For the past three years I’ve called Engine Yard my home. It’s been a great job, working with both intelligent employees and intelligent customers. The first couple of years I was in Application Support, keeping Rails apps running smoothly and helping them scale. Then I did time in Profesional Services, helping with performance analysis, migrations, custom Chef recipes, and so on. I split my time between Professional Services and working as the Master Instructor, managing the curriculum and teaching the Zero to Rails 3 course.

I’ve been busy. I never thought working remotely would keep me busy but this job has had me working harder than any other job I’ve held. At times it has been stressful but for the most part it has been very rewarding. And I’ve made some valuable friendships along the way.

But now it is time for me to move on. I’m moving to BLiNQ Media to work as a software engineer. This company is cool and follows agile practices to achieve some impressive results. I can’t wait to contribute!

I’ll still be working from home, utilizing pairing and other agile practices to get things done. It’s going to be a lot of fun. My first day isn’t until the middle of the month so wish me luck as I transition into this new venture.

Like many of my colleagues, I have accounts on most of the major social networking sites. I also am the type of person who jumps on a new service as soon as an invitation is available to check it out.

The most recent service in this trend is Google+, Google’s first serious foray into the social networking space. Their other services (Wave and Buzz, namely) have fallen short of what users want from a social network, but Plus seems to be catching on big time.

I’m really digging the interface. It’s reminiscent of Facebook, but it feels more like a more-organized Twitter. The focus is on the stream and organizing the people you follow into Circles, making sharing to different groups of friends easy. The way it works just makes sense and it beats the convoluted security settings of Facebook hands down. Add on top of that a feeling of openness and cool features such as Hangouts and you have a killer product that I can’t tear myself away from.

I’ve read several posts about people deactivating Facebook in favor of Google+, and while that’s a noble goal for many reasons, I’m not quite ready to make the jump just yet for several reasons.

• Authentication - Sites are still using Facebook to connect, login, and manage authentication. And others, such as the awesome music sharing/discovery chat room Turntable.fm currently only allow you to connect if you are on Facebook and are friends with someone who already has access. Deactivating now before Google+ opens up and has a killer API is premature.
• API - There’s no Google+ API yet. It’s coming. We’ll get it, and there will be games. Granted, I can’t stand Farmville and the like, but they do draw people and keep them coming back. Plus for every 10 Farmville clones there’s at least one good application that has a good use. :p
• User base - Google+ is still in beta, and currently the invitation system is turned off. As more bugs are worked out and capacity is met, more people will get to join, but as of now it is still in the very early stages. Half the people I’d share with are not able to join yet, even though they really want to.
• Event planning - This is a minor complaint, but a complaint nonetheless. Google+ doesn’t have an easy way to set up events like Facebook. My family and my friends both rely on this system to get us to gatherings on time, so I need access to this. Sure, I could convert everyone to something like Evite, but that would take a lot of effort and convincing people to sign up for yet another service. Anyone have any good solutions for this?

That being said, I’m using Facebook less and less. It’s only a matter of time before the above reasons are no longer issues for me, then it will be time to cut the Facebook cord.

Are you using Google+ and Facebook? If so, do you plan on dropping one for the other?

It is time for the annual site redo, where I finally get tired of the look and feel of my blog and totally mix it up. This go round, I’ve taken the approach of combining and dropping a few blogs in favor of a single spot, making it more likely that I’ll keep it updated.

I’ve also gotten rid of the vcard site template all together. While it was shiny and pretty, it felt more like an advertisement. I’m not really trying to advertise myself to the world, I’m just trying to stake my own claim on the virtual real estate property of the Internet.

The goal of this design is to be very simple. Two columns, mostly text, few images, and no clutter. There’s no real heavy use of Javascript or other technologies that just don’t have a place on this modest little blog. It’s all static, generated via Jekyll.

I made the decision to go with HTML5 and use Sass for CSS. The result is rather clean markup and super-readable CSS (in its non-compiled form of course). The font is sized to be readable and pleasant without causing much strain, which is important since I tend to ramble.

I hope it the changes work for you, my friends!

Every year for the past three years the same thing has happened to me: I’ll write my rear end off during November to complete NaNoWriMo, and by the time the month is over and my 50,000 words is complete I am sick of writing.

