It's been kind of quiet around here. It's not that I haven't had much to say, it's that I haven't had the time to say it! For those of you who follow my various microblogs probably even noticed a dip in updates over the last few weeks. Every last ounce of energy has been put into the final push for the book and I had to cut back on the distractions to make it through.
Now that it's over, I get to pay attention to some majorly neglected areas. First and foremost is my bike. We're in the middle of a great fall here and I haven't gotten much riding in at all. Note to self: write books in the winter, not the summer.
Next up is PHPT. I've got a few people interested in helping out with it. I'm still working toward 100% drop-in replacement for PHP's run-tests.php. There's still a bit to go, but it's getting close. I've got a little over a month to get it really rocking, though. My Testing the PHP Way: PHPT tutorial was accepted to php|works, so the test suite had better be up to par before then. :-)
I'm also giving my The Future is Not Yet Widely Distributed talk in the agnostic track—tracks that aren't PHP or Python specific. The talk is an hour long introduction to Git. Now that I've written the book on Git, I'd better be able to talk about it for at least an hour. :-D
I am planning on having both talks available as screencasts/video talks too for anyone who can't make it to the conference.
Anyhow, that's the quick update. Now that I'm not spending all of my free time writing, I can get back to writing some more here for fun. Look for some posts on programming soon. I'm going to be learning more about OpenSocial now that we're supporting it in a big way @ Ning.
For those of you who follow me on Twitter, you know I've recently gone to work for Ning. Been living under a rock and don't know what Ning is? It's a platform that lets you build your own social network. Best of all, if ya don't like the way something is implemented, you can get access to the source and change it around yourself.
The team of people working on Ning is amazing. The number of new people since I stated a few weeks ago is crazy. We're growing by leaps in bounds, but there a few positions that are close to my heart... if only because it helps spread the load of work that I'm responsible for! :-)
The team I'm on, Application Development (AppDev), needs more of us. We're responsible for building the PHP and Javascript that the user interacts with when they're on the network. When you create your own social network, you're on the code we write. The same code that you can get access to if you want. PHP and Javascript a great, but raw programming talent and a willingness to learn the languages are even more important.
We're also in need of a top notch Flash dev or two to join our team as well. There are a few of us who can muddle our way through Flash apps and make things work, but having someone who really groks it would be a huge bonus.
If you're a top notch PHP or Flash guy and are interested in working on something big and exciting, Ning's got a place for you. Telecommuting is definitely an option - I think about half of our AppDev team is remote now stretching from London to Melborne to Canada to NYC and (now!) Kansas. Shoot me an email with your resume if you're interested. Seeing as how my name is travis and the domain name is ning.com, an enterprising person should be able to figure it out: ;-)
