Freelancing Gods 2009

Introductions and Opinions

Photo taken by the terribly talented Tim Lucas.

I earn my keep as a freelance web developer - primarily using Ruby and Rails (but more on that below). This blog isn't named after my working situation - I bought this domain well before I began freelancing. It's named after the idea of gods (in the literal sense - ie: deities) freelancing between their roles (smiting people, burning bushes, seeking sacrifices, that sort of thing). It's not meant to reflect my opinion of my self or my skills.

I'm based in Melbourne, Australia - it's where I've grown up, and I've not lived anywhere else. Well, not to the point of redirecting mail or getting a landline installed. However, I am currently travelling around the world, and have been working here and there as I go (the joys of freelancing and international clients). You might find me in North America, the United Kingdom, or (soon) Cambodia.

Code

The language I prefer to code with is Ruby. Usually that's through the Rails framework, but occasionally I'll use pure Ruby for some scripts or command line tools, and I've dabbled a bit with Merb. RSpec is my testing framework of choice.

One area I have a particular speciality with is the search engine Sphinx - I've written both a pure Ruby API - Riddle - and a Rails/Merb plugin - Thinking Sphinx.

While I'm not a designer, I'm also capable with HTML, Javascript and CSS. The web is my preferred platform, purely because it's so flexible and accessible.

In past lives I've worked with C#, ASP.NET, Visual Basic and Microsoft SQL Server. You can't pay me enough to use those technologies again. Seriously.

And besides, it's not the money that matters, it's the challenges, culture and people of the organisations. If I can't knock on the door of the company directors and tell them what I think - with no fear of a backlash - then I won't stick around. Same if the company has no interest in my external projects, or if I'm expected to be at the office every day, from 9am to 6pm, without fail.

Ruby Community

The Ruby community here in Australia is awesome - full of passionate, friendly people. If you get the chance (and you're not already a regular), come along to a meeting or two. Or, even better: come along to a Rails Camp. There's now been three in Australia (two outside of Sydney, one - run by myself - near Melbourne), and they've all been fantastic. Ben Askins is owed many accolades for making it happen, but they really are community-run events - there are at least half a dozen names behind each one that are deserving of kudos.

Because of my travels, however, I missed the third one. Which is a good enough excuse to take the movement global - there's going to be a Rails Camp just outside of London in August. And it's going to rock.

And even more exciting is seeing others running similar events - there's been a Rails Camp in Paris, and there's plans for one in Denmark.

Discworld Community

As well as all the coding and related events, I dabble in running fan conventions - in particular, the Australian Discworld Conventions: Nullus Anxietas (in February 2007) and the sequel, Nullus Anxietas 2 (Feb/March 2009). The first event brought together over 300 people, as well as the author responsible for the series, Terry Pratchett, and was a fantastic success. We're hoping the second will be just as good, if not better!

World-view

In case you haven't picked up from my posts, I'm an idealist at heart. I love big, dangerous, world-changing ideas. I'm also well aware that technology isn't the answer - it's just a tool (but an extremely helpful one). Communication is what's going to help us make things better.

Colophon

Do you know what colophon means? Me neither - but I looked it up.

"An inscription placed usually at the end of a book, giving facts about its publication."

So, if you're interested in how this blog's run: I wrote it all, using Rails. Perhaps one day it'll run on Merb. The design was by the talented Anthony Kolber - once he did the hard work, I translated it to HTML and CSS. Currently hosted on Slicehost - not that it really had any problems running on Textdrive before that. I use HTML 4.01 strict, because not all browsers accept XHTML properly (Internet Explorer, I'm looking at you), and it should be valid - or close enough. No one's perfect, right?