topic Re: Nugget schedule in BreakPoint

Keeping the Nuggets cooking, or hearding cats 101....

Ben — Fri, 19 Jan 2007 22:47:52 GMT

Anyone else interested in joining me to carry on the nuggets?

Darren did a great job starting the tradition, and it will be missed by the community.

I have a nugget i can share to start things rolling.

If we could get ten of us to commit to 5 nuggets a year, we could fil the gap.

We are just looking for a unique "topic for discussion" each week. We have already shown that we can "cook up a tasty treat" given an arbitrary "ingredient" (yeah I am pushing the food analogy a bit far ).

So.....

Are you in to help?

Should we just let the nuggets idea shrivel up?

If Y'all are game how can we work-out a schedule?

Any thouhgts?

Ben

PS: Darren, you could do a cameo appearance every now and then if you'd like.

Message Edited by Ben on 01-19-2007 04:52 PM

Re: Keeping the Nuggets cooking, or hearding cats 101....

JDave — Fri, 19 Jan 2007 23:46:57 GMT

I agree that it must be carried on. The withdrawal would be too much to go cold turkey, as many have stated.

One idea I had if you are doing a rotational schedule is to have some monthly theme. So different people could contribute their nugget about customizing controls or time-saving tips, etc.

I hope to see many more tasty nuggets from you gurus.

JDave

Re: Keeping the Nuggets cooking, or hearding cats 101....

johnsold — Sat, 20 Jan 2007 19:41:12 GMT

Ben,

I think this is a good idea. I know it is difficult to come up with ideas on a schedule over an extended period of time. Darren has provided a great service to the community and we would honor him by continuing the column.

If there are those who would like to contribute, but are afraid to commit for 5 nuggets, even a single contribution may be of value. It would be a bit more work for the "Coordinator," but may be worth it in terms of value to the community.

I will commit to helping by coming up with >= five nuggets over the next year. (Now I have to get to work and think of something).

Lynn

Re: Keeping the Nuggets cooking, or hearding cats 101....

altenbach — Sat, 20 Jan 2007 22:15:10 GMT

The nice thing about Darren's nuggets was the fact that they were exceptionally good in a LabVIEW sense but also very well written. One important thing that needs to be addressed is how can we keep the standards very high. We don't want to flood the board with trivial nuggets of fools gold. ("Hey, I just discovered local variables, see how I can now eliminate most wires!" :))

Should we just collect a few names of people that commit for a certain number of nuggets as per Ben's suggestion?
Should we have a comittee that accepts nugget suggestions from anyone, then invites the submitters of the top entries to write a nugget?
We could have "Champions Nuggets" written by LabVIEW champions who could also incorporate public sugggestions (giving proper credit to the source, of course).

... just some ideas!

Re: Keeping the Nuggets cooking, or hearding cats 101....

tst — Sun, 21 Jan 2007 15:53:46 GMT

I could also try to help and I volunteer to do the first one, since I got an idea over at the LAVA forums, and I would probably forget it by next week.

I agree that we need some sort of QA system, or at the very least a coordination system.

Re: Keeping the Nuggets cooking, or hearding cats 101....

Ben — Sun, 21 Jan 2007 17:09:45 GMT

Thanks for your offers of help!

We'll let tst get us cooking with the idea from LAVA for the week starting 22-Jan-2007.

I pencil myself in for the week of 29-Jan-2007.

Until we get more organized we can make due with just posting to this thread to let others know when you will be posting a nugget.

As far as QA is concerned...

That will become an issue if we have more nuggets than we can handle.

Until then, I will be happy with filling the gap with whatever support we can get.

Thank you!

Ben

Pssst... Christian is just 2 postings short of Zealousness!

Message Edited by Ben on 01-21-2007 11:12 AM

Re: Keeping the Nuggets cooking, or hearding cats 101....

tst — Sun, 21 Jan 2007 18:13:43 GMT

@Ben wrote:

Pssst... Christian is just 2 postings short of Zealousness!

Yeah, I noticed that too. I was thinking that I could concede and let him use his 5000th post for the first-ever Community Nugget™, but he would need one post to acknowledge it and that would mean he won't be able to post for a whole day.

Message Edited by tst on 01-21-2007 08:15 PM

Re: Keeping the Nuggets cooking, or hearding cats 101....

Darren — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 04:58:21 GMT

Hmm, apparently I didn't quite grasp the effect my retirement from nugget-writing would have on the LabVIEW community. You guys go ahead with whatever plans you make for writing your own nuggets, but as you can see here, my retirement lasted all of a week. Yes, the nuggets will still be (occasionally) cooking...

-D

Re: Keeping the Nuggets cooking, or hearding cats 101....

Ben — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 13:45:30 GMT

Well for my part only...

I was willing to fill the gap but I do not intend to compete (sp?).

I'd hate to see the effort I put into my nugget go to waste though. I'll through some text together to go with the example I developed and send it your way.

Thanks you for reconcidering Darren!

bEN

Re: Keeping the Nuggets cooking, or hearding cats 101....

Ben — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 15:28:15 GMT

Very nice start tst!

Unless I hear otherwise I am still planning to do one next week 29-Jan-2007.

