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Well, I was born on a normal day in July, 1981 and have been creating chaos ever since. Born in North Carolina, but raised in the aftermath of the Soviet Union, Kazakhstan, I have been messing around with computers nearly my entire life. I wrote my first program in assembly when I was 11. In my early teens I ran a BBS connected to Fidonet and started building a website for my band. In 1999 I was introduced to Linux, and it was love at first compile. I started my career in IT in the early 2000's doing IT for a Car Dealership in Charlotte NC. I wrote my first major web app in Cold Fusion (an ecom app) at that time. In 2006 I left Charlotte and moved down to Columbia where starting working as a developer, freelancer and consultant. Currently I am working as a freelance developer and DevOps consultant!!

Thoughts on the new iPad

\n Ever since the iPad was announced the other day, I have been giving a lot of thought to it. I have to admit, I’ve been thinking a lot about cloud computing the past few weeks, and this just gave those thoughts a whole new avenue. The biggest thought that I have is this: Could I, a developer, use the iPad as my primary computing device?

Well, for starters, what do I use my Mac Book for that I couldn’t use the iPad for. The answer is not that much. I develop my own personal website, do a lot of stuff with JavaScript, PHP and Rails. I write, play around in Photoshop, email, twitter, blog, listen to music on iTunes and surf the web.

Ever since I got a full time job, I’ve not been consulting much. Most of the heavy coding I do at work on my Mac desktop.

So, in order to use the iPad there are some “products”/functionality that must be replaced/replicated.

Email: I use Mail for my email, so what difference does it make to me if it is on the mac or iPad? I use my iPhone for about half my email now anyway.

Browsing: For this one I might miss Firefox some, but I still use Safari about 25% of the time anyway. I also browse a lot on my iPhone. The larger screen would be nice.

Tweeting: I use Twitterific both on the mac and the iPhone, so no issues there

Blogging: I usually use the web interface, but I also have used the WordPress app. I think that on the iPad, this would be a far better experience than on the iPhone

Writing: With iWorks AND Google docs, I think it is safe to say that this is a no-brainer. I would more than likely want the keyboard for the iPad for any major writting…but doable.

Photos: I have been working to get all my photos on PicasaWeb anyway. Photos are an easy issue. I also have a Photoshop.com account and the iPhone app for Photoshop.com rocks. GIve Adobe a sec to get it updated for the iPad and I am in business.

This leaves me to the two hardest aspects: Music and Coding. For music I would have to cheat just the tiniest bit. I would have to store my music on my wife’s pc and use iTunes to keep the iPad and iPhone with music…but I can also use LastFM whenever I have a WiFi connection (or always on the iPhone) to listen to my library as well as LastFM’s picks for me :). Also, if Apple brings iTunes into the cloud, then there is a major issue fixed.

This now leaves coding. I have been playing around with Bespin since it first started in the Mozilla Labs. It’s a great place to store and edit code in the cloud. That being said, until they get Git support, I will only be able to test HTML and JavaScript in Bespin. In walks http://www.kodingen.com. This service is built around a Bespin core, gives you testing servers for PHP, Rails as well as Perl and Python support. The three open source Database players are there: MySQL Postgres and SQLite. It is a developers dream land. Slick and stylish. With this final piece of the puzzle, I really could live for sometime developing and living in the cloud on an iPad.

What do you think guys? Should I do it? Leave me comments and let me know!

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