Taking Responsibility as a Creative
I read Michael Hyatt’s post today on how successful creatives think. One of his points was “successful creatives take responsibility.” He went on to say that the successful creative has to “accept responsibility for how [their work] is received by the market.” I’ve not written a book or created an album, but I do write code for my employer. They need something done and I code it.
I have seen internal projects falter and never get used and others have been successful. I could point fingers at different people. Some of the blame could legitimately be placed on others. But I have to realize that I have to shoulder some of the blame. I come up against users not fully knowing what they need. Other times the users are resistant to change. They are given a tool they don’t want to use but mandated by leadership to use it. Read more
Firefighting & Hedgerows
Over the past month my job has changed quite a bit. Our IT team went from three members to two. So I’ve had to transition from simply being a programmer to being a firefighter as well. During this shake up, the owners decided they wanted me to cross train and learn the networking, phone systems and all the other little bits of trivia that currently only my coworker knows. He came in on the ground floor and has spent the last few years just getting the company up and running. But at the same time the owners have realized that having all that information centralized in one person’s brain is not ideal. So several weeks ago, all approved IT tasks began coming directly to me to execute. If I didn’t know how something worked, I was to ask my coworker to teach me and complete the task. If it was something I knew how to do, I would hand it off to him.
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The Lengths I Go to Organize My Books
A few years ago I installed OpenBiblio on one of my websites to keep tab of all my books. I wrote a Perl script that uses a book’s ISBN number to retrieve the bibliographic information from Amazon and then enter the book into my library. I can now search all my books as well my DVDs and I have a complete list for insurance purposes. Also, now if someone wants to borrow a book, I can check it out and know who borrowed what and when.
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Coding and having fun with YouVersion and WordPress
Over the last month or so I have had the privilege to work with the Digerati at LifeChurch.tv on a plugin for WordPress. It allows WordPress authors to link scripture references to YouVersion, an online Bible, produced by LifeChurch.tv. You even have the option to have a text bubble appear over your reference with the verses you are referencing. You can read the official announcement here, http://blog.youversion.com/?p=138. Read more
Coder’s Block
For the last several weeks I have struggled with programming. I completed all of my large projects and found myself with only mundane and/or repetitive coding in front of me. One day it was so bad that I just clocked out early because I could not get focused. Beginning this week, I would start my day by coming up with some little personal project to get into the right mindset. For instance, I wanted to see if I could pull stats from WordPress.com via Perl scripts. I was unsuccessful but I learned some things along the way. Because of this I was able to transition to another project and get it completed.
These little distractions were helping me overcome my coder’s block but I still struggled. That began to change on Wednesday. I was listening to Buzz Out Loud and the discussion sparked an idea. I got to work and began toying with the idea for geek-maps.com. I worked on it for a little bit and then switched over to my work projects. When I got home that evening I worked for several hours on the site. When I got to work the next morning, I didn’t have as hard a time getting started.
As I continued working throughout the day Thursday and then on Friday I noticed some nice side-effects. There was this new energy for my work. I also found that each project built upon the other and solved problems inherent in both. Another side effect was the overcoming of my writer’s block. As I worked on geek-maps, I began writing about what I was doing and the problems I was trying to solve. My purpose was simple. I was writing to let visitors know what I was up to and, it helped me think things through.
Writing for geek-maps, I was not worried about the topic or my sentence structure or the tone. I just wrote. Some authors say that it is the best way to combat writer’s block. It took this experience for me to see the evidence. I have had all kinds of ideas rattling around in my head, but I have not been motivated enough to write. My hope is that with this renewed energy I will begin to put some of those ideas to paper.
jLanguage
jLanguage 2.2 is an internalization plugin from Jakob Jensen at http://jakobj.dk/blog. It allows a user to markup their posts in various languages. Update – 1/27/2010: It appears that Jakob’s blog is offline. There is a newer plugin called xLanguage available from WordPress.org.
