When I was younger I found it really interesting you could piece together ‘tags’ to make web pages. More recently, I’ve found it fascinating how the guys at Cyanogenmod and ModaCo can hack through source code for phones. They improve not only the speed but also the functionality of android phones sometimes far beyond where the original manufacturer gave up. My example is my old HTC Magic which was running Android 2.1 reasonably well thanks to Cyanogen and team but HTC left me high and dry on Android 1.6!

So the point is, I’d love to be able to do that too. I told myself while I was in Canada I would learn Java but never got round to it (busy life!). Since then I’ve been spending my time filling in job applications…

Lifehacker brought my attention to Codecademy, an interactive teach-yourself site currently focused on javascript, so I decided to give it a bash. Within a few minutes I was hooked and completed the whole thing in one sitting. Not terribly long but it put wood on the fire. I decided to do something with what I learnt and the result is below.

I just hope that Codecademy update with more detailed lessons in more languages in the near future.