I hope it will illustrate that the high quality shown by Darren and tst's Nuggets is NOT required.

Ben

Re: Keeping the Nuggets cooking, or hearding cats 101....

tst — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 07:40:51 GMT

Here's a little thought I had.

We want to keep these nuggets on a high level. This requires talent, hard work or both, but most people (including me) are not natural-born poets. You can get your text (as well your code) to be much better after a review.

So my tip for all future nugget writers - prepare your nugget in advance.

Write it a week or two before you plan on posting it. You don't have to write it all in one go. You can do it just a couple of minutes at a time over a period of time. After you write it, let it sit for a few days without touching it. Then, come back to it and see if you can improve it.

Also, if relevant, prepare images to go with your nuggets. Remember, an image is worth a 1000 words. Try to have clean images (without clutter) which will only convey the point you are trying to make. Anything that doesn't help convey that point will distract readers.

If you want, you can even use the forum editor to see how your nugget will look. When you embed images (using the button), you can provide a URL of a file on your hard drive. You will then see the image, since it already exists at the URL you provided. You can also preview the post to see exactly what it looks like. Just make sure to really upload the images when you are posting the actual nugget.

And one last tip - if you're uploading a VI (although I believe most nuggets should be explainable through text and images only) save it to the earliest possible version. If necessary, try contacting someone with earlier versions privately so that they can save it for you.

And, above all, ~~live long and prosper~~ HAVE FUN doing it.

Re: Keeping the Nuggets cooking, or hearding cats 101....

tst — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 22:46:31 GMT

If nobody else wants to, I can do this week as well.

Anybody?

Re: Keeping the Nuggets cooking, or hearding cats 101....

Ben — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 13:40:47 GMT

Hi tst,

I would not mind.

Re:the frequency of Nuggets

The thought occurred to me that the Nuggets may benifit from some irregularity. Studies have shown that addiction grows as a result if intermitant possitive feedback. in the case of Nuggets, this would mean that the lack of a Nugget every now and then could actually increase the Nugget readership. Of course this assumes the Nuggets miantain their quality.

So...

I am going to collect my Nugget ideas and scatter them about on an infrequent basis.

If you decide to be the Nuggeteer for 5-Feb-2007, you will not be stepping on my feet.

Thank you for your help tst!

Ben

Re: Keeping the Nuggets cooking, or hearding cats 101....

Ben — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 13:55:58 GMT

For anyone looking for Nugget foder, you may want to review the "Interesting Posts" thread.

http://forums.ni.com/ni/board/message?board.id=BreakPoint&message.id=511&jump=true

There you will find a lot of ideas there waiting to be "cooked up".

Ben

Re: Keeping the Nuggets cooking, or hearding cats 101....

altenbach — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 18:38:00 GMT

Seems we did not get a nugget this week, maybe we can do an official sign-up list here.

Let's try this: I have created a public google calender to be used for nugget scheduling.

The LabVIEW Nugget Schedule

Here you can see what Mondays are still open. Anyone who wants to contribute, please post in this thread and I will add it to the calender. I am also looking for some volunteers (official title: Nugget Schedule Moderator :)) that want edit access to the calender so we can share the workload. 😉

If you want to contribute a nugget, please post:

Forum user name (well, duhh, I could get that also from the post panel ;))
Desired date (Modays only):
Topic (optional):
Target audience: Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced.

Let's see volunteers! 😄

Re: Keeping the Nuggets cooking, or hearding cats 101....

tst — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 21:52:47 GMT

How about leading by example?

I do have another nugget (probably for intermediate and advanced), but I will need to do some work before it will be ready. Maybe later this week. I can't gurantee delivery for next monday, but even if you pen me in, I don't think this has to be a super-strict schedule.

As another addition, I suggest that anyone writing a nugget will add this at the end:

For a list of past nuggets, see here.
If you want to write a nugget yourself, see here.

It will probably also be well if we formulated a proper text with advice on how to approach this (write and wait, use images, etc.) and place it somewhere where it will stand out when we link to it.

Re: Keeping the Nuggets cooking, or hearding cats 101....

altenbach — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 21:59:33 GMT

@tst wrote:
How about leading by example?

OK, I penciled myself in for next Monday. 😄

Re: Keeping the Nuggets cooking, or hearding cats 101....

Ben — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 23:24:11 GMT

I have a half dozen cooking and have not made up my mind on what I want to do first. Once I make up my mind I'll get around to writting it. Until then I do not want to commit to anything.

Oh what the he#$ !

Pencil me in for the first Monday in March.

Ben

I reserve the right to pull out at the last minute for no good reason.

Message Edited by Ben on 02-13-2007 05:24 PM

Re: Keeping the Nuggets cooking, or hearding cats 101....

altenbach — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 23:27:45 GMT

@Ben wrote:
I reserve the right to pull out at the last minute for no good reason.

Ben, I can give you edit access to the calender so you can delete you entries even without my permission. 😄

Re: Keeping the Nuggets cooking, or hearding cats 101....

Ben — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 16:04:50 GMT

Hi Christian,

Please e-mail me the details on how to edit the calendar.

Ben