2013 Year in Review

Every new year I take some time to reflect on the past year and take note of some of the major things that happened. I do this for several reasons:

1) To keep a list for myself of things worth remembering

2) As sort of a "Christmas letter" to people I care about

3) To give myself perspective on my accomplishments and short comings to be learned from

What I've been doing for the past 6 months....

In the middle of wedding planning, I quit my safe government contractor job in MD for a pay-cut and higher rent in NYC. All for the opportunity to work with an exciting tech startup trying to solve a really hard problem.

The below video is my CEO talking about what we've built so far...

http://www.finovate.com/fall13vid/socure.html

HTML5 WebWorkers

I've been way too busy to write a real post, but here are some final observations I had towards the end of my previous job in April...

HTML5 Web Workers do NOT help you with memory or performance. (in fact, they hurt you with both)

They ONLY serve to un-block the UI and can also be used to simulate server-side functionality if you aren’t yet ready to implement node.js for your app.

That's it. Don't allow yourself to believe that you can do more with them. (I'm sure someone can prove me wrong on that statement :)

When life gives you sequestration...make lemonade

In the coming months, the frequency of my blog posts will likely slow as I have decided to leave my employer and move to NYC as I begin work for a tech start-up called Socure.

Before signing off, I will share a few thoughts I have had as I reflect on this life event...

Visualizing data like Bob Ross

This post is the first of what will be a series of explorations into data visualization. I will dive quickly and deeply to lay the foundation as most of this can be found easily on the web.

In upcoming posts, I'll reuse this same code and go deeper, having a slower conversation around advanced techniques.

I also thought I'd have a little extra fun with this post and channel my inner Bob Ross.

If this is your first time with us, we'll be using the free JavaScript library d3.js and work in a simple development environment using jsFiddle for our "canvas" and Chrome Javascript console for debugging. Firefox users can install firebug if you feel more comfortable with that.