Video of PhoneGap Day EU 2015 - Push N' Pull Presentation

The video for my Push N' Pull presentation is now available.



If you want to get a copy of the slides please check out my previous post.

PhoneGap Day EU 2015 - Push N' Pull

Yesterday, I was happy to present at PhoneGap Day EU in Amsterdam. It's one of my favourite days of the year. Besides getting to hang out with all of my co-workers who I rarely get to see in person as we are separated by half a continent I get to talk in person with the people who use our software.

At PG Day I was presenting on the work that we've been doing in order to make the lives of developers easier. My presentation introduces the new and improved Push Plugin as well as the completely new Content Sync Plugin. I'll be blogging more about these two new plugins in the up coming weeks but for now if anyone wants to check out the slides they are embedded below:

VideoPlayer Plugin Updated for Cordova/PhoneGap 3.x and Above

Happily, I'm getting the chance to go back and visit some of my older plugins. I've just updated the VideoPlayer plugin so you can install it via the command line tools. To install via the command line just do:

cordova plugin add https://github.com/macdonst/VideoPlayer

For more information on how the plugin works check out my old post on the topic.

My Speech Rec Presentation at InfoQ NY

The slides and video for my speech recognition presentation are up now at the InfoQ site. Feel free to watch it and laugh at my demo fail.

Books I've Read This Week

Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration by Ed Catmull is a book that I enjoyed because it does a pretty good job of giving you the back story on how the company Pixar came to be. Pixar is the fascinating company that has given us wonderful movies like Toy Story, Up and Wall-E. It is really interesting to hear how they overcame various challenges over their lifetime. Where it doesn't work for me is a business book. Most of what Mr. Catmull tries to import as knowledge seems like rehashed platitudes to me. He even makes allusion to this in the book. What's even worse is a lot of his people first approach in this book rings false as he's been implicated as a central figure in a wage fixing scandal. So I'd rate this book as a solid borrow for those of us who want to learn more about how movies are made at Pixar.

Books I've Read This Week

If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B Movie Actor by Bruce Campbell. Look I love Bruce Campbell, probably more than the next guy, I mean he's been making movies and TV shows since the early 80's so there is something there for everyone to love. But read a memoir of a B movie actor, seems sketchy. It isn't, it is every bit as hilarious and charming as Bruce Campbell. It is an amazing look at his life starting with him making independent films as a teenager, meeting his friend and frequent collaborator Sam Rami and all the way up to his rise to somewhat stardom. This is a really funny book and a very cautionary tale of what it takes to get into the movie business. Highly recommended.

Night Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko is the first book in a 5 book series of this translated from Russian urban fantasy series. In this world all of the magical beings and creatures we read stories about are real but they are hidden from regular humans. The magical beings or "Others" as they are called are split into two factions, predictably, light and dark. There are two groups, The Day Watch who police the light others and The Night Watch, which this book focuses on, who police the dark others. The two groups are in a bit of a stalemate. You see if a light magician does some great good then it gives a dark magician the license to do great evil. This books is split into three stories where we follow Anton Gorodetsky, a light magician and member of The Night Watch. Anton is a member of the technical staff but due to events out of his control he has to step up and assume more responsibility. Throughout the novel we see Anton struggling with the differences between good and evil. I enjoyed this book and I'm interested in reading the next novel, The Day Watch, to see the story for the opposite viewpoint.

Books I've Read This Week

London Falling by Paul Cornell is an urban fantasy novel featuring a good old fashion witch but I'm getting ahead of myself. In London four police officers are closing in on a mobster. During the course of their investigation they bump up against the supernatural. Now they are all cursed with the ability to see the shadowy underbelly of London. This brings them into conflict with a real witch. This particular witch loves one of London's football teams and is part of the legend where any opponent who scores 3 goals against her beloved team will die. This is a really entertaining book. I love the idea of a police force that protects us from the supernatural. It reminds me a lot of Ben Aaronovitch's Rivers of London series that way. Plus it is full of Cornell's wit which is British so that's always a plus.

Stuff of Legend Omnibus Two written by Mike Raicht and Brian Smith, lavishly illustrated by Charles Paul Wilson III. As we rejoin the story our intrepid toys are still looking for their boy in The Dark in order to save him from the Boogeyman. After the events of the first omnibus they are separated as the first half of the book deals with the Jester and the second half focusing in on getting all the toys back together. I really do love this series. If I had any complaint it would be how long it is between books but I shouldn't complain as all of that extra time is poured into the art. The toys just leap off the page and the sepia colouring they use invokes the World War II time period in which the story takes place.