Lovely theme, eh? It’s called Color Paper and it’s FREE from Smashing Magazine.

That is all for now… stay tuned – cool things should start to happen soonish ;)

Very nice. Had to save this one :) Get Your Cyborg Name

Well, maybe I’ll go for more of a tumble log type setup – that way I can be short, sweet and simple.

Then again… how would that be any different from my Twitter account ?

Well, maybe I’ll post soon… maybe not. I make no promises, but I’ll try harder.

Ciao

In it, I discuss the micro-blogging trend and a few different ways that businesses can take advantage of it. Check it out and let us know how you’ve seen micro-blogging used in the business world.

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!

Hi, how are ya? I’m pretty well. Yeah, I know it’s been a while since you last heard from me, but it’s been a crazy year. I apologize for my absence and promise to remain actively social, at least until grad school…

A rather lengthy update follows the break.

My Last Undergrad Semester Ever

Ok, let me start out by saying: 6 classes = 0 social life. I spent most of my final undergrad semester studying for classes, working on projects, freelancing websites, occasionally attending yoga classes, and looking for that “real” post-college job.

My classes were pretty good for the most part, I learned a bit and was even able to extend Expressive Connections for a final project – the site now features OpenID login and Groups (as well as, On-site Messaging and Networks – contributed by my partner, AJ). Expressive Connections went on to take the Best of Show (Web) award in the 2007 DMAT Showcase in the College of Communication Arts & Sciences at MSU.

Back in February, I launched my portfolio site – JulieMarie.net, as well as my current profession – freelance web development (primarily using Ruby On Rails). At the time, I didn’t plan on freelancing becoming my primary career – but as it turns out, on-site Rails jobs in Michigan are slim, competition is high, and I had less than one year of overall web related experience to work with.

Freelance jobs kept popping up and on-site jobs didn’t. I limited my search to the Southeastern Michigan area because grad school at U of M is also on the list of things to do in the near future. In all the chaos of classes and job searching though, there wasn’t really time to establish Michigan residency (saving me from the fortune of out-of-state tuition), write all the application essays, or take the GRE in time for the Fall application deadline which was in early May. Thus, grad school has been pushed back to the Winter term, application deadline – November 1.

So that brings us to the end of my last undergrad semester. I graduated with Honors and a Bachelor of Arts in Telecommunication, Information Studies and Media (or TISM, as it’s more easily referred to) – with a specialization in Digital Media Arts and Technology, focusing on web development.

Post-Grad

With only a week until my lease was up, no on-site job lined up, and therefore no real idea of where to live, I was about this |—-| close to moving to Howell, MI (due to its central location), but instead went to Novi, MI to stay with Adam. While staying there, Adam’s roommate, Matt, got me outrageously addicted to “Battlestar Galactica.” I watched the Mini-Series and all three seasons within about a month and a half. Needless to say, October won’t come soon enough.

I also managed to get some work done in between BSG episodes – created a WordPress Theme (1st time working with PHP) and started work on what currently acts as a CMS designed as a learning aid. I’m fairly excited about the CMS, I was able to build it in Ruby on Rails for the client and I think it turned out really well. Plus if all goes well, it could grow into something pretty cool. Additionally, I took an at-home, part-time job working basically as a User Experience Engineer for a cluster of web hosting sites. The job wasn’t exactly what I was looking for – but it will definitely help out in preparation for grad school

Europe

Yep, I went again. Only for 2 weeks this time. As it so happened, all my talk and excitement about my 6 weeks in Europe last summer excited my mom enough to buy us each a spot on a tour through London, Paris, and Rome (plus Versailles, Assisi, and FLORENCE!). The trip was pretty crazy, a lot of fun, and 12 days to remember. There were nine of us from Chicago, and a group of about thirty from Puerto Rico, and our tour guide, who was from Spain. Ultimately, I think everyone picked up a fair bit of Spanish, a tad bit of French, and a sense of Italian which often came out as a Spanish variant. Click on the city names above to see some of my pictures.

Moving Again

Immediately after my return from Europe, it was time to move again. This time to Farmington Hills, MI – which is right next to Novi. I moved here because my cats, who were staying with a friend while I was in Novi, needed a home and because it’s in an area of high web development activity where I am likely to find some sort of work. Only problem is I don’t yet have internet there, so my freelance business is on hold. On the bright side, I now have time to finally pick up this Beginning PHP and MySQL 5 book.

Future Plans

So what’s next? Well…now that I’ve got my own place I can establish residency, take the GRE, and apply for grad school. If all goes well, I’ll be moving to Ann Arbor in January with my dearest friend and forever roommate, KT. Until then, I’ll continue my freelance work and the search for an on-site job of some kind – preferably working with Rails, of course.

Recent government action has dramatically increased (300-1200%) the fees internet radio companies must pay to play the music you enjoy.

This means that sites like Pandora and Last.fm, as well as many other online radio stations, could be shut down due to bankruptcy.

You can help, let your voice be heard. Visit SaveNetRadio.org to see how you can help prevent the death of online radio.

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

Well, since I don’t really have a lot of time to write more than one blog post per month, I figured I’d link you all to my Twitter page where I have the chance to post once or twice a day.

You can find me at twitter.com/jewlofthelotus. Add me if you’re a Twitter-er (?), too. :)

I don’t tweet too often and I don’t necessarily tweet about what I am doing. But if I have something meaningful to say in less than 140 characters, I’ll tweet about it.

And so I give in to this Twitter thing.

Jewls