieces.

Thoughts? (if that made sense)
16 years ago
Cephalic Carnage

I know it's not a song, but basically anything by these guys.
Enjoy.


[ May 15, 2007: Message edited by: Matt Fielder ]
16 years ago
I forgot something!!!

VERY IMPORTANT!

Stretch and warm up!
Get your wrists moving, get the blood flowing, make sure your fingers are loose and pay attention to your Carpel Tunnel. If you EVER feel any pain in your hands or wrists, STOP immediately. Let your hands cool down and relax.

Pay attention to the angle that you create at your wrist while playing. If it's too sharp, you're stressing the tendons that run through the CT and they'll start hating you. When I mentioned technique earlier, this is one place where good technique will pay off.

After years of playing insanely fast and heavy metal, I've punished my wrists and am doing all that I can to avoid surgery and constant pain.
16 years ago
First, start with technique. If you don't fret, position the guitar, strum, etc properly, you'll always have problems and those can be hard habits to break if you start out wrong.

First, I'd start with basic chords. If you can play nothing else, at least you'll feel like you accomplished something. And hell, if someone asks what you know, you can strum a few chords and they'll think you sound like Clapton.

With those chords, practice your technique; fretting properly, strumming, etc. Oh, and for now, stick with a pick. Fingerpicking can be a pain in the arse.

One of the things that a teacher I knew taught FIRST was to know what note EVERY fret was on the fretboard. The first lesson was a layout of the fretboard and you had to have it absolutely memorized before the next class or you couldn't go on. Not a bad idea.

Do some reading on how to play scales, how your fingers (ALL FOUR) should be used and what it means to be effecient on the fretboard.

After all that, just have fun. Buy some TAB sheet music, listen to songs and try to pick out what the guitarist is doing. Something that was suggested to me is to play while watching TV and try to play theme songs or whatever is on the TV. It'll force you to listen and pay attention to pitch and develop your ear.

Good luck with your new toy.
16 years ago
I hate firefox.
Extensions would always have issues loading, updating, or unloading.
Too many other little things I just didn't like.

I went back to Opera that I used long ago.
There's glitches with Opera too, but I like aspects of it a lot better.
17 years ago
I always recommend weekly. I tell new users to run things on slow Sunday mornings while they're drinking coffee reading the sports page.

Extra note: look into modifying your hosts file to block already known bad sites. You can use the pre-fab one that is in spybot. Go to advanced, tools, add host file.
18 years ago
it taught me to spell taught.
18 years ago
I just get more and more frustrated at how much of our society revolves around pro sports. I can't really get into watching someone else play a game. There's no interaction and it drives me insane to just sit there like a sheeple waiting for someone else to do something exciting.

Funny thing is that I used to play ice hockey and LIVED to watch / listen to hockey games. Couldn't live without it. How times change.
18 years ago
free from some guy's wife who runs her own real estate company.

Mixing pleasure (personal life) with my work is hard for me to do.
The only personal thing I decorate with is a collection of pictures of my daughter. Other than that, its pure business.
18 years ago