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.. it is a really special feeling when you give someone a book and it changes the way they think and act. So I'm really pleased to have just finished reading a book that I know I'll be handing out ...
-Jeffery Fredrick |
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Quoting Watts Humphrey, "Developers are caught in a victim's mentality." We never think it's our fault, it's always somebody else's.
-Jared Richardson |
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Ship It! is part manual of best practices, part software methodologies book and part a distillation of ideas and experiences of good and bad projects that the authors have been involved in. It migh...
-Tech Book Report |
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(Apr 7)
There's a great annual conference coming to RTP for the first time on May 2nd. The stellar speaker lineup includes:
And that's only about half the list! See the entire list here.
The conference has four concurrent tracks with six sessions, not counting Andy's morning keynote. We opted for shorter session times (45 minutes) with the hope we'd have more content and you'd get to attend more great sessions and hear more speakers.
We also worked hard to keep the prices low. A single ticket is only $99 and can be lower if you can bring 4 more of your friends.
Topics range from Tim Wingfield's Executable Requirements: Testing in the Language of the Business to Catherine Louis' Failure patterns: Lessons learned over 10 years transforming global companies. I'll be giving my introduction to agile talk. The material is wide ranging and I'm sure you'll have more than a few talks you'll want to attend.
Also, a huge shout out to Tom Wessel and all of Southern Fried Agile team. Without their help and backing, this event wouldn't have happened.
It should be a great first outing for this new conference. We're trying to spread the word, so please pass on the information to your friends and co-workers in North Carolina. I hope to see you at TriAgile!
Category: Agile
(Mar 11)
I'm involved with a new conference coming to RTP in May. Come join us for TriAgile. We've got a great list of speakers and a good mix of topics. I'll be giving my Introduction to Agile talk. Andy Hunt, Cory Foy, and many other great speakers will share the stage.
Take advantage of the early bird pricing! I look forward to seeing you there.
Category: Agile
(Feb 12)
My daughter has been asking me to share her flickr page with my "nerd friends". So, my nerd friends, if you have the time to click through a few cats, dogs, and several "still life" shots from a budding photog, she'd appreciate it!
Main page
Her favorite shot of our cat
One of her landscapes
I hope you enjoy a few of them.
Category: Personal
(Aug 21)
I recently started doing video editing for the Pragmatic Programmers and the first title I worked with was an excellent getting started guide for backbone.js.
It’s not a sales job for why backbone is better, but rather it assumes you’ve already decided to use backbone and provides the information you’ll need to start using it. Derrick creates a slick image gallery application that uses backbone in the browser, and a bit of Sinatra server side.
Come check it out and I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised at how much you can do with it!
Hands On Backbone.js
Category: Misc
(Aug 19)
I've started writing some form of this post for the last several years. I thought it'd make a great headache/migraine educational bit. About how we as an industry abuse our bodies with caffeine, long hours, and terrible ergonomics. But I never seem to finish that post, so I’m writing this one instead.
About 8 years ago I started getting migraines... about once a quarter. Not too frequent, so I just ignored them. Then they slowly progressed to monthly. Then weekly. And at some point I realized I was waking up with a low grade headache every day. My wife had been trying to get me to a headache doctor for a while, but daily was my wake up call.
Along this time I started skipping west coast conferences. The additional stress of dealing with extra time zones never helped.
I also noticed that, of all my conference friends, I was the only one who had a low-end pharmacy in his laptop bag. Other people bought tylenol when they had a headache. I went to a pocket that had each major over-the-counter medicine so I could rotate doses. I also found that I retreated to the quiet of my hotel room hours before my friends.
Now I rarely speak at conferences, but I do attend a few. Most days I have at least a low-grade headache, but some months (like the last one), I don’t really leave the house other than for work.
Why am I typing all this? I’m asked from time to time why I’m not at conference X or Y. Or why I don’t attend the local user group meetings anymore. I’ve really fallen off of the blogging wagon as well. Finally blogging seemed a more efficient way of sharing the information.
I also want to take this opportunity to say that migraines aren’t just blinding pain that leave you on the floor. They’re also when you have headaches more than three times a week. They can be caused by stress, certain foods, bright lights, missed meals, exercise, or a hundred other things most people take for granted. Ignoring your condition, like I did, makes it much more difficult for you doctor to help you. The longer your body thinks of the pain as normal, the more difficult it’ll be to break the cycle.
Your regular doctor will know a bit about headaches, but there are neurologists who focus exclusively in this area. I strongly encourage you to find one instead of being "tough" like me.
Category: Personal
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