Matthew Darby's Blog - personal

Organizing Your Thoughts

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 00:26:00 -0500

I just finished reading Pragmatic Thinking & Learning: Refactor Your Wetware by Andy Hunt of The Pragmatic Programmers. It covers why and how to organize your thoughts effectively. Since reading the book, I have been taking steps to record my thoughts and have been and paper handy when I do find myself in situations where I am might come up with a solution to a problem I have been working on away from the area and time I was originally tangled with the issue.

Initially, I created this blog with the purpose to help me to become more efficient in my written communication, however this is now my first blog post within a year. In between that time I have joined Twitter and have become more active in my updates to Facebook where I at least post something there on a daily basis. I find myself throwing off my need to post here though, not without a lack of something to post on but instead not setting the time aside to do writing.

Andy Hunt's book touched on something else for me that has nagged on me for quite some time. I consider myself to be a web developer and many times I put off writing for other tasks I have on my plate. In doing so, I have seen my handwriting deteriorate along with my ability to communicate my thoughts in both written and oral fashion. It's something I am not proud of. I think as developers we sometimes put aside our need to build our communication skills so that we can improve upon our technical skills. However without proper communication, we can easily fall by the wayside and left to be irrelevant.

This blog was to be more than just a avenue to vent on the latest thing on my mind, but instead to communicate my insight one things that I was currently working, would like to get into or discuss other topics outside software development. I got away from that and allowed myself to become distracted by other things. Therefore, I plan to keep my commitment to this blog to effectively communicate my activities, not just for my personal gain but to communicate to others.

It feels good to blow the dust off this website one more time.

Becoming an Effective Manager

Mon, 22 Sep 2008 21:10:00 -0500

I'll be the first to tell you that I don't consider myself to an expert in this topic. In fact I am still learning. Recently I have entered this role at work and I have been introducing a mixture of techniques I have picked up from previous supervisors I had over the years while mixing in the things I have always looked for in a great manager. The role doesn't come easy for me, nor do I take it for granted and yet I am humbled to have the opportunity to serve in this role. It is truly a blessing.

I have a passion for software development and it in this area I like to put my focus in, but even being an effective and pragmatic developer demands that I be aware of the other soft skills that are necessary to perform my job. Creating an maintaining a relationship with the people around you whether it is your coworkers or your client is truly important. Clearly communicating your goals while recording the requests you receive is also promising traits of a great developer. For me establishing this base where I began my career has been one of the things that helped me to even be considered for my current role. So for me, before I could even think of becoming an effective manager I first had to an effective developer with great communication skills.

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A Surprising Success

Sun, 23 Jul 2006 22:53:00 -0500

Last night a good friend of mine had a surprise birthday party that he may not soon forget. I worked with his girlfriend for the past month plotting and planning this occasion that would bring the majority of his friends together as well as his brother, the preparation seemed to be well worth it. His birthday is actually on the same day as my mother's birthday and two days before that my sister has her birthday. Because I went home to see my family on the 4th of July and I will be traveling with them to New Hampshire this coming weekend I had decided to stay in town to help put this little gathering together. Two years ago for my birthday my friends got together to throw a surprise birthday party for me, so I knew at some point I had to return the favor. Two years ago this same friend and I traveled to Florida the week of his birthday except the actual day of his birthday was spent just going out to dinner, basically, a relatively quiet affair. This year however was quite different and I was glad to see everyone who showed up. To all who played a part in the preparation and execution of the surprise, no matter how big or small your role was, I thank you and the birthday boy and his girlfriend thanks you as well.

New Opportunities

Sun, 16 Jul 2006 01:18:00 -0500

Within the past month so much has changed around me that I am still trying to get settled and readjusted. Lately I have been more active than I ever have been in my life. About a year ago I made a decision to move from my current living arrangement into a one bedroom apartment. For the first time in my life I would live by myself. With that decision, I would plan to only stay for a year. I wouldn't allow myself to settle-in, nor did I want to get comfortable. My long-term goal was to move into something I owned within the following year. [More]

