qCal v0.0.1 Released
qCal is an object-oriented iCalendar library for PHP5. It is a project I started over two years ago. It has seen short, sporadic (but substantial) bursts of development throughout its history, but thanks to a developer who took an interest in it and has decided to provide some funding, it is finally seeing its first release.
The Release Process
qCal’s release process will, from here on out, consist of a two-week development cycle. I will release a new version every other Thursday as long as it stays in active development. Each release, with the exception of this first one, will consist of a list of changes that have been made since the last release (a changelist), goals for the next release, and updated documentation.
The reason this release is an exception is because of its size. There is already around 85% of the iCalendar spec (RFC 2445) implemented in this release. Writing documentation for this much code would have put off the release for quite some time. That’s why I intend to work on mostly documentation for the next release. There will be very few new features added in v0.0.2, just documentation. After that, the release process will go more or less the way I described above.
If you’re at all interested in the library, please download it and let me know what you think. The next release will be on Thursday, January 14th.
Taco Bell thinks it's Subway now
Wow, I was just sitting in my living room watching TV and the most ridiculous commercial I’ve ever seen came on. I thought it had to be a joke, but it isn’t. Taco Bell has a “diet menu”. Because I thought it had to be a joke, I checked out the website. The website actually says “Eating better just got easier”. All I can say is wow. If you go to Taco Bell to lose weight, kill yourself.
I have switched from Wordpress to a custom Django app
When I first decided to create this blog, I had intended to write a custom Django application for it. Instead, due to time constraints, I just went with a Wordpress blog. And it actually worked out pretty well for me. I really don’t have any complaints with Wordpress. I just wanted to write my own blog in Django.
After writing this little blog application, I have decided that Django is freaking amazing. This application does just about everything I need it to and I wrote it in about a week in my spare time. To anybody who is on the fence with Django, my recommendation is to dive in. It’s sexy.
To those of you who had accounts on my old site
I have not ported your accounts over to my new system and I am not sure that I will. I simply didn’t have enough regular users to warrant making the effort. If I get enough requests, I will take a look into it. Otherwise I probably won’t.
Happy Birthday, John Eaton
Today is the birthday of the late, great John Eaton. He was a great friend, a caring brother, a loving son, and he is greatly missed. I love ya, buddy. Rest in peace.
Advice for those seeking a web development position
In the last six months I’ve landed three jobs, each significantly better than the last. I mean, I’m not saying I was working a bad job in the first place, I’ve just been really lucky. I’ve had more jobs that I enjoyed than ones I didn’t. Even so, I’ve been fortunate enough to continue to find better and better jobs. Because of this, I’ve been doing quite a bit of thinking about the topic of finding work and just why I’ve been able to find so much of it. My advice will be most useful for those seeking a web development/programming-related position because other than fast food, that’s the only area I have any experience in, but I imagine a lot of it will be relevant regardless of your particular field of work.