On to the update… It’s been about 5 1/2 months since my last post, I was freelancing then – but now I’ve got a real job – Project Manager at MetaSpring, a marketing, design and development startup studio in Ann Arbor, Michigan. And awesomely enough, I primarily get to work with Rails! We just launched our redesigned website and blog so please check them out and leave a comment!

Aside from the new job, life’s been normal… Went to California over Thanksgiving with Adam, that was awesome. Christmas, w00t. New Years, woohoo! Work. Work. Work work work. Oh, ..and I’m about to buy a new MacBook (!!!!..sorta..).

This 12” PowerBook G4, God bless its beautiful little form factor, is audible from the opposite end of my apartment. Adam likens the sound of it to that of a dustbuster. And it really is driving me crazy, not to mention it’s way too slow for what I need it to do. So, I have to upgrade. First let me say, I love the MacBook Air body – sleek, sexy, almost weightless. I checked it out in Best Buy last week and it definitely had me salivating…sigh…but it needs more power. So, I’m getting a white MacBook with an upgraded hard drive to match the specs of the default black MacBook (which, by the way, is $100 more than the white with even specs).

If all goes well, I’ll be making that purchase before the end of the weekend :) But now I’m going to bed, and hopefully sleeping off this oncoming cold. Wish me luck!

The first interview was with Robert Dempsey, Project Director of Atlantic Dominion Solutions a Ruby on Rails website and application development firm, and Founder and Director of Rails For All a non-profit organization dedicated to the promotion of Ruby on Rails to developers and businesses.

My interview with Robert is available in the Interviews section at Rails for All.

The second interview was with Craig Ambrose, a freelance agile web developer specializing in Ruby on Rails. In November, Craig began producing his Freelancing On Rails podcasts which have been a great insight into the world of freelance web development (something I’d like to try full time down the road).

Read on to view my interview with Craig…

1. How did you get into software development, and more specifically, Ruby on Rails? Did you have any university training or were you more self-taught?

I spent three years at uni (software engineering) but I never finished because I was doing a year of industry placement with a computer games company and got a bit involved in the project and lost interest in going back to uni. So, while I found university invaluable, I did find I was learning more once I left. I’m personally in favour of a more balanced combination of theory and practice. Usually whenever people give me a chance to rant about it I advocate an apprenticeship model for programmers, with a couple of days a week of “trade school”, covering all the theory, and a much heavier programming component that university usually offers, on real projects for real clients, rather than contrived problems.

I started using Rails a couple of years ago when I was at a local industry group (on the subject of design patterns) and pitching about the lack of good object-relational modelling layers in PHP and someone suggested that I try Active Record (and Rails). I tried rewriting a small PHP app I’d written in Rails instead and was surprised by how much faster it came together and how much nicer the code looked.

2. What kind of jobs did you have before freelancing and how did they help prepare you for this work?

I spent about 4 years doing C and C++ programming in a couple of different game development companies, and when the second one downsized, I started doing freelance work as a PHP programmer. After about eighteen months of that I was feeling a bit isolated and stagnant in my learning. At the games companied I’d been part of teams (of about ten programmers) and there were always more senior people to learn from. As a PHP developer I was working with a a couple of other programmers on occasion, but many of them were self-taught, which I don’t have anything against, but they didn’t seem to have much interest in pushing their skills beyond producing spaghetti and calling it programming. Also, I found that I was working more and more for the same client that I ended up being basically an employee.

In the end, I took a job at a .NET firm for a year. The work wasn’t terribly interesting, but I found that my “freelancing mind set” really helped in dealing with management and the companies clients. I was learning more again, but the organisation and technology where very conservative, so obviously I was being left behind. When I finally quit to freelance again (and this time with an intention of having a bigger variety of clients, and working exclusively in rails) I had a bunch of knowledge about what the bigger companies were doing. Still, I don’t think that the experience is entirely necessary, people can start freelancing straight away, providing they have ways of continuing their own learning.

3. What part of your job is the most interesting or rewarding and which is the most challenging or difficult? What motivates you to continue in spite of these difficulties?

The rewarding bit is not working for someone else. It’s good to be able to succeed and fail on my own merits, and make my own decisions about which technologies and development practices are most effective. I enjoy the face to face contact with clients, and the networking and marketting.

The downside is probably cash flow. A single contractor is pretty exposed to the feast and famine income of payments and gaps between projects. It seems to be slowly becoming less of an issue, but it’s probably the single biggest obstacle to freelancing.

4. From your personal experience in this field, what attributes do you think are essential for success?

Confidence. Everything else can be faked if you’ve got confidence. :)

Oh, I guess being able to program helps too, but that just requires practice and a whole lot of books.

