Non-tech readers can ignore this.

• Continuing to proselytize the JQuery JavaScript framework; getting a lot done with it.
• Approaching a brown belt in WordPress customizations and cetera.
• Just tapping the surface of Drupal
• Getting my fingers wet on a little iPhone Web app; a bit wary but excited about the SDK
• Hoping to get the chance to do something in Rails soon

Boy, that doesn’t sound that exciting, but I do feel like I’ve been doing a lot of stuff that seems interesting. Maybe it’s best not to try to quantify it next time.

I took, like, at least three linguistics classes in college in the 1990’s, so I’m a dangerous and ignorant, but curious, dilettante.

I remember learning something about people who are multi-lingual, that they store rules and vocabulary for each language in completely separate “pockets” of the brain. This keeps people from switching between languages mid-sentence–uncontrollably, at least, not the intentional English/Dutch back-and-forth DJs seem to do a lot–or lapsing into binary like that awesome SNL skit of Bill Gates that one time.

Which makes me think. Does learning a programming “language” follow neurologically in any of the same footsteps? Do we process statements in scripts like we read? I at least like to think so, as it would help explain why I like syntaxes (or syntices, if you like the archaic, thoughtful form of the word) like jQuery and hate to have to deal with perl.

I often have to deal with as many as half a dozen languages or contexts per day in my world of Web. Today I am jumping from python to JavaScript with punctuation moments of PHP, and irritants like dtml (don’t ask if you don’t know it) and CSS (CSS rocks, I just am not that polished at it these days), and of course HTML, etc.. I stumble with the occasional misplaced bracket or semicolon or dollar sign, but not nearly as often as you’d think. Are we pre-programmed to switch easily like this?

Like Portland? Like mobile stuff? Like tech and Web stuff? Then get mobilated. Cell-webbed. Textoclicked.

Cloud Four (that’s my awesome company!) is helping to organize a new Mobile Portland group, where mobile people can get together and yak it up and make great leaps in ideas for mobility.

Keep an eye on Cloud Four’s blog for more information, or sign up at mobileportland.com.

See also coverage on Silicon Florist.

Here’s the part where all of my savvy friends mock me.

I don’t hate PHP.

I was talking to John Keith this morning about how I didn’t hate it
(specifically, we were talking about python), and here’s why:

1) Documentation. I find it really hard to find python documentation
(I know that not everyone feels this way…it’s just not intuitive for
me). PHP documentation is gorgeous.
2) You have a lot more in front of you without having to go track down
libraries and worry about incompatibilities and installing across
platforms and servers. I realize that this is also one of its biggest
faults and that even mentioning this as a “strengh” makes me a big fat
plebe.
3) General readability and intuitiveness (not bashing python here–its
forced whitespace conformity makes it pretty easy to scan, and bad PHP
is, well, bad in an illegible way). But the functions, I find, are
almost always named exactly what I’d expect them to be named. Etc.

Yep, I know it’s a security nightmare and the language of morons and
stuff, but I still don’t hate it. So sue me.

At long last, I can introduce Cloud Four to the world! Peruse and understand!

Yay!