Chad Things

I just completed one of the best tech conferences i’ve ever been to – Fluent javascript conference in SF. O’Reilly did a great job of providing many opportunities to learn more about various facets of the javascript world. These include business, mobile, gaming, tech stacks, detailed in the very useful fluent schedule. There was also tons of buzz around web apps (code shared on client and server), backbone.js, node.js, among other things. It was well organized, with usually about 5 parallel sessions, and enough breaks to consolidate notes, meet other attendees, explore the exhibit hall, or just catchup with email. There was also a few organic meetups at night, but I did not make it to any of those.

I was happy to see discussion around business side of javascript, mainly due to the rise of web apps and HTML5. Even though javascript has been around for 17 years, only in the last few years has there been an explosion of js frameworks and libraries. This is partially attributed to mobile explosion, apple not supporting flash, and a really great dev community (yay github). With all these new tools available, companies can focus more on the bits they care about, allowing them to get new apps, features, and fixes in front of their users faster than ever. Web apps were a very popular discussion area, from the business and develpment side. Specifically two sessions highlighted this. First was how business are “Investing in Javascript” (pdf presentation by Keith Fahlgren from Safari Books. The other was by Andrew Betts from labs.ft.com, discussing the financial time’s web app which allows users to view content offline. Most people know that traditional newspapers are dying, but I liked how Andrew points out “newspaper companies make money selling *content*, not paper”. Also Ben Galbraith and Dion Almaer from Walmart had a fun-to-watch Web vs Apps presentation (yes, its true, tech isn’t always DRY). The main takeway from them (which was echoed throughout the conference) was that web apps are better than native apps in most ways except one – native can sometimes provide a better user experience (but not always). Of course you may still want to build a native app using html5 and javascript, and there are 2 great ways that people do this, using Appcelerartor’s Titanium or phoneGap (now Cordova, apache open-source version). One of the coolest web apps I saw at the conference was from clipboard.com – Watch Gary Flake’s presentation (better look out, pinterest).

For the uber techies out there, there were lots of insights on how companies successfully used various js libraries and frameworks (in other words, whats your technology stack). This is important to pay attention to, since not all the latest and greatest code is worthy to be used in production environments. You should think about stability, growth, documentation, and community involvement. Here’s a few bits I found interesting

• Trello (which supports IE9+ only): Coffeescript, LESS, mustache templates, jquery/underscore/backbone
• just.me: jquery, less, node.js
• new soundcloud: infrastructure: node.js, uglify, requreJS, almondJS .. served using nginx. Runtime: backbone, Handlebars
• twitter: less, jquery, node.js, more twitter tech stack
• clipboard.com: Riak, Redis, NGINX, jQuery, Node.js, node.js modules
• pubnub: custom c process faster than memcached and redis
• picplum tech stack: coffeescript, backbone.js, rails 3.2.3, unicorn + resque, heroku postgres, heroku (nginx), AWS couldfront & S3
• stackmob: uses backbone, mongoDB, Joyent and EC2, Scala and Lift, Netty and Jetty

Finally, here are a few other cool tech-related tidbits from the conference. There was soo much good stuff, this is not a complete list, but just a few highlights from my notes

• Paul Irish – js/web dev workflow 2013– grunt, livereload, adobe shadow, codekit, brunch, recompiler webstorm
• Chris Power’s sharing code between client and server (older presentation)
• Elliott Sprehn’s talk on rendering screenshots in js for google feedback (whoa),
• Sha Hwang from Trulia.com talking about displaying data beautifully on maps (crime heat map)
• Tom Hughes-Croucher (Jetpacks for Dinosaurs) Writing robust Node.js applications
• Nicholas Zakas – Maintable Javascript
• Tidbits: twitter: Mixins by Angus Croll
• document.elementFromPoint() – awesome – give coords, tells you which element is under, including iframes and z-index
• If you haven’t yet, subscribe to Javascript Weekly.

After 3.5 years with the iPhone, last September I decided to give the Android a go. Apple was good to me in the beginning, offering a major life improvement when i switched from a standard cell phone. I loved having maps, my personal calendar, email, and music with me all the time. Huge improvement. But ever since my wife got the HTC Incredible (an android phone) in the summer of 2010 I was jealous. Her phone was faster in most ways compared to mine, which had poor reception at home and work, where i spent most of my time. The wife would consistantly leave me in the dust on roadtrips as well.  She also had Verizon, and I had AT&T, so I was eager to switch carriers. Last fall after losing my iPhone i looked into the android options and decided it was time.

At first the main reason I wanted Android was control. I love Apple, they design better than anyone, but at the end of the day I was tired of always doing things the apple way – I wanted more control on how to manage things that are as personal as your mobile device. In other words, I don’t care how awesome your hammer is, everything is not a nail. I prefer a swiss army knife.

