#archive

As part of my current practicum project at CM-SV, I was asked to put together a prototype that demonstrates the capabilities of Google’s Cloud To Device Messaging (C2DM) service, or push notifications. What follows was the result: https://github.com/patrickbaumann/c2dmprototype c2dmprototype consists of two applications: a relatively vanilla Django server application (the Cloud part of C2DM) and an Android 2.2 application (the device part of C2DM). The demo aims to demonstrate the basic pieces of a “push to talk” application by allowing a user to send audio messages to devices by pushing them instead of requiring the battery-limited phone to poll the server. [Read More]

I wanted a way to treat a Ruby file as both an importable library or a script. The best solution I could find was as follows: if __FILE__ == $0 #script / run as self code goes here end If the file is called directly a la ruby ./library.rb, the code within that if block will be executed. If included, FILE, the file that this code exists in will not match $0, the file being executed and the code in that block will not be executed. [Read More]

While parsing several variables that could be strings or arrays of strings, I found myself doing too much type checking and my code was getting ugly. I wished there was a way to execute each on types that weren’t containers.

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I recently took the Graduate Record Examinations (GRE) General Test as part of the application process to get into a technical masters program. I had only a few weeks to prepare for it and was given advice of all kinds from many sources, some of it helpful, some of it not. Below is a list I’ve compiled of the advice that was helpful along with some of my own: Find out what score you should be shooting for By all means, reach for the sky and try to get the best score you can, but within reason. [Read More]

I’m an Engineer. I spent eight years of my life trying to become one. Why so long? I would like to say that I consider four of those years to be my High School years but that would be a lie. High School for me was less about my future than it was about being liked and getting good enough grades to avoid being lectured by parents and teachers. I was in advanced classes and did decent, but I would not have considered myself a good student. [Read More]

Hello and welcome to my blog at “PatrickBaumann.com,” a personal blog1about career and life written from the perspective of an engineer recently out of college. I am a graduate from a moderately-sized state university in central Minnesota as well as a new resident in the great state of California (budgets be damned, this place is still a joy to live). Prior to graduating with a degree in Computer Engineering, I interned with and was eventually hired full-time by The Boeing Company in Anaheim, CA. [Read More]