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I’m sure that everyone at some point in their lives has had moments where they think about the goals they have accomplished, and what the future has in store for them. Taking that a step further - I’m sure many people also sit and think hard about “whats next”?

I’ve had those moments many times before, and I seem to be having one again. I am trying to figure out if IT and Programming is what I want to do for the rest of my life. I know I’m good at it, and I know that I still have moments where I’m “in the zone” - meaning that IT software development still holds an interest for me, somewhat.

Of course, having a birthday recently, and being in my late 20’s has caused me to re-evaluate the course of my life.

Of the alternatives I’ve considered to Programming, some of the more interesting ideas include teaching in a foreign country (Guyana, the birthplace of my mother and wife, came to mind). Teaching here in Canada also crossed my mind, along with Financial Planning, and helping people find jobs.

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It’s around that time again for me, July 19th; the day the marks the end of another year of my life. Many thoughts roll around in my head on my birthday of course; some good, some not so good, some psychotic (very very few). In general though, I think it is a time for reflection on the experiences I’ve had over the past year, and (if for some reason no other time seemed right) a time to be humble and pleasant to the people and situations that surround me.

I don’t think birthdays should be all about gifts and birthday bashes involving large groups of people you don’t know. Not that these things are bad, but they are but small and relatively unimportant parts of a birthday. I do think it should be a time where you can allow yourself to be unconditionally open to positive energy and attitudes. Negative attitudes should be brushed off like dust on an old book; a minor annoyance on the surface, but only a superficial obstacle compared to the vast meaning and knowledge held within the pages of the book itself.

To all who share a birthday around this time, I implore you to take this time as gift to yourself, and use it to show the world your capacity for kindness, tolerance, and patience.

Have a wonderful, easy-going, peaceful and happy birthday.. if only in your own mind!

Right now my main point of communication with the rest of the world is this blog, which is just fine by me. But now and again I’m reminded by friends that these other services, such as Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, MySpace, etc., are out there, and that I should log in more often so that they can satisfy their interactivity needs by poking me, or making certain that I’m informed about what they happen to be having for dinner.

I am a proponent of building and maintaining social networks, don’t get me wrong. However I find it rather difficult (time consuming) to try and keep all these little social networks updated with my latest going’s on.

There are some solutions, such as allowing one service to update all others by providing them with your login/passwords to each of these other services (Facebook provides applications which does this). I don’t like this concept though, because I don’t like the idea of giving all my personal authentication information for all the services that I use to just one company (call me paranoid).

Therefore I’ve found small ways around this, such as including a Twitter update widget onto my WordPress blog, which doesn’t require any username/password information because it uses the Twitters “public timeline” service. It would be great if Facebook also had an application that allowed you to update Facebook’s status by reading the public timeline.

I haven’t found such a Facebook application, though I think it would be very popular. Then again, I don’t think this type of Facebook application will ever be created, because I believe that Facebook is all about driving people to log into their site to do their updates, and to prevent these updates from occurring outside of Facebook. I know that Facebook apps are mostly created by end-users, but I think there are some restrictions on what Facebook allows third-party developers to develop (just a theory), and this may be one of those restrictions.

To the other bloggers out there who are in the same boat, trying to organize and automate all your social networks - what tricks and hacks have you found that seems to be making your life easier?

Update:Trevor Mauch has a great article on the benefits and drawbacks of using Twitter vs Facebook.

 I used to play Dungeons and Dragons with some very close friends a few years ago, and I really miss the game. I was introduced to D&D when I was about 25 years old, which is pretty late in the game compared to the many who started playing in high school or university. I have to admit though that I thoroughly enjoyed getting together with close friends and having in-depth discussions not just about the technicalities of the game, but about pretty much everything else that was going on in the world at the time.

Since I moved to Burlington, it has been a lot more difficult for me to head out into Toronto to visit friends at all, let alone to commit to a schedule to play D&D for a few hours a night each week. Being married and working full-time as a software developer doesn’t really lend it self well to much D&D time, especially if that means driving across three cities to just to get to where the game is being hosted.

However, again, I do miss the game. So I figure that the only way to get involved in D&D again is if I get involved with a game happening locally here in the Burlington area.