Rebounding From My Problems

Sat, 10 Jun 2006 12:53:00 -0500

Last week, some people might have thought that my life had been turned upside down. I am a technology geek, especially in the area of computing and web development. On Friday, my day took a turn for the worse when my hard drive crashed and ruined all of my data. The only thing I was able to save was my web projects stored in Visual Source Safe (For geeks, this is a source repository that save our code and all of our revisions and thankfully so.) So my weekend was spent reformatting my computer and starting back from scratch. All my legal music, personal files, and databases containing my project data were all lost. Yeah this was pretty bad. However, instead of getting upset and frustrated I looked at these turn of events as a new opportunity. I had a chance to rebuild my computer and learn from my mistakes, such as backing up my data. This also allowed me to reproach my personal web project I had been working on since I had learned a great deal in ColdFusion methodology and SQL scripting and design in the past month. This was a chance to me to have not only a better computer but to apply better practices in maintaining my computer and its data. In life we will be approached with some difficult times where we hit some misfortunes. Some will be worse then others. It's important to keep a clear perspective in what is really important in life though. In my case, while the data in my computer was a key part to my ability to be a developer along with some more financial and personal data that is pertinent to certain areas of my life, being so tied to these things won't really help my progress in life more so then when I didn't have them in the first place. So grieving over the loss of my data won't help to bring them back, instead I turned the event into a learning opportunity to better improve myself for the next time things like this happen. Thus I grow and learn from my mistakes and move on. So now I have rebuilt my machine and I am currently rebuilding the inventory database manager I had been working on in the past couple of months. Now I can implement some new methodologies I have learned in the past month, (ColdSpring, Reactor for the CF geeks reading this) and further increase my ability to become a better developer. Also, this maybe my chance to increase my blog posts and contributions to other online communities; hopefully.

A New Purpose

Mon, 08 May 2006 15:48:00 -0500

For almost two months I left this blog for dead, during a time I was starting to pick up visitors no less. I knew before starting this blog I would need to be committed to one type of topic and stay with that. So I have decided to move discussion about my ColdFusion development experience and applications I have been coding over the past couple of months. I know this isn't that glamorous of a topic for most of my initial readers but this is what I do, and if there is one thing I need to work on is my writing skill, this blog will help with that. Currently one of my passions is web development and so I will be sharing that with you. However, from time to time I will move out of the development talk and approach topics like religion, NC State, politics and whatever else happens to cross my mind. I don't really care if no one views these posts. This will just be my outlet to work on my ability to communicate to a potential audience through writing while discussing a topic I love. I would hope that my writing skill continue to increase as the posts I make increases. If you are actually taking to the time to read this then I thank each and every one of you.

It's For a Good Cause!!

Wed, 15 Feb 2006 00:58:00 -0500

Since late December I have been growing my hair out. Why you may ask? I decided to participate in a campaign with St. Baldrick's, an organization committed to raising money toward the awareness of cancer in children. My part in this will involve shaving my head on March 4th at the Hibernian in downtown Raleigh, NC. My goal is to raise $500.

You may wonder why I would participate in such an event. To be honest, I felt it was only a small part I could play toward such a great cause. I have been blessed so far not to feel the affects of cancer nor to my knowledge anyone in my immediate family. Therefore while I reap the benefits of a blessing, it is the least I can do participate and in an event to help does who have not been as fortunate.

Sadly, I don't have a recent picture of myself on hand. Really I don't have a camera all together and I do a terrible job keeping up with pictures I receive in the first place. When I can get my hands on both of these items I will update my photo. So far though, I have a mini afro growing which is the first time in about five years I have allowed my hair to grow out for so long. Once I am shaved, it will be first time ever I will have been bald. While I might feel like Sampson when it comes to my hair and keeping it looking neat, its only a small price to pay as I meet my goal.

What you can do is donate money toward research in curing cancer in children. I have a webpage hosted on Stbaldricks.org that you may go to so that you can donate money online either in my name or directly to St. Baldrick's. If you prefer to just send a check you can write to:

St. Baldrick's Processing Center
c/o RT Lawrence
14111 Freeway Drive, Suite 200
Santa Fe Springs, CA 90670

Or you even have the option to phone it in by calling 1 (888) 899-BALD.

St. Baldrick's is a non-profit organization with the Federal ID 20-1173824. I want to thank for reading this if you got this far, a truly thank you if you have donated or plan to donate. You can check back on this blog to see the time I will be shaving my head if you would like to come out and support or make fun of me.

Get to Work

Mon, 30 Jan 2006 01:02:00 -0500

If you have checked out the main page for this domain at http://matthewdarby.com you will notice there is an ugly place holder with my name on it. For months I have been trying to come up with design ideas for what will become my personal site. It will include my portfolio, info about me and whatever else you would expect to find on a personal site. Unfortunately I have been stalling on making progress with the site ever since I got sick, and it has been hard for me to find that same drive I had earlier to launch this blog. As a developer I get writer's block. My brain fatigues and I suddenly become disenchanted with doing anything creative toward web programming. I am sure this is quit common for many other people when it comes to other areas of creativity. It just so happens however it couldn't come a worse time. My motivation to go ahead and launch my personal site has been driven by my participation in a fundraiser for the St. Baldrick's Foundation (more on this in a later post). What I would have wanted to do is set up a page so that I could not only raise the money I needed for the event I will be participating but also use it as an opportunity to showcase my site to my friends and family. However, it seems procrastination and motivation loss got the best of me. Thankfully tonight, things took a change for the better and now I have come up with a least a template for the new look and feel of my site. So with the ball starting to roll, lookout for some changes and hopefully the release of my new web site within the upcoming week.

