I was recently tagged in one of those chain letter things on facebook by my friend Blake Hall. I’m supposed to post 25 random things about myself and then tag 25 other people. Well, I’m not tagging other people but I thought it would be fun to post.

So it seems this post falls exactly one month from my New Years Resolutions post. I thought I’d regale you with some updates.

Today I signed up for the Beginning Rock Climbing course at Planet Granite. I’m pretty impressed with what I’ve seen of the place so far. I start my first of 4 weekly classes on February 4th. I’m not sure how this will work out long term since even at the club to do the regular climbing I’ll need a partner. I’m hoping I’ll find someone in the same boat during the class that I can partner up with going forward. They also offer yoga classes. I think I’ll plan to attend two classes a week. If I do the Ashtanga yoga on Mondays and Wednesdays to start I can expand to a third class on Saturdays in the future. I haven’t checked it out but they also have a fitness center which sounds like a regular gym there. I have a membership at Gold’s Gym but I haven’t gotten out there too much because it’s kind of out of my way. Planet Granite on the other hand is very close to me. I discovered I can walk there in 15 minutes or so.

I haven’t progressed with learning Russian. I started with the Rosetta Stone program but then I got sick and haven’t gotten back in the flow with that. I also decided to hold off on taking Russian classes at the moment. I think starting out with the rock climbing and yoga I’ll be pretty busy. I’m still thinking about taking art classes, but like I said last month, it’s not something I’m planning on pursuing immediately.

Otherwise I’m keeping busy. Work is going well and I’ve met some cool new friends to hang out with. I’ve had an surge of freelance work lately that has kept me off the streets. Hopefully some of the extra money I’m making will go towards building myself a new computer.

So I promised folks pictures a while ago and hadn’t gotten around to it. Mostly because I was waiting until I got everything put away and cleaned up. But you know me, I tend to procrastinate. So I figured if I waited until I got things put away the pictures would never be taken. So here they are.

Or so I say. But clearly that’s not true, unless you believe my stories of a well trained chimp that does all my reading and writing for me. It’s a joke I’ve used quite a bit through the years. People typically find it funny because of the obvious falseness of it. Clearly I can read and write but most people also seem to think I’m quite intelligent. I am a computer programmer of all things. And this is where I feel most people fail.

Because computers are becoming such a key part of our everyday lives, a part that many people still struggle with, my advanced knowledge in their workings (compared to the observer) lead them to mistakenly assume that this makes me some kind of genius. However I know the truth, they have been fooled.

I read an article today on the train in EnlightenNext magazine entitled “The Dumbest Generation?” by Tom Huston. It’s an interesting read. One thing that stood out was the phrase sophisticatedly narcissistic which seems to fit.

Why do I jump to the conclusion that I’m some sort of moron? I don’t feel like I stand up to most of the identifiers of an educated individual. One, I know very little of current events. I don’t live in a cave, so I’m aware of some very significant events but I don’t watch the news, I don’t read normal news websites like CNN. I’m up to speed on most tech news, but I live in a bubble.

What are my main sources for news? TechCrunch, Boing Boing, Digg and Reddit. Just now I look at the top headline on CNN “Cries from Gaza: ‘We are in the eye of the storm’” and you know what? I know almost nothing about what they are talking about. I’ve read some headlines about something going on in Gaza but honestly, I wasn’t that interested. I was more interested to read that Steve Jobs was losing weight because of a hormone imbalance and that’s partly why he’s not going to be doing the keynote at MacWorld. This is because I’m sophisticatedly narcissistic. I have all the news and information at my fingertips and I have no excusable reason for not keeping up on current national and world events.

At one time I added the New York Times and CNN to my RSS feed reader because I felt it was something I should do but after a few weeks I realized I just didn’t care and it was just noise to me. One thing I remember having to learn when I was in middle school was the 50 states and the capitals of all 50 states. I’m sure at this point I could do a pretty good job labeling the 50 states on a map but I’d be pretty hard pressed to name all 50 state capitals.

Not to long ago there was a magazine that had a cover article “Is Google Making Us Dumb?” or something like that. I didn’t actually read the article but that’s a question that some of my friends and coworkers discussed at the time. Some would argue that I’m not dumb for not knowing these things because I don’t need to know it, I can look it up. I’m in front of a computer probably 70% of my waking hours and I have an iPhone with internet access in my pocket for the rest of the time. I suspect GPS navigation systems will cause a similar dependency where at some point there will be people who won’t be able drive anywhere without the use of one.

