Added:

to my global js file… because it makes me feel like a badass to write code like:

Yesterday I had a chance to sit down and do Episode#4 of the CodeIgniter Podcast with Phil Sturgeon and Kenny Meyers. It was a blast! I’ve known them (both in person and “virtually”) for several years, and have always enjoyed talking with them, but I wasn’t sure how it would translate to the “podcast” environment. Well, I think it translated great.

In my opinion, the best part of any free-flow discussion like a podcast is that you get the (reasonably) unfiltered thoughts of people who are just plain excited by what they do. Sure I wish I had a few less “um”s, but its a small price to pay to get to sit and chat with 2 of the smarter people in the community.

Phil did an amazing job - and heck, got it nicely edited and posted pretty much instantly; everything that guy does is fast and high quality (there’s a joke in there somewhere). Kenny Meyers is one of those guys who you just want to sit and talk with, his observation about the shift in server administration off the host and onto the developer still has me re-thinking how I approach things. Both of them were pretty merciful on making fun of my accent (what’s that a-boot anyhow).

I’m looking forward to doing it again, and to listening to future episodes from others.

If you have a half hour to kill, or can listen to talking and still get your work done (I’m not one of those people), then go have a listen.

Also, is it “eye-on” auth, or “eee-on” auth? These are the questions that keep me up at night!

Remember years ago when you didn’t have Dropbox or Air Sharing and you relied on a trusty USB pen when you went somewhere and needed to physically pass files around? I do. Having spent almost 10 years doing training and going from office to office, computer to computer, it saved my life many times.

In 2007, I met one of the Mozilla guys at a conference (I think it was Benjamin Smedberg) and he gave me the last USB pen I ever owned.

I tucked it in my backpack, and that little guy has been everywhere with me, even causing momentary confusion in Germany when a customs agent pulled it out of my bag and excitedly showed it to me. At the time I thought I was about to get interrogated by a German Jack Bauer; turns out he just was a Firefox lover. It saved my butt once again late last week, when I was in a foreign computer lab with no internet access (wireless or otherwise). I’m sitting there with my laptop, needing to get files to another computer that’s hooked up to a projector, and drawing a blank. I momentarily contemplated burning a single file to a blank DVD, but then I remembered ol’faithful. So out it came, files got moved, and I tucked it away quickly into my pocket in case I needed it later.

...And then I did something stupid…

Its with a sad heart that I write that I’m no longer part of the wonderful team at EllisLab.

When I joined the company in 2007, there were interesting challenges ahead. I got to be the only developer working full time to bring ExpressionEngine2 to market, and along the way got to envision, design and build some of the most interesting aspects of it - the configurable publish screen and the file manager, among others.

After ExpressionEngine2 made it to market, I had the opportunity to really dig into a new challenge, a new product, with no legacy and no expectations. It was a joy to bring MojoMotor to market. I spent my days dreaming about how it would work, how people would interact with it, and even fussed over little details like naming and icons. It was a lot of fun. MojoMotor has only been available for a short time now, but it is by all measures a success.

EllisLab has a strong core of products now, and a large, engaged community; and also a new management and a new direction. The type of challenges that excite me, that drive me, aren’t available anymore, and so while it appears sudden to some, my time at EllisLab has reached a natural conclusion.

I’m off now seeking new opportunities and the next challenge. I remain passionate about what I do, and what I’m good at - building fun, engaging software.

Coming in MojoMotor 1.0.4, is a simplified version updater. Here’s a 17 second video preview.

One of the things that hasn’t really been made public about MojoMotor is that it has the ability to be themed. This option is available under Settings.

Its my vision that down the line we’ll be able to offer a few official themes, as well as offer community contributed themes. More focus on this will happen after the beta of course. For now though, I’ve been working on a little theme that I think will go over good with everyone. Now I’m not much of a graphic artist, but it’s pretty slick work (if I may be so humble) for a code monkey. It could use a minor bit of polish, but at the end of the day, there’s a little something for everyone.

If you ARE a graphic artist, please don’t be too critical, but I would be very interested to see what everyone thinks! If there’s enough interest, I’ll make it the default theme.

Want to see it? Keep reading!

Well, finally back and enjoying the afterglow of another amazing experience; EECI 2010. Aside from the great things that happened to me personally (I’ll get to those in a moment), it was 3 days of pure and utter awesomeness for the whole ExpressionEngine/CodeIgniter world. I’ll never get to hang out with a more awesome gang then the folks I meet through this world.

