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Culture, Open Source php|Meetup Meets Here
We've been trying to work this out for a while, and we finally got the logistics worked out.
The php|meetup group for Columbus will meet here at Innova for the next three sessions, starting on 9 August, at 6 p.m. We will be discussing some of the major php-based content management/blogware solutions out there: Drupal, WordPress, and Joomla (yes, in that order).
If you're not a member of the php|meetup group, sign up there and rsvp for the event. We'd like too get a headcount for the event beforehand. It's painless, and it lets you get to the message boards for the php group. And if you're a php user/programmer and that doesn't appeal to you, I don't know what will. Free beer?
Productivity Getting in the Zone
If you've ever worked a day in your life, you know what the Zone is, though you might not have called it that. It's that magical state where you start working at 7am and the next time you look up the project is done and it's 7pm and you don't know how you got there. Alcohol has a similar effect, but without the productivity. Sometimes we slip into the zone very easily, but sometimes it can become difficult due to everyday distractions like email, or your coworkers begging you to play a game of 8-ball with them. (Speaking of which, check out the new scoreboard! I'm winning, suckers!)
Different things work for different people, but the most helpful thing I can do to get in the zone is to strap on the headphones and fire up the 'Coding' playlist. For me, this playlist consists of hard metal or electronic music that I've heard a million times. It blocks out the world while I work. Some people require different music — I had a friend in college who couldn't code to anything but Tool. Kent, the Innova Graphics and Drupal monkey, has had classical music playing all day. My fiancee can only work to music she's never, ever heard before.
Just load up a playlist with only the music you can lose yourself in, and watch the workday disappear. If you're one of those people who doesn't like listening to music, enlighten me on how that works — closed-door office, white noise, what? I don't know how you guys do it.
Culture Developer-Driven Hiring
Out of the thirty applicants for our web developer opening, one man stood out. His resume impressed, his code was clean, and he didn't seriously offend anyone during his time with us. That man is Chad Cunningham, and he's one of us now.
Seriously, congratulations to Chad on his recent hire.
As awesome as Chad is, I'm going to rant for a while about our awesome developer-driven hiring process! Continue Reading…
Productivity The LaTeX Conspiracy
Although we associate the PDF format with Adobe, it was actually invented by the Knights Templar at the request of the Illuminati. As a virtually unwriteable format, PDF was designed to cripple the workflow solutions operation of IBM and its masters, the Freemasons. IBM's response was to allow the stranded time-traveller Donald Knuth to release TeX, which thanks to the Grays we now know as the core of LaTeX. LaTeX would be able to generate PDF using the Roswell technology that IBM had acquired from the Mafia in 1947.
At this point the story becomes more complicated.
Continue Reading…Design Making Your Blog Suck Less
Can’t believe we missed this one: in an old post from 2005, Jeff Atwood (via Coding Horror) points us to an interesting set of the top ten blog design mistakes, which themselves come from Jakob Neilsen. Check out how many we’ve failed at, and see how many you might be missing.