A Little Time Off

2010-12-16 07:36:01 by jdixon

I always wondered what I could accomplish with a few weeks of free time. Never thought I'd have the chance to find out. Yeah, funny thing about that...

I've been Product Manager for an online monitoring service over the past 15 months. I've learned a lot about the full product cycle, building up all the components of a startup web company: cranking out a business plan, analyzing the competition, defining the roadmap, performing QA, etc. It's been a ton of fun, growing an Open Source trending application into a full-blown ECA/BSM suite. Now is the right time for me to hand it off to a full-blown sales organization and see it thrive. Which means I'm taking some time off to look for my next challenge.

I'm happy to report that the job market looks very strong right now. I'd love to believe that all the interest I'm getting is a byproduct of my years of experience and varied skillset, but I'm too self-loathing for that. Regardless, I'm still interviewing and haven't made up my mind yet. So if your startup/Web/SaaS/DevOps company is looking for a seasoned ops/network/security/engineering/product-managing type, drop me a line and let's chat. My CV/resume is available online.

Working with the Mojolicious Framework

Thanks to my reorganized shed-yule, I have the chance to catch up on some side projects. The first one is the evolution of NetFlow Dashboard as a SaaS service. Devon O'Dell has been doing some nifty stuff with the collector, while I've been focusing on the user-facing web and API stuff. I stumbled across the Mojolicious framework, and zomg, you can color me impressed. Compared to Catalyst, "Mojo" is a breath of fresh air. The syntax is actually quite similar to Dancer, but it goes a few steps further, adding placeholders (with optional regex constraints) and named routes. Take for example, the following snippet:

use Mojolicious::Lite;

    # Route with placeholder
    get '/:foo' => sub {
        my $self = shift;
        redirect_to('login') unless ($self->session('username'));
        my $foo  = $self->param('foo');
        $self->render(text => "Hello from $foo!");
    };

    # Defaults to login.html.ep
    get '/login' => 'login';

    # 
    post '/login' => sub {
        my $self = shift;
        redirect_to('login') unless (
            $self->param('username') && $self->param('password')
        );
        # [ ... some code to authenticate user ... ]
        $self->render(text => "Welcome!");
    };

    # Start the Mojolicious command system
    app->start;

    __DATA__

    @@ login.html.ep
    <!doctype html><html>
        <head>
            <%= content header => begin %>
                <title>Login</title>
            <% end %>
        </head>
        <body>
            <%= content body => begin %>
                <form action="post">
                <input name="username">
                <input name="password" type="password">
                <input name="login" type="submit">
                </form>
            <% end %>
        </body>
    </html>

This epitomizes everything I enjoy about Perl code. TMTOWTDI, but without all the crufty framework directories and files that remind me of Ruby on Rails. Mojolicious::Lite is easy to read, easier to write, with all the shortcuts a strapping young web hacker might want. It's smart enough to inject common sense where it should (e.g. searching for templates by named route and format) but powerful enough to let me extend any of the underlying Mojolicious classes (like Catalyst). Good stuff.

Rudolph the Bastard Reindeer

2009-12-27 21:52:43 by jdixon

I'm probably not treading into undiscovered territory, but having re-watched a number of my favorite Christmas specials as an adult, I couldn't help but notice the influences of an earlier, simpler, uglier life in America. Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer had an especially hellish upbringing in the shadow of Claus and his elven slave-drivers, according to the storytellers at Rankin/Bass Productions, Inc.

Overtones of discrimination and the Old South start from the very beginning. The comforting tone of Burl Ives as the friendly, banjo-toting, Good 'ol boy snowman-narrator help to lighten the apocalyptic mood of newsreel footage foreshadowing the storm that inevitably vindicates Rudolph's hapless existence.

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