I wanted to extend the functionality so that when the user clicked on the language link to change to the appropriate post translation it would also set the default language of WordPress so the entire site would be translated. The site owner would only need to download the language files from WordPress and make sure their theme is coded to use WordPress’s localization.
If you want to check out the files you can download them from http://www.codeoffaith.com/files/wp_plugins/jLanguage/jLanguage_patch.zip
Coffee, Deadlines & FUD
To say the last few weeks have been stressful is an understatement. I have subsisted on 2-3 cups of coffee a day to stay focused. I am a part-time employee but it feels like I’m working full-time hours.
Last week my supervisor told me that I needed to create a site that handled event registrations and accepted ACH transactions. So I began working on this project and it needed to be done by Friday. I spent some time making sure that what I was coding would work with the current code base I had created. I was told repeatedly to not worry so much about making sure it integrated as opposed to just getting it working. That just goes against how I think. I know that Murphy’s Law will kick in at some point and I will end up wasting the “time I saved” by just hacking something together to get it working. As I came across areas of concern I expressed them. The responses I got were less than encouraging. The responses came across as “Keep quiet and do your job.” Read more
Driving & Coding… but not at the same time
Over the last two weeks I’ve done a bit of traveling. I drove to Dallas three times in a weeks time. Now, for most people in the MetroPlex that is a daily occurrence. In my case however, I have lived in Fort Worth for two years and had not been to Dallas. My first trip was to attend the Dallas Open Source Group. I found this group several months again through Meetup.com but had not been free on a Saturday to attend.
I got up early that Saturday and bought me a large coffee to get me ready for the trip. I found my way there without too much trouble. We met at Atlanta Bread Company. The management doesn’t mind the group meeting there and they have free Wi-Fi. There were about 10 of us with a range of experience and vocations, but we each had an interest in using open source software and seeing its adoption increase.
We discussed the body of software available on Windows. We would get distracted and chase rabbits but it was a fun hunting experience. Afterwards a few of us went to have BBQ and continued our conversation. It was during this trip that I was introduced to Nerdbooks.com.
Tuesday evening found me leaving Arlington for another Meetup group, DallasPHP. This group is a collection of programmers, managers and owners involved in the use of PHP & MySQL. The meeting was held at the Yahoo! offices in Richardson. Jason Ragsdale, a Yahoo! employee, gave a presentation on scalability and optimization.
This presentation was beneficial because several of the concepts I could implement immediately. I am a decent programmer but being self-taught I do not know all the best practices. I have been programming in PHP for close to four years but I have barely scratched the surface.
Finally, last Saturday, the DallasPHP group had a Q&A session at Nerdbooks. It was a smaller group and this allowed us to bring up coding problems or questions and get advice and feedback. Being my second time to Nerdbooks I couldn’t help but buy something. I picked The PHP Anthology
It occurred to me later that I had engaged in two activities that I really enjoy. I like pulling out a map, locating some obscure or interesting place and then figuring out how to get there. I also revel in programming. Coding at its simplest is stringing logic statements together to accomplish a task. The fun is piecing those logic blocks together to complete the puzzle. “Whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through Him to God the Father.”
Spherical Geometry and other things that I learned in school or should have
A few weeks ago I was working on a project that included a store locator. It required the user to input his/her zip code. Then the site would return a list of stores in order of their proximity to the user’s zip code.
I have to admit that I’ve seen this functionality on a variety of sites but I was never sure how the distances were calculated. As I began reading the source code, I learned that the previous programmer was using spherical geometry. That is after reading a few of the comments he included and then making a trek to Wikipedia. I came across an article on Great Circle Distance. Because of the curve of the earth you can’t just use linear geometry.
To say I was stymied was an understatement. I took geometry in high school and trigonometry in college but this beyond what I had ever attempted. After a few minutes of confusion, I got a clearer picture. I understood that I was taking various angles and distances and running a multitude of calculations. My biggest problem at first was that I wanted to actually figure out the cosine or tangent of each angle. I finally reached the point where I understood that to make this work I didn’t have to understand the inner workings I just needed to plug in the right pieces in the right places. Once I began breaking down the equation by its orders of operation it made more sense. I coded the whole equation and it calculated the same distance as Google on the first try.
