It has been around 3 months since I have started on my journey in learning Java through the e-book, ThinkJava (ver 5.1.2).
Though the questions are fun and sometimes challenging, it also means that I have experienced my frustrations in testing my codes and running into trouble with them, without knowing what is wrong, or how to do certain things.
Whenever I felt that I need some guidance, I would turn to Google. However, solutions for this e-book seemed to be quite hard to find. Some of the solutions can be found from a Google Code Archive I found off Google, but the solutions are not that well-organized until I could easily maneuver the site to find the right solutions.
Therefore, in lieu of this gap of information on the web (or my lack of ability to search through the web), I have decided to create a new blog to archive my solutions!
It's both for me to keep track of my progress, and for those who are in the same predicament as me, lost and wandering in the sea of Java codes.
And so...
Here it is! ThinkJava Solutions
It can be access through the horizontal bar in this blog also.
Showing posts with label java. Show all posts
Showing posts with label java. Show all posts
Monday, February 8, 2016
Sunday, November 8, 2015
Progress Update
It's been more than a week since my last post.
I figured I should sit my butt down in front of the computer to properly chart out my progress instead of scrolling through the never-ending pages of Facebook, or playing games on Steam, or viewing random Youtube videos, or ... seriously, there are tons of things that are more attention-grabbing and have short term gratification than typing out this post.
But still, in order to live my life, I should evaluate myself more often through blogging.
First of all, I have been quite satisfied with myself on being consistent with improving my physical well-being.
For the past 12 days ever since I have recovered from my recent cold, I have exercised for 9 days, and each time is around 30 to 45 min. Hurray~
It hasn't been easy for me to cater time to exercise; to put on my running shoes, get out of the house, and pant like a dog in view of others.
I would have to say the greatest motivation for me so far is the impending Spartan Race on 15 Nov.
I'm left with 1 more week to prep myself so I wouldn't die from running through all the obstacles.
Previously I was quite into working out at home using the Sworkit Lite mobile app due to the haze which restricts me to indoor activities.
However, the recent weather seemed to have cleared up the foggy sky!
Perhaps it is due to the increased in efforts (or the acceptance of efforts) to extinguish the fire.
Or, it could just be the wind.
No matter what, I'm grateful for the good weather to get my body sweating outdoors!
I felt that it is important for me to get my body conditioned to running some distance instead of just staying indoors and doing static exercises.
I have tried out 2 methods so far:
1) Running 2 km with a 5 kg body weight + arm strengthening exercises
I did this twice, and decided to drop this method.
Although carrying an extra 5 kg load sounds pretty mild, the weight pulled down my speed quite significantly.
It seemed to be good training.
But it caused my back to hurt a bit at the end of the 2 km run.
I figured that the 5 kg load is putting too much burden on my body to train efficiently.
So after 2 tries of this, I decided to give up on running with the 5 kg load.
I felt that the body weight vest would be utilized better when I'm doing static exercises at home.
2) (400m + 10 burpees) * 6
I came up with this routine to train my body in running short distances and also the prepare myself for the possible burpees that I would be doing during the Spartan race.
So far, this routine has been a good workout (i.e. I felt like dying, but not dead yet).
I would probably continue this for the week coming up to the race.
I don't think all these physical training is sufficient to prep myself well for the race.
But it's probably near the limits to what my body can take given the time constraints.
As for my self-guided Java Learning journey, it has been rather sporadic.
It was hard to build a routine of reading and practicing the materials taught in the book, most of the weekday nights I'm quite exhausted from work and exercise.
I did most of my learning on the train if I managed to find a seat while I'm travelling to or from work.
There are 16 Chapters in total, and I'm only at Chapter 3.
It's getting more sophisticated, but it's also getting more interesting =p
The experience of writing codes is rather similar to answering Mathematics problem sums.
Both are finding logical solutions to a problem, and there are also multiple ways of approaching the problem.
Sometimes, I also have to try certain things to see whether a certain approach would work.
Lots of trial and errors.
Feels like learning Mathematics all over again! Wee~!
In starting a habit of reading, I tried to force myself to read a book while I was waiting for dearest to get ready to chat at night.
I only managed to do it for 2 nights so far. haha..
Ya, reading is definitely not my thing.
