Extending the Cake bootstrapper to parse cake.config

I’ve just had a post published on the Cake blog, describing how to extend Cake’s bootstrapper scripts to support parsing cake.config file.

Particularly useful when adding Cake to an existing project that is already using some of the directories that Cake would use by default.

Read the post, and let me know in the comments here if you’ve ever had to modify the bootstrap yourself.

Continual learning and improving quality

The bio that is on my GitHub and Sessionize profiles (amongst others) includes the following sentence:

"I have a passion for continual learning and improving quality, and enjoy being in and creating environments where these happen."

This isn’t just a throw-away line. I really do like being in that kind of place, but let’s dig a bit deeper:

• I want to have a positive impact, leave things better than I found them.
• Looks for ways to keep my skills current by learning from others and sharing what I’ve learned. Always be looking for better ways of doing things.
• Be around people that challenge me - people with diverse opinions, experiences, ages, backgrounds.
• Aiming to do things sustainably - trying to find the right balance between work and non-work.
• Speak up for those that can’t (or don’t feel they are able to) speak for themselves. Looking for ways to use my position and privileges to lift others up.
• Have a laugh. If you’ve ever had anything to do with me, you’ll almost certainly have experienced my sense of humour!

These could be at work, at a user group, at a conference, in an online meeting, or a virtual community.

Do I do these things all the time? No, sadly not!

These are aspirational - they’re the things I’m aiming for. I’m not perfect, and I fail a lot. I hope I learn from my mistakes, and I hoping I’m heading in the right direction.

Speaking at DDD UK

I just found out that my talk ‘Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger Builds’ has been accepted for Developer! Developer! Developer! Day in the United Kingdom on Saturday 12th December. I won’t be flying to the other side of the world, but rather this year the UK’s premier free developer conference is being run virtually.

Given the time zone difference, I’ll be staying up into the early hours of Sunday morning to present my talk (12.30am my time, so manageable).

They’re running 7 tracks of content, and given it’s virtual then everyone is invited to register and attend.

See you there!