Bonsai Hacker

As a big fan of hands on books such as the ‘From Scratch’ and ‘Cookbook’ series I am always excited to get a chance to review new books in subjects I am interested in.  Recently I was given the chance to review the Cassandra High Performance Cookbook by Edward Capriolo. And since I have been exploring several NoSQL solutions [...]

This year marks my 7th year of being involved with TechBirmingham in some form or another. So I thought it would be a good time to look back at what it means to me.  Especially since its through this organization that I am able to as involved in the area tech scene as much as [...]

You would think after 6+ years of doing bonsai, I would have accumulated some wisdom about the subject. Perhaps I have, but I feel that I am still just beginning. However, I did pick up a few nuggets that may be useful to other beginners. How did I learn these things? Much of it came [...]

This is the first post in a series I am planning on doing this year. The purpose is to write down my original thoughts on projects  I have been involved with. I call them “A look back:” because most of these projects were started years ago and this is an attempt to write down my original [...]

As with everything else in life, people have preconceived notions of bonsai. Some got there first glimpse through media such as the movie “The Karate Kid”, while others might notice a cute little tree at a local garden center. Many don’t realize the most important thing, If you really want your bonsai to be great you [...]

Since I never keep them I don’t really worry about New Years Resolutions. But I do like to set goals for the new year to gauge where I am at after each year. I have found that there are definitely some do’s and don’ts for setting goals though. For example, broad sweeping resolutions like “lose weight” just [...]

A little over 2 years ago a friend invited me to get together with him and a small group of other developers for one of the first jellys in birmingham. At the time I had no idea what it was but the idea of working around other like minded developers sparked my interest. Even though [...]

Last Saturday on October 16, Microsoft hosted the 2nd Southeast User Group Leadership Summit (SEUGLS) at Microsoft’s Alpharetta, GA office. O’Reilly Media and Pearson Education were also supporters of the event providing a nice book selection for attendees. The event again brought together community leaders from throughout the southeast for a day of networking and [...]

Ok I have been sitting on this post since just before barcamp Birmingham. After having a blast at Dragon*Con 2010 and meeting some other awesome conference planners I decided to go ahead and push it out as I have several other conference related post that have entered my though process. This was a post on [...]

Its been a month since my last Desktop Notes post. Mainly due to alot going on in the past month. This is what has been going on: Post Ignite Birmingham tasks BarCamp Birmingham 4 Planning and then the event itself Bringing back Birmingham Jelly Loads of new projects at work! IPSA Summer Networking Event Working [...]