Yesterday we received the latest copy of our home school family magazine. It is a small publication that goes out to members of the homeschooling organization that we are currently working with (Wisdom). The theme of the magazine happened to be on passion. They do not currently have all of their articles available online, and the article I am about the reprint is also not available online.

I wanted to take the time to share this article as I think it is a fantastic reminder about what passion is and how we can exercise it on a day to day basis. The author (Ken Noster) happens to be the Director of Wisdom, and from what I can gather, a man full of "wisdom"!!

On Building Noah's Ark

Synonymous with calling, passion is a gift. It has to do with response, and it has to do with responsibility.

Too often, passion is seen as a personal thing, reduced to the realm of personal preference or even self-indulgence; but I don't think this accurately describes passion. Christ's passion was actually something he asked to be relieved of, and realistically, may of our own passions cost us a great deal.

I seem to have been given a few passions, and each of them works out to be a source of joy and at the same time a responsibility that demands faithful response.

I have a passion to grow things, to feed clean grains, vegetables, and meat to my family and other families. Perhaps at a basic level it's a desire to nurture. I like nurturing newborn calves, injured horses, chickens, wheat seedlings... and it is difficult to back off or abandon an animal or plant that is failing. Most of all, I like to nurture my wife and children, not only with good food, but with good ideas and good theology; and their healthy spiritual life certainly is my passion.

I have a passion for truth. Whether it is big business exploiting little people or bureaucrats exerting their bias on families, I find myself roused to action. This particular response has pushed me to sit on boards and make presentations to government bodies. It has propelled me to write letters and make speeches. It has caused me to move beyond my comfort zone over and over.

Ultimately, the Truth is a person, and I am recognizing that my passion resides in representing Him as well as I am able.

I have a passion for love. I used to think of love as just a personal things, sort of my own response to people, a response that was private and no one's business but my own. It was only when I began to slowly learn what love really is, that I began to see it as universal in its demands and in its effects. It was by realizing love was a gift that needed to be received before it could be given that I became convinced that love, like my other passions, is a gift I have received and am called to spend on others. I have received it from my parents, family, friends, and most especially my God and Saviour; and who am I to think I don't owe it to everyone I meet, and even those I never meet.

All my passion springs from gifts I have been given, and I wouldn't have passion at all if it weren't instilled in me. It follows, then, that passion is not ultimately my own to use as I please, but it is a gift to be used for the good of others. To the extent that I passionately serve, I receive joy; and ultimately I become the person I'm created to be.. I grow up and become responsible. To the extent that I fail to apply my passions to the good of others, I am robbed of joy and shrink in my maturity.

Each day challenges me to apply my passions well, and wouldn't you know it: the more selflessly I can use my passion for others, the more I passionately enjoy the day!!

Awesome article. I just wanted to take the time to share that as I know that someone is going to be able to receive a blessing from it today!!

Develop With Passion!!

Thanks to everyone who took the time to respond!!

Have you been struggling with learning new concepts at work? Are you feeling overwhelmed by the constant flood of information that keeps coming at you from all angles? Do you constantly find yourself reading new books yet being unable to retain/apply any of the information that you have read. It might just be time to debug your brain!!

Pragmatic Thinking and Learning is one of those books that falls into my category of "Career Catalyst". These are books that when read and applied can have a lasting impact on how you go about executing your career. This book will help you identify your current style of learning, as well as give you techniques and exercises that you can use to identify and fix errors in your own thinking that may be preventing you from reaching your full potential when it comes to continuous
learning.

The Pragmatic Programmer is another one of those books that falls into the "Career Catalyst" category. In my opinion, any student entering a computer science/technology field should be provided this book as one of their first to read. If you can digest and apply the concepts outlined in this book it will provide you with a set of habits that will enable you to be a developer who charts a steady upward course with your career. I have spoken with lots of developers who have read this
book, and yet they have not taken the time to apply the concepts to their own career. If you have not read the book, or you are in the category of people who have read it but not really applied it, then there is no better time to start than today.

One of my goals when I am teaching is to encourage people to start thinking about how they can "chart their own course" and focus on finding a rhythm that enables them to learn new concepts in a JIT fashion, while also not becoming overwhelmed with the continual flood coming at them. I personally feel that the information contained in these two books can become instrumental in helping people figure out what it means for themselves to become more productive programmers.

If you have not read either one of both of these books, here is an opportunity. The first 5 people to email me will receive amazon credit (applicable to amazon.com) with which they can purchase a copy of both of these amazing books (you will have to take care of shipping costs).

Develop With Passion!!!

A couple of people have asked about my current dev setup on twitter, so I thought I would take the time to share how I currently have my machines setup for my dev work.

