Tales of the CodeStorms

My tale starts when I went in for a job interview at the Vancouver Film School. The position I was applying for was "Intermediate Developer" -- Something I was completely unqualified for. The role of an "Intermediate Developer" would be to write internal applications on a LAMP stack and support the Senior Database Developer with any database scripts for different departments (admissions, human resources, accounting, etc). My first interview was a generic HR meeting. Incidentally, I studied everything about the different programs of VFS prior to meeting with HR and she asked me, "so what do you know about Vancouver Film School?" -- Boom. I recited everything that was on Wikipedia. I even listed out all 10+ programs from acting to game design to entertainment business management. I felt like I completely dominated that interview.

That very day while I was on my way back to BCIT to finish off a project, I was called in for another interview the following da…

There was a time in the past where I actually thought developers and designers would benefit from unionization. I realize now that it would shape a devastating reality to the overall advances of technology and design. Unionization would paralyze our ability to innovate because the level of protectionism inherent in unions encourages laziness.

By looking at different disciplines, such as, carpentry and construction, we can observe that there hasn't been any real innovation in toolsets. Carpenters still do not have any robust tools that'll make their jobs 100x more convenient. I compare that manual labour to a programmer writing in binary just to build an eCommerce site. It is puzzling how other technology sectors have little to no progression. Another example is economic airline technology--20 years ago we had super sonic jets and now we're stuck with slower airplanes. How do they fix this problem? They improve the fuel efficiency in the engines. Aircraft technology needs …

Words by Lieutenant General Hal Moore:

There are four principles in leaders conduct in battle. First is three strikes and you're not out. There's 2 things a leader can do, either contaminate his environment the unit with his attitude and actions or he can inspire confidence. He must be visible on the battlefield. He must be in the battle. Self-confident, positive attitude, must exhibit his determination to prevail no matter what the odds or how desperate the situation. Must have and display the will to win by his actions, his words, tone of his voice on the radio and face-to-face, his appearance, his demeanour, his countenance, The look in his eyes, he must remain calm and cool--no fear. He must ignore the noise, the dust, smoke, explosions, screams of the wounded, the yells--the dead laying around him, that is all normal. Must never give off any hint or evidence that he is uncertain of a positive outcome even in the most desperate situations. Again, the principle that must be…

After watching tonight's fight between Manny Pacquiao and Antonio Margarito, I decided to explore why boxers are able to duck out of fights (Mayweather). The boxing federation, as a company, has it structured all incorrectly. In all honesty, boxing is in a state of decline and the only real way to re-energize the fans and really get some growth in the boxing community would be to revise the fight policies.

In the UFC, fighters are employees. The organization constitutes regular fight schedules so that the fans of the sport can be assured consistent fights (something to reliably look forward to). Conversely, in the sport of boxing, fighters are treated as separate companies where they're able to decline fights and employ an army of lawyers to ensure they win negotiations.

While Floyd Mayweather is able to stir up the declining boxing fans with his ridiculous galavanting and trolling in the short term--the long term integrity of boxing as a sport suffers. Slowly but surely fight…

Recently, Ben and Dion (the main guys who started Ajaxian) have left Ajaxian's helm to concentrate on other projects. One thing I've noticed is that they've reduced the frequency of posts to about three times per week. Prior to Ben and Dion leaving, there were sometimes 2 posts per day. Furthermore, since the articles on Ajaxian aren't that interesting, I've gone ahead and subscribed to Dion Almaer on twitter. Dion posts about 10 tweets a day on average with really interesting works out there in regards to front-end development.

Twitter is the #1 source for technology and design trends. I barely even open reader.google.com anymore as 140 character tweets can be more informative than walls of text.

Good luck and have fun,
Jaime Bueza

Jaime Bueza is a software developer in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. He has developed web applications for Nintendo, Starbucks, Electronic Arts, Ritchie Brothers, Kiwi Collections, Cox Communications, and Microsoft. When he's…