RosemaryLong.com

I used to be one of those developers that thought that in order to really call oneself a programmer, one must be able to program something from line 0. My training in University involved learning some low-level programming languages that taught us the importance of processing speed and memory allocation. In my mind it followed, then, that in order to make something good one must put all one’s discipline starting from low-level knowledge up to software engineering theory to code a product properly. This might have been good in said institutional days when every hour spent was willfully given in the name of education, but as I’m older and have more things to tend to surrounding my regular work hours, I’ve slowly emerged from this way of thinking.

It would be an exercise of modularity and reusability if I made something from scratch and then repurposed it for different projects.

Then for freelance projects I considered setting up a simple CMS like WordPress for clients with a nice template that they could edit their own pages.

I took this further and saved time in design by starting with one of those free-to-$50 predesigned templates.

In the past two weeks at work, I had been terrorized by the knowledge that we would have to quickly turnaround a multi-user custom-content website, and I racked my brain for a shortcut that would let us deliver the site in a month and a half as required. My first instincts included using Drupal, but the learning curve might be too steep to climb in such a short period of time. Next, WordPress MU which I am already familiar with. Sure it handles the multi-user bit, but how do I wrangle the idea of submitting posts to a blog into something actually usable for this particular project.

Then one night I found what could be the perfect solution: PhpMembers is a pre-built user management system that allows me to pile on as many custom-built pages as I want. It sounds like a happy medium as I don’t have to do the boring crap of doing user authentication and management and “oh boo hoo hoo I forgot my password” stuff, and instead I can focus on the cool parts.

In my head I was thinking of a way to express how the tedious stuff being eliminated allows more time for finesse of execution of the more important parts of the project. “Why reinvent the wheel when you can just find one and sex it up?” No, that doesn’t work, especially since I picture a stone torus with a prominent hole shape. For now, in my head I’m imagining that I’m just taking a pre-existing wheel and throwing glitter on it to pretty it up. I wonder if there’s a product or tool out there that can help me with my analogies.

You’d think that with the hot weather and living conditions (average of 29°C both at home and at work last week) that it would be too hot to eat, and naturally the pounds would be dropping off. The opposite was happening actually. It’s been so hot that instead of being satisfied with a glass of water, instead I cool down with a bubble tea or an icy blended drink from Starbucks. There was also double damage in that I stopped doing my morning exercise for an entire week because I’d already wake up sweating.

Today it’s a cooler morning, and I feel so much better after doing some cardio, yoga and pushups. Self, remember this feeling and keep doing it to yourself, and for yourself.