Well, my last blog entry was in December and my last real blog entry was in October. I think I’m pretty much long overdue for an update.
Life
Not much has changed in my life. We’re currently attending Valley View Baptist Church. I know this may seem like a sudden change, but we left Antioch way back in May after a huge leadership debacle. Valley View seems to match up with what we believe and has a huge heart for ministering to those people that need Christ, rather than those who we would like in our church because they make us feel comfortable. Anyway, enough of that.
In more recent news, I have found Facebook. Most Web 2.0 sites out there that focus on “social networking” have really failed to pique my interest, but out of the many I have tried, Facebook makes the grade. If you haven’t tried it out, go on over and sign up. Once you’ve started, search for me, add me as a friend, and then start looking around for past friends, colleagues, and other people you might know from groups you’ve been involved with.
Work
After almost 4 months of working for SitePen, I have decided I absolutely love working at home. I also love working for a company that is focused on the cutting edge of web development and isn’t bogged down with bureaucracy.
Capoeira
Capoeira has been going fairly well. December was hectic, so we didn’t get down to Iowa City much for classes, but we started going again in January. I haven’t learned too many new moves except for the saca rolha which is basically an aú into a corkscrew spin. The difference between the saca rolha and a regular corkscrew spin is that you use it when someone comes in for a cabeçada (a head-butt), you can do a saca rolha to bring the back of your head into their face. It’s a sweet little move 
. Other than that, I’ve been learning a lot of sequences.
Man, I keep telling myself I’ll write more often, and then I go a month or so without writing… what is my problem? Let me catch you guys up with what’s happening.
Work
After a year and a half at Master Packing and Rubber Company, I’m leaving my position there to join the gang over at SitePen full time working on Dojo and other DHTML/JavaScript web application “stuff”. My last day at MPRC is this Friday and I start at SitePen a week from today. I’ll still be working on MPRC’s website in my free time and offering them a bit of technical support every once and a while (read: over the next month, I’ll be getting phone calls left and right from them). It’s been a fun year and a half and I’ve learned a ton about business, quality assurance, and website administration and I truly appreciate them giving me the opportunity to work for them. That being said, I’m really looking forward to working from home for SitePen and working full time with the some of the best in DHTML and JavaScript.
Dojo
We’re approaching our 0.4 release and there are plenty of treats for this release! One of the biggest developments for this release is the gfx package. Gfx is an SVG drawing API that works in both IE and Firefox. Check out the clock demo. Another SVG goodie we’re packing into this release is the charting engine. These goodies are thanks to the wonderful work of Eugene Lazutkin, Tom Trenka, Gavin Doherty, and Kun Xi.
Capoeira
Last Wenesday, my wife took some (over 200) pictures at our capoeira class of our capoeira family. I’ve posted them here. She started taking pictures during aú and handstand exercises, took them throughout the roda, and ended the excursion at Thai Flavors (our hangout after Wednesday night practice).
So, I was going to go to Capoeira tonight, but I did an aú before we left and I landed on my knee. And the result…
That’s after putting ice on it for an hour or so. Hopefully it will be better by Wednesday… I don’t want to lose what I’ve learned in the last 2 1/2 months because of some stupid injury.
I’m also looking for an alternative to Gallery. I currently have Gallery 2 installed on my web server and it requires 16M of memory, which Linode doesn’t always have to allocate to me (I have the lowest grade plan). Dear Lazyweb, what other photo gallery applications are out there that compare to Gallery and are a bit less resource intensive?
Last night saw my wife’s and my first try at Capoeira. The Capoeira Angola Palmares school down in Iowa City welcomed us and we started right in by learning to ginga (the basic capoeira move). We also learned esquiva lateral (lateral escape) and aú (a trimmed down cartwheel). After two hours, my legs were tired, my feet blistered, and my clothes drenched, but it was a blast. We got to watch a roda and meet some really cool people. All in all, it was a good night. I can’t wait until next monday.
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