Back Blogging!

Hi everyone!

It's been a long time since I've seriously been blogging. A lot has happened the last few months (years), but even better, there is a lot to happen in the near future!

So what have I been up to?

Over a year ago I was working for Club Cruise. After discussing the situation, it was better for me to focus myself on MikeMedia or to get a full time job somewhere else. I took "the easy road" and went looking for a job somewhere else.

I had some contacts with some headhunters that contacted me during the years and contacted them to get the ball started. I did a few interviews (a few very interesting ones and a few less). But in the end one of the head hunters got frustrated I guess and started accusing me of all sorts of stuff. So that was it and back to Google and Monsterboard.

I also contacted my friends at Johan Enschede Amsterdam and were happy to get me for their CF team. As I needed to start earlier then expected, they weren't able to get me started that soon and I had to look for something else. No hard feelings, was a great opportunity, but sometimes it's just not meant to be.

So a few days later I was contacted by someone who found my resume on Monsterboard. He was one of the CEO's from TRAG Consultants and was looking for a in-house developer to take their applications/work flow to the next level. A lot of Flex/AIR development with huge MSSQL databases (health care records and such from 75% of the Dutch hospitals). They had no idea about server side requirements, so I had to convince them to get on-board with CF.

About 2 months later (begin of December) I was contacted by old colleagues that they were starting up a new company and wanted my opinion for some of their applications. At first it looked like could do the app in a few days with some evenings, but as the project became more and more discussed, I had to make a choice. Stay with TRAG or leave and go with the new company. It was a very though choice to make as I loved my job at TRAG and really liked working with everyone over there. Also the first application wasn't released for them yet, so I felt really guilty to leave them half way during the development.

So the first working day of 2009 I went to the office and discussed the situation and left TRAG. They weren't too happy of course, but if it was the opportunity of a lifetime, they would wish me all the best with it. In the end it was a not that easy, but I don't want to put the ugly part publicly as that is something between the parties involved.

So what are you doing now?

I'm currently working with 0900 Money which released a first version of Goldrush Auction (http://goudkoortsveiling.nl) in Dutch. This project involved Flex, Coldfusion 8 and BlazeDS development. As I'm currently switching from BlazeDS to activeMQ, I keep bumping into problems, but more on that later.

A consumer tv show had an item about us if the auction was a). For real and b). if the concept wasn't gambling. They had a professor on the show, who is specialized in gambling games, who didn't had his facts straight. But also more on that later.

So we're expanding our auction application on the front end (lots of usability updates), but most important on the back end. A new DB cluster, extra web servers, a new messaging system and multilingual sites (you don't want to know how many languages, I love UTF-8, but it's still a pain in the ass!).

0900 Money will launch a different concept in the next coming months, which will be very interesting to see how that will develop in the market. More on that as soon as I get the OK to speak on this topic in-depth.

So what can we expect on this site?

I'll be blogging regularly on this site about mainly Coldfusion and Flex development with all the other cool stuff that is needed to get our apps to work. Also some personal stuff, music posts (maybe some mixes too) and whatever I think is needed to be published.

Most parts of the blog aren't done yet, but should be up in the coming days/weeks as I really missed to blog!