Part of why I've been away is Ravelry. If you're not a knitter/crocheter/spinner/weaver/dyer, you've probably never heard of it. It's a pretty nifty site, and one of the things it has is forums. In spades, but that's beyond the point. The forums were designed by someone who didn't really participate in forums previously, so they are more or less flat, no nesting comments (but you can get to replied-to posts appearing via magic by clicking). The cool thing about them is that under each post are "buttons". They're labelled "educational" "interesting" "funny" "agree" "disagree" and "love". The concept is that you click on a button for a post and it increments a counter. Only one click per person. This makes it so you don't get a page or three of "me too"s, and you can generally judge the quality of a post by the agree/disagree ratio. Of course, with the buttons, there is the inevitable button wank, which the coder has tried to get around by allowing you to hide individual buttons, or all of the buttons. My problem with this is that I keep looking for buttons on posts on other forums. And blogs. And everywhere else.

It's like moderating, but everyone has points all the time.

So, work. Work is... well, it's like everywhere else I've worked in that they have too many tools that kinda mostly but not all the time work together. It's a 12 hour shift, which mostly sucks, but I'm getting used to it, oddly enough. Something about it not being full daylight makes it somewhat easier to sleep. I'm keeping myself entertained by tracking ticket stats, as we have to announce in a group chat who's taking care of which ticket. The 'newbies' -- me and my 3 same-day-training-started compatriots are kicking the asses of the contractors who were here before. Usually outclassing them by 2-3x. I'm keeping my resume out, and looking for something else, but the pay's decent.

I must be gettin' old if I can't figure out how to write in my own frickin' journal.

I know it's been... almost 3 years since I showed my text here. Let's see if I can catch y'all up.

About the time I stopped journaling, the company for which I was working cracked down on communications about the company. Feb 08 I left the company's warm embrace as they hired a "15-year windows admin" instead of either me or my co-worker who used to work for SUN to be a Solaris admin. The hubster and I were working on our business as the economy spiraled into the toilet. Short sale of the house, bought 70 acres near Rye, CO. Went to Sock Summit as vendors.

Now I'm working as a contractor at a company in north Denver. I'm going to refuse to mention which contract company or which company I'm contracted to, because I'm somewhat unimpressed by the actual work. I will mention that I hate interviewing, and I'm not cheerful enough for Apple retail. Or something. I don't know. I think I failed when I told them my "wow" moment with my mac was when I opened the terminal and found a fully functioning UNIX underneath.

Anyway, working with tech has re-kindles my sheer loathing of poorly implemented and documented tech and I thought this would be a good place to vent my rage somewhat.

XOXO
--the one and only kshgoddess.

I'm looking to start working with Android. I found this tutorial. Basically my thought is this: cellphones are going to go boom. The last time I saw this kind of hype storm and positioning it was around this silly thing called "the internet" and if my pattern matching software is working right we're getting ready for a new boom in the next decade or so... this time fueled by whatever the cellphone is about to become.

I like the German term "Handi"

.. ..

I stopped writing in my journal regularly because over the last few years I've moved to using my blog more. The blog has even lead to me contributing to several articles to an industry magazine. Now, maybe my writing is better... or maybe that would never happen in a journal.

Why? Why aren't journals more like blogs? Why doesn't journal publication naturally lead to the kinds of connections that blog entries do? Is slashdot just like facebook in that respect? Is /. a walled garden?

Not even you.

1. 3D cube. "Spaces" just ain't it.
2. Flaming window effect... (oh man that was so cool)
3. the vast application selection in aptget
4. ability to use VIM/gvim/kvim ubiquitously
5. telinit
6. simple script based init system was easier to manage
7. ability to change file to program associations from a text editor
8. virtual terminals
9. hackable keyboard macros/keys (although the mac defaults are pretty damn good)
10. custom keystroke to lock screen

What do you (or would you) miss most about your Linux desktop?

The fact that this post I made is marked troll has opened my eyes to something. It genuinely wasn't a troll. I remember doing work with Perl and Python in XML and it really didn't work that well. I remember working with django, rails, and several Perl frameworks... and being wholly unimpressed.

The fact of the matter is. If I want to get taken seriously I need to learn Python and Django and I need to learn to like it.

It really wasn't a troll. I just didn't think Python, Ruby, or associated technologies were all that great. Obviously, this is a problem with me. No. Really. I can't see it yet. I need to spend some more time learning so I can get over my misconceptions. I've obviously missed something.

I have decided never to code Perl again. I am currently doing my day job in a mix of Java and Groovy with Spring, Grails, and straight J2EE. I have already authored and opensourced a few platform extensions to Spring and Grails. I've also authored a new Single Sign On system. I hope to spend the next three to five years in this day job. I like it a lot and I get to do lots of cutting edge work. Even if it doesn't pay well. I have a plan to fix that.