After about 9 months, I have mixed feelings on the switch, so I’d thought I’d list my pro’s and cons

Droid Bionic Pros:

• Bionic
  • 4.3 inch screen is bigger than 3.5 of iPhone.  I prefer bigger screen when using the touchscreen or watching videos/pics.  It still slides easily into my pocket, too.
  • Supposedly faster with Dual Core.  Having a dual core means if some app messes up, even if its in the background, it won’t bring your phone to a grinding halt. In practice it doesn’t seem faster, and several times a week it is dramatically slower (unlocking can take several seconds, oh the horror).
• Android Hardware
  • I love having a back button.  I hate that Apple doesn’t have that – only has the “home” button.
  • I also love the menu button.  Apps take advantage of that better providing a better and faster way to get what i need.
• Android Software
  • Notifications bar.  New email, text, voicemail, app msg, whatever.  You’re always 2 secs away from getting what you need.
  • I have not rooted my phone yet, but plan to.  That opens up even more possibilities.  Not so much on Apple.
• Pro – Google.
  • I am more like google than apple.  That is, I rather have more data and more features available to me then have that one button positioned just right.
  • Google Account integration.  If you’re a google user, with gmail, google docs, maps, etc, then this is for you.  Integration is so natural it blows me away.  Especially contacts – facebook and gmail merged is so sweet.
• Syncing
  • I love that i can sync my mac with my bionic without using wires.  However, i’m still not excited about the delay it takes to go from my computer to google then to my phone.
• Camera
  • Although both iPhone and Bionic suck when your photo needs a flash, The droid has 8 MP and a nice video camera – a step up from iPhone.
• Storage
  • More storage. Bionic has internal card and removable SD card.

Droid Bionic Cons:

• Bionic has Bugs
  • Sometimes I must reboot to get data connection to work over phone network (when not on wifi).  This is better than it used to be, but still buggy.
  • Google calendar interface is jumpy – When looking at agenda view, it will jump backwards a week or more.  Just annoying.
  • Freezes for a few secs sometimes, while i’m typing (which screws up your flow) or during a transition or animation (like unlocking phone).  This happened alot on iPhone, too.
• No screen capture by default
  • On iPhone, you can take a photo of any screen by pushing power and home button.  Nothing like that for Android, making it hard to share cool stuff with friends or debug.
  • Note: The maxthon browser lets you capture the screen of a webpage with this addon.
• Video Player not good
  • Stock video player doesn’t play all types of video.  Try switching to MX video player or arcMedia.
• I miss Apple’s Music/iTunes sync
  • I got used to iTunes, and once i setup sync with my iPhone, I loved just plugging in my iPhone and having things just sync. I could easily organize music and podcasts (i get news and stuff daily) on my computer, then in a few mins my updated playlists are sync’d.
• I miss Apple’s intuitive interface.
  • Basic things apple does really well, like size of buttons, how much info to display on a page,

2011 was another great year. It was great because it was calm and stable, relative to the past 5 years. I still kept busy (more on that below), but when looking at the last 5 years there was nothing significant in 2011 except that i worked at just one job the entire year, Critical Mass – first time since yahoo in 2005.

Reviewing my Best of 2011 pictures, one thing stands out – backpacking in Glacier National Park.  I covered that in my Honeymooniversary blog, so i won’t go into it here.  Other highlights starting early on include Chicago Blizzard Snowmageddon, BYOB Crew’s trip to Galena, where i went snowshoeing, My birthday metra train trip to Flossmore station brewery, and Rachel Mason’s birthday karaoke where we ate meals before and after singing (drunk diner meals rule).

Summer started early with Spring Break trip to Florida to visit Pants and BDub, plus Dusty and Laura. More fun and interesting included Urban Assault bike race with Katie Maser, Trip to Shayna’s family’s Beach House in Maryland, Camping and Shenanigans at Lakes Of Fire, Hiking, Swimming and Craftacular-ness in Wisconsin, More camping at Devil’s Lake, Shayna’s birthday Ethiopian food, a day of Six Flags and rollercoasters, and a crazy power-packed trip of fun to SF for friends and Brasstax Halloween Renegade. We also attended our friends Curt and Maggie’s wedding in DC, which occurred on a beautiful old house overlooking the Potomac.

The year winded down with Thanksgiving in Chicago, where we hosted both sets of parents at our place – first time ever I cooked the turkey. We also did the annual Santa Kong (I was hip-hop Santa), and had a staycation in Chicago for Christmas. This was another first, the first time since i left home when i was 18 that i spent Thanksgiving and Christmas in the place i was currently living (did you get that? as in, i did not go out of town) I was greatful for this since i was working a bit too much at CM and with the halloween and wedding trips I needed to slow down. We did go see my family for New Years in Georgia (Tybee Island next to Savannah), where I finally saw my newest family member, Ty, making me an uncle for the fifth time. We also had fun with tu-tu bunnies when we swam in the ocean on New Years Day. Brrr!!

I hope 2012 continues to be another great year.