Archive for April, 2008

28
Apr

Agile RTP - Andy Hunt on May 6th

Agile RTP

If you’re anywhere near Raleigh on May 6th, be sure to check out the Agile RTP meeting. We’ve got Andy Hunt coming to talk and I’m sure it’s going to be worth your time to attend. The title of the talk is Refactoring Your Wetware.

If I could point to two or three people that have shaped my thoughts about programming and development, Andy would be at the top of that list.

If I could only recommend one book to anyone doing development, it would be The Pragmatic Programmer. The book certainly changed the way that I think and has certainly shaped my career. Interestingly, it’s the only (at least partially) technical book that made my list of books that changed my life.

If you’re in the area (or if you feel like taking a road trip), be sure to come by and see Andy talk and participate in the discussion at Agile RTP.

15
Apr

Twitter In Plain English

I’ve turned into a Twitter junkie. There’s just something about it that makes me smile.

If you don’t get it (I didn’t at first either), check out this great video that I just ran across from Common Craft … on Vimeo


Twitter in Plain English from leelefever on Vimeo.

13
Apr

10 Weeks Later…

I’ve been very quiet on my blog for a while now, but I wanted to get everybody up to date on a few things…

#1) First and foremost, I’m a dad :)

Whitney and I had our first child (Haley Kay Carey) on January 30th. Everyone is doing wonderful and I’m loving being a dad. Right now, this is where the majority of my focus has been channeled. Haley is doing awesome, Whitney is doing awesome, and I’m doing awesome.

You can find our pictures of Haley on Flickr at: http://flickr.com/photos/thecareyfam/tags/haley/

Haley Pics

#2) If you’re interested in what I’m doing (until I get back to blogging more), I’m using Twitter frequently. It’s much easier to do the micro-blog thing with Twitter.

You can find my Twitter profile at: http://twitter.com//bencarey

#3) I created a small web page to hold the links to my small projects and experiments. There’s not much on the site right now, but there will be as time moves on. I have a lot of little experiments that I’d like to try and this will probably be where I link them up (I’m sure I’ll blog about them as well).

The new site is: http://www.hellokensho.com

#4) I launched Omakase. This was a little idea to experiment with Rails, iPhone development, and some ideas for exploring ways to make micro-applications. Omakase does one thing… it makes decisions for you. I’ll post more about it after I finish cleaning it up a bit. The site was written for the iPhone, but it does have a traditional browser version as well. Currently, the browser site looks the best in Safari.

You can find Omakase at: http://www.iloveomakase.com

#5) I moved my blog and site host over to Media Temple. As part of that move, I wiped out all of the categories for my old blog entries. I did this on purpose. I do blog about a mixture of items (technology, business, development, life, travel, etc.) and I decided that all of the categories just weren’t worth the effort to maintain them.

I’ll get back to blogging, speaking, and the various communities before too much longer. For now, I’m enjoying a bit of a break and soaking up the new addition to the family.