Learning how to code again

While working on 'Happily Ever After', I found that the scale of the project requires better coding. I've temporarily stopped work on it and I'm going through some incredible resources that have helped my code immensely. In the last week, I've reviewed topics from polymorphism to multi-threading.

For Java, I'm using Bucky's free online videos over at http://www.thenewboston.com/
For actual coding practice, I'm using a site that gives you problems and allows you to code within the web site: http://codingbat.com

The information presented in these tutorials are a thousand times better than my college experience (though to be fair, we concentrated on Assembly, an almost machine language that's more difficult than object oriented languages). Even when I learned C# or Java in college, the information was presented in a terrible manner.

I've decided that someday, I'd like to start a nonprofit site that teaches kids to code through simple, short, and fun videos of the game mechanics found in old school NES / Super NES games.

Google Fusion Tables / Earth Test

1.) Use Google Fusion Tables and import your KML file as a new table (this table contains the boundaries of your shapes). I found this free program Shp2kml (http://www.zonums.com/shp2kml.html), which takes shapefiles and converts to Google Earth KML files.

2.) Use Google Fusion Tables and import your data file (the column that determines the 'intensity' - for this example I used a sample count)

3.) Merge the Tables (for my tables I used the ZIP codes as the common column)

4.) Google Fusion Tables > Visualize > Map

5.) 'Configure Styles' > Change your bucket values (so that 0 to 1 displays as this color, 1 to 10 displays as that color, etc.)

6.) If you want to share with others or display on the web site, load the table, click on the top right 'Share', and imbed the HTML

7.) I'm trying to figure out how to display the intensity map on Google Earth. When I transfer it, I lose the bucket values.

Edit: Choropleth and Thematic mapping! Those are the keywords I was looking for. Now time to scour the Internet for a plug-in for Google Earth! :)