Split personality

My day job — these days — is hacking Java. Well, that’s an understatement. I’ve been writing what is best described as some form of multi-platform, embedded system for a MysteryProjectThatImSwornToSilenceOver with some really cool people WhoImNotAllowedToMention. It’s an audio-visual experience involving joysticks and touch-screens; it keeps my left brain in tune. My night job is, well, multi-lobal funk.

I’ve been working with Matej on Envelopa.com for about 6 weeks now. We have a few users; a couple of screencasts; and a fairly stable code base considering it was mostly written in some fuzzy daze. We’re about to launch Envelopa in Slovene (more to follow shortly) and an API is also code-complete.

The latest technical bits were amazingly simple to roll out. We took the bits we could use out of Zend Framework (Zend_Translate, Zend_Cache and Zend_Rest_Controller for the api) and popped together the last run in a matter of hours. The API (how hard can an API for envelopes be?) took a day  including documentation and a pretty kick-ass tutorial if I do say so myself.

The thing is, Matej and I talk just a few times per week. We discuss who-will-do-what and when-it-will-be-done. We set some constraints but we’re pretty liberal with them. (By the way Matej, you still owe me a bottle of Canadian for winning the last “who finishes first” challenge.)  We say things like “Wouldn’t it be cool to have themes?” or “API? Well, guess that makes sense.” or “How fast can you do a screencast?” and we move. My day job plays about the same albeit with some rather tougher limits.

I guess the point is that it’s cool to work with good people. People who can effectively challenge and motivate; who aren’t intimidated by a human’s ability to deliver when booze is on the line.  I like those kind of people, with or without the daze.