Revival
It had been quite a while since I last posted something here; most times I even bother to log in it’s for deleting spam comments filtered out by Akismet. Spammers seem to be the only visitors not te be deterred in any way, shape or form by the complete and utter lack of activity in here.
Since the last post I have been pretty much tied up by work to do anything more than eat, sleep and, well, work. Not much going on besides that, and not much of interest to write about.
My previous assignment however ended at the end of august and I’ve been on the availability list ever since. Requests from clients do happen and some of them fit my profile well but none of them heve been honoured sofar, so I spend my days studying, checking the request database, keeping an eye on my mailbox, and brushing up on some of the things I haven’t been paying much attention to for quite a while (whenever did HTML5 become part of the W3C?! Sheesh…).
So: about time the dust off this space and write a bit about what’s going on nowadays.
Coincidentally, I was talking to a friend of mine over the phone last evening during which he asked me if I could do some minor revisions to the site of the shop he works at. I’ve done some work to it years ago, sprucing up the look a bit and rearranging some of the content and maintenance pages. Since this was sort of a hand-rolled CMS in PHP and MySQL it was an interesting excercise doing work on an actual working site instead messing about with tryouts.
Because it has been quite a while since I last worked on the site it’ll take me some time to get acquainted with its internal structure and database layout again, but it should be good fun.
Sort of makes me wonder all over again if I should consider another line of work…
November 6th, 2009 at 10:29 pm
When did HTML 5 become part of W3C work? Well, the WG was chartered March 2007, so, uh, not that long ago.
(Though that does mean the majority of the time I’ve been involved in it it has been a W3C spec, so I guess that is a while now.)
Also, if you want real fun dealing with code, try debugging obfuscated minified Javascript. That’s what real web work is like… Well, maybe work at browser vendors isn’t average…
Finally, I wait to see if this gets any further than your last attempt at restarting blog to write more about model railways (though please do write about that!).
November 7th, 2009 at 11:55 pm
Hey Geoff,
Still keeping an electronic eye on the old dust bucket though, aren’t you… ?
The HTML5 remark was to illustrate my long gone involvement in anything web related: having a bit more time on my hands gave me the opportunity to get acquainted with the current state of affairs again.
When I left, the WHATWG group was busy with HTML5 while the W3C was still grinding its teeth on XHTML 2 and going nowhere fast, so it indeed was a surprise seeing the W3C getting the picture at last.
Also, back then CSS3 was a distant dream; seeing that gather momentum and growing browser support was a nice surprise, too.
Anyway: don’t hold your breath regarding model railway posts: that too has slipped to the background, although it’s definitely not of the map. I recenty switched managers again and my new one is a model railway enthousiast as well, so who knows…
Mostly, for me it’s a matter of getting stuck in and doing stuff instead of dreaming about it.
Anyway: don’t boot my out of your feed reader yet: I’ve got a rant about LED lamps brewing inside that’s dying to get out!