Therefore, in order to keep to it, I have reduced my daily aim from 15min to 10min.
Hope that helps! >_<
I haven't been doing much micro time management.
That means I'm just doing all these activities on an ad-hoc basis without much planning before hand.
I probably should start doing more planning to ensure that these habits will follow through even when I'm hard-pressed for time.
On a side note, blogging is also become cumbersome because of the time I have to invest to writing this kind of long post (because I could have used the time to play games and watch Youtube videos).
Since it's a way of keeping track of my progress, I should probably have a schedule for writing on my blog.
Therefore, I have decided to publish at least two blog posts per week; one on Wednesday, and one on the weekends (either Sat or Sun).
I also want to list down some of the topics that I would like to blog on in future so that I can remember them.
I will try to figure out how to put this list on the blog.
So far, so good.
Living my life.
I figured I should sit my butt down in front of the computer to properly chart out my progress instead of scrolling through the never-ending pages of Facebook, or playing games on Steam, or viewing random Youtube videos, or ... seriously, there are tons of things that are more attention-grabbing and have short term gratification than typing out this post.
But still, in order to live my life, I should evaluate myself more often through blogging.
First of all, I have been quite satisfied with myself on being consistent with improving my physical well-being.
For the past 12 days ever since I have recovered from my recent cold, I have exercised for 9 days, and each time is around 30 to 45 min. Hurray~
It hasn't been easy for me to cater time to exercise; to put on my running shoes, get out of the house, and pant like a dog in view of others.
I would have to say the greatest motivation for me so far is the impending Spartan Race on 15 Nov.
I'm left with 1 more week to prep myself so I wouldn't die from running through all the obstacles.
Previously I was quite into working out at home using the Sworkit Lite mobile app due to the haze which restricts me to indoor activities.
However, the recent weather seemed to have cleared up the foggy sky!
Perhaps it is due to the increased in efforts (or the acceptance of efforts) to extinguish the fire.
Or, it could just be the wind.
No matter what, I'm grateful for the good weather to get my body sweating outdoors!
I felt that it is important for me to get my body conditioned to running some distance instead of just staying indoors and doing static exercises.
I have tried out 2 methods so far:
1) Running 2 km with a 5 kg body weight + arm strengthening exercises
I did this twice, and decided to drop this method.
Although carrying an extra 5 kg load sounds pretty mild, the weight pulled down my speed quite significantly.
It seemed to be good training.
But it caused my back to hurt a bit at the end of the 2 km run.
I figured that the 5 kg load is putting too much burden on my body to train efficiently.
So after 2 tries of this, I decided to give up on running with the 5 kg load.
I felt that the body weight vest would be utilized better when I'm doing static exercises at home.
2) (400m + 10 burpees) * 6
I came up with this routine to train my body in running short distances and also the prepare myself for the possible burpees that I would be doing during the Spartan race.
So far, this routine has been a good workout (i.e. I felt like dying, but not dead yet).
I would probably continue this for the week coming up to the race.
I don't think all these physical training is sufficient to prep myself well for the race.
But it's probably near the limits to what my body can take given the time constraints.
As for my self-guided Java Learning journey, it has been rather sporadic.
It was hard to build a routine of reading and practicing the materials taught in the book, most of the weekday nights I'm quite exhausted from work and exercise.
I did most of my learning on the train if I managed to find a seat while I'm travelling to or from work.
There are 16 Chapters in total, and I'm only at Chapter 3.
It's getting more sophisticated, but it's also getting more interesting =p
The experience of writing codes is rather similar to answering Mathematics problem sums.
Both are finding logical solutions to a problem, and there are also multiple ways of approaching the problem.
Sometimes, I also have to try certain things to see whether a certain approach would work.
Lots of trial and errors.
Feels like learning Mathematics all over again! Wee~!
In starting a habit of reading, I tried to force myself to read a book while I was waiting for dearest to get ready to chat at night.
I only managed to do it for 2 nights so far. haha..
Ya, reading is definitely not my thing.
Therefore, in order to keep to it, I have reduced my daily aim from 15min to 10min.
Hope that helps! >_<
I haven't been doing much micro time management.
That means I'm just doing all these activities on an ad-hoc basis without much planning before hand.
I probably should start doing more planning to ensure that these habits will follow through even when I'm hard-pressed for time.
On a side note, blogging is also become cumbersome because of the time I have to invest to writing this kind of long post (because I could have used the time to play games and watch Youtube videos).
Since it's a way of keeping track of my progress, I should probably have a schedule for writing on my blog.
Therefore, I have decided to publish at least two blog posts per week; one on Wednesday, and one on the weekends (either Sat or Sun).
I also want to list down some of the topics that I would like to blog on in future so that I can remember them.
I will try to figure out how to put this list on the blog.
So far, so good.
Living my life.
Wednesday, October 28, 2015
Detailed time management
In order to better manage my time, I have decided to schedule in the habits that I want to build daily in my Google calendar (can be seen at the bottom of the blog).
To better visualize the calendar in terms of my progress in the 5 different aspects of changes, I have decided to label each of them in the following colours:
And for planned activities, or activities that I missed, it will be shown in the calendar, but will not be highlighted. So the more un-highlighted activities, the more I have procrastinated on doing them. haha.. Good reminder to tell me I'm not doing something that I'm supposed to. =p
In addition to exercise and Java learning, I have also scheduled in time for reading!
On a side note on my journey to learning Java, I realized that in the notes of the MIT sources materials and the book "Think Java" which the materials closely followed, there wasn't any instructions on how to execute the Java codes using the Java Development Kit or the Eclipse (or am I supposed to use something else?). So I have typed the codes inside the notepad++ (a code editor which I have downloaded earlier for learning Python, of which I have prematurely given up halfway previously), and now I have no idea how to run the codes. -_-" Guess I will go through some spoon-feeding over at the SoloLearn website.
To better visualize the calendar in terms of my progress in the 5 different aspects of changes, I have decided to label each of them in the following colours:
Physical Well-being
Mental Well-being
Finance
Aspirations
Lifestyle
And for planned activities, or activities that I missed, it will be shown in the calendar, but will not be highlighted. So the more un-highlighted activities, the more I have procrastinated on doing them. haha.. Good reminder to tell me I'm not doing something that I'm supposed to. =p
In addition to exercise and Java learning, I have also scheduled in time for reading!
On a side note on my journey to learning Java, I realized that in the notes of the MIT sources materials and the book "Think Java" which the materials closely followed, there wasn't any instructions on how to execute the Java codes using the Java Development Kit or the Eclipse (or am I supposed to use something else?). So I have typed the codes inside the notepad++ (a code editor which I have downloaded earlier for learning Python, of which I have prematurely given up halfway previously), and now I have no idea how to run the codes. -_-" Guess I will go through some spoon-feeding over at the SoloLearn website.
Tuesday, October 20, 2015
Project Aspiration: Java Apprentice
As I am still recovering from my cold, so I can't really exercise.
I decided to get started on another thing that I have been putting off.
For a while now, I have been generating ideas that could either be helpful to the society (or me), or they could be a secondary source of income. I logged down all these ideas in a private notebook and really hope to work on some of them one day. The main challenge is that these ideas require programming skills to materialize, and I have almost zero experience in it. I could hire a programmer to do the job for me, but how fun can that be? plus I don't really have a lot of money to hire them, especially knowing that it's not certain that these ideas would eventually have a ROI. So, I decided to just learn it myself, and this became a part of my aspiration.
The first step to being an app developer is to learn programming.
But what programming language should I learn?
This was something that bugged me when I started to toy with the idea of developing app.
However, a quick search on Google could easily solve the problem.
 |
| Link |
According to the above flow chart, the programming language for me to start on is ... Java!
There's also an interesting analogy of the programming languages to the characters in Lord of The Rings. Apparently, I'm going to be Gandalf.
I have saved a few websites to learning Java previously.
But I think I will start with a more conventional course from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
The course is called, "Introduction to Programming in Java".
The link to the course can be found here.
It feels like I would having a proper learning structure to form a strong foundation if I start from here.
I didn't have the time to start on any of the materials yet, but I will.
In case I start to procrastinate again... Let me set a target.
By the end of this week: At least 4 hours.
By the way, I have added a habit lists for daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly to the side of the blog, and also included a habit tracking Google calendar at the bottom of the blog.
Let's hope these will keep me on track.
Time to rest for the night and hope the cold will go away~
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