Well, I’m really not sure why I didn’t do this a month ago, or why it took me this long to think of it, but my new portfolio site is up at JulieMarie.net.

I built the site with Radiant, a simple, Ruby on Rails based content management system and designed the layout myself.

Check it out! Let me know what you think :)

Jewls

When I came to MSU, I thought that the music industry was where I belonged. I knew performance was definitely not the path for me, so I took the production route. MSU offers two courses in audio production, both of which I passed with flying colors, but neither of which left me with a strong sense of confidence or inspiration to jump into the business. This was not the fault of the professor. It just turns out that I’d rather just listen to music and appreciate it, than create it on my own and push it into a market that I won’t waste time critiquing at this time.

Last spring, after finishing both audio classes, I spent a lot of time worrying that I was headed down the wrong road. As I finished up my last audio class, I watched my boyfriend, Adam, code away and make websites. I liked his freedom and I liked that he was making something that people could use. With music, people can absorb it – listen to it, dance to it, appreciate it. With the internet, you can interact – with people and with applications. It only became clear to me recently, but interaction has always intrigued me. I guess this comes from my fascination with determinism – I enjoy observing interactions and the effects of those interactions. Human interaction is particularly interesting. In my interactions with people, I’ve always liked to play a mutual role – lots of different groups of friends, never taking sides in a fight. I’ve also always enjoyed entertaining people – throwing parties is one of my specialties, you know. I like a lot of different types of people, I don’t like fighting, and I like to make people happy. Plus, I enjoy interaction. So, how do I make a career of this? Well, I had a whole summer to figure things out. So, I headed to Europe and forgot about the future. I also signed up for a few web-related classes before I left.

As you may have heard, Europe was incredible and completely life-altering. I came back to Michigan eager to do something enjoyable with my life (as well as, return promptly back to Italy). So, I gave into Adam’s praise of Ruby on Rails and spent the rest of my summer working through RoR tutorials and reading Agile Web Development with Rails. When school started back up, I had a Computer-Mediated Communications class as well as an Interactive Media class. From there, I built ExpressiveConnections.com for my Interactive Media class, and learned a lot about online interaction in the CMC class. It was a good semester.

My Scripting Web 2.0 class this semester is great. My “Is God Dead?” class has allowed me to explore determinism among other things more. And the other classes are, well, okay.

So, I’m enjoying the internet. I really enjoyed making Expressive Connections. I want to learn more, and I want to be really good at it all one day. I’ve only been doing this web thing for eight months, though. So, I feel like I have a ways to go. I also feel like I missed out on a lot during the first three years of college….I could have been taking programming courses and database classes. (It especially irks me that when I was in high school making websites for rock bands (the faces of greenwheel) and templates for Diary-x journals, or Freshman year of college when I made an online portfolio, that I didn’t recognize my interest in the web then. I guess I can excuse myself in high school since the characteristics of today’s “Web 2.0” (like interaction, participation, customization, and collaboration), weren’t quite there yet. I didn’t see the full potential of the web, then. And, I guess I can excuse myself for Freshman year because I built my portfolio site using Adobe GoLive and it was a frustrating experience, to say the least. However, looking at the old source code today gives me a good laugh.)

So now I’m going to graduate and need to figure out what I’m going to do with myself after that. I think I’ve almost come to some sort of clear rational decision, but I’m not there yet. Here are some things I’ve been thinking about:

1. Grad School – Human-Computer Interaction at U of M
2. Freelancing…
3. A real job somewhere…

I like freelancing because I can be my own boss and work on my own hours. I’m hesitant about getting a “real job” mostly because I have only been doing this 8 months. I barely have a relevant resume. And, I feel like there’s a lot more that I should know before going for a “real job.” Finally, there’s grad school. Honestly, this program at U of M sounds perfect. And applying is 90% positively in my near future, however, before I apply – I need to get Michigan residency. No more of these Out-of-State fees, thank you. When I am able to get residency, though, will determine which semester I am able to apply for. If I wait to get a place in Ann Arbor after graduation and then get residency, the soonest I could apply for is Winter admission. So, then I’d need to find something to do on a full-time basis between May and January. Whether that would be freelancing or a job or an internship – I have NO IDEA.

Sigh. But that is where I am now. Trying to make decisions. Excited about the future, unsure of how I’m getting there. I’m good at planning, though. So, hopefully it will all come together soon.

If you read this far, please leave a comment so I can bake you a cake.

Jewls

Check it out, kids: ExpressiveConnections.com has finally been announced.

Expressive Connections is a network for creative professionals – aimed at aspiring and accomplished writers and artists who are looking to begin or advance in a career utilizing their talent.

