Work, Projects, Tools and Tips

January 23, 2010

As you might have noticed I’m trying to get a post out at least once a week. If I keep up this pace I will have more posts by March 2010 than I had in all of 2009, that’s all good and great except that I’m so busy with work that I haven’t had time to write at all lately. So I figured that instead of making up an excuse I’ll let you know what is that’s been keeping me occupied, and mix that with some useful information.

Work

Fortunately I’ve been extremely busy with three projects I’m working in parallel. The first one is a new site for a well known real estate agent in the Atlanta market. The site has a custom-made admin interface to allow her and her team to edit their own content and some other details, without drowning them in unnecessary features. We should be going live in early February so we are in the final stages which can be extremely hectic. We already have some very cool features (hint) to follow the launch which I’ll probably write about later.

The second project is a web application that makes use of the Amazon Mechanical Turk API which took me a bit of time to learn. Unlike some of the APIs I’ve written about, this one is more complex. I’m planning on extending this project into a full PHP library for the Mechanical Turk API once it’s finished. I will very likely release it as an open source project from the beginning.

The third project is longer term and it’s based on a WorpPress MU, although with the upcoming merge it’ll just be WordPress. It has to do with a national religious-based organization and will probably spawn many blog posts along the way as well. I’m really excited about this project as it’ll allow me to dig very deep into WordPress.

Projects

As any developer, designer or webbie out there I have a list of personal projects I’d like to tackle at one point.

Blog re-design: I don’t consider my blog to be ugly, but it certainly isn’t beautiful either (and it has some details that need fixing badly), and the best word to describe it is probably “simple”. I’ve been working on some ideas here and there and hopefully will get to release a new theme soon. Here’s a preview of the latest iteration (please give me your $0.02).

New design for my blog

Collaborate with WordPress: During Wordcamp Atlanta many of the speakers tried to motivate the audience to help WordPress grow. What a good job they did! I came out of the event energized to start lending a hand. So expect me to start picking up some tickets, writing plugins, etc. very soon.

Start an open source project: I’ve been wanting to start one for a very long time, and I think it will be a small PHP library for Amazon’s Mechanical Turk API.

Learn Objective-C: I’ve been meaning to learn a new language for a long time. Writing iPhone and/or Mac applications sounds very appealing and that’s the direction I want to take. Of course, this will take a big commitment on my part so I’ll have to wait until I have a bit more time to tackle this one.

Tools

When I say tools I don’t just mean my editor and ssh client -although these are fundamental- but actually all the things that help me as a web developer. Here’s a list that might have some tidbits you can use as well.

Software tools: I write in Coda, keep track of my code in GitHub, use a Linux VPS to host my projects (and this blog), use FileZilla to transfer files, and FireBug and FirePHP to debug.

Stay-on-top tools: It’s hard to stay on top of everything in the web development world, but there are some key blogs and podcasts that help reduce the noise to signal ratio. My favorite podcast is BoagWorld which is also a very neat blog. Here’s my entire podcast playlist if you want to look for yourself. I usually listen to them in the car which would otherwise default to NPR, talk radio or some lame FM station.

If you can spare a couple of hours every week, do yourself a favor and sign on to DCTH (Design Community Twitter Hours). You will learn, network, have fun and spend time in great company with awesome webbies from all over.

Not all my activities take place in front of a computer.  I’ve joined several groups of interest through Meetup.com which have helped me learn, make friends and even find new clients. Also, working from home was taking a toll in my social interaction level, so I joined Ignition Alley, a great co-working space in midtown Atlanta.

So as you can see I have more than a plate-full going forward. What do you have going on? Please share your own experiences, tips, projects and whatnot.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, January 23rd, 2010 at 1:58 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can speak your mind , or trackback from your own site. Either way, muchas gracias!

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