I haven’t written in a while, but I don’t feel bad because none of my friends did either. It’s the end of the holiday period, and consequently my own holidays which, this year, lasted a (way too) long two weeks. I’m itching to get back to work on Monday. I haven’t done much during my time off honestly. There were some family dinners, celebrations with friends and lots of phone calls. I worked on some projects, tried new things online, organized online picture gallery, watched some movies and relaxed mostly. There’s not much to report.

So seeing as I’ve got nothing to say, I’ll just wish you all a happy new year. May 2009 bring you everything you desire!

The Montreal tech scene is thriving, especially in 2008 – or maybe I just became more involved and hence notice and participate in more things. Either way, last night was Montreal’s first CelebrateCamp which was held at the newly renovated Radio Lounge on the Main. “Camp” events, for those of you who are not familiar with the term are basically a kind of “open source” unconference. Wikipedia describes it as such:

An unconference is a facilitated, participant-driven conference centered around a theme or purpose. The term “unconference” has been applied, or self-applied, to a wide range of gatherings that try to avoid one or more aspects of a conventional conference, such as high fees and sponsored presentations.

So there, it was basically a big meeting of select people who have a marked interest for that specific event. It was organized by Austin Hill and the profits generated from ticket sales were given to Montreal Children’s hospital. We raised around 4000$ so it can’t be considered a bad thing. It was pretty nice actually, we had plenty of room to talk and meet people. I’m guessing that the fact that it was held on a Thursday night kind of slowed things down a bit, but then again people weren’t going clubbing, they were socializing. With that in mind, I have a few deceptions. First of all, most of the attendees were Twitterers. I walked in there with the feeling that I knew everyone, but that I couldn’t identify anyone. Name tags with Twitter usernames would have been great to identify people. I didn’t meet everyone I wanted to meet, mostly because I had no idea who they were. However the whole thing was organized in what, 2 weeks? So I’m considering it a success anyway. Also, people didn’t really hang around. By midnight there were about 50 of the 150 people that were there at 10 that were still there, and when the bar closed I can safely say that we were two left. Are geeks early sleepers? Or was it because it was Thursday? Or because everyone was keeping their party stamina for the Station C party the next day? Well, whatever it was, I met three people, which is disappointing.

But I had fun, and we raised 4k$ for kids. Can’t be bad.

See the Twitter tag and the Flickr tag. For an accurate tweet-recap of the party in two nice animations, head over to Michelle’s blog and have a chuckle on me.

Well I haven’t posted in a while, so I figured it was my duty to do so while I had some free time. Work at CloudRaker has been great so far, I’m having a blast and everyone is great. We’ve launched a project last week, which I assume I can mention since it’s live. It’s a christmas greeting card for BRP. It was not a huge project, but the deadline was tight which made it fun. Aside from that, I’m still working on that big project I mentioned in another post, and that’s going pretty nicely as well. So far, I’ve got nothing to whine about at CloudRaker. We’re having our christmas party on the 18th I think, so that should be pretty fun. I’ve been getting used to my MBP though I still don’t feel fully comfortable. I hate that fucking apple button! But I’m getting there.

If you’ve notice, there’s a few additions to the site. I’ve been playing around with WordPress lately, and I made some modifications to this blog. Among them is the lifestream, which pretty much aggregates all my activity from social networks. If you want to stalk me, that is the perfect tool as I keep those network pretty up to date. You can read more about social networks on the lifestream page, and you can see the archives over here. I’ve also made it mandatory to register in order to comment, so go ahead and do that.

I’ve also created another blog-like site. I’m going to use it to post lyrics that I like, since I’m a huge fan of lyrics. It’ll also be pretty much music related, so if you’re a fan of lyrical music, check it out. I’ve called it fusi0n lyrics.

A friend just told me this, and it made my day, so here’s some sharing love!

You’re a great guy…
One day you’re gonna make a deserving girl very happy
You’re smart, funny, generous, kind, good looking, you dress well, have great taste… you can cook, clean are independant, and you like cats.

Thanks Z!

Well, it’s time to recap the last week, which was my first at CloudRaker. Overall, I wasn’t wrong about my first impression. Everyone’s pretty cool, and the work is more challenging, even if it’s only because I’m not an expert with CakePHP. The “contract” I’m on right now is rather impressive, not necessarily code-wise (although it is!) but just with the level of achievement the client represents. I’m not sure what I can and cannot disclose, so I’ll keep it to subtle allusions. What matters is that it’s pretty big, and it’s certainly valorizing to be working on it. Aside from actual work, they gave me a Mac Book Pro to work. Isn’t that great? I’ve never actually owned a Mac, so I’m still getting the hang of things. That fucking apple button is the most annoying thing in the computer field since spam. However, I did manage to gather my knowledge and installed Ubuntu on it. Ha. All in all, I’m looking forward to Monday morning, which is, if you know me at all, quite something.

The first week was a bit unsettling though. Movember was in full swing, and it was rather scary to be surrounded with hairy people. You can get your dose of fright on the CloudRaker Movember site, but be warned, it’s hairy and alive. However, the awards are out and the mustaches are off, which is a relief! I’m strangely looking forward to participating next year, I’ll have to meditate on the motives for that. Either way, my hat is off to the CloudRaker, Taxi and Toxa for not being afraid to look ridiculous for a good cause.

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