Hiking, web development, best practices, and general awesomeness
Being a remote developer has its share of obvious benefits. There is no commute to work, none of the office distractions, and the comforts of home are just a couple of steps away. However, there are a few downsides to deal with. After five months of working remotely I wanted to take some time and go…
This year started with a big change for me - a new job with Shutterstock in New York. At least the company is based in New York. I'm working as a remote software engineer, staying right here in Wisconsin. Anyways, one of the cool things that Shutterstock does with its remote developers is fly them…
Another year has passed. It felt like a long one for me, longer than most.
For Katie and I, last year was one dominated by a single dramatic event: the arrival of Noah. With both of us being first-time parents we found the long pregnancy dreadful, the birth scary, and seeing our son for the first…
Looking back at my previous jobs it's interesting to look at both what skills I gained while working there and how they shaped the direction of my career. At Michigan Technological University I learned about databases and priority management. SparkNET taught my about object-orientated programming,…
After working with web programmers and developers over the last four years (and being one myself) I've noticed a disconcerting trend. The average lifespan is very short… that is, the lifespan of interest in their job. This is not true for every single worker in this industry but results from…
My career in web development started with delivering products, not necessarily expectations. Starting as a lone web developer I've previously made the mistake of trying to put the product specifications before the client needs, focusing on what I can do technically and not what I should be doing to…
Snap. Where did 2011 go?
Yup, last year was a bit busy. I've barely mentioned this on here, but I now work at DealerFire in Oshkosh. We mostly create custom websites for automotive dealerships, but there's a good mix of digital marketing, social media, and app development mixed up in there too. I'm…
When a computer script crawls across the web looking for information (like Google's search robot) they need to do a lot of thinking to figure out what information is located on a web page. After all, web pages are written by humans for humans, with the data and information contained in our complex,…
Recoding all of my subdomains to follow a model-view-controller framework has been a really interesting process. I've had the opportunity to experiment with different design patterns and techniques, especially in the realm of data handling and content delivery. Abstracting out my resume is a great…
When I first decided to create an online blog I wanted to avoid a common pitfall of many other blogs: lack updates. While there were a few empty months in 2009, it feels like a did a good job with regular posts every week or so... Until the New Year rolled around. This is the first blog post in over…