The site is in a sort of alpha-mode right now. We think it’s got a pretty solid start, though – which is why we’re inviting you to take a look around, create an account and let us know what you think – if you’d use it, or what features you’d like to see added, etc. It’s still got some kinks and we’re still working things out here and there. But we’ve got big plans.

The site started out as a class project for my Interactive Media class. If you’ve read my blog at all, then you have probably heard me speak of it vaguely – referring to it as my first real RoR, HTML, and CSS application. You may have also noticed that I keep referring to “us” and “we,” by that I mean myself and AJ Gorczyca – we are the “team.” Well, once again we find ourselves in the same course – this time it’s TC448 – Scripting Web 2.0. And if you read my very last post, then you would know that this class entails Ruby on Rails, MySQL, and Apache, and other things of the “Web 2.0” nature. Pretty f-ing awesome, basically. Well just like the last course we took together, this one has a group project – that is to develop a web site utilizing the ideas and languages learned in class. Since Expressive Connections already fit into these project requirements, we decided to ask the professor, Kurt Demaagd, if we could continue building onto the project rather than start again from scratch. He agreed and so you can expect to see a lot of new features and changes. Here’s what we’re aiming for:

• On-site private messaging
• Member endorsements and letters of recommendation
• Ability to watch favorite users, see who other users are watching, and see who is watching you
• User-submitted audio and video content for portfolios

It would just be wrong if a network for creative professionals left out musicians, producers, actors, directors, and everyone in between. So, we’re not going to leave you out.

This is where we stand and these are our plans for the next semester. I think you’ll see some exciting changes along the way. And, hopefully you’ll help us, too – by checking it out, creating a profile, or spreading the word around to others who may be interested.

It’s a work in progress and we want you all to help us in building the most exciting site we can, so any feedback you give would be greatly appreciated.

Jewls

This forum is the first major RoR feature that I’ve done almost entirely on my own. It’s my baby. And, I can’t believe it only took me two days – yeah Rails!

Having no programming experience behind me, learning Ruby on Rails started out as quite the challenge. However, this experience has definitely turned me into a lover of the language. I often have trouble stopping myself from working into the night.

So thanks to Adam for inspiring me to give Rails a try! :)

Oh yeah, one last thing… Happy Holidays!

Jewls

First, you know ads are going to reach the News Feed of Facebook users any-day now, when you see flyers all over your campus asking students to join the Crest WhiteStrips Facebook group.

Here’s a link to a picture of the ad: Smile State

I read an interesting article on Web accessibility today. I’ve been running into the topic fairly often recently (as to be expected for web designers of any skill level), and I haven’t really been confident in what the concept really entails. This article helped point me in the right direction, though. One commenter said it best: “Make something accessible and you’re making it easier for everyone, not just ‘disabled’ people.”

The website for Interactive Media I is coming along nicely. Rails is still pretty frustrating for me, but I think I’m picking it up little by little. No designs have been implemented yet, though – it’s becoming critical that we work on that. Adam and I were playing around with the CSS layout yesterday and applied a three column fluid layout with both 100% height and width. It works and it looks good – however it won’t support faux columns and therefore, more than likely, will not work with the type of design that we’re aiming at. So we may have to look at some alternate options.

Well that’s all I’ve got for ya.

Jewls

I’m coding (with much help from “the b/f”:http://threadbox.net) a lot of Rails for this, and at first it was extremely frustrating. But, I’m starting to get the hang of things and we’re making a lot of progress. My teammate, AJ (a computer sciences major), is struggling to get MySQL functioning on his XP system – but once that’s up, he is going to try and help out with it as well.

At the moment, I’d say a good portion of the back-end is good to go. Now, we need to begin focusing on and implementing the actual design of the site. So, it’s time for all of us to do some Photoshop explorations.

We’re all pretty excited about the site and I think it will turn out pretty well for my first Rails/HTML/CSS project. Stay tuned for the launch, which should be around early December.

Jewls

Here are a few more pleasantly mind-boggling realizations that I have come to develop:
* I am quirky. ~__adj.__ characterized by peculiar or unexpected traits~
* It is entirely *impossible* to __completely__ understand or know another person’s (or animal’s) psyche.
* Determinism. Only %{color:blue}_(big)GOD_% **has** TRUE %{color:green}_freewill_%.
* Religion. ~It’s a mountain.~

These were all exciting recognitions. Here are some I’m still working on:
* Did the egg fall fall from the tree? Skepticism roots for: “No.”
* How do human relationships work, really?
* And, did I actually just have a really awesome idea to help myself become more familiar with Rails?

…**(big)BAM!!**

I just answered that last one, and the answer is yes. Stellar.