I added another articles section for my other love language Erlang.
The first article is just a quick intro into this cool and powerful language, I will be sharing more soon..
Author: carlosgabaldon
Specializes in custom web application development utilizing open source software.
Why working in a large org sucks
Great quote by Paul Graham which explains why working in a large software development organization sucks.
..we can get a portrait of the “normal” world. It’s populated by people who talk a lot with one another as they work slowly but harmoniously on conservative, expensive projects whose destinations are decided in advance, and who carefully adjust their manner to reflect their position in the hierarchy.
My interview by Dmitry Belitsky
I recently did another interview by Dmitry Belitsky on “How to become successful rubyist”. Dmitry is an up an coming web developer who put together a great set of interviews with several top Ruby hackers.
My Interview on RubyLearning blog
I recently had the pleasure of being interviewed by Satish Talim for his RubyLearning Blog on his mini series – “How do I learn and master Sinatra?” – by top Rubyists using Sinatra.
The interview series provides insight and commentary from notable Sinatra developers, with the goal of facilitating and providing answers to the questions Ruby beginners face on how to learn and master Sinatra.
Satish Talim is a programmer, author, trainer, and speaker. A recognized expert in the field of software development with over 30+ years of I.T. experience, Satish has consulted and trained teams at various companies in India and the US.
http://rubylearning.com/blog/2009/07/21/carlos-gabaldon-how-do-i-learn-and-master-sinatra/
Sinatra rake tasks
Since I have been playing around with Sinatra again, I decided that what Sinatra needs is some automation for some of the boring day to day tasks. So I created a GitHub bucket to dump my Rake tasks. I only have 1 task, to create a new project, but I have a lot new projects that I will be doing in Sinatra in the coming months, so I know there will be a cornucopia of tasks.
More on Sinatra
I wrote another article on the cool Ruby web framework DSL Sinatra.
In my last article I wrote about the cool Ruby DSL web framework called Sinatra which is taking the Ruby world by storm. I decided that another “How to” article on some of Sintra’s other kick ass features was just what Frank would expect.
..
Sharpening your tools
I have always felt that every software leader should from time to time get back to the basics and do some deep dives into focused technical tasks. Such as writing automation code for any tedious task that you have one of your high paid developers doing manually.
So what do I do? I need to get back to the basics and do some hard core hacking. What does that mean? I have been actively contributing to several open source projects over the past few years. Open source is very rewarding, but I think doing a large project in my first language (C) will remind me why I love programming. Maybe write an operating system; my own BSD distro? Or maybe a new language?
Burned out
Over the past few months I have been feeling burned out with my career. I feel like I have lost focus on why I got into software in the first place. I am a hacker and a geek who loves things like learning new languages each year or geeking out with Order theory. But lately, I have been pulled more into the world of project management and endless meetings. I am spread so thin across so many different projects and initiatives that I spend my days planning and telling other people what to do, but very little time doing any real work myself. Of course planning and leading people is very important and if you “get it” you need to help other people “get it”, but for hard core engineers this can wear on you quickly. Every few years I tend to be get pulled out of engineering toward management, which I guess means someone thinks I am doing something right, but I have to find my way back.
So what to do? I need to get back to the basics and do some hard core hacking. What does that mean? I have been actively contributing to several open source projects over the past few years. Open source is very rewarding, but I think doing a large project in my first language (C) will remind me why I love programming. Maybe write an operating system; my own BSD distro? Or maybe a new language?
Tweeting killing my blog
This year I said that I was going to tweet more. With just 1 month into this year I have to say that I love tweeting, so much that I find it harder to want to blog. There is something so powerful about the informality of sending out a tweet. I know blogging can be just as informal, but every time I sit down to blog I feel like I am getting prepared to write a college term paper or a presentation for work. I feel like I have some type of quota of words to meet to even be worth posting. This is where the 140 character limit of Twitter is so powerful, because whenever you want to say something you have to be as concise as possible with your words.
So let’s see how the year goes, but for those that follow my blog you will probably find more activity following me on Twitter.
Canceled Slice
I have been using slicehost for over a year. I think that they are a great company and I highly recommend them if you are looking for a cheap VPS to host something that you are working on where you want full control. That being said, with Google App Engine on the scene now I really have no use for slicehost, so I am canceling it. I am a hacker not a Sysadmin and I really do not want to become one. With App Engine I can just focus on the product idea and the code and not have to worry about deployment and scalability. So I am working on my next big product idea that I am going to run completely on App Engine, backed by GitHub of course.
More to come soon..
Articles section
The Extended Mind
I recently read a very interesting article in Discover magazine (yes I still read print) about the concept of the extended mind. This refers to an emerging concept within the philosophy of mind that addresses the question as to the division point between the mind and the environment by promoting the view of active externalism. This view proposes that some objects in the external environment are utilized by the mind in such a way that the objects can be seen as extensions of the mind itself. Specifically, the mind is seen to encompass every level of the cognitive process, which will often include the use of environmental aids.
This article got me thinking how technology, particularly the Internet, has extended my view of my life over the past 17 years. Back in 1991 I used a computer to write papers or store some very basic financial information. I did not really 100% trust my computer then, so I would keep hard copies of everything important stored on my computer. Over time, I started to view my computer as somewhat as an extension of myself that I stopped keeping hard copies and felt like if I need to access music or my tax info I could easily type a few commands to access that information. Flash forward to 2009 and I keep almost nothing important on my computer, instead my life life is stored somewhere in the pipes of the Internet. My finances, memories, resume, work, knowledge, documents, communication, friends, and my thoughts are all stored somewhere out in the ether. This information instead of being stored in some random section of memory in my Brian is now stored in some random computers scattered around the world connected to hardware and cable, which has become my extended mind..
Moved to WordPress
For those of you who do not follow this blog through feedburner you may have noticed I have moved from Calabro to WordPress. I decided that I wanted to spend more time blogging then administering. I originally wrote Calabro as an exercise to learn Python and kept using it because it was meeting my needs as a simple blog engine. Which is pretty good since I used it for almost 2 years, but after a few major spam attacks and having to rebuild my slice a few times I decided that I needed to go with a more mature and robust blog engine.
<?php
echo 'Hello WordPress!';
?>
I have not moved over all of my old posts to WordPress yet, something I plan to do this weekend, so if anyone has bookmarks to any old articles you will get a 404 for a few days.
The nice thing of moving to WordPress is all the cool plug-gins and the kick ass community. Also, I now have a free slice to hack the next great startup ;-)
Twitting
This year I want to start using Twitter more, there are some very cool and interesting people on twitter. I think the main reason I have not used twitter as much is because I do not spend a lot of time on my phone and opening twitter when I want to say something seems like to much work. So I am trying out Twidget which is a simple OS X dashboard widget. I am thinking that when I want to say something, F12 + random thought should be easy enough..we will see.
2009 New Year’s Resolutions
- Blog more
- Hack more
- Try one new local micro-brew each month
- Go on more camping trips with family
- Do a 5k run
- Start a screen cast blog
- Yoga 3 times per week
- Budget
- Give my open source projects more love
Carlos Gabaldon 