Categories
Humor

The general idea behind VPNs

Unfortunately, VPNs don’t finish their tasks with a great song-and-dance scene.

Categories
Career Current Events Tampa Bay

St. Pete College offers free tech training for laid off/furloughed residents in Pinellas County

If you’re:

  • In the Tampa Bay area (Pinellas County in particular),
  • in technology or looking to get into it, and
  • your job was affected by the pandemic…

…you might be eligible for some very useful free training from St. Pete College’s Rapid Credentialing Scholarship program. It provides full-tuition scholarships to eligible students, and it does so in weeks as opposed to years.

The program offers training in a number of fields. Under technology, here’s the training offered:

  • Amazon AWS Cloud Computing + Solutions Architect Associate Certification

  • CIW Web Design Specialist Certification

  • CompTIA Cloud+ Certification Online

  • CompTIA A+ Certification Online (1001/1002 combined)

  • CompTIA Network+ Certification Online

  • UAS Safety Certification Level 1 (Drones)

You are eligible for the program if you meet all of the following requirements:

  • You’re unemployed, underemployed, furloughed, or expecting to be furloughed
  • You’re a resident of Pinellas County
  • You are a U.S. citizen or permanent resident
  • You are 18 or older
  • You have an Employ Florida account (which you can sign up for here)

To find out more…

Categories
Current Events Tampa Bay

Coders, Creatives, and Craft Beer’s next meetup happens next Tuesday!


We’re long overdue for a Coders, Creatives, and Craft Beer meetup, so let’s fix that — the next one happens on Tuesday!

Here are the details from the Meetup page:

Calling all techies, creatives, and creators!

This September it feels like we’re all going back to school, even those of us not in a classroom. We’re students of life, learning to navigate our new normal. We’re looking for ways to make it in an uncertain world. This opens up opportunities to learn.

Fire up your smartphone or computer and let’s discuss topics like:

  • What are you learning?
  • What do you want to learn?
  • What have you been doing to stay sane?
  • What projects are you starting or trying to finish?
  • What small thing could help you?

Let’s connect and look for ways to learn from and inspire each other during these crazy times.

Join us on Tuesday September 15th for an online Coders, Creatives, and Craft Beer. Bring your favorite beverage or food and let’s hang out.

Online meetup details will be posted.

The event details:

We’ll see you there!

 

Categories
Current Events Tampa Bay

What’s happening in the Tampa Bay tech/entrepreneur/nerd scene (Week of Monday, September 7, 2020)

Once again, here’s the weekly list of events for events for Tampa Bay techies, entrepreneurs, and nerds. Every week, on GlobalNerdy.com and on the mailing list, I scour the announcements for events that are interesting to or useful for those of you who are building the future here in “The Other Bay Area, on The Other West Coast”.

This list covers events from Monday, September 7 through Sunday, September 13, 2020.

I’ve opted to list only those events that I can confirm are happening online. I’m not yet listing in-person events, as we’re still in the middle of a pandemic in one of the hardest-hit states in one of the hardest-hit countries in the world. We’re also seeing the mandated return of students to schools, which will likely  exacerbate the situation.

Events — especially virtual, online ones — can pop up at the last minute. I add them to the list as I find out about them. Come back and check this article from time to time, as you might find a new listing that wasn’t there before!

Monday, September 7

Tuesday, September 8

Wednesday, September 9

Thursday, September 10

Friday, September 11

Saturday, September 12

Sunday, September 13

Do you have any events or announcements that you’d like to see on this list?

Let me know at joey@joeydevilla.com!

Join the mailing list!

If you’d like to get this list in your email inbox every week, enter your email address below. You’ll only be emailed once a week, and the email will contain this list, plus links to any interesting news, upcoming events, and tech articles.

Join the Tampa Bay Tech Events list and always be informed of what’s coming up in Tampa Bay!


Categories
Current Events Tampa Bay

Drop off your old laptop or iPad and help a Tampa Bay kid remotely go to school!

One of the side effects of COVID-19 is that it’s shown how wide the digital divide can be. While today’s tech makes distance learning possible (can you imagine what it would be like if the pandemic happened during the era of flip phones, 56K modems and Windows 98?), not every family can afford a personal computer, tablet, or even decent home broadband service. There’s a way for Tampa Bay techies to help, thanks to Tampa Bay WaVE, Think Big for Kids,  Boys & Girls Club of Tampa Bay and ECycle.

