evolution of the programmer

This is so true.

test of deepest sender

I'm testing out a post from a firefox addon called Deepest Sender.

stumbleupon

A friend sent me a link to StumbleUpon the other day. At first glance it appeared to be some sort of cross between delicious, light blogging, and some automatic social network creation. It allows you to link/tag urls like delicious, and it also lets you blog about them to some extent. It also has a list of "friends" that it thinks you would be interested in. But as far as I can tell the "friends" list is anyone of the opposite sex, roughly the same age group, and in your same area code or close to it. It would make sense, that it would suggest people who tagged the same sites, or have the same interests.... but this is just lame.

Grid7Labs

Grid7Labs is a sort of side project I'm a part of. Outside of my day job, I'm going to be working with a great group of people over at Grid7 getting some good ideas off the ground. And I'll actually get to do some real Rails hacking, instead of this fake Rails (or as we like to call it here in the office, BRoR, for Bastardized Ruby on Rails). Hopefully I'll have more time to write about Grid7 later... until then check out the side.

Fhqwhgads

Someone needs to hurry up and create an instant sleep machine. I just don't have time for everything + sleep.

PowerPoint

PowerPoint presentations for me have always felt long and boring. That's just my general reaction to PowerPoint. I've sat through enough of these horrible presentations, that whenever I hear "PowerPoint" I instantly groan inwardly. I spent a year as a TA for the UofA teaching intermedate Java courses. At the UofA, the undergrad CS TAs got to actually lecture for 1 hour a week and host lab hours for a subsection of the class. I always attempted to stay away from PowerPoints as much as possible, I tried to get as much interaction going within the class as possible. But this presentation is amazing. It's not quite a PowerPoint, it's a Keynote presentation... but it's the same concept and has the same pitfalls in unskilled hands. But no... the presentation itself is amazing. A coworker labeled this kind of presenting as almost a rapping feel... to me it feels like a movie, a short fast moving film perhaps. In anycase, it captures you attention like nothing else I've seen. I encourage you to watch this, even if you know nothing on the subject matter.

refresh phoenix

I went to the Refresh Phoenix meeting last night. If you've never heard of Refresh I encourge you google it and see if you have a local group setup. Last night's meeting was great. We had a guest speaker, Adrian Sannier, the Technology Officer of ASU. Not only did he cover some really interesting topics, but he presented them in a way that was so entertaining and fun to listen to/watch that it felt he could have been talking about anything and I would have enjoyed it. This was the second Refresh Phoenix meet I've attended. I've enjoyed both of them... and plan on attending them every month if at all possible. I've met some great people, and have already found a group of people with whom I will be working on some side projects on. However the thing I really like about it is the feeling of being part of a community. It's hard to describe, but it reminds me of being in college again. I'm sure everyone's experiences in college varies, but being in Computer Science meant that you were surrounded by geeks who love technology and often times love to discuss it. Once graduated and started working, it feels like I've lost touch with that group of people (not specifically the people I went to college with) who love technology and like to just hang out and discuss random things. Maybe it's just the place I work. Maybe I'm just crazy. But hanging out with people I've meet through Refresh Phoenix reminds me of hanging out with Steve and Ron after a long night of working on Automata homework.

aaaaahhh!

Blogging for me is like pulling teeth. I just never get around to it... and when I do it feel like I'm not getting anything done. I guess when I really enjoy writing is when I have a block of time where I can sit down, gather my thoughts, and put them all together in some sort of corherent text. But most of the time I am so busy running around taking care of random crap that I don't have time to think... much less gather my thoughts. Dispite this, I will attempt to blog more often. More at lower quality is better than none at all, right?