zahnster

Even though I’m fairly confident as a web developer, there is still one big part of the development process which makes me incredibly nervous still – the hand off.

It’s a different kind of stage fright – you work on a site for weeks or months, and you know deep down that the quality of your work is solid. You’ve gone through the site with a fine-toothed comb, testing the ins-and-outs, and you finally feel ready you hand it off to your peers. You hold your breath, because your application is now, for the first time ever, completely in someone else’s hands. There are no more walk-throughs; This is the real deal.

Will they find bugs? Will they do some combination of events that you never thought of that just happen to be devastating to the program – something you overlooked – something completely obvious that will make you feel (if not look) like a brainless fool? Are you sure you uploaded every file you needed to?

These are the things that run through my head every time I near the completion of a web project. It’s the time when you hold your breath and hope that your peers and clients are blown away with your product (or at least satisfied).

That’s my type of stage fright.

Do you know Mike G? You might. If you don’t, you should, because he’s awesome.

Seriously.

I first met him at Full Sail, where he taught me how to be a badass at programming. Since then, he’s been around as a constant influence and resource for anything PHP. He’s like a programming dictionary, and you too can tap into this wisdom by visiting his blog at http://www.lovemikeg.com.

PS – Since disclosure is required, this post was paid for in shiny gold facebook bling by Mike G.

PPS – He really is cool. Even without the Facebook bling.

Adobe CS3 has been out for a little while now, and thanks to my new job, I’ve been able to get my hands dirty with it for the first time.

But, for the first time ever, I’m not thrilled with it. In fact, I’m quite mad about it.

The problem arises with the fact that Adobe took out the ImageReady program. Now, ImageReady was kind of a ‘niche market’ tool, but as a CSS-based web designer, it had become somewhat of a staple program to me because of it’s ability to allow you to ’slice’ a web photoshop comp. You could slice, name, and optimize layers right there on the screen, and most importantly – you could toggle these slices on and off, allowing you to make overlapping slices with no problems.

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Have you ever been talking about someone and then you turn around and realize the person you were talking about is standing right there?

That happened to me today, but in New York fashion, the person I was talking about was David Hyde Pierce.

So the story goes like this – My company’s clients are largely made up of Broadway musicals, so as I mentioned before, there are certain perks involved. After seeing The Color Purple the other night, it really got me in the mood to see more shows, and in no time I’ve gotten a short list of “Must see’s”.

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Last night I went and saw The Color Purple, and I can’t even begin to express how amazed I was by the show. I had never been to a Broadway production before, and it blew me away, the talent, the sets – everything. I’ve turned into such an American Idol sellout, but Fantasia had such a wonderful performance, and it’s great to see that she’s kicking some ass in the Entertainment world.

And, this is really cool, I was sitting right next to Sherri Shepherd. Of course I was a retard and had no idea that she was famous until the people were lining up for autographs. I must say that she’s one of those honestly good people; we chatted for a while when I was all alone and quite frankly a bit intimidated by the lights and the rush of the people ushering in, and it was really nice to have someone to talk to.

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A few months ago (in May), Facebook opened up it’s web services to PHP developers worldwide. It’s yet another brilliant move by the social networking pioneers, providing your average developer with a means of creating mini-applications for Facebook users. They are totally free to develop, and have very little restrictions… you can even create commercial apps!

As a PHP developer, I’ve been very tempted to create a mini-app, but time and ideas have been short. However, the other day I took a ‘political quiz’ mini-app, and the results of the quiz inspired me.

For those who know me well, you should know that I’m a very firm believer in the Libertarian party and philosophy. So it was without surprise that my political quiz results were personally disappointing – it’s a line graph between being a ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’. I fall in the middle of that, pretty much, with a slight lean towards the liberal side – but I really have a personal problem with being associated with liberals (to be fair, I have a problem with being labeled ‘conservative’ as well). The real political spectrum is 2 dimensional, not 1, so during the next few weeks I am going to be designing and developing a Facebook app – a short political quiz, using the Nolan chart as a way of measuring results.

It should be an interesting learning experience.