It’s great that PHP programmers will be in high demand in 2007, but employers had better catch them fast before they all switch over to Ruby.
It’s great that PHP programmers will be in high demand in 2007, but employers had better catch them fast before they all switch over to Ruby.
I’m not sure how I ever became both lazy and particular.
For a guy who loves efficiency, I really do make things difficult for myself. Rather than let Movable Type handle all the details of publishing my sites, I instead code my interface to the database backend. When Musicwhore.org was more of a monstrosity, I could justify the extended code.
These days, I’m just set in my ways. I don’t want a bunch of static files sitting on my web space. I should know better — serving up static files is much more merciful on the processor than forcing it query a database and build content on the fly.
So in trying to make things simpler, I’ve made them more complex.
I spent yesterday remixing "Hear the Wind Sing".
After receiving the Kawai K4 I bought on eBay, I went back to this song to fix some of the issues I left hanging after I reached a "stopping point". That must have been more than a year ago.
My big impetus was to use a sound not included in the factory preset system exclusive files made available on the Kawai support web site. It was this weird, voice-type patch that I loved. I managed to find it on a mailing list.
If you’re remotely thinking about buying something for me this Christmas, let it be this convenient item. Every little bit toward some monitor speakers, a Shure SM58 microphone, newer headphones or Ableton Live helps.
If you want to call me a "web developer" or a "computer programmer" or anything along those lines, I won’t argue. It’s how I’ve earned a paycheck for the past six years (give or take a year.)
But I don’t claim an entitlement to that label.
My development skills were learned on the job, and there are big gaps in my knowledge that a trained engineer or programmer fills at the outset. I didn’t even know the way I build my sites actually has a name.
So 2006 comes to a close, and what do I know that I didn’t know before? Let me list the ways:
I don’t know how it happened or even when it happened. I just know one day, I discovered the Kawai K4 I bought from eBay back in January 2005 wasn’t working.
I brought it down to Strait Music Co. to see if it could be repaired, and after waiting a month for the repair guy to get to my keyboard, I learned it was beyond hope.
About half an hour ago, I dropped $250 on eBay for another Kawai K4. I had attempted to bid on a few postings in the past few days, but I always got outbid. I hate the bidding process. Tonight, a seller included a "Buy It Now!" option, which is how I bought it the last time. So that’s what I did again.
If my original MIDI workstation were not stolen back in 1998, I would probably still have all that equipment.
If I still had that equipment, I probably would have been disinclined to write any new music. I had already reached the realization I could never produce the kind of music in my head because my tools were insufficient.
If I did not write any new music, I probably would have forged ahead in a career as a web developer, and I probably could have eventually forgotten what it’s like to write music.
If I forgot what it was like to write music, I don’t know how would have ended up.
This article has nothing to do with the holidays, but it does mention fruitcake. I figure that’s a tenuous enough reason to post it.
I’ve been working the past year in the localization department of my office, where I’m the token American in a group of French, German, Japanese and Korean staffers. I think some of the Germans are rubbing off on me.
One of the Germans, in fact, e-mailed the link to that article to the group, and that blunt form of communication appeals to me. I’m no fan of small talk. I have this long-standing belief that anyone who asks "How are you?" doesn’t really want to know the answer. You might have the runs and a 102-degree fever, but the answer will always be, "I’m fine."
Some days, I’m flat out lying when I have to give that reply. The extended answer would be, "I’m fine — we can’t stop this conversation now." That question would be so much easier to answer the German way. A negative reply would just be taken at face value. I bet if you’ve ever been greeted with a negative reply to "How are you?" a judgmental trigger goes off in your head. "Oh, you poor thing."
Subtlety would go out the window with such brutal honesty, but I don’t think that’s a bad thing.
Leave it to me and my strangely-named sites to test the globalization preparedness of a Web 2.0 site.
Yes, I’m being difficult by giving my weblog a Japanese title with not a single attempt at Romanization, but my little bit of Asian text is enough to gauge whether site developers are even thinking that far ahead.
The latest subject of this test is MyBlogLog, to which Ryan introduced me. It’s a fascinating idea — social networks for your blogs. Of course, I signed up to be a member of The Transmission, HawaiiUP and HawaiiBlog. And I added this site and Musicwhore.org, among others. (My profile, in case your interested.) In using this site, I’ve run across some odd things that can get a bit annoying.
Ryan wrote about Twitter, and I got intrigued enough to sign up myself.
I rather like this idea. For all the Voxes, Diggs, del.icio.us.es, Last.fms and MySpaces out there, a site that forces its users to be concise is a rare thing. There have been many times I wish my long-winded online journal wouldn’t look so awkward with just a single-line entry. Twitter lets me braindump without having to be literate about it.
The social aspect of Twitter, however, lends itself to being an extension of instant messaging, which I guess it would since it can plug into IM and mobile devices. The resulting dialog often looks like an IRC chat done entirely with /me commands.
I would like a friend search, though. Friends of mine could have signed up for the site, but I wouldn’t know it unless they announced their presence.
Twitter is an interesting site, compact but wide open.