If you took me with internet access compared to an above average educated person from 100 years ago and quizzed us on important things in our respective times I would clearly have an advantage. Even if they were armed with all the resources at their disposal, I would still probably win. Am I merely adapting to new technology?

My generation is pretty hard to motivate. People look at the election as a glimmer of hope that we’re capable of acting. But I’m not sure. Look at what we’ve been through for the last 8 years. Where were we 4 years ago when Bush got reelected? I don’t know anybody who thought Bush was the right man for the job, but he still won. This time Obama won, but not by what I thought should have been a historical landslide. During the election people picked a side and repeated the soundbites. I’m not 100% sure where each candidate stood on the issues. I could probably make a good guess based on their respective political parties, but it would be a guess. I did take a quiz online though and it said that Obama was a far better match then McCain based on my responses.

Early in the election I was backing Ron Paul. Why? Because I have an intrinsic distrust for authority and government. Ron Paul stood for small government. I liked the idea of getting rid of the IRS. I knew that reverting to the gold standard wouldn’t do much good and could do harm but the idea of shaking things up seemed favorable. I didn’t like that he was pro-life but I didn’t think he would be able to do anything about it, Bush couldn’t. But that’s about it. I didn’t rally for him but I did send him money, just as I later did for Obama. Why didn’t I really do anything? Probably because in my heart I knew it didn’t make any difference. Ron Paul wasn’t going to win. And honestly I’m not sure how much good Obama is going to be able to do. I hope he’ll be better then McCain but you never know. At least I voted.

I know that I’m ignorant, and what’s worse is I’m probably not going to do anything about it. I’ll feel guilty about it, but that won’t be enough to motivate me. I think this is the problem with me and a lot of my generation and this is why we’re the “Dumbest Generation”. Let’s hope that I’m wrong, otherwise we’re all doomed.

I’m not really one who does the yearly resolutions and this year is no different.

Lately I’ve been in the midst of a lot of self reflection. I guess moving across the country and starting a new life does that to a guy. So I don’t really think of the following “resolutions” as anything more then I would at any other time of the year. My focus lately has been trying to identify places of unbalance in my life and try to come up with changes to become a more well rounded individual.

I’ve been very pleased with my weight loss but so far it’s been most because of dieting. I need to start exercising if I’m going to continue to lose weight and make the change permanent. It’s all about changing my lifestyle to be healthier. Not having a car in CA is certainly helping but I want to do something more deliberate. I’m thinking about learning rock climbing. This has been something on the back of my mind for a while but because I don’t have any friends that are particularly active let alone rock climbers it’s not something I’ve felt like I can just pick up. I’ve been doing some research and I’ve found a place called Planet Granite in Belmont which is pretty close to me. It’s an indoor climbing gym which looks pretty cool. They have classes so I figure this is a good way to start learning, plus hopefully I might meet some friends who are also interested in climbing so if I want to do actual rock climbing I’ll have people to do it with. Planet Granite also teaches yoga which is something I’ve wanted to get into as well so maybe I’ll try that as well.

I also would like to learn Russian. I’ve recently purchased the RosettaStone program for learning Russian and although it seems good I think I need to take an actual class. I’ve found a place called ABC Language Exchange that have weekly classes starting end of January. So I think I’ll probably try that out.

Lastly I have been toying with the idea of getting a degree in illustration for a while. I had looked into the Academy of Art University which has online degrees. They are based in San Francisco so now that I’m in the bay area I’ll see if I still want to do online or if I’ll be able to take classes on campus. Maybe a combination would be best, as I do like the classroom environment where I can interact with my classmates.

So those are the three things I’ve been thinking about doing lately. The Academy of Art University will not be something I pursue immediately. I’ll probably start calling and talking to them in a month or so with the intention of starting classes in the fall. I initially didn’t sign up because I didn’t think I could swing it financially but now I’m in a different boat and don’t think it will be much of an issue.

I think this will be an interesting year.

So I’ve been a resident of California for just over three weeks now and things are going well. I have most of my IKEA furniture assembled and most of my boxes unpacked. I’ve been kind of lazy with things lately but that’s OK.

PBwiki is really great. Everyone I work with has been super good about making me feel at home. I’m starting to get into some more complex projects. I’ve been meaning to get some photos posted but haven’t gotten around to taking any. Hopefully in the next couple days I’ll post some pics of my apartment and neighborhood.

Last week I attended the San Francisco PHP Meetup where Terry Chay talked about frameworks. In particular he discussed how off the shelf frameworks suck because of the consequences. He definitely was coming from the point of view of someone who writes very large highly scalable websites and in that context I very much agree with him. He did say that these frameworks are good for toy projects and enterprise software which I’d agree with.

I’ve really wanted to find a good framework to use and I’ve come pretty close with Solar and Kohana but I’m never satisfied with the trade-offs. I feel like I can use libraries from Solar or Zend if I need to as long as I code things properly on my end. I follow the same naming structure as Solar and Zend where my file names and classes match up and I use a parent “namespace” to keep my code from polluting the global namespace.

Friday was my last day at Netconcepts. It wasn’t very emotional because this has been building up for about a month now. My first phone interview with PBwiki was on September 5th, I was in CA interviewing in person September 19th and I put in my notice on September 24th. I’ve had a chance to go out with most of my friends and coworkers. Everyone is super excited for me, even though they are sad to see me go.

Hopefully I’ll be able to stay in contact with folks because they have been a great team to work with. Many people are already talking about flying out to visit me in CA.

I’m not even leaving Netconcepts 100% as I’m going to continue working on the SEO Title Tag plugin and the WordPress Quiz plugin. I’ve told them that they need to transition them to a Netconcepts developer but since my departure leaves them somewhat short handed I can pick up the slack for now.

This week is all about packing. I still have a lot to pack and the moving company comes on Friday. I fly out to San Mateo on Saturday and I start my first day at PBwiki on Monday, October 20th.

I’m very excited about this move, I think this is going to be a great opportunity.

So after 27 years in southern WI, I’m moving to California.

I’ve just accepted a position with http://www.pbwiki.com as a junior developer. I start there on October 20th, so it will be a crazy couple of weeks preparing to move.

I’ve wanted to move to the bay area for quite some time, and this was finally the opportunity to do it. I’m sad to leave Netconcepts, they have been a great group of folks to work with and I’ve learned a lot. Pbwiki seems like it will be an awesome place to work, lots of cool smart people and a really sweet product to work on.

I’ll try to post more as it happens, how I’m adjusting to San Mateo and the bay area in general. I’m sure it will be an adventure.

At Netconcepts I’ve implemented microformats in order to optimize content for search engines. An example of this would be the hCard microformat which we’re using in the Allen Edmonds store locator. If you view the source of http://www.allenedmonds.com/mens/allen-edmonds-in-brookfield.shtml and look for class=”vcard” you can examine how we’re marking up the content with classes like street-address and region. We’re hoping that this will be used for local search.

Today I was reading a post about a talk Rasmus Lerdorf (the creator of PHP who currently works at Yahoo) gave yesterday at DrupalCon where he mostly was talking about the performance of PHP frameworks. In the midst of this post I read something interesting.

Rasmus made a special point of highlighting the importance of embedding structured metadata into the page. RDFa allows you to embed data into your web pages and also lets you create custom vocabularies, or even better, reuse existing vocabularies. Why would you want to do this? SearchMonkey will go out and index this content and open up a rich search API to allow you to do intelligent queries. Well beyond what is possible with traditional search.

I know Netconcepts has started to experiment with SearchMonkey (I spoke on this topic at Web608) but this is the first I’ve really heard of RDFa. I’ve heard of RDF before (Resource Description Framework) but only in terms of XML documents (commonly used with RSS feeds). But what is RDFa? A quick look to Wikipedia says:

RDFa (or Resource Description Framework attributes) is a set of extensions to XHTML being proposed by W3C. RDFa uses attributes from XHTML’s meta and link elements, and generalises them so that they are usable on all elements. This allows you to annotate XHTML markup with semantics.

Has anyone been paying attention to this? I wonder how useful this could be in GravitySream. Since it’s an extension to XHTML I wonder if the site has to be valid XHTML in order to take full advantage of RDFa.

For more information on RDFa you can check out the RDFa Primer from the W3C and the original article I read Rasmus Lerdorf – PHP frameworks? Think again.

Today my iMac arrived. This is my first Mac so I’m pretty excited. I unboxed it at work because I didn’t feel like waiting until I got home after the Drupal Meetup tonight.