Nick Mudge Ignition Software Consulting & Development

From Daniel Tenner's post How to recognise a good programmer:

Positive indicators:

• Passionate about technology
• Programs as a hobby
• Will talk your ear off on a technical subject if encouraged
• Significant (and often numerous) personal side-projects over the years
• Learns new technologies on his/her own
• Opinionated about which technologies are better for various usages
• Very uncomfortable about the idea of working with a technology he doesn't believe to be "right".
• Clearly smart, can have great conversations on a variety of topics
• Started programming long before university/work
• Has some hidden "icebergs", large personal projects under the CV radar
• Knowledge of a large variety of unrelated technologies (may not be on CV)

Sounds like the kind of programmer friends that are great to have.

Last week Marshall Beddoe organized the first Bay Area Haskell meeting in San Francisco. It was great. I think there were about 20 people there.

There's now some talk on the Bay Area Haskell Users Group mailing list (which is brand new, and a spin off from the Bay Area Functional Programmers mailing list) about talks for future Haskell meetings. Dan Piponi mentioned doing a talk on monoids.

Last week was my last week working at Minnick Web Services, working on and building websites for magazine publishers (and working on eBook registration systems). It was great. I worked there for close to two years. The final large project I had been working on (with a few other people) for quite awhile launched last week. It is the redesigned www.gamasutra.com. News story about it.

I bought a car today, a 1994 Honda Civic Del Sol. I actually owned the car for four years, and then sold it to my dad who has had it for three years, and now I'm buying it back. I haven't had a car for close to three years. It is definitely nice to have one again.

I have a new full time job working for Inductive Automation/Calmetrics. Industrial automation is a whole new industry for me to learn about and get involved in. I am excited about it. My job starts on Monday. I will be doing programming of course.

And I got a new cell phone:)