Some people have suggested online RPG gaming such as World of Warcraft, Dungeons and Dragons Online, etc. But this isn’t for me. The purpose of playing games with friends for me is less about the game, and more about being around and interacting with intelligent, witty, and sometimes crazy people. It’s about socializing, something I fear has been lost in the translation from table-top games to the world of online gaming.

This is a shout out to any ladies and gents who have an interest in playing, and reside in the Hamilton-Burlington-Oakville area. Of course I wouldn’t want to jump into playing right away, because I forgot much of the rules, and would have to brush up a bit. But if you’re interested in getting a game going, please let me know via e-mail, or better yet, post a comment on this article so that others can follow along.

Some say it is easier for humans to remember negative experiences than positive ones. I’ve found this to be true often enough, where I forget how much joy I experienced from a well prepared ethnic dish, or how good it feels to walk on the sandy shores of a beautiful beach on a sunny summer day. The same goes for simple routines, like watching a favorite television show, or reading a good book.

I had this same feeling again recently when I decided to read through The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I’ve read the book before, and had found it to be an endlessly funny sci-fi adventure. This time however, I found the book to be so much more. Douglas Adams is so brilliant in his writing, that he puts even the most mundane of topics into a new light, and forces you to view it from such an angle that your head ends up under your armpit, which just happened to be relocated between your legs.

A movie version of this book came out a few years ago, but it does not do the book any justice. So many layers of plot, witty narration, and internal dialog of the characters is missing that the movie totally misses the depth of the book by 7 billion light years.

If you haven’t read this book, please do. And if you don’t understand it, read it again, with a dictionary by your side. It is in your best interest to fully grasp the ferocious satire and intelligent humor that only an author like Adams can bring to the table.

At some point in the last year, I decided to focus strongly on my own personal finances. In the past, I’ve never considered myself to be “good with money”, and somehow, for one reason or another, I always found the lack of money to be a major roadblock in my life.

Now, I have everything under control, and I have a very accurate idea of how my money is being spent. More importantly, I’ve figured out how to save money, while still maintaining my current lifestyle. The details of how I did it is another story altogether; but since I’ve been able to take control of my finances, I’ve also been able to share my experiences and methods with other people. After doing much reading to understand the flow of money, creating my own plan, and sharing these ideas with others, I have gotten a lot of positive feedback.

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Two years ago, I discussed a shared calendar solution called Monket Calendar. In the discussion I mentioned that I was considering Monket Calendar as an alternative to PHP iCalendar, which was another (read-only) web based calendar solution I was using at the time.

I no longer use PHP iCalendar, and I haven’t since looked at Monket Calendar. The only calendering solution that I use now, and that has all the features I need, is the absolutely wonderful WebCalendar by k5n.

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On Sunday March 16th, a good friend of mine met an untimely demise when the single engine plane he was piloting crashed into a highly wooded area of South Western Virginia.

With great sadness in my heart, I attended his funeral, and fought hard to keep back the tears. As I touched his coffin, reality set in, and I couldn’t hold them back any longer.

Before going to his funeral, I had written a eulogy which I wanted to share with his friends and family. Unfortunately, I did not get the opportunity.

However I would like to share that eulogy here on my blog, so that those who knew Roy could understand what he meant to me, and why I cherished our friendship so much, so here it is..

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I’m currently using CVS as my revision control system for personal and work related projects. As of late, I’ve been feeling the need to look into alternative RCS systems, such as Git, GNU Arch, Subversion, and Bazaar.

I feel the need for change for many reasons related to the way I personally work with CVS, but mostly because I’ve never really given myself the chance to try something new or different. I fell into the CVS camp back when it pretty much was the only option, and when it definitely was the most popular.

However, I find that simple things like creating and deleting tags and branches, branch locking, and updating branches with changes made in another branch to be unnecessarily difficult, even with custom written scripts that I’ve written to compensate.

I think it’s time to try other RCS systems to see what they have to offer. Bazaar seems to be one of the more interesting projects, so I think I may try it first. I’d like to learn from the experiences of others who have taken the plunge and started using an open source revision control system besides CVS. If you’re one of those people, and have found your switch to be a positive one, please comment on your experiences!

For many Internet power users, using Internet Explorer, Opera, or even Mozilla Firefox to handle many concurrent website sessions can often result in a very frustrating and paralyzing web browsing experience. Read the rest of this entry »