A summer update

So here are a few updates since my last post:

• I have begun working at Upstatement for the summer as their web developer intern. Things are going really well here so far. Had my first company Tank Day last Friday, where we went to play bowling, arcade and pool for the whole day. Can’t complain.

• This site will soon be moved to a static site generator based on wintersmith, a node.js-based framework. Progress on the project can be seen on Github. It will probably be hosted with Github Pages. Sad to leave WordPress and WPEngine for now (especially after the new and beautifully designed MP6), but I feel like this new platform is the right move. It fits in well with my developer workflow, including using grunt.js as a build tool, write post in markdown and allows me greater control over theming and styling. The only beef I have about it so far is that it uses Jade as the templating engine. Jade feels weird to me. It’d be better if there was a handlebars plugin or sth along that line (mustache or underscore come to mind). Maybe I can research and write a plugin for that one day.

• I’ve been attending many meetups in the area (my favorite thing about living in Boston in the summer). I’ve heard many interesting topics being tossed around, including Data Visualization, analysis of the different JS frameworks (Angular, Backbone and Ember to name a few), more arguments for using MongoDB and other NoSQL database systems, WordPress goodness and big data hacking among others. There’s gonna be one on Client Side Data Management tonight, and a half day conference next week on Information Design and Data Visualization. I am literally in awe at the infinite amount of resources that are available in this city for someone to learn, for FREE, with pizza and occasional beers too.