They’re holding a Drop Off event this week at the lobby of Tampa Bay WaVE’s office building, located at 500 East Kennedy Blvd. They’ll take your old laptop or iPad and get it to a local school-age child who otherwise wouldn’t be able to e-learn.

Right now, I have one laptop for each limb. That’s more than I can possibly use at any given time, so I’m taking the one pictured above (it’s the one I installed Peppermint Linux on, a few weeks back) to the Drop Off on Thursday. To me, it’s a spare Linux server that I can spin up for experimentation, but to a student, it could be a whole lot more.

If you’ve got a laptop or iPad to spare, please consider dropping it off at the WaVE tomorrow or Thursday, and help show the Tampa Bay tech spirit!

For more information about this program, contact Heather McMillian, Senior Operations Manager at  hmcmillan@tampabaywave.org.

Recommended reading

Categories
Current Events Tampa Bay

August episodes from Tampa Bay’s tech podcasts

I thought I’d try a new feature for the end of each month: A listing of the month’s episodes from Tampa Bay tech podcasts! Here are the ones I know about, listed from newest podcast on the block, to one that’s been around for years.

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!

Here are the episodes from August:

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.

Here are the episodes from August:

The 6 Figure Developer

At the time I’m writing this, The 6 Figure Developer — hosted by John Callway, Clayton Hunt, and Jon Ash — has posted 158 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 episodes from August:

  • Episode 158 – Project Tye with Glenn Condron
    Glenn is a Program Manager on the Application Platform team at Microsoft, where he spends most of his time working on the ASP.NET 5 core runtime. Before joining Microsoft Glenn was a developer in Australia where he worked on software for various government departments.
  • Episode 157 – BlazorCMS & SpeakerMeet
    This week we’re going to talk about some of our personal projects. I have been working on a CMS in Blazor and John has a site for Technology Speakers.
  • Episode 156 – Data Engineer Role with Dwight Goins
    Dwight is an industry luminary focused on Artificial Intelligence, Computer Vision, Machine Learning, Augmented and Mixed Reality, IOT, and Emerging User Experiences. He is the Chief Algorithm Officer of Thoth Speed Engineers, Senior Adviser to NEDD Tech Inc. as well as an Application Delivery Manager at JM Family Enterprises.
  • Episode 155 – Burnout & Change Mgmt with Rob Bogue
    Rob is a speaker, author, and consultant. As owner of Thor Projects, a premiere consulting organization in Indianapolis (Indiana), he helps clients make the complicated simple.

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 271 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.

Here are the episodes from August:

  • 271: Getting Into Tech & Being a Developer Advocate with Sam Julien
    In this episode, we get to talk with Sam Julien, Sr. Developer Advocate Engineer at Auth0. We discuss what it’s like to get into the technology industry and dive into Sam’s personal journey. We also explore what it’s like being a developer advocate in today’s remote world.
  • 270: A Conversation About Design with Pablo Stanley
    In this episode, we get to speak with Design Leader, YouTuber, and Co-founder & CEO at Blush Pablo Stanley. We discuss the fundamentals of design thinking, and how to improve your craft. We also talk about Blush, and how it allows you to customize every piece of an illustration to create your own compositions.

 

Categories
Programming

“My code isn’t working” is a great problems-and-solutions flowchart for Python programmers

Tap to view at full size.

Dr. Martin Jones, the author behind the book and site Python for Biologists, has come up with a chart to help Python programmers when their code doesn’t work and they can’t figure out why.

He writes:

A few times a year, I have the job of teaching a bunch of people who have never written code before how to program from scratch. The nature of programming being what it is, the same error crop up every time in a very predictable pattern. I usually encourage my students to go through a step-by-step troubleshooting process when trying to fix misbehaving code, in which we go through these common errors one by one and see if they could be causing the problem. Today, I decided to finally write this troubleshooting process down and turn it into a flowchart in non-threatening colours.

Behold, the “my code isn’t working” step-by-step troubleshooting guide! Follow the arrows to find the likely cause of your problem – if the first thing you reach doesn’t work, then back up and try again.

It’s intended for programmers who are new to Python, but even experienced Pythonistas sometimes get distracted and stuck on simple things. I’m keeping a copy handy.

You can tap on the image above to view it at full size, and there’s also a printable PDF version as well.

[ Thanks to my UC Baseline classmate Daniel Jimenez for the find! ]