- Part 3

HackTO #2

One of the best ways to continue learning is to take part in hackathons. You’re thrown into a group of developers and told to make something with a limited amount of time. Sometimes you’re provided with APIs or a specific instruction set on what to make and other times it’s up to you. I’ve always found that the stress of figuring something out over a short period of time helps me learn better.

HackTO is a hackathon in Toronto where developers are given 7 hours to make something built off of the provided APIs. The first HackTO was hosted at Tineye’s headquarters and my team, @ashchristopher, @terencelo and myself won it using YellowAPI. This time around I’m hoping to make something that’s both useful and creative.

Continue reading HackTO #2

Choosing Talks based off of Blog Posts

I’ve always enjoyed going to meetups, conferences and other tech events and lately I’ve wanted to give back to these communities by giving talks on things I found interested. The problem is, I always worried that what I found interesting other people would find boring. I would think of great talk ideas but always chicken out at the last-minute out of fear that people wouldn’t want to listen to what I had to say.

After thinking of this problem for a few days I came to a solution that I think works well. I’m going to create talks on the most popular content from this blog. Here are a few reasons why I’m going to do this.
Continue reading Choosing Talks based off of Blog Posts

Three Meat Bolognese Sauce

While I realize that this won’t be your traditional Bolognese sauce I wanted to share my recipe for my three meat tomato sauce after a bunch of friends commented on it. All of the measurements and timings are approximations and you should experiment with it accordingly. Continue reading Three Meat Bolognese Sauce

March 2012 in Review

After 6 months of procrastinating I finally got around to writing more articles. After DjangoCon in September 2011 there was an increase in readers to the site. As these numbers started dying down I became discouraged and stopped writing.

Since I started writing again this month I’ve noticed a large increase in readers, comments and discussions with other developers. As I said in my last monthly re-cap I plan on doing these more often. This time I promise I won’t procrastinate like I did last time.

Here are the statistics for March:

Continue reading March 2012 in Review

Hire for Culture, Not Skill

G Adventures doesn’t hire new people the way most companies do. They still have the normal interview process but what sets them apart from most companies is something called the “Culture Fit” interview. This is the last interview that a candidate goes through and it gives the last go, no-go whether or not a candidate is hired.
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Djangocon.eu 2012 and Early Registration

DjangoCon Europe was announced earlier this month and for those that missed it here are a few details. DjangoCon Europe will be held in Zurich Switzerland on June 4-6th with sprints happening on the 7th and 8th. For those who are looking to pick up a ticket the early bird prices end this Saturday, March 31st.

Here’s a list of the ticket prices:

	Early Bird	Regular
Corporate	599 CHF	629 CHF
Individual	429 CHF	459 CHF
Student	219 CHF	249 CHF

While I’ve never been to DjangoCon Europe last years DjangoCon US was amazing with a lot of great talks and sprints. I think the best part of DjangoCon is meeting the people you interact with on IRC in real life. The discussions and code that comes out of events like this are priceless.

Schloss Eggenberg Doppelbock Dunkel Review

Name: Doppelbock Dunkel
Brewery: Brauerei Schloss Eggenberg
Style: Doppelbock
ABV: 8.5%
Price: $2.85

A Bock is a defined as a strong lager from Germany. Traditional bocks are sweet, relatively strong (6.3%–7.2% by volume), lightly hopped (20-27 IBUs) lager. The beer should be clear, and colour can range from light copper to brown, with a bountiful and persistent off-white head^[1]. A doppelbock is simply a stronger, more malty bock.
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Properly Handling Failures

Remember the two benefits of failure. First, if you do fail, you learn what doesn’t work; and second, the failure gives you the opportunity to try a new approach – Roger Von Oech

Every developer has written a bug at least once in their careers. It’s almost a rite of passage to debug faulty code and turn it into something that works. Most of the time these bugs are caught before they ever reach the eyes of your customers but every so often a bug gets through to production. How you handle these bugs can be the difference between a successful program or business and a failed one. A couple of days ago a company emailed me with one such bug and it demonstrated a company that knew how to handle failure.

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Southern Tier’s Unearthly Review

Name: Unearthly
Brewery: Southern Tier
Style: Imperial India Pale Ale
ABV: 9.5% (Varies from year to year)

When it comes to craft beer in Ontario the options are fairly limited. We have a lot of Ontario craft beer but our choices for American craft beer are rather limited so when I saw a new bottle of Southern Tier I had to pick it up. Continue reading Southern Tier’s Unearthly Review

Cilantro Lime Chicken Taco Filling

Over the past few months I’ve been experimenting with different recipes for my slow cooker and my favourite one is for a delicious taco filling.

Using Salsa, Cilantro, Chicken and a few other ingredients you can make a delicious taco filling over night or while you work. The meat is extremely tender and you can easily shred it with a fork. All that’s needed once this is done are shells, and other taco condiments. Continue reading Cilantro Lime Chicken Taco Filling