Signs of Web dependence
We successfully completed our move on Saturday thanks to my parents and some new friends here in Boise. It’s great to be getting settled in our new house.
During the move, however, we were without Internet access for nearly three days. I honestly didn’t mind too much, but I was definitely aware of it. I also got to thinking about how much more of my life I keep online these days. Here’s a brief summary:
- My blog
- My LinkedIn profile and other social networking sites
- My del.icio.us bookmarks
- My 300+ feeds in Google Reader
- My Gmail
- My PHP forums
These are the main elements of my online life. There are many more small ones. As soon as we had access again, I started playing “catch up” and I somehow felt “whole again”. Very strange. Can anybody else relate to this?
Sphere: Related ContentJavaScript and PHP posts in the works
I’m back from North Carolina now and I haven’t forgotten my pledge to analyze and review the major JavaScript frameworks. I’m also very intrigued by the Zend Framework for PHP, so I’m planning to discuss that as well.
On a personal note, we just closed on the purchase of a house this morning, we’ll be moving this week, and our second child is due to be born next month. So blogging may take a much-deserved backseat to life in the coming weeks, but I’ll get back into it soon enough.
Sphere: Related ContentDiversify your goals
Lately I’ve read a lot of great posts about goal setting and personal growth. People have been sharing their personal tips for setting realistic goals, tracking progress, and following through. I’ve also been reading David Allen’s book Getting Things Done. So I’ve been mulling over the notion of goals for several days now.
One aspect of goal setting that is addressed in GTD, but seems to be absent from a lot of the blogs is diversification. It’s natural to develop laser focus on career goals and financial goals, but there’s much more to life than work and money. I encourage you to consider some other categories:
- Fitness goals – Staying in shape makes everything easier and you’ll probably live longer too.
- Intellectual goals – Read some good books, do Sudoku, watch foreign films… The possibilities are endless.
- Social goals – Get connected, talk to people, write letters, pick up the phone… No man is an island.
- Travel goals – This may seem whimsical, but I like making lists of places I want to go in my lifetime.
Hopefully these new categories will get the wheels spinning in your head. Balance in life is very important. So go for the promotion and the big bank account, but don’t neglect the triathlon, foreign language learning, rekindling old friendships, and visiting Timbuktu. In forty years, you’ll thank me.
Sphere: Related ContentScore one for the little guy
I’d like to draw your attention for a few minutes to a great article over at Common Craft about a dating site called Plenty of Fish. I’m sure you’re wondering why a supposedly happily married guy would want to talk about a dating site. What intrigues me about this site is that it is going up against the heavyweights in that niche (Match.com, eHarmony, etc.) and pretty much taking them out behind the woodshed. Throwing them under the bus so to speak. Opening up a can of whoopa– OK, you get the idea. And the kicker is that Plenty of Fish is run by one guy from his apartment. The site is currently earning between 5 and 10 million dollars a year.
This gives hope to all of us who dream about the mere possibility of even a modest fraction of his success. Now we know that it does indeed happen. Yes, score one for the little guy. So which Goliath will you be going after?
Sphere: Related ContentNot the only Patrick Lee on the planet
While some people experience relative ease in their quest to reach #1 on Google for their own names, I’m locked in competition with a multitude of Patrick Lees. Yes, I’m sure it’s hard to believe there are several of us out there. It’s such an unusual name.
I just checked and I’m sitting quite comfortably in the #5 position when I search for Patrick Lee on Google. Although I am locked in a bitter struggle with them for Google supremacy, I thought I would take a moment this evening to pay homage to my worthy competitors (one of whom is female and named Lee Patrick). So here goes in order of Google rank:
- Patrick Lee, MIT physicist
- Patrick Lee, bioethicist in Germany
- Lee Patrick, actress
- Patrick Lee, author of a book about abortion
If I search for Patrick Lee in quotes, I’m currently #4. Not too shabby.
Well I hope you’ve enjoyed your time ahead of me, you pretenders to the Patrick Lee throne. Resistance is useless and not even your .EDU domains can save you. Buwahahaha!!!
Sphere: Related ContentBrainstorming versus focusing
Greetings from Raleigh, North Carolina. I just arrived this afternoon and have four days of corporate training at McClatchy Interactive starting tomorrow morning. During one of the flights today, I was reading Getting Things Done by David Allen. It’s an interesting book and probably a topic I will return to from time to time. What I want to write about today is what I see as the competing disciplines of brainstorming and focusing. This dichotomy should make sense shortly.
I’ve always been very good at brainstorming and generating new ideas. I think of new things in the shower, while exercising, during the morning commute, while washing dishes, and any number of other random times during a typical day. Sometimes it’s all I can do just to write them down before I forget anything. Brainstorming is not difficult for me at all. Where I tend to come up short is in moving one of my ideas from concept to reality. Part of the problem is that I keep adding other ideas in the meantime.
Now don’t get me wrong. I am very focused when it comes to my job and the work I do for clients. I know exactly what needs to be done and I do it well. It’s with my own ideas that I find myself in a different situation entirely. As of right now, I have great ideas for five websites, six WordPress plugins, and four Firefox extensions. The sheer number of ideas makes it difficult to triage them effectively. And they just keep rolling in!
So that in a nutshell is why I’m reading Getting Things Done in the first place. I don’t want to have to pick and choose among my ideas. I want to do them all and eventually I believe that I will. In the meantime, I think a little triage is in order. Stay tuned. Readers of this blog will be the first to know when I actually deliver on one of my ideas.
