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When learning how to code, design or ship anything of note, it quickly becomes apparent that there are a thousand different ways to get to the same end product. No designer uses Photoshop in the exact same way and most developers have different frameworks, environments and strategies to solve the challenges at hand.
Many times we get the feeling that we’re doing it all wrong. We may even have some of our peers tell us the same thing. They might have a superior understanding of CSS Preprocessors or where the latest JavaScript library was first invented, but an underlying truth still prevails: they haven’t shipped a thing.
While it is important to stay up on current technology, it should never take more time than actually building something. Chances are you’re doing it wrong and that’s perfectly okay. In fact, I would encourage you to do more things the wrong way. Doing more things that are imperfect can be liberating.
Perfection can be off-putting, boring and sterile. You know what I miss the most in the newer music that I listen to? The imperfections. Studio engineers and musicians are now expected to use computers to attain a perfect, inhuman level of precision. That perfection leaves music feeling robotic or plastic. There’s no groove, no swing. Our designs, programs and art should have a human groove too.
Let’s not focus on perfection so much. Let’s get it out there. Let’s let it be real. Let’s let it be human. Let’s let it be vulnerable.
I challenge you, my dear reader, to build something right now. Record the entire thing, as ugly as it may be, and put it out there for public flogging. I would dare say that you will still be alive and that the only people that will criticize what you’ve done are the same people with two thousand ideas that remain twenty percent complete.
The other people that criticize you are the ones that are pulling for you. We should be ecstatic that we work in an industry that cares about giving back as much as ours does. Most industries are overly-competitive and would never help out their peers.
Being vulnerable means that you’ve shipped, and it also just happens to be the best way for us to learn. Show your scars and pull up your dress. We’re all rocking the same goods. We’re all scared but the people we admire have decided that their art is more important than their feelings.
We can get caught up in the technology without “seeing” our art objectively. We worry about Sass, Bootstrap, Backbone, Node, and Compass, or even worse, we take up valuable time learning them just enough to be on top of the industry. It’s not about the technology. Technology exists to make the creation of art easier. It’s not designed to be a constant distraction and deflector of real work getting done.
Musicians, artists, writers, all go about their art differently. They all use different tools, have different strategies, and deliver their work in different ways. “Different ways” means nothing. “Deliver” is all that matters. At the end of the day if you’re not delivering something you’ve got nothing out there.
Even if you’re doing it wrong, you’re still doing it. That alone sets you apart. Shipping is all that matters.
The post You’re Doing It All Wrong appeared first on Treehouse Blog.
]]>A touch screen that reads fingerprints could make the technology more useful.
Tabletop computers have not exactly taken the world by storm, as some predicted they would. While a few have appeared in shops, bars, and hotels, it’s not hard to understand why devices that until recently cost more than $8,000 have failed to gain wider adoption.
]]>Here at Vangel we are happy to highlight local institutions for their efforts in sustainability. For the fourth year in a row, The Princeton Review has named UMBC as one of the country’s most environmentally responsible colleges in their annual guide to green colleges.
UMBC has a sustainability club which is very active, apparent through their constant flow of content online. The UMBC sustainability group web page is a hub of information which includes news articles, videos, events and discussions. Although the discussion is not viewable unless you are a student, it is evident that this group is active by the amount of replies to each discussion. This group has created a real community of students, staff and faculty who care about sustainability at UMBC and work hard to keep improving.
The UMBC Sustainability group is active on social media. Throughout the week interesting articles and information about upcoming events is posted and commented on. In addition to the Facebook page, @SustainableUMBC is active on Twitter. Another Twitter account @UMBCRecycles, is also related to UMBC sustainability efforts.
UMBC has many groups and projects under way as part of their sustainability efforts. One of which is UMBC’s Biodiesel project whose mission is:
“. . . to make the University of Maryland, Baltimore County more sustainable by reusing the waste vegetable oil created by on-campus restaurants to produce biodiesel. The biodiesel will then be used to run the buses that are on-campus. In the future we plan on expanding our research into other forms of fuel, such as biofuels. When creating biodiesel you end up with glycerin byproduct. We plan on using the glycerin to create hand soap to be used at the University.”
Additionally, there is Project Greenthumb, an educational campaign on campus that teaches students, faculty and staff how to recycle appropriately.
UMBC Sustainability has hosted many events including an e-cycling event where students could correctly recycle their electronics, ECOFEST, UMBC’s Weeklong Earth Day Celebration and Recyclemania, a nationwide, eight-week long competition against other universities to cut back on waste and collect the most recyclables. In this year’s competition UMBC ranked 98/273 for Food Service Organics, 28/273 for corrugated cardboard and 11/273 for bottles and cans. Congrats, UMBC!
UMBC Sustainability is constantly working to integrate sustainability campus-wide. June 5th, the group hosted a workshop designed for faculty who wish to integrate topics of environmental sustainability into their courses.
Other UMBC Sustainability Facts
21 percent of the school’s energy comes from renewable resources.
80 percent of the cleaning products used on campus are Green Seal-Certified.
UMBC has a Dining Sustainability Commitment to minimize the impact on the environment with primary focus on REDUCTION. Their approach is to bring awareness and education and implement best practices for waste management, water conservation, energy efficiency, and pollution control.
UMBC keeps sustainable design strategies in mind when constructing new buildings.
The new Performing Arts and Humanities Building (PAHB) is still under construction, but in the design, UMBC takes the natural environment into consideration. UMBC believes that “Protecting health and protecting nature go hand in hand.”
The PAHB is an anticipated LEED Silver project: Leed-NC v2.2
The first phase of construction was completed and the building was opened Fall 2012. Phase II will be completed Fall 2014.
In addition to all of their other sustainability achievements, UMBC also practices Dual Stream Recycling. By separating paper, plastics and glass, the clean recycled paper can be sold for a profit to bring revenue back to UMBC, providing funds for transportation fees and to enhance the growing recycling program.
Thank you, UMBC for being an inspiration to your community as well as to other universities across the country and around the world! Keep it up!
For information about ongoing sustainability efforts at UMBC check out their website, like them on Facebook and follow them on Twitter.
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MS Defense
Computer Science and Electrical Engineering
Linked Data for Cybersecurity Vulnerability Descriptions
Arnav Joshi
9:00-11:00 Monday, 22 July 2013, 325b ITE
The Web is typically our first source of information about new software vulnerabilities, exploits and cyber-attacks. Information is found in semi-structured vulnerability databases as well as in text from security bulletins, news reports, cybersecurity blogs and Internet chat rooms. It can be useful to cybersecurity systems if there is a way to recognize and extract relevant information and represent it as easily shared and integrated semantic data. We describe such an automatic framework that generates and publishes a RDF linked data representation of cybersecurity concepts and vulnerability descriptions extracted from the National Vulnerability Database and other text sources. Entities, relations and concepts are represented using custom ontologies for the cybersecurity domain and also mapped to objects in the DBpedia knowledge base, producing a rich resource of machine-understandable linked data. The resulting cybersecurity linked data collection can be used for many purposes, including automating early vulnerability identification, mitigation and prevention efforts.
Committee: Professors Tim Finin (chair), Anupam Joshi and Tim Oates
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