A Bit of Fun

I'm going to take a break from the usual philosophical rambling to brag a bit. I hope you don't mind.

My first piece of news: I'm officially published! An article I wrote on post-industrial commuting has appeared in the local Maple Ridge News, under the "Green Matters" column. Since it's a free publication, I think I'll keep my day job. But it was fun to see my writing edited and reformatted in infuriating ways. I have the opportunity to write regularly in this column, and I intend to take it.

In other news, after my earlier blog rant about the potential for a software-driven revolution in the global economy, I decided to go back to writing code again. In my rant, I rambled somewhat incoherently about the need to expand collaborative software into the business realm. So when a programming contest opened up to develop custom methods for the company's new 12 Sprints project, I figured it would be a good opportunity to see if I could still write code (I haven't written code in several years). I teamed up on the contest with two friends from work, who did a great job keeping my random brain on a strict schedule of delivery. Together, we created "Discussit", a tool to enable image-based collaboration. You can watch our demo video on YouTube here. Well, guess what -- we won!

Now we have to somehow figure out how to split a MacBook Pro into 3 separate pieces. I'm planning to trade my share in for an iPad. I'm downloading the iPad SDK (software development kit) as I type this. It's good to have some fun again.