Granted, I didn’t learn spherical geometry in high school but it is similar to the type of things I would have lamented over, “I’ll never use this in the real world.” This got me to thinking. What other things that I learned in school have I used in “real life.”
- Spanish – I didn’t learn Spanish until college but I’ll include it. I’ve been to Mexico several times and it was a definite advantage. I also used it from time to tome while working at Pizza Hut. There were times when I had to converse with customers in Spanish. I would also eavesdrop on my hispanic coworkers who forgot that I could speak Spanish.
- French – Not so much. I wish I had remembered more for the time I went to Paris and Benin.
- American Civics – I understand how our government is supposed to work. As I have grown older, the current state of our political system just depresses me.
- Free Enterprise – I used the subject matter of this class during my brief entrepreneurial period. There was not enough demand for my supply, hence I went out of business.
- Keyboarding – We used actual typewriters in this class. I am so thankful for that class. I spend most of my day in front of a computer, so I revel in the fact that I don’t have to hunt and peck.
- Chemistry – I love watching the chemical reaction of Mentos reacting with Diet Coke. If we could have done that experiment in high school, then chemistry would have been a great deal more enjoyable.
- History – “A person who fails to understand history is destined to repeat it.” I didn’t learn that in my history classes. I think I heard it in a movie somewhere. Most of the time, I use my knowledge in history to point out people’s historical inaccuracies. It’s a bad habit, I know.
- Consumer Math – This is the class where you learned to balance a check book and calculate interest on a mortgage. That was an easy A.
- English Literature – “From this day to the ending of the world, But we in it shall be remember’d; We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; For he to-day that sheds his blood with me Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile, This day shall gentle his condition: And gentlemen in England now a-bed Shall think themselves accursed they were not here, And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.”
Who hasn’t wanted to quote those lines from Henry V in a conversation to embolden their troops. Sadly, the opportunity has evaded me to this point. - Physics – I didn’t take Physics in high school or college. However, after watching Mythbusters, I would really like to learn. Who doesn’t want to know how much kinetic energy is released when a car collides with the ground after being thrown by a trebuchet. Thanks to UC Berkeley, I can now take the equivalent of Physics for Dummies.
Well, it’s not an exhaustive list, but I think my high school years were well spent. But as the old saying goes, “You’re never done learning.”
Day in the Life of a Web Developer – Part 1
I have been attempting for several months to write more often. I would like to get into the habit of writing everyday. I have read that forcing yourself to write everyday increases your creativity. I decided what better way to find material than to write about what I spend 6-8 hours being paid to do.
So, I spent my morning working from home because I had a meeting with a contractor in Mansfield. I did not see the point in wasting gas in driving to Fielder and then back out. I got to Fielder close to noon and sat down to work on the web redesign. I got approval last week to scrap the DotNetNuke CMS (content management system) we were trying to shoe horn to meet our needs. So this week I began full force writing my own CMS system specifically catered to the needs of Fielder Road.
Then this afternoon I had a meeting with the Missions minister. It was a conference call with a contractor pertaining to the new missions’ website. Ideally, I would also do that site but the Communications Team has decided I need to concentrate on one project and not spread myself too thin. I have realized looking at proposals from these design companies than when I was freelancing, I horribly undercharged. I once charged a client probably 10 times less than what some of these companies are proposing for even less of a product. Granted I was in a depressed market in a semi-rural area. I guess that in the MetroPlex you have to charge those kinds of prices in order to stay in business.
Aside from all these meetings, I spent most of my day correcting items on our old website. Sadly, that is how most of my days end up. I sit down to focus and begin coding and a problem or a meeting interrupts me. The stuff I’m working on requires I sit for several hours by myself focused on the problem. I feel like I spend all my time in meetings anymore and it feels like nothing gets accomplished at least in internet communications arena.
