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Life announcement: Joining Rapid7
Up until now, I’ve kept this blog strictly about technical discussions (and there hasn’t been too much interesting to discuss lately that hasn’t had extensive coverage elsewhere, sorry about that!). Today, however, I have some exciting news to share that isn’t strictly technical, though it will no doubt have a major impact on the things that I’m working on and may end up reflecting (positively) on the posts I make in the blog going forward.
I am thrilled to announce that this Monday, August 20th, is my first day at Rapid7, an awesome cybersecurity company that has recently opened a new innovation center down in Kendall Square in Cambridge, MA. I’m sure you have heard the increasing reports of how fragile our current online services are to break-ins and theft, and as more and more of us are putting ever greater portions of our lives out in the cloud, it becomes ever more critical that those spaces become secure. Rapid7 is on the side of the good guys in helping companies big and small get a handle on the security of their environments, and I’m extremely excited to be able to do my part to help make the cloud a safer, more secure place. My role at the company will continue to involve a lot of front-end work, and my first goal as I get to work is to build a JavaScript environment for our new tools that will be as healthy and robust an application development environment as any backend work, so watch this space for more tips and ideas on that front!
If I can get a little personal for a minute, this is such an exciting move for me. Not only will I be given the opportunity to take what I have been learning about healthy JavaScript application craftmanship and applying it to an industry that is doing really good work for society, but this will be the first time in my entire Boston career that I will finally be working down in Cambridge rather than the 128 tech circle. This means much more opportunity to cross-pollinate ideas with other developers working on other awesome projects down in Kendall Square, and it also means finally getting to put the Minuteman Bikeway which runs alongside my house to work. No more driving for me; the last couple days have been, in part, spent getting my bike in shape for daily commuting. Oh! And Rapid7 was awarded the #1 best medium sized business to work at by the Boston Business Journal this year. Jealous? We’re hiring!
Of course, a big move like this doesn’t come without ramifications. It is with a heavy heart that I must reduce my role in the company I co-founded, 10×10 Room, to that of advisor. I will be investing a lot of my brainspace going forward into rolling out the best possible front-end architecture I can for Rapid7, and it would not be good for either Rapid7 or 10×10 Room if I tried to ride both horses at once. I have made a ton of friends in the game development industry over the past few years, and I am genuinely sorry that I never did get a chance to meet more of them in person. I will still be following everyone on the social interwebs, and I can’t wait to hear what amazing work y’all will be sharing with us in the future. No matter how old I get, I’m sure I will always identify as a gamer, and it was a true honor to consider myself a game developer for a short while as well. I’m also incredibly excited to know what’s coming down the pipeline for 10×10 Room and Conclave, which makes this an even more difficult departure. Needless to say, Rapid7 had a very, very high bar to hit to get me to leave my current company, which I guess just goes to show once again how excited I am about this new role.
Well, that’s enough nattering on personal life stuff on this blog. For the tl;dr crowd: I’m going to be doing a lot more JavaScript architectural work in the future for a new company, the new company is awesome, and both of those things put together will hopefully mean there will be some more fun JavaScript posts coming your way here soon. Watch this space, and thanks for reading!
Hey howdy hey
Merlin is the best mage
Hello there and welcome to my shiny new blog. You’ve discovered the obligatory first post where I tell you a bit about myself and what I’m planning to write. There are, as it should happen, a few different purposes for the blog, and I’m afraid they serve a few different audiences. Wiser people than I would say this is a terrible idea and that if I have multiple audiences I should write multiple blogs that cater to each audience. To which I say, bugger that, we’re going to be lucky if we get through a single blog together, you and I, let alone several. Moreover, this is not the first terrible idea I’ve ever had and certainly won’t be the last. Perhaps things will work out all the same. I, for one, am excited to find out.
However, my heart is not entirely closed to those who may come to this blog for one purpose and find some of the entries in here completely uninteresting to them. For you, dear friends, I will provide tags and/or categories that I will be strict about using with every post. (Not least of which because I love breaking things down into little categories. A lot. Quite possibly too much. But mostly for you!) And if I am clever enough and have time enough at some point in the future, I hope to introduce a schmancy color scheme that will allow folks to be able to tell at a glance which category any particular post may fall in. I can’t say the categories will be neat and perfect, as I am living evidence that one category of stuff can bleed into another, but it seems like a decent enough starting point.
Get to the point
But enough of that. (Really. Yikes. The fingers, they just keep going, don’t they?) What, exactly, was going to be the point (or points, not unlike a shuriken) of this blog again? Threefold, my friends! You may know I’m a regular user of Twitter. Sometimes, especially right now, I have a few thoughts in my head that may take a little more than 140 characters to communicate. This will become the repository of those big thoughts. Said grand thoughts tend to come in three basic flavors:
1) work thoughts – Usually programming, possibly sometimes other thoughts about being the cofounder of a very small game development company.
2) game thoughts – I play games. I like to talk about things. I probably want to talk about games.
3) life thoughts – As the parent of two young boys, there are likely going to be stories to tell from the family arena.
I bet you can see the problem here. Some friends and family are going to (I hope!) stop by from time to time to see how we’re getting on and what trouble the kidlets are getting into these days. The chances of these folks being interested in the latest HTML5 discovery I made is probably pretty slim (though non-zero), and vice versa. Well, hence the tags and categories and eventually the colors and hopefully all will be well. We’ll find out together.
So! Now that all that is out of the way, I can start posting about all the HTML5 stuff I’ve been uncovering, which was the catalyst for me finally taking the time to kick off the happy fun times. Let’s begin!
10×10 Room
My company
Conclave
Our first game
archmagus 