Knocked Out Cold

Sun, 15 Jan 2006 22:04:00 -0500

For me when I get sick, I go down hard. I can always tell though when I am about to get sick. I can feel the germs collecting in the back of my throat the night before. The common cold usually begins with a sore throat and a stuffy nose. My progression gets worse with body aches and high fever. At this point I am miserable, but then who wouldn't be. So on Wednesday when I felt the light mist forming inside, I knew it would be a rough weekend for me. I missed two days of work and pretty much quarantined myself in my apartment. Thankfully, after a doctor's visit, I was relived to find out that I didn't have whatever was going around the month earlier. That was truly a blessing. It seemed some people got really hit hard with something that lead to sever diarrhea and stomach flu. I just had the common cold. Still it was enough to knock me down and have me bed ridden for up until tonight. When I get sick I enjoy my solitude though. It's the one time I truly get to just relax and cast off all my cares and have a good reason to be miserable. While I am not one to seek pity for my suffering I do get a weird feeling of comfort to know I have a valid excuse not to be bothered. Former roommates and my family can probably attest that I am a hard person to be around when I get sick. Tonight however, I can breath again.

Life without TV

Wed, 11 Jan 2006 22:46:00 -0500

I always get those funny reactions when I tell people that I don't have a TV. People generally have that look of shock and tend to ask how I survive. One of my friends gives me constant updates on the prices of TVs at Walmart. It makes me chuckle every time. To tell you the truth though, I am not so sure how I have survived thus far myself. August of last year, I moved into my current apartment, this marked the first time I ever lived by myself. Before I had a TV card in my computer and my roommates had a TV in the living room. That allowed me to get my sports fix in and keep up with 24. Don't get me wrong I am not on some crusade to quit watching TV or anything. For me moving into the apartment meant that I would have to pay all of my bills for the first time along with pay a high sum in rent. I wanted to make sure I had enough money to afford my bills as well as the other things I would need to furnish my apartment with such as a couch and coffee table. What would really look great with such furniture would be an HDTV. So I figured I would just wait and save my money to get the type of TV I wanted instead of settling for something in the meantime. However, it was rough because I really loved to sit back and watch ESPN when I came home from work and catch up on my other favorite TV shows. Five months have passed since I have been here in my apartment and I still don't have a TV. While I am missing some of the greatest college basketball games and I have only watched but one NFL game this season I am still making it without the boob tube. Time to time I will ask a friend of mine to allow me to come over to catch a State game or get my Sunday night fix in but otherwise I get by. Believe me though, when I do get that HDTV, cable and I will be getting reacquainted. Till then I guess I will continue to work on developing my website.

So what is it that you do?

Tue, 10 Jan 2006 21:08:00 -0500

I can't go through a month without being asked to develop a web page for someone or give tips on what direction to go in to put a new page up. I don't mind them either. From time to time I think about doing small projects on the side then I realize what little free time I have already. Sometimes I feel people mistake what I do. They may think I do web design, which would be the graphics, the flash the general layout of the page, etc which I can do. However, that's not my specialty and it is a painstaking process for me to endure coming up with some of the designs I have created in Photoshop. I am a web programmer and therefore develop web applications that may function beyond the general user's reasonable understanding. From time to time I will take on certain projects if I think it will help me increase a skill or some relevant knowledge toward my personal growth in web programming. This past week I helped a friend launch a web site for her business. The lesson I learned from that was that I do know not want take on any more projects at this point in time. I may do so later on but for now I shall focus on building up this site and begin releasing some cool web programs that I hope everyone can enjoy. So therefore there is more to come. Stay Tuned!!

The First Entry

Sat, 07 Jan 2006 13:16:00 -0500

I remember when blogs were really starting to take off. I never got into them then, but I foresaw the possibilities they could create. Here I am now; presenting the world my own words. I guess it was only a matter of time though. What you can expect from me is a wide variety of topics covering the latest events in the news, thoughts and insights on web programming, my passion for NC State athletics, my political and religious beliefs and a host of other things that may pop into my head. While I know my audience is small I hope to capture the attention of those I share my mind with. Welcome to my little space here on the web!!