Ionrock Dot Org

My Weblog

Year End Updates

So, by some string of luck I managed to get a few follower's on my Posterous blog. Considering we are just starting a brand spankin new year, now seems like a good idea to offer a little overview of myself. Also, this Posterous blog is primarily just a way for me to blog on my own website, Ionrock Dot Org, so feel free to check it out or leave comments there.

Work

First off, I'm a programmer for YouGov. I program web applications with Python. This past year has been quite the roller coaster for jobs. I started off the new year with a company called BSG Alliance. This was after scrambling from a failed startup. BSG promptly changed their name and managed to grab even more VC money and I was semi-confused what the company really was doing. By the way, this confusion might seem like a negative statement about my previous employer, but in reality it says more about yours truly. I started working their because they used a pretty nice dynamic language and the guys I was going to work with were insanely fun. The problem was that I just didn't get whole Enterprise 2.0 mindset along side Rails. The result was that when some friends of friends pinged me to see if I was looking, it was a little too easy to entertain the idea.

So, after a name change for the company and a trip to Palo Alto for me, I found myself with a new job working from home. Since then, I've had a blast. I love where and what I work on every day. Previously, my endeavors ended up being rather focused on XML technologies. YouGov has given me a chance to avoid XML for a while and it is honestly rather refreshing. The XML world has made data formats interesting and useful, which translates well with other data formats such as JSON. At my job, we use JSON quite a bit and have written a good deal of internal services that focus on it as a data format, so while I'm not exercising nxml quite as diligently, my mindset for information hasn't been inactive.

The other big change for me in moving to YouGov is that I no longer work on my physical machine. I have a laptop, but it is effectively a dumb terminal that I use for connecting to my machine at the office. This has provided a great deal of challenges and allowed me to finally become serious about my Emacs and shell skills. It is funny to realize how little features like copy and paste can become slightly difficult when you can't easily just grab the mouse and make a few clicks.

Finally, I started blogging for O'Reilly. Things started out focusing on XML, but O'Reilly changed backend systems as well as reorganized their web content. The positive side of this was that I was able to blog about anything I want. The downside is gathering an audience is not quite a simple since my posts have become part of a much larger pool. I'm not complaining though. It is a lot of fun blogging about tech with a reputable organization and I've gotten a free book in the process, so I'm happy.

Music

So, outside of programming, I play bass in a band called Ume. This past year we finally got in the studio to record. This ended up taking quite a while to finally capture a small set of songs we had been working on. When we first moved to Austin, we got in the studio and started making a record. That process became somewhat difficult as our engineer ended up going on tour for a few months and we had to find another that was reasonable. By the time we finished the majority of the tracks we were contacted by a relatively well known producer that wanted to work with us. This was extremely exciting, so we dropped what we were doing to see what would happen. Being a good producer, he pretty much let us know that we needed practice. So, we spent massive amounts of time practicing and getting better playing together. Eventually it became obvious that while the producer wanted to work with us, it was pointless to wait, so we went in the studio and started working on a record.

We wrapped up the EP and have managed to get it pressed. A friend of ours did the artwork and really did a great job. We ended up playing Fun Fun Fun Fest and will be playing SXSW this year. My wife has been working with Girls Rock Camp Austin. Through some contacts there, she is going to be turning some Ume music into a real deal symphony piece. Ume also had the privilege to play Girls Rock Camp, which was pretty awesome.

A quick side note about Girls Rock Camp. It is a really powerful program! I don't think many men realize that the world still has a great deal of sexism that makes it very difficult for girls to find their own voice. I'm a guy, so my experience is very limited on the subject. But, what I can say is that I've had the privilege of seeing young girls gain confidence and it is really powerful.

This year the EP is coming out (Feb 24th digitally). There is a press campaign happening at the moment and a few friends have been working on some videos. Surprisingly, making a video is really hard work. It is physically challenging to effectively play a show for 6 to 8 hours. Hard work aside, I'm looking forward to checking them out.

So, that is about it for me this past year! Looking forward to 2009.