profession

10.04.07

The last few months I have plunged myself into work. After certifying in PHP 5, I ended up not using it. Instead, I am back on the Ruby on Rails bandwagon, now having in my possession the second edition of Agile Web Development with Rails. It is different enough from the first edition to warrant reading through from the start.

Another recent book of great benefit is CSS Mastery, which contains quite a few techniques for style sheets, one of my favorites being tabs that grow as you increase the font size (sliding doors technique).

Modern mercenary

Putting all this to use, I have been working on a few freelance projects. Royer Homes contacted me to develop a web-based tool to help analyze the costs of their housing projects. I had used Ruby on Rails for my personal web site, but this is my first major project with the technology. In many ways it has been a learning experience, logging about 100 hours but spending far more time overall. It is also my first project to utilize the Prototype library for all sorts of AJAX goodness. Kudos to the the Prototype team for great offline API documentation!

Last month I took on a second Ruby on Rails project, which was well underway before I joined. Econolution is a community-based site builder to which I did some minor polish here and there. Most of my time went to customizing the rich text editor FCKEditor with appealing Modalbox dialogs.

Along the way, I installed a license of Windows XP Home Edition on my MacBook Pro in order to test Internet Explorer (BrowserCam’s VNC just didn’t cut it). Yes, I agree with those before me, it somehow feels dirty to run Windows on a Mac. Parallels is pretty decent though, a few glitches but a lot better than my past experiences with Virtual PC.

Hands and feet

Okay, this is a little odd, but for my 30th birthday I had some serious pampering. The whole manicure/pedicure thing (first time), including the hot wax treatment, followed by a sorely needed haircut. While all this was going on, I kept thinking of Audio Adrenaline’s song Hands and Feet. It’s a song about obedience to Christ in reaching out to the world. The chorus line is “I’ll go where you send me.”

In a few weeks I intend to be serving at Campus Crusade for Christ in Langley, B.C. as a web developer on a Human Resources project. It’s a four month co-op, to ease me into the missions life (fund-raising and all). It seems I’ve been preparing for this, as the project has an existing code-base and will be developed in (drum-roll)… Ruby on Rails. It’s more than just an HR project for me, because I intend to determine the long-term feasibility of working with TruthMedia. But one step at a time, without knowing all that lies ahead, I am responding with Isaiah:

“Here I am. Send me”¹

For a closer look, download my April newsletter (304K PDF²). Please send me an email if you would like to be involved or have any questions.