Blogging is something that comes in waves for me, and once I get out of the habit, it is tough to get back into it. I enjoy it, but sometimes there’s just so much going on that it completely escapes me. The last few months have been one of those periods. So let’s start from the top…
I’ve been working on a new project recently. Tweenky is a micro blogging client I am developing that is mostly used with Twitter, but also supports Identi.ca, and hopefully more micro-blogging services soon. The concept behind it was the lack of any good web clients out there for Twitter, and especially ones that brought back the “track” feature that Twitter took away from us a few weeks back. It’s still very much a work in progress and I just have to find the time to work on some of the new features and further improve stability. I’m having a blast with pushing the boundaries of JavaScript and what it should/shouldn’t be used for. So, if you are a Twitter user, go check it out, and if it is still requiring an invite code, use “derekville”.
So I just returned from a convention out in Santa Clara called Zendcon. As a web developer, my primary language of choice is PHP, and Zend is the company puts most of the work into the PHP project, so this was kind of their little yearly shindig. It was 4 days of 1-2 hour training sessions on all topics related to PHP and web development. I saw some presentations from engineers and developers from companies such as IBM, Google, Mozilla, Digg, Yahoo, and tons more. I met a ton of really interesting people too and had a great time at Yahoo HQ for Hackday ‘08. (note to self: Don’t wear “Hackday ‘08″ shirt to airport, it leads to hacker questioning from TSA agents)
Vacation #1 was on the front & back end of the Zendcon trip as I had a few days before & after the conference to play around in San Francisco. It’s such a cool city and I had a blast driving around in the Pontiac G6 convertible I rented for the week. I’ve never had so much fun driving a car!
Vacation #2 is coming up next month with Katye & I flying up to Seattle where we’ll also head up to Vancouver & Victoria. I haven’t been to Seattle in about 10 years, so I’m really excited as I love that city. Everyone I’ve talked to raves about Vancouver too, so I’m pretty excited about my first trip north of the border.
If you are a web developer in the Kansas City area, you need to check out two emerging groups. The first being DotNext, a group in the KC area that gets together every month or so to give sessions on anything web development related. Last month was a series of presentations of Amazon Web Services. This month is going to be on various database related technologies. The second group is Cowtown Computer Congress who is setting up a hacker space in North Kansas City. For those not too familiar with what a “hacker space” is (myself included), it is a place for technologists to get together to work on various hardware & software projects, share costs on equipment, and actually socialize (something most geeks never do much of). So should be an awesome place to convene when it officially opens in the next couple months.
And finally, a new podcast from some rather influential people in the web development world has launched that I’d like to mention. Open Web Podcast was created by Google engineer Dion Almaer (of the Ajaxian podcast as well), Alex Russell of Dojo, and John Resig of Mozilla/jQuery. So if you are into web standards and JavaScript, definitely check it out.
Finally, I recently discovered the FX show “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia”. Hilarious! Check out all the episodes on Hulu.