At night I am learning to write software for the iPhone in Objective-C. I hope to bring back my skills from C/C++ and OpenGL to write 3D graphics games for the iPhone and sell them on the AppStore. I figure the AppStore sales should bring me just enough additional income to not mind the lower salary. The work really is quite fun.

Let's see if I can pull this off. Anyone want to come with me? Anyone have tips?

In view of the fact that I hardly come here any more, plus the fact that TPTB here seem intent on fscking up the UI even further :| I've decided to call it a day here.

You can follow my antics over at deviantART or Multiply (sorry, Jorg), or add me on Facebook.

Alternatively, you music lovers can check me on Last.fm, whilst most of my linkage is over on StumbleUpon.

It was fun back in the day, when I had more time to spare, but now... *shrug*

Au revoir!

-MT.

Haven't been here in a while. I'll try to keep better tabs on this place.

As someone who's just moved to Java myself... I suggest starting here: http://grails.org the Grails framework will get you started in Java based web development and you can learn more diving deeper into Java as you get more and more proficient. Grails is built on Spring which is a Java Enterprise platform but Grails saves you from having to learn all those "enterprisey" bits. Instead Grails picks defaults that are the most sensible for web development.

As you get better you can graduate to adding your own features to the framework or even beginning to use the more advanced Java frameworks outside Grails tying everything back together using Spring's IoC and Java JNDI. Or you can keep things light weight and web2.0 by using various remoting technologies inside Grails. It's a quick way to learn that doesn't put training wheels on you.

Get going in an afternoon... scale out using Java as your project grows.

... looks like I'll be packing up my bags and leaving the Perl kingdom for the lands of Java. Forever this time. Not entirely from choice but from pragmatic concern over my career. All the cool vibe has rubbed off the Perl kingdom. Most of it dribbled onto the Rails zealots. I'm beginning to think the Django fans may have gotten some of it too. But, I'll be making money by day doing huge scale Java applications for medical, clinical, and biotech applications from now on.

My only hope is that the lands of Java will be invaded by the "cool vibe" again ... somehow ... I don't think there will be a Perl rebirth anymore. It seems more likely that there will be a turbulent season of integration efforts between a new incarnation of Java born from open source, some language redesign, and a smattering of Linux distributions. There is a very good shot at Groovy, JRuby, or Jython becoming the "new Java" on the Java platform. I also sense the inkling of a Red Hat, JBoss, Java, Jython integration story happening at Red Hat over the next few years.

For reasons that are just becoming apparent Groovy/Grails is not as popular in my region. There is no technical reason in fact if you are running in a Java environment you'd be myopic to not pickup Groovy... and you would be well served to at least build a demo app in Grails. This region however is a Python/Jython stronghold. I didn't know why, but, I just learned that a major Jython contributor is a member of my Jug. That explains a lot. I know RedHat is primarily a Python shop so Java to Jython in the region surrounding the Red Hat campus makes perfect sense. I suspect that Java running Jython code would be the main way Red Hatters will use Java going forward. They are big on Python. And so too are some parts of Google apparently...

I'm beginning to learn that political forces more than technical merit can shape the technological landscape. It's a sad thing to learn because we techies want to believe we're more like mathematicians and only proof and merit rule our decisions. It's not true. For example, Slashdot is among the last strongholds of the Perl kingdom. Outside these hallowed walls the PerlBe are under constant threat.

Each of the major technologies have their own little world they live in and very few technologists actually have a realistic view of the whole technical landscape. I've found that http://www.indeed.com/ is an invaluable tool for looking into the reality of what the tech landscape was. The fact is companies hire for the technologies that they were using three to five years ago. Most do not hire for what they will use or what they are going to use. The hiring managers simply don't know where tech is going tomorrow. If the job is on a job board it's probably a legacy application that's being supported and that means it's a few years old.

You start to bundle these technologies into sets. Perl and C go together better than Perl and Java for example. Python, Perl, C and C++ all roll together for example. So to me it looks like if you were after sheer job security you should learn C really well. In fact from this data C is the unassailable emperor of computing languages. And even though I'm packing my bags for Java land that's the truth of the tech landscape ... Java land is firmly in second place. It's shocking that the whole of the kingdoms of Pythonistas, Rubyists, and the PerlBe are all half of what the C++ers get.

Truth hurts. I'm going to have to go and play with some open source C again at some point. I figure if I can cross between Java and C I'll be a sight better off than someone trapped on either island. Both of these are pretty big islands now though.

I really do.