Wow, another year gone by. Where does the time go? Well, considering I’ve written a year-end summary the past 2 years, I’ve decided to do it again for this year. So here it is, 2014 in review:

It’s that time of the year again. A time to look back on all that was accomplished in the previous year, and a time to look forward to all that can be accomplished next year. Once again, let’s look at what I was able to do this year:

So, I am at a cross-roads in my career. Due to some recent circumstances, I will be looking for a new employer effective February 1st, 2014 (my last day with my current employer will be Jan 31). So I will be available for hire in the near future!

Yesterday I was asked a rather interesting question about presenting technical presentations. While I don’t think my method will work for everyone, I feel it’s a good thing to talk about. So here’s my method, and some advice that I would give first time presenters:

For the past several months I have been struggling to figure out what I want the next step in my career to be. I am still trying to figure the details out, but I had an important revelation last night. I want to share that revelation with you.

About three months ago I decided to start shooting videos teaching programming concepts to put on YouTube. When I first started it, I didn’t think it would take off. In fact, I thought it’d be just another failed attempt at trying something new. But three months, 11 videos, nearly 700 subscribers, over 17,000 views and 1.5 man-months of viewership later, I can’t really complain. I’ve missed a few videos over the past few weeks, and missed another one today. And I feel that you deserve to know why.

Over the past 3 or 4 days there’s been a huge upturn on Twitter and in the community bashing Web and PHP Magazine for giving away T-Shirts (and tweeting a photo) with a double-entendre at PHPUK. A lot of banter going back and forth from those like Cal Evans who went so far as to pledge never to go to another conference sponsored by the magazine, to Stefan Koopmanschap who basically thinks it’s no big deal. (note: these are my interpretations from their posts). I think the whole thing has grown WAY out of proportion…

When was the last time you were silly? Well, more specifically, when was the last time that you wrote code that was downright silly? I’m not talking about writing code that’s dirty, or hacking something together. I’m talking about writing code that you know before writing won’t work, or is wrong or is just plain silly… I’m talking about the kind of code that you think that if you show other developers, they’ll just sit back and go "Why the #@$% would you do that in the first place?"… Well, I do it quite often, and let me tell you why you should do it more as well!

Well, 2012 is wrapping up. What a year it has been! Here’s a partial recap of some of the things that happened to me and that I did this year:

The brain is a muscle, and as all muscles, it needs regular exercise to keep sharp. Or at least that’s what the old adage says. This is a post that I’ve been meaning to write for a long time now, but never got around to (until now that is). Sparked by a twitter conversation with Mr Grumpy himself (Chris Hartjes), I decided that the time was right for it. So, here’s my method for staying sharp and exercising my brain…