My newest "first" blog

Everyone once in a while I sit down and decide that I'm going to start blogging more seriously. I have a lot on my mind and I like to rant so maybe I should give my wife a break and rant on line. While that is true I also would like to learn more about what web programming. One day I would like to think that I could retire from the Lab, spend more time with Karen, go on a mission – things like that – and being able to make a living programming would be really really cool.

I would really like to learn to program on the web. Actually I like programming on almost anything but it looks like the future is the web. I would also like to learn to program on the Mac/iPad/iPhone which is Objective-C. A few years ago I got interested in looking at running a web page as part of a Wood Badge Ticket. I tried to get a web site set up using Expression Engine (EE). My idea there was to set up a site that my wife and kids, primarily, but whoever wanted to could have gotten involved, and that we could use it as kind of a central clearing house of information for the whole family to stay connected. The only problem with that is that there are tools that do these kind of things already (like this site) that would allow us to do the same thing, only way better. I learned a lot with that experience but the thing that I really want to do is to do development, the programming that lies behind the beautiful web sites. Also, since I have remarkably little artistic talent that's probably a good thing.

So my last great thing to try is Ruby on Rails programming. I'm liking it, and it turns our that there are a few things that remind me of EE, which makes sense, since Rails and EE are both frameworks. Well I guess EE is more of a content management system (CMS) but it reminds me of a framework.

I'm pretty sure on that I'm settled on working on Ruby on Rails, and I'll be using our family as a resource in developing it. I hope that everyone that reads about it is excited. I'll bet that no one can guess what the first thing that I'm going to try and develop is going to be. I'll wait and see if anyone can guess.