Just a few weeks ago I resigned from my position at Wharton Computing. I'll be moving on to work with my friend Steve Rittler, at his company CounterMarch Systems. I am eternally grateful for the friendships forged and experiences gained during my time at Wharton, but all good things must come to an end.
The upshot is that since I will be working from home full time I will have back the 3 hours of each day that I previously spent commuting; which means I'll be able to spend more time with my family, and one thing in particular that I'm excited about: We'll all be able to eat breakfast together. It also means that I'll have no excuse not to join the gym down the street from my house and get working on Goal #6.
I can't help but be excited for my new job. Working from home, for a small company, with one of your best friends -- does it get any better than that? We'll just have to see.
On a related note: If you're in the Philly area (or willing to relocate, but telecommuting is not an option), The Learning Lab (my former team) is looking for a hot shot web developer to be my replacement.
Posted in
Jobs |
Meta
• 4 Responses
1 day ago
Today I finally figured out how to stop one of the most annoying things about my phone from continuing to happen, so I thought I'd share it.
That annoying thing was: When I would disconnect my charger, the screen brightness would dim far below what I would expect. I wouldn't mind a little bit of dimming, but I'm talking about an almost unusable brightness level indoors, and if I were to go outside it might as well be off. Unacceptable!
I spend a lot of time tweaking and customizing my phone to conserve battery and to predict the type of state I want it in before I want it there. For example, I use Setting Profiles to have scheduled events like:
- When at work (identified by GPS and time of day), turn off all sounds and instead use vibrate. Nobody needs to hear my sweet Zelda text message sound.
- Overnight, disable all sounds and vibration EXCEPT for phone calls and the alarm clock, and set the ringer volume to something that's not going to give me a heart attack. If I do get a phone call at night, no matter who it's from, chances are it's an emergency; so I want that call. But I don't need to know that my friends are up at 3am playing Words With Friends and it's my turn.
Those are just a couple of examples. I have tons of these types of rules setup; including brightness changes. So the last thing I want is some stupid OS setting messing with my brightness. I tried using the auto-brightness feature but found it just wasn't bright enough for me in most situations.
The solution to my problem, as it turns out, was to disable the system battery profile "Maximum Battery Saver". I guess it makes sense that using the MBS profile would dim the screen when unplugged, but given all of the rest of my customizations it obviously wasn't working for me. So instead, I've switched to the "Nighttime Saver" mode, and the brightness issue is no more.
Viva Android!
Posted in
Android
• No Responses Yet
2 days ago
I've been fortunate enough to be invited back to speak at cf.Objective() again this year. I am honored, so thank you to Bob and the rest of the steering committee!
This year I will be presenting Hidden Gems in Browser Tools, in which I will share with you a collection of tips to help you be more productive using Firebug, Chrome Developer Tools, and the IE Developer Toolbar. In this brave new world JavaScript is king, and anyone who refuses to serve him will be sentenced to the stockades.
Ok so that's a bit overdramatic, but there is a nugget of truth there: JavaScript is the future of web programming. We would all be better served to hone our skills not only writing, but also debugging JavaScript issues, and sadly, yes, that means in Internet Explorer too.
Posted in
JavaScript |
Speaking
• 3 Responses
11 days ago
I have taken the last few years off from posting my goals, but I don't see any reason not to start up again. I'm not really one for resolutions, mostly because of their binary nature: either you succeed or you fail. Life is rarely like that. Goals are more my style: even if you don't get to 100% of your goal, you can still get 96% there, and that's something!
Since I didn't make official goals for 2011, here's a quick list of things I did this year that I'm pleased with:
- My second son, Ethan, was born in January, and in the last few weeks he's been starting to walk!
- I really started taking reading seriously. I read 23.333 books in 2011 (My goal was 24, and I'm still finishing up the last one). Getting a Kindle definitely helped with this.
- I released 4 updates to my various Mango Blog plugins.
- I presented on the CFMeetup (online) and at CF.Objective()
- I really started taking Git seriously, and it has been a boon of productivity. I'll never go back to SVN if I don't have to!
- I released my first near-native mobile app, The Squeeze, for BlackBerry Playbook. (I've since given up on the platform, but we still use our Playbook, because it's the best video camera we have.)
- I upgraded from a 13" Macbook to a 15" Macbook Pro. Buying used is definitely a good way to save money, but there are some pitfalls.
- I wrote an article for the Adobe Developer Center for Flex 3 developers who need to update their knowledge to Flex 4/4.5.
- Compadre Steve Rittler and I created, organized, and ran Philly Merge, a one day regional conference (Philadelphia) "For Entrepreneur-Developers and Developer-Entrepreneurs".
- I fell in love with TDD all over again when I realized how necessary it is to work on fragile setups, like those I was creating with ColdFusion's ORM.
- I participated in the How I Got Started in ColdFusion meme.
- I finally figured out freaking SPF records in DNS. Geez.
- While I haven't yet released Taffy 1.1, which was definitely a goal for 2011, I did get RC1 out the door and all that remains before 1.1 is officially released is to write more documentation.
- I created a GitHub "organization" dedicated to helping fill the gaps in CFScript.
- I proved once and for all why Tabs are Superior to Spaces!
Now, the fun part, my goals for 2012:
- Finally release Taffy 1.1. I really want this one done in the next month or two.
- Read 24 books. I felt like this was an incredible pace last year. Two books a month is still a pretty high goal for me.
- Do well in my presentation for CFObjective this year.
- Attend JSConf 2012 (no date announced yet). If there were only one language that I need to know aside from ColdFusion (and let's face it, there's more than that), it's JavaScript. 2011 saw my JS skills greatly improve, and the next step is definitely to continue reading about it and to start attending training/conferences.
- Continue doing Yoga regularly. I started doing Yoga (again) in November or December of 2011 and it's been a great workout and really improves my flexibility and balance. My favorite video to follow is very fast paced, too, so I get a bit of a cardio workout in the process.
- Lose some weight. My metabolism is finally catching up with me (or I with it?)... and I'm starting to tip the scales into the overweight category. At least, it feels that way given the way the weight is distributed. Mostly I need to work on my gut. I would be thrilled to lose about 10 pounds, especially if the majority of it came from the mid-section.
- Make Philly Merge 2012 a reality.
- Watch the Phillies take the World Series trophy back. Ok, so this one is mostly out of my control. Except for the watching part. But I will take my part seriously!
Did I miss anything obvious?
Posted in
Meta
• No Responses Yet
26 days ago