Here are the hardware specs for the 2 machines that I run:

• Desktop: Mac Pro - 16GB - Dual Quad Core
• Laptop : Macbook Pro - 4GB - Dual Core

Anyone that knows me will attest to how much of a keyboard freak that I am. I am constantly on the lookout for integrating more tools into the toolkit that allow me to both not use the mouse, and stay as close to home row as possible!! To that end, here is the current set of software that I use purely from a OSX perspective. When it comes to my windows VM's, I am pretty sure that I have documented their configuration elsewhere, but since I have not been spending a lot of time in the windows environment for the last while, I thought it would make sense to focus on the tools I have installed for my Mac:

• Being a Vim user, this tool constitutes where I spend most of my time day to day doing dev work. It is probably useful to make note of the current set of plugins that I am using (which is growing weekly as I become more and more proficient):
  • DBExt - A great plugin for working with databases directly from Vim
  • NERDTree - Tree Explorer Plugin For FileSystem Navigation
  • SnipMate - Code Snippet Expansion
  • Syntastic - Good syntax checker
  • Command-T - Fast file navigation in Vim
  • Buffer Explorer - Fast buffer viewing/switching
  • Rails.vim - Great complement when developing rails apps
  • Surround.vim - All about surroundings (think quotes, xml tags, ...)
  • TwitVim - Vim Twitter Client
  • VimGrep
• ViKing Currently in beta stages, it is being built by an Develop With Passion alumnus who shares a love for ditching the mouse!! Using keybindings that will feel right at home for Vim users, it aims to bring Vim Style navigation to all areas on OSX. I am currently beta testing it, and it has greatly improved my OSX mouseless experience!!
• MercuryMover Great way to move/resize windows with the keyboard
• SizeUp Another tool to do window management with the keyboard. Great for fast window placement.
• QuickSilver The first tool I install on any new osx image. This tool is amazing!!! Make sure you enable advanced features, and turn on all of the proxy object etc...
• Vimperator I have used Vimium with chrome, but it still does not come close to the level of functionality that Vimperator has. Vim style navigation for firefox!!
• Bash I spend a lot of my day at the command line. I cannot stress this enough. If you have not taken the time to learn a good shell, do yourself a favour, learn one and learn it well. This is not about being nostalgic, it is about being able to accomplish a large majority of tasks much faster when you know the command-line equivalents. Windows users finally have a great native shell with PowerShell. Bash, zsh are great for Unix environments.
• Version Control I am not about to recommend which you should use, but use it to manage the tools/scripts that you have so you can quickly jump between machines without issue. In conjunction with the dotfiles that I have as well as a bunch of custom ruby scripts, keeping both of my machines "in sync" is a snap (even between unix and windows environments).
• VMWare Fusion Useful for running a handful of applications that I have yet to find good OSX equivalents for, as well as for when I am doing windows development using Visual Studio.

Hopefully this list of tools gives you a good start to enjoying the mouseless lifestyle in OSX. If you are a keyboard ninja and have tools/utilities that you would like to share, please comment on this post and share with everyone!!

Develop With Passion!!

It has now been 3 years since I made the decision to start offering training courses that I could use a a means to engage, educate, and empower people to take their careers to the next level. I have lost count of the number of students that I have been blessed to be able to train over the years!!

One thing that I have always wanted to do a better job with, but as of yet have been unable to follow up on, is keeping the conversation going between past students. I am not talking about the conversation between myself and them, more importantly the conversation between each other.

To that end, I just recently set up a Develop With Passion™ - Alumni group on linked in. The goal is (for the interim) to have a place where past students can come and share their war stories, talk about challenges, offer encouragement, and all sorts of other hopefully great things.

This is a post to encourage past students who have not yet responded to the invite to head over to the group, sign up, and start contributing. I know there is lots that we can all learn from one another!!

Develop With Passion!!

This is an announcement of a brand new 1 day remote course. One of many "micro" courses that are about the be published and added to the Nothin But * line of courses.

Overview

Nothin But ReSharper is a one day deep dive into the R# visual studio plugin, that can accelerate you development in ways that you are probably unaware of if you have not seen it in action. In this session you will learn how to take advantage of R# to enable you to accomplish the following taks inside the ide much faster:

• Micro Code Generation
• Refactoring
• Code Navigation
• Code Analysis

Prerequisites

Hardware/Software Requirements

With only a day required to participate, and at a cost of $300, it is a great way to get yourself out of a comfort zone for a short period of time, participate from your own location, collaborate/discuss with people from all around the world, and get some awesome learning time in!!

My thought with this, and the other, micro courses is to allow people to get deep dives into specific tools/technologies/approaches, without the battering that usually ensues from a full blown week of 5 12 hour days.

To register for the course go here: http://nbdnresharperremotejune.eventbrite.com/

Develop With Passion!!