version2beta is M Robert Martin. version2beta is Rob Martin. Hi, I’m Rob. You can call me Rob.
Or you can call me version2beta if you like.
When I first started this blog, my primary job was Chief Superhero at Quintessential Mischief LLC1, making systems be more systemic. The rest of the time I did all sorts of fun things, like bother famous developers in other countries with odd ideas about how their applications could be more paranoidly secure. Sometimes I work nights as Version2beta LLC, building firewalls, servers or workstations, or maybe writing an odd bit of code, or working the obscurity out of uncommon problems.
And then, once every blue moon, I wrote something for my blog. That would be this site.
Life changed. Our biggest customer (too big, really) took a crap on us, cancelling and not paying on tens of thousands of dollars of contracts and invoices. They had reasons - the project had been based on OpenERP for instance — but we were their partner, not their outhouse.
So I took a job. It’s a good one, working with some really good people, at Top Floor Technologies in New Berlin, Wisconsin.2 Check out my hire me page for more details. I’m also working with Quintessential Mischief one or two nights a week (my wife still owns and operates it, it’s just smaller now), and I still do a very small amount of freelance work as Version2beta.
And I still write this blog.
From our clients I’ve learned how valuable a blog can be, provided someone wants to be a writer. That’s not me. I am neither a writer nor a blogger, and as such have limited expectations from this blog:
A repository of code and snippets, often just so I can find them later.
Hopefully I’ve set realistic expectations for the reader. Hopefully I will be able to exceed those expectations every now and then.
Rob (version2beta)
rob@qmuxs.com | rob@version2beta.com | @version2beta
Update 5/9/2011: See my Instantiate Blog post for more of the whys and wherefores.
Quintessential Mischief LLC makes systems, especially ERP and e-commerce systems, and we like to customize where appropriate. My real title is Application Architect, but I’m thinking about getting it changed to more accurately reflect what I do. ↩
Top Floor Technologies focuses on B2B internet strategy, and they have the right people working at doing it very well. We are on the way up. ↩
OpenBSD is secure, and secure is good. ↩
pfSense puts OpenBSD’s packet filter on a FreeBSD prepackaged system with a front-end management system. Mostly good, and the upgrade to 2.0rc3 was flawless, but I still don’t understand why it runs on FreeBSD instead of OpenBSD. ↩
Check out Linode. I really like my virtual private servers there. ↩
I use a number of Amazon web services: EC2, S3, CloudFront, etc.. ↩
I can install Ubuntu machines all day long. Sometimes, I do install Ubuntu machines all day long. ↩
So many of my Linux heroes have worked on the Debian project. ↩
Like many developers I have mixed feelings about Oracle/MySQL. ↩
I was slow to realize how powerful and fast PostgreSQL actually is. ↩
I used to describe MODX as the best content management system/framework, but I become less comfortable with it as they move toward their commercial open-source business model. I don’t begrudge them a profit, of course. ↩
Tryton Enterprise Resource Planning platform. I’m doing a lot of my development in Tryton now, which of course moves us beyond the web and into the warehouse and factory. ↩
Django is a legendary Python-based content management framework, created by a major newspaper publisher and used in pretty serious websites all over. ↩
Flask is a Python microframework, kinda like a smaller version of Django without the ORM and a few other things. ↩
Drupal is a content management platform with a vibrant community and tons of features. Tons of features, probably even a kitchen sink. I’ve described it as the RV of the CMS/AF world. ↩