I recently had the pleasure of attending NodeConf Summercamp 2012 and I wanted to quickly jot down some thoughts about stuff I learned, both Node-related and not.

In case you’re wondering what the experience itself was like, Tim Caswell aka Creationix wrote a blog post on the cloud9 blog that recaps some of the day-to-day activities.

So here are some of my takeaways in no particular order:

• Lots of people are successfully using Node in production, including Voxer, Uber, and Yammer. The Node community wants to encourage more blog posts about both success stories and battles with bugs (and more importantly, follow-ups to both).
• Node is being used for lots of things other than web apps such as non-http servers and even robots!
• Node Streams are pretty awesome and this is why.
• Node Domains are a fairly new feature but also seem pretty useful.
• Crossing the JavaScript to C boundary is expensive, so there was a lot of talk about avoiding compiled dependencies. I’d still like to learn a lot more about this because I found it counterintuitive. For example, node_redis claims to perform a lot better with hiredis, which was one of the compiled deps that folks mentioned not to use.
• HTTPS (SSL/TLS) isn’t very performant right now (TLS handshakes happen in the main event loop and happen a lot more than necessary), so it’s probably better to use something like nginx or stud for SSL termination. They’re working on it!
• People in the NodeJS community are very warm, welcoming and pretty darn funny.
• Unless you want to smell like a wood-fired barbeque, bring a fireplace-specific hoodie and a rest-of-the-day hoodie. (I’m not a very outdoorsy person so I had to figure this out on my own).

I had a fantastic time at NodeConf Summercamp and I’m looking forward to going again next year. Thanks to Mikeal Rogers and the rest of the organizing crew for making it such a great experience!

Once again I’m posting my New Year’s Resolutions somewhere public (my blog) so that I’m more likely to follow them. My resolutions this year are the same as last year’s with one noteable exception.

Last weekend, I participated in Change.org HackForChange hackathon. We had 24 hours to design and build an app that could help change the world, and we ended up winning 2nd place! I wanted to take this opportunity to discuss my experience, and announce what lies ahead for our project, AnonyMouse.

I’m told I’m supposed to Blog Like A Hacker.
Well, here goes nothin.

I’ve made it a tradition to post my New Year’s Resolutions here on my blog. The idea is that if they’re posted somewhere public, I’ll be more likely to follow them. This year, I’m going to do a recap of last year’s resolutions and see which ones I’ve kept and which ones I’ve broken.

Last year I posted my New Year’s Resolutions here, and I’m proud to say that I managed to follow most of them (although not all of them).  I’m doing the same this year.

Normally I post long-form essays here on my site.  However, I figured if I exposed my New Year’s Resolutions somewhere public, I might be more prone to follow them.

In this post, I discuss a few major life changes I’ve recently made, the stimulus for the change, and my plans for the immediate future.

In this essay, I explain how I use a variety of Web 2.0 software and applications that store my data “in the cloud” to manage my busy traveling consultant lifestyle. All of the applications I use are free (as in beer), although some are still in beta (meaning that the developers feel they are basically unfinished or unpolished). These apps not only help me keep organized, but they help me keep in touch with people while I’m away from home, and also allow me to bring a piece of home with me wherever I go.