One of my favourite things about this time of year is the yearly traditions that we’ve begun to establish in our family. One of those traditions is going to the Bright Nights in Stanley Park event. When you combine trains and Christmas lights, it’s a pretty unbeatable duo, especially in the minds of my two young sons who are pretty big on both of these things.

Put on by the Vancouver Park Board and the British Columbia Professional Fire Fighters’ Burn Fund, this is an essential Christmas event for families in the greater-Vancouver area. Not only do you have a good time by going, you also help support a great cause, the Burn Fund, which helps burn survivors and their families.

As I outlined in a recent post, I switched this site from Wordpress to the excellent Octopress blogging framework. I couldn’t be happier with the switch and I’m not surprised that others feel the same. There were several blog posts that were helpful in convincing me to move to Octopress and also in helping ease the transition. I would like to commend some of these articles to you now, especially if you are considering Octopress for your blog.

Who doesn’t love handmade letterpress cards? I sure do, and what a pleasure surprise it was to find some custom made letterpress cards for geeks!

My uncle, who is also a fellow geek, sent me a link to Code Cards about two weeks ago and after a quick browse through the site, I placed my order. I got the Egg Nog Arrays cards which includes a set of 4 cards & envelopes, with the cards written in Python, Ruby, PHP and JavaScript.

This is my first post on my new Octopress-powered site.

Prior to today, this site was driven by Wordpress and overall I was fairly happy with it.Wordpress is indeed a powerful platform and as an experienced PHP developer, I can dig into the source code and tweak things to my heart’s content. For many of the sites I manage, Wordpress is an excellent option and I will continue to use it for those sites. However, for a simple blog like this, Wordpress tended to get in the way more often than not, and I found I would get caught up in managing all the various plugins and themes more often than simply writing.

The other day I was reflecting on exactly why I loved my job as a software developer and I came to a very simple conclusion. It’s because I get to make things.

Could there be an innate desire in us as humans, to create? It seems to be an integral part of who we are as a species. We love to create things and we enjoy the results of other’s creations. It is a real privilege, as a software developer, to get paid for doing what is naturally fulfilling.

I love Ruby. I know many programmers that were ready to give up, had even started the search for another career, and then they found Ruby. Or as some might say, Ruby found them.

I can relate. I can’t say I was ever actively looking for another career, but the thought crossed my mind, “do I really want to still be programming in another 10 years”? Can you blame me? I was primarily doing PHP Programming. Not to knock PHP, it works great, has an incredible amount of resources available, and for many years has gotten the job done. The problem is that while I could finish the job, the actual process always left something to be desired.

The subtitle for this book is “How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives”, which is a great summary of the book’s actual content. For me, its been incredible to see the rise of Google over the past decade. I remember when AltaVista, WebCrawler, Excite and HotBot were some of the places you would go when searching the web. Interestingly enough, I was actually working for a search engine company when Google first appeared on the scene. It shouldn’t be a surprise that I was shortly thereafter looking for another job. Google surprised us all back then with some truly disruptive search technology.

My band Greylevel has recently released their sophomore album entitled “Hypostatic Union”. We worked really hard on it over the course of about 2 years and we are very happy with the end result.

The album itself is quite an expansive work with long songs that flow into each other. Lyrically, the album is an exploration into the search for meaning and the discovery of coherence through a transcendent worldview. Some have called the album dark and depressing, which I don’t get. It is however an album that, I hope, will give you a window into some of my thoughts and also cause you to think some of your own thoughts.

If you are a fan of modern progressive rock, or if you’re just a fan of music in general, then please check it out. If you visit the Greylevel website,  you can listen to song samples and also find out where you can buy a copy, if you are so inclined.