It’s been more than 10 years now that I made my first website (using Netscape Composer). Apart the fact that I loved it, nobody would have been able to say that I still would be doing that today. Here comes the quick last year review and the try of getting an overview of next year. Promising as far as I can tell. I’m realizing that I didn’t do any last year, what a mistake.
So in 2009, I left Oslo and the web application team of Opera Software because I wasn’t happy. Not being able to fully enjoy the Friday beer might be a cause or not.
Back in Switzerland I was able to take some time with my former girlfriend, visiting her and some friends of her in Germany. I still wanted to work on some projects but I realize now that it was stupid to not being able to do one thing at the time and appreciate it.
In June, I joined eboutic.ch as a Rails developer. Those guys weren’t afraid to pick someone who never done anything serious with Ruby on Rails before. Hopefully Raphaël was there to guide me and show me the way when I was being to pythonic or, even worse, phpish. In the six month I spent there, we actually manage to do some big stuff and that is really a good achievement for the company itself. Migrating to a very fresh version of Rails, revamping all the HTML during the redesign, auto-magically generating the daily mailing (that were done by hand before that, every single day) and many more.
Excuse me if I offend you, but the more I work with different technologies the more I realize that the differences between them is basically the syntax of the language itself. As Paul Graham would have said, Ruby is an acceptable Lisp. I’m back at hacking in PHP since a couple of weeks, and it’s, sometimes, quite painful.
During that time, I lived in a couple of flats, looking for a room or waiting for September to know what would have happened on her side. All the flat I lived in or visited sucked. My job was getting on my nerves and I had the feeling to be stuck in a dead-end. So, I blew everything up. Locality, job, girlfriend, ... It’s time to take the time of doing things like I feel them, or to feel them.
Thanks to Paris Web, and the people I met there who told me what I already knew but could see myself. I’ve been travelling between city, jumping from jobs to jobs for more than 3 years now. This is what I like doing: being a pain in the arse, getting stuff done on time, putting some quality, learning stuffs and travelling (it doesn’t have to be far).
So since this month, I’m a (no-yet-too-expensive-)freelancer, I’ve got a flat in Neuchâtel (which is a complete heresy for almost all my friends, the one who didn’t already reject me). I’m looking forward to enjoying this city even more.
As a side thing, thanks to the professor who supervized my diploma (in 2006) I had the opportunity to give a 2 hours JavaScript crash course including an introduction about the awesomeness of getting a new job every six months. And to act as an expert for diploma. It’s good but very hard to go back into the school reality. I knew the gap was huge but felt in it nonetheless.
Enough with last year, let’s look at the bright future. More weddings and children to come. Not mine, but it makes me feeling how good it was to be innocent. Innocent doesn’t mean nice at least not applied to myself.
On the work side, the challenge will be to find a (correct) balance between working and doing anything else that doesn’t involve any kind of computer. Pure utopy, but it’s good to start trying at some point. Another one will be having enough work.
And last but not least, my mother is leaving Switzerland for starting over in Corsica. I’ll have to take care of some of her furnitures but most important the cats for a couple of month. Two devils worse that kinds because it’s totally hopeless to believe in educating a cat.
Feel free to drop me an e-mail if you have some mice for the cats, some freetime or a need for a couch. I’ll be pleased to help.