Rick Ellis said something unexpected and uniquely insightful during his keynote that really resonated with me. I don’t have the video in front of me for the exact words, but an accurate paraphrase would be “The community is where its at. In many ways, and all the important ones, the software is irrelevant.” As someone who has worked tirelessly over the last 3 or 4 years to build the software he’s referring to, I completely agree with this. The magic-sauce of EE and CI comes from the community of dedicated, passionate people around it. Its easy to forget that when we’re busy fighting deadlines and trying to fix IE bugs.

Now seems about as appropriate a time as any to extend my sincerest thanks to Robert Eerhart, Janneke van Amsterdam, and the entire Whoooz team. These folks put on one of the most professional, well organized, kick-ass experiences I’ve ever enjoyed. Every little detail was tended to, nothing was second rate - I wish I had Robert and Janneke organizing my day to day life… things would be so much better!

The highlight of the trip for me was finally getting to talk about MojoMotor. Mojo is something that I’ve been working on since around Christmas last year, and its been nearly everything I’ve been up to professionally for 5 months. Anyone who’s watched my keynote at EECI2009 knows that I’m a “social coder”. I crave community; and I consider nerding-out with other people to be foundational to the way I work. Keeping Mojo under wraps for 5 months has been killing me! I want to share, I want to say “hey, check out this cool thing I’ve been doing”, but we decided very early on that we wanted Mojo to come as a total surprise. Now that its out there, I’m glad we did.

Response to the news of Mojo has been overwhelmingly positive. I’m really hopeful that people will end up loving it as much as they love CodeIgniter and ExpressionEngine. I few secret tidbits that not many people know about MojoMotor:

• MojoMotor was a name that Rick grabbed years ago. He just liked the sound of it. As I was developing MojoMotor it started out with a much different name, but it was quickly apparent that “MojoMotor” was the right name for the little CMS.
• “The publishing engine that does less…” and the concept for the logo both came about in less then 3 minutes during a Skype call between me and Rick. Other parts of the software that I expected to come quickly took WEEKS. Funny how that works.
• The graphic artist who helped us along was Ilina Simeonova. She did stellar work, and her dedication to a project that she had little invested in was inspiring.

And of course, the journey is only just beginning for MojoMotor. The final round of beta testing with “real world” (ie: non-staff) testers is just getting underway, and after that we’re releasing. It’ll be in your hands quickly, I promise. The price has been set at $49.95. I’m looking forward to watching it mature and grow before our eyes.

Firefox 3.6 was released today. I love it. Love it. One thing I wasn’t crazy about was a behaviour change when opening links in new tabs. Before 3.6, they opened at the end of the tab row, but now they open beside the tab you are currently on. Want to change it back?

• “about:config” in your address bar.
• search for “insertRelatedAfterCurrent”. The full config is “browser.tabs.insertRelatedAfterCurrent”.
• Set it to “false” (just click it until it toggles).

Enjoy!

There’s been some really neat activity on the CodeIgniter front recently. Great stuff.

Jamie Rumbelow has taken over as CodeIgniter Community Cheiftain, after an admirable job by the imminent Michael Wales. We’re lucky to have both as part of our community.

Rick Ellis has discovered Twitter (see him @rickellis) and is dropping all kinds of cool news about CI and EllisLab.

The CodeIgniter repository itself is getting a bit more love recently due to a few folks putting in their own time. Here’s how I spent my weekend (check out both the time (yup, 3am) and message of rev 1789 :)

There’s a lot of exciting things ahead for the framework - its a great time to be involved!

I just wanted to take a moment to update everyone about BambooInvoice. Although a new version hasn’t been released since April, it is still very much under active development. The next version will be 0.9, and features a series of enhancements to make Bamboo more flexible, robust, and suited to a broader array of uses.

Despite earlier concerns about my choice of license, I can definitively say that for the near future, BambooInvoice will remain GPL. If I do change the license, it will be to another Open Source license.

On a technical level, I’ve put up the project at GitHub (http://github.com/derekallard/BambooInvoice) as an experiment in using Git as a code repository. This is my first time working with the system, and while the code is up there now, I’m not sure I’ll stay with Git - although it does feel nice so far, working with Git is pretty different from what I’m used to with Subversion. At the very least, major versions of the code will be put up there (ie: releases).

To the question of when, I’m honestly not sure yet. Its pretty close, but there are a few important pieces not yet in place, and I don’t feel comfortable even giving estimates or guesses. I can say development on the next release has been fast and furious as time allows, however the release of ExpressionEngine 2 has been taking up all my time in the last few months. That said, there is real progress; most notably

A full rewrite of the tax system from the ground up. Unlimited taxes, configurably applied to your invoices and items.

Additionally, here’s a sampling of the current changelog: