Code of Faith

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

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.

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 and High Performance MySQL.

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.”

The custom CMS package is now displaying text to the browser. I got the text editor working so now updates to said pages can be made easily. But at the same time, the more I work on this, I realize there are more and more components that pop up that need to be coded. There are going to be a lot of late nights trying to get this functioning before I leave for Cambodia in 19 days. That self-imposed deadline is looming large in front of me.

But despite all the stress of feature creep and deadlines, I did have some victories. I have spent the last few weeks trying to develop a module that will allow the end user to reorder pages in their menu structure. I also want the module to allow users to move pages into a hierarchy if they want. And for several weeks, I would write equations and draw diagrams to no avail. The solutions functioned but were incomplete. That was until yesterday. I was taking a break and thinking about the problem. It was almost as if the heavens opened and the answer came forth. It was a simpler solution, yet worked in all situations.

It is moments like that which make me remember why I love programming. The struggles, the puzzles, the late nights trying to debug code are all worth it. And yes even the moments where I realize my complete incompetence. Many times after hours of struggling with something, the solution presents itself. Most times it was staring me in the face the whole time. Yet the next time, I do not make the same mistake or I diagnosis the problem in minutes as opposed to hours.

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.