iPhone/Mobile Camp Atlanta 2009

This weekend, I attended iPhone/Mobile Camp Atlanta at the King Plow Arts Center.

It was great to meet some new, non-PHP-specific faces in the southern iPhone and mobile communities. The crowd seemed to be quite tech-heavy, rather than business-heavy. As such, I learned some new things such as how to handle analytics on the iPhone (use Flurry), how to reduce latency when using Core Audio, and some new-to-me information on parsing XML on the iPhone.

I also dusted off my talk, “Rickroll To Go With WURFL, PHP, and Other Open Source Tools”, trimmed it down for a 30-minute timeslot, and presented it as “WURFL, Device Identification, and Mobile Media”.

My talk seemed to go great because, hey, what talk with a little Rickrolling and Ice Ice Baby isn’t going to be a hit, right? It was tough to keep it to that smaller timeslot, but it seemed to work well. I was followed by everyone’s favorite Microsoft evangelist, Glen Gordon, who was speaking on all things Microsoft.

I definitely walked away with a continued motivation to actually produce a useful Cocoa and/or iPhone app sometime this year, so I’d better hop to it. It’s the ideation part that’s tough for me, though. And all of the graphic design can be a bit demotivating, too, but there are creative ways to handle that.

Anyways, it was a great event! Hopefully they’ll conduct one again next year! Special thanks to Jonathan Freeman of Widgetpress (and all involved) for organizing the event!

PHP/technical New Year’s resolutions – 2009

Reflecting on my 2008 New Year’s resolutions, I didn’t accomplish all of them. The only one I really even began to tackle was contributing to Zend Framework.

I participated in PHP TestFest, and my tests ended up making their way into CVS, so that was a nice surprise. I did manage to speak at both php|tek 2008 and ZendCon 2008, so that was good…though not really a resolution of mine.

Regardless, it’s been a good year for accomplishing some of my technical- and PHP-related goals. But what about 2009?

Well, since it’s public knowledge now, my wife and I are expecting our first child in June 2009 (woohoo!), so I’m going to be taking a bit of time off of the conference circuit. I specifically didn’t propose anything for php|tek 2009, because it’s due to take place just a few weeks before the kid’s due date, so I don’t want to be away from home at such an important time. Maybe I’ll supplement that with more talks at Atlanta PHP?

So, since I’ll be stepping back from conferences a bit, what will I be focusing on? Here are some of my PHP/technical resolutions for 2009:

• Continue contributing to Zend Framework: With my first proposal now in the state of “Pending Recommendation,” I’d like to start drafting a proposal for a Zend_Cache_Profiler of sorts, ala Zend_Db_Profiler. I’ll be looking to write up and submit that proposal within Q1 2009, I think.
• Contribute to php|architect: The 2009 Editorial Calendar for php|architect has been released. There are at least two topics in there that I’d love to write on. Specifically, I want to attempt to adapt my “Rickroll To Go With PHP, WURFL, and Other Open Source Tools” presentation into an article format. That should prove to be an interesting, entertaining challenge.
• Catch up on my list of technical books I want to read: My Amazon Wish List is filled with all kinds of books that I want to read, so I’m really hoping to get through a handful of them this year.
• Finish my iPhone game: It’s a super top secret idea, of course, but the gameplay is largely done and works well. I’ve got to work on scoring, how leveling works, preferences, and finally, graphic design. So…I’ve got a long way to go on that. It’s been a great exercise in learning UIKit/Objective-C!
• Write an OS X Memcached GUI monitoring/profiling client?: I’ve wanted to build a little OS X desktop app for monitoring the performance of Memcached servers for a while now — think cool graphs of gets, puts, evictions, bytes used, etc. Something that, if you managed a pool of many Memcached servers, that it’d come in really handy at giving you a snapshot of performance and potential areas of improvement. This would be another great exercise at learning more about Cocoa/Objective-C, too. Desktop software development just feels a bit more legitimate sometimes, ya’ know? Or maybe that’s just me.

So, I think that’s it for now. We’ll see how I do this year.

Happy holidays to everyone! See you in 2009.

A slight change in my focus

Just a little note that I’m officially changing my duties around a bit at work. During my three years at Schematic, year one was spent as a Senior Software Developer, the second was spent as a Manager for our Open Source Platforms Group (the PHP team), and for the third, I went back to the hands-on technology side as a Senior Software Architect in OSPG. Now, I’ve decided to make a move back over to the management side as “Senior Manager, Technology” in our Atlanta office.

“What is this ‘Senior Manager, Technology’ thing?” you ask? Well, basically, it means I’ll be leaving some of my hands-on development duties behind (though still using them occasionally!) to focus on managing a crack team of developers across various technical disciplines. I’ll also be helping to match these people up to projects they’d like to work on, helping ensure their career growth is on the right track, that they’re happy, enjoying their work and so on. I’ll also be actively involved in recruiting and other types of managerial-type activities. I tend to think that I’m a good fit for this role given my years of experience down in the trenches, getting my hands dirty with code and project teams, while also being somewhat business-savvy given my experience and education.

It’s a different kind of challenge for me, but I’ve got some experience with it and am happy to help out our growing technology team in the Atlanta office. I will be working on the occasional project at a high level, such as in a Solutions Architect role, or maybe even acting as a Software Architect from time to time. I’ll continue to act as the Platform Chair of our Open Source Platforms Group team, too, which means that I’ll continue to be involved in shaping coding standards, best practices, and other key technical processes around Schematic.

“But…you’re a developer! Surely you’re not leaving that behind!” you exclaim. Of course not! I’m going to use my spare time outside of work to pursue other things that interest me right now, such as Cocoa and iPhone development as well as working with the Arduino platform to do some tinkering with electronics. And don’t worry, I’ll still be spending a lot of time with my dear old friends, PHP, Zend Framework, and other open source technologies.

So, this is all very exciting! For the three of you that read my blog, this is a short summary of what I’ll be up to for the foreseeable future. See you PHP’ers out on the conference and user group circuits, too!

“Victory is mine!” -Stewie Griffin

Wow, I FINALLY found the one thing I wanted on my Mac — multiple desktop support.

VirtueDesktops

With Leopard coming sometime soon, Apple’s new Spaces feature will likely replace this, but for now, it’s going to be a huge help.

And best of all, it’s free!