I’ll still blog and post on Internet forums and tinker with writing prompts and short stories, but anything substantial just doesn’t seem fun. It’s an overdose of serious writing all at once. It’s one of the few downsides to participating in a writing event that crams a large amount of writing into a very short amount of time.

I guess on one hand that could be considered a good thing. It gives me a much-needed break from my story, allowing things to congeal in my head so that when I finally come back to the story I’m fresh and hopefully have grown as a person enough that I can turn the Inner Editor back on and do some good. But in previous years I’ve gone back to my manuscript and decided that it just would require too much rework to be worth the effort spent.

And that’s true. My first two novels written during NaNoWriMo are pretty much derivative garbage. I don’t think I’m being hard on myself, either. I’m being honest and not trying to play the role of self-deprecating author to drum up sympathy from you, loyal reader. Seriously, reading the stuff I’ve written before I know I can do so much better.

I was pleasantly surprised today when I had the desire to come back to my story from the latest NaNoWriMo. I’m wanting to take it and mold it into a finished product that people will enjoy. Will it find a publisher and land me a big contract, or will I have to publish it myself to get the story out there? Well, time will tell on that part, but I honestly believe this story is interesting enough that people will love it.

I’ve been reading a lot of similar books in the genre lately, and I have to say, I can see my writing fitting in as is. So if I spend the time editing, refining, crafting, clarifying, solidifying and honing the story I have it can really be something special. And that makes me feel pretty good. I guess it’s true what they say: the third time’s the charm!

Like the dot-com bubble of the nineties, I’m beginning to suspect that there is a bubble of social media that is reaching the breaking point. There is an overwhelming number of places one can go and build up a profile and a small gathering of followers or friends or whatever the site in question calls them. We’re becoming more and more comfortable just sharing and giving information away in order to get the ego boost of feeling like we have an audience.

There are actually businesses built on exploiting that desire. They tout surefire ways to build your social sphere of influence, build communities, and generate revenue from these people more than willing to throw their micro-payments your way in the form of real currency, “social bucks” in the form of things like Facebook credits, ad impressions, and the most valuable: your demographic data.

I’ve been one to hop on board with new startups trying to be the next big social media outlet. I’ve been in closed betas, open betas, slightly ajar betas, alphas, and the entire span of the Greek alphabet. I’ve been there since the beginning by blogging before that was even a term. I was helping podcast when mp3 files were too big and it was more efficient to share Real Audio. I’ve seen what works and what doesn’t.

And I still fall for something very basic. I spread myself too thin and wonder why I’m not getting the response I desire.

For example, I run a writers group called the Geek Writers. I started off promoting the group by building a Wordpress blog, linking that with a Facebook page, starting a Twitter account that received updates from all of those, and putting together a Google Groups mailing list. My thought was that if I wave my hands hard enough, people couldn’t possibly miss what I have to say.

I missed the point.

“The point” being that I was—and still am—trying to build a community of people with like-minded interests. And instead of focusing my attention on one area and making it work really well, I spread myself thin by taking advantage of every possible social outlet that would work. I ended up with a fragmented community: a handful posting on Facebook, a handful posting on the mailing list, a few people responding via Twitter, etc. But there was no real defining point of entry for my little community. 

Social networks should support your community, they should not define it. They should solve a specific problem.

So I took a step back after talking with some friends of mine, and decided that the best way to promote the community was to not rely so much on other social networks and focus on building the community up in one place. So instead of using Facebook, Twitter, the blog, the mailing list, and so forth, I moved meeting management over to Meetup.com and use that almost exclusively now. I’m going to shut down the Facebook page, and the mailing list on Google Groups is now unused. I’m in the process of repurposing the blog to support the community instead of defining it by making it an outlet for content by way of helpful writing tips. I haven’t decided what to do with the Twitter account, but it’s usefulness isn’t really standing out to me right now.

Do you know what the result has been from this little experience? A more cohesive group presence online. We’ve been growing our numbers at a reasonable rate. And it feels actually manageable instead of overwhelming. It’s a great feeling.

Ok, I’ve sort of rambled on this post and strayed from talking about the “bubble”. I’ve felt the effects of being over-saturated in the social sphere online, and I know I’m not the only one. I have a feeling that it won’t always be the “new hotness”. Just look at MySpace’s current implosion. They’re feeling the heat of competition and people not willing to spread themselves thin anymore. Maybe it’s a sign of things to come, or maybe I just need to get some more sleep. :)