Repetitive tasks are boring. Let’s face it; if you don’t have to sit in front of  a compute, click a link and type something in to a field, why do it? Computers are amazing tools that are capable of doing all sorts of boring tasks if we just knew how to setup the task. Although there are many different ways to do this, today we are going to focus on the Python programming language.

Why Python?

There are a multitude of programming languages out there. I’ve personally programmed at least a little bit in the following languages: BASIC, Fortran, Visual Basic, C/C++, JavaScript, Perl, PHP, Pascal, SQL, and Python. According to CodingDojo.com and Tiobe.com, Python is at #5 for the most in-demand programming languages in 2016. Topping the list are languages like Java and C# but Python is ranked pretty high. And not just on these two sites; if you do a search for the most popular or in-demand programming languages, chances are really good that you will see Python in the top 10 if not in the top 5.

If you are going to learn a new skill and spend the time to get pretty good at it, it would be nice if that skill was fun, helpful, or valuable in some way. Sure, underwater basket weaving may be challenging, but is it really valuable? Not to me. [Read more…]

Welcome back to my journey to being 1st on Google.  This is the final update for my attempt to rank this site first on Google for my name, Alan Reeves.  If you missed any of the posts, you can find the first one here and last week’s here (126).

As of last week, 6/22/14, this site hit #1.  It has been a very, very long journey, ranging from #91 all the way to the top.  So, let’s take a look at the journey itself, starting with Google.

There are 24 sites that hit the top 5.  Some hit just once (like Triberr) with the top site showing up at 152 times (BlueCapra).  Here is a nice pie graph that shows up the relative number of occurrences for these results:

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Welcome back to my journey to being 1st on Google. I hope everyone had a great Father’s Day.  If you did not get a chance yesterday to tell your dad how much you appreciated him, take time to do that today.  Some people no longer have that option.

This is the 125th update for my attempt to rank first for my name, Alan Reeves.  If you missed any of the posts, you can find the first one here and last week’s here (124).   Below are the results as of Sunday, 6-15-14 (click here to do your own search for Alan Reeves on Google):

• #1 – Book Worm Laser & Design on Pinterest (no change from last week at #1)
• #4 – Alan Reeves on Vimeo – laser engraving videos (down 1 spot from last week at #3)
• #5 – Alan Reeves on Dailymotion (down 1 spot from last week at #4)
• #13 – Alan Reeves on Twitter (up 1 spot from last week at #14)
• #17 – About me on this site, BlueCapra (up 18 spots from last week at #35)

This week I’m at #1 on Google.  Overall, my top 5 results increased 17 spots with 4 of the top 5 results occurring in the first 25 places.  As a whole, I showed up 11 times in the top 100 search results. [Read more…]

Welcome back to my journey to being 1st on Google. This is the 124th update for my attempt to rank first for my name, Alan Reeves.  If you missed any of the posts, you can find the first one here and last week’s here (123).   Below are the results as of Sunday, 6-8-14 (click here to do your own search for Alan Reeves on Google):

• #1 – Book Worm Laser & Design on Pinterest (no change from last week at #1)
• #3 – Alan Reeves on Vimeo – laser engraving videos (down 1 spot from last week at #2)
• #4 – Alan Reeves on Dailymotion (no change from last week at #4)
• #14 – This site, BlueCapra.com (up 6 spots from last week at #20)
• #35 – Alan Reeves on Disqus (up 1 spot from last week at #36)

This week I’m at #1 on Google.  Overall, my top 5 results increased 6 spots with 4 of the top 5 results occurring in the first 25 places.  As a whole, I showed up 10 times in the top 100 search results. [Read more…]