Sphere: Related ContentPHP ain’t got no respect
Lately I’ve been reading about how PHP developers feel like second class citizens among programmers. Check out some of the comments on this SitePoint post. This sentiment of course is nothing new. The barrier to entry for people to use PHP is virtually zero. However, downloading some “kewl scripts” from the Internet and hacking them up does not make someone a PHP professional. Yet that is the impression among “real programmers” about PHP developers as a whole. I’ve said for a long time that PHP gives people more than enough rope to hang themselves: register_globals, gpc_magic_quotes, etc.
I’ve also written about the silliness of predictions of PHP’s imminent downfall. PHP is not without its warts, but it also supports a vibrant ecosystem of frameworks (Zend Framework, CakePHP, Symfony, etc.) as well as high profile open source software (WordPress, MediaWiki, Drupal, ZenCart, etc.). I really doubt that PHP is going away any time soon.
One fact that is troubling is the slow adoption of PHP 5. Since it does break backward compatibility with several features of PHP 4, Web hosting companies have been reluctant to upgrade for fear of breaking thousands of their clients’ creations. Some companies like Dreamhost give customers a choice of PHP 4 or 5 on a per domain basis (an excellent idea if you ask me). PHP 5 really is a major improvement over PHP 4 and the reality now is that PHP 6 is on the horizon and promising even more improvements and new features. I’ll be watching the market share of the various versions closely in the next several months. One interesting tidbit for you: the Zend Framework only works with PHP 5.1+.
So what can be done to bolster the wounded egos of the world’s PHP programmers? Probably not much that will have an immediate effect. The long-term solution is to continue to innovate, collaborate, donate time to open source projects, and make application security a top priority. PHP has a reputation for security issues that is not entirely undeserved.
Fight the good fight one line of code at a time and don’t pay too much attention to self-important Java, .NET, and C++ programmers. Try to ignore the Rails devotees completely unless you want a good laugh. They say some funny stuff about PHP.
Sphere: Related ContentI am not a designer
Although I wish I had more design sense, I really don’t have it. Certain skills can be learned, but the truly great designers out there seem to have an innate ability that I’m lacking. Being naturally analytical and mathematically inclined makes up for this to some extent, but I often wish I could trade some of that for a little more artistic talent.
Since I don’t see this wish being granted any time soon, I’ve gone in search of ways to “artificially boost” my design sense including books, blogs, and online tools. I’m also trying to push beyond my current 1% mastery of Photoshop. All of this is slow going and I really don’t have much time to devote to it, but I’m hoping to make some measurable progress in the next few months.
This morning I added a little more visual interest to the site including a logo designed by my good friend Ben Leivian as well as feed and e-mail icons from the Silk Icons set. Then I used an online tool called ColorJack Studio to try to create a palette, but I think it needs some work. Not the tool itself of course, but my ability to make the most of it.
As I said before, this whole design thing is a journey and not a destination. I think I need to stop and ask for directions…
Sphere: Related ContentMy first guest post is online
Yes, I managed to talk my way onto somebody else’s blog for the first time. I wrote a guest post for Treasure Valley Consultants’ Network on the topic of Communication Do’s and Don’ts for Remote Workers. My thanks to Justin Beller for extending the opportunity. I hope to write another guest post soon.
I just want to clarify a couple of things. I am not currently a full-time remote employee, though I was from about March 2006 until this past April. I now work full-time on site for the Idaho Statesman and do a little remote consulting work on the side for a few past employers as well as other companies.
Sphere: Related ContentI am a Yahoogle addict
The following takes place at a fictitious Yahooglers Anonymous meeting in Boise:
ME: Hi, my name is Patrick and I am a Yahoogle addict.
CROWD: Hi, Patrick!
ME: I’ve been sober for about two minutes. I checked my feeds right before I got up here to speak and I’ll do it again soon as I sit down.
SOME GUY: I hear you, man.
ME: Anyway I just can’t seem to shake this addiction (and believe me, I’ve tried). I even tried seeing other companies. Yeah, I really did. Flickr, YouTube, del.icio.us, Feedburner… You know what happened?
SOME OTHER GUY: Preach it, brother!
ME: Yeah, they got bought by Yahoogle! The whole lot of ‘em. I don’t even want to tell you which companies I’m seeing now because Yahoogle will find out and buy them too…
FIRST GUY: If they haven’t already!
ME: My life would be easier if I could just pick one: Yahoo or Google. But I can’t…
CROWD: That’s why we’re all here!
ME: On the Google side, I got Gmail, Gtalk, Google Maps, Google Earth, Google Analytics, Google Webmaster Central, Google Calendar, Google Docs & Spreadsheets, Google News Alerts, YouTube, and my new mistress… Google Reader.
SOME GUY: She’s a cruel harpie, that one!
ME: And on the Yahoo side, it’s Yahoo Mail, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Groups, Yahoo Messenger, Yahoo Sports, Flickr, and del.icio.us.
SOME OTHER GUY: You’re in deep, buddy.
ME: Yeah, you’re telling me. I wish they would just merge and get it over with.
(A shadowy figure emerges from the side of the stage.)
SHADOW MAN: There is another way, my son.
ME: Who are you? You’re not my dad.
SHADOW MAN: Search, maps, news, e-mail, chat, video, and more. We’ll even throw in X-Box Live free for 12 months…
ME: Hey, you look familiar. Do I know you?
SHADOW MAN: Umm, doubt it. Did I mention we also have a great platform for developers?
(A large, sweaty bald man appears in the back of the room and starts marching forward pumping his fists in the air.)
SWEATY GUY: Developers, developers, developers, developers!!!
(The room descends into chaos. Another great meeting. See you next week?)
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