Posted by Sébastien Lachance with Comments (0)
Thoughts on Flash
I read through this article this morning and found it interesting. At first I was considering strange the fact that the IPad was not supporting Flash, but after reading carefully this article, it makes sense.
Almost a month and a half now that my son is born. I could not imagine in how many ways it has changed my life (other than having no more free time :P).
That morning was probably one of the strangest and longest day I’ve ever seen. After being told that we were waiting for a “big” baby (I am 6’1 tall), we had the surprise of seeing a perfectly “normal” baby, weighted at 7lb13oz and measuring 21 inch after a long 14 hours.
One thing I’ve have learned so far… I will never say again that I’m tired because I’m lacking one or two hours of sleep. I’ve had 4-5 hours of sleep in 4 days after he was born. And no matter how well I was prepared, I now see that I will have a lot to learn. It’s unimaginable how every little things he does amaze me.
But it’s really a wonderful gift of life, and I’m planning to enjoy every moment of it.
2010 will be a great year and I’m sure that my life will change dramatically. I have a whole bunch of ideas and things I want to do. Here is a list of my “professional goals”.
Ever since I first heard of ASP.NET MVC, I knew I should become proficient in it. But I can’t control the type of project I’m working on, so I neglected to do my homework and stay up to date.
A big gap to fill. I’ve made some progress but still not able to do it efficiently. I will probably pick up some books and try to design web site from scratch just for gun.
I have some ideas of plugins that haven’t made it to general release. This year, I will definitely launch one to have a real experience with launching an open source project and responding to feedback.
Something else than the jQuery plugin mentioned earlier. I have made some “improvement” to BlogEngine.Net and maybe I will submit them some changes I’ve made.
95 posts to go and around 50 more readers. Completely feasible. I also picked some tips while I had a complete lack of posts for some month and I am now ready to apply them.
I need to finish Getting Things Done and try it for some months. A goal that I really need to complete this year.
I took some weight since the wedding in October 2009 and I can now see how it affect my health. So I am ready to take care of this again. It may not looks like a professional goal but I’m sure It will have a big impact in the end.
AlternativeTo is a web site that suggests alternatives to a given application based on user recommendations. For example : TeamCity will have Hudson and CruiseControl and Windows 7 will have Windows Vista and Windows XP as an alternative. The web site is divided into 2 main category: desktop and mobile and can be further divided between OS (Windows, Mac, Linux or Online for the Desktop section and IPhone, Win Mobile, Android, Blackberry and S60 for the Mobile section).
The first things that came to my attention is the ease of use and the quality of presentation. It’s just easy to find what you need to. It really is that interesting and I admit I return to them often when I’m in need of an alternative software. They have release their beta version on March 2009.
Great job guys!
PS: I have no relation whatsoever with AlternativeTo. I just find the concept interesting.
Last week, I came across this excellent post by Robert C. Martin and had found it very interesting. We have seen an increasing amount of good tools to get the job done, but not a lot of improvements in computer languages. I'm delighted to see that there is now a lot of good developers who are working on improving languages. We have a bright future ahead of us!
Like everyone else, I tried the new browser from Google. So far so good. As of today, I had no problem at all, except for some site that I could not log into. The major improvement I can see out of the box is the maximization of all the possible space and added an integrated html inspector.
They also added the search functionality right into the address bar. It makes only one shortcut to reminder. For a non-official version, it really is amazing. I expect a great future for Google Chrome.
I was thinking about this for a while. If I have to choose five peoples who have influenced me the most concerning my career, who would that be?
1. My first supervisor when I was a wielder.
This guy once said to me that I would never do anything more than wielding in my life and if it wasn't for my father, he would have fired me for nothing. I promised him that It will not happen. Four years later, I was the leader of a small team in the company. Take that...
2. Bernard Voyer.
A famous explorator that I met when I was in school. He believed in his dream and have conquered the Everest, South Pole, North Pole and a lot of hard to reach places. He his just a normal person who gave everything he had to make his dream true.
3. The ASP.NET guy.
I don't remember his name , but it's shortly after I finished school. He had just completed a Microsoft Certification in ASP.NET. This is where I first heard the term MCSD and I promised myself I would be one (even though I had no idea what it was at that time). 2 years later, February 7 2006 at almost 9:00 PM, I was one. I learned all by myself with the help of some books and the requirement list on MSDN. It just felt incredible. Even if I'm no longer in the world of certification, I'm still very proud of it.
4. Scott Hanselman.
First blog ever that I have put in my RSS aggregator. I'm following him since a long time and he inspired me a lot. It's because of him that I am a blogger. He's coming to the .NET User Group of Québec next week and I can't wait to meet him.
5. Jean-Paul Boodhoo
Never met the man. I first heard of him in an episode on DnrTv about design patterns. It seem he has a lot passion... If you have never heard of him, head here. I wish I was as passionate as him. I am, but he his more :).
This was my top 5 of the peoples who had the most impact on me. But I want to talk about a 6th person. He probably don't want me to talk about him so I will not give any name. Before meeting him, I was already into Agile development. But he taught me a lot about other aspect of the methodology. Everything that can't be learn in a book to be more precise. But thing haven't got very well at some point and after a lot of different events we lost touch. Anyway, I am very recognizing to have worked with him.
Last week, I have left my job at bxsystems. I had an opportunity that I could not refuse. I have worked for 3 years and 8 months with the most talented peoples I ever encountered. They are great professionals and I am sure they will continue to be successful in their careers. This is where all started for me, where I started to get passionate about programming. I had a lot of freedom and a lot of learning opportunities.
I am very grateful for everything. For a beginner, it could not be a better place. Thank you!
You may not know, but I am a full time web worker since February 2007 and I am loving it. I followed my girlfriend to his new job in mechanical engineering located in the "Beauce" area in the province of Québec (1 hour from Québec City). But let's make a point clear. It was not as easy as it sounds. It takes a lot of discipline and you may find that you just can't do it. I have had many friends who were not able to work from home. For me, it was easy since it's a childhood dream. I have gone through 3 phases.
The first one is the "That's easy" phase. During the first 2 months, everything seemed so easy. I was very productive and enjoyed every minutes working from home. This is also the phase were you work more than you are supposed and keep no free time. You have the impression you can achieve anything.
I called the second phase : "I need to check everything around the house to be sure nothing changed.". In this phase, everything disturbed me. I started to feel lonely and was wondering if I made the right choice. During this 6 months phase I had a hard time concentrating on my job. It's also the time we were building our new home. During that time, I never took a day off except the day we moved in. I was exhausted, stressed and lost. We had problems with contractors. The price we anticipated was a bit higher due to the angle of the lot we bought. To make things worst, I started working on a new project requiring me to work with Microsoft Dynamics (until you used the supplied API you can't imagine how frustrating of an experience it is). But I have gone through it.
Now, I am in the third phase. I called it the "Rebirth phase". I restarted my old habit of learning as much as I can. I have solved my concentration problem. I feel a lot more happier and a lot more in health. I started to really enjoy working remotely and I am sure I am as productive as I was before. I am now fully happy with it. And I have new projects for my region...
I am now available to work on small contracts for now. I also want to work remotely. If you are interested, just let me know via the contact form.