It has been a while since I updated my blog with, what I find, share-able posts. My life as a student can be quite hectic but now I found the time to concentrate on writing about a very fruitful period of my life; my internship with Touchnote.com.

After I left my previous internship earlier I gave myself 3 weeks to find a paid internship in London, else I’d go back to Holland to find one.

I applied to several paid internship jobs in London as web developer. A web dev agency was interested and Touchnote, which I found on GiveMeaStudent (disappeared all of a sudden).  It took me a few days to decide with which company I’d like to work with. Both have their advantages and disadvantages. In the end I chose Touchnote for it was closer to home (still quite far though), I enjoyed my communications with them, having a smaller team I expected a more personal approach. Touchnote was interested in meeting me so I arranged an interview asap.

My first English job interview

Obviously I had a horrible Dutch accent but my interview with Touchnote was very pleasant. I spoke with the CEO and the lead developer.  The chat with the lead developer was interestingly perfect! The type of questions asked by him gave me an idea of their way of working, professionalism and their knowledge regarding web development. What they could offer me was exactly what I was looking for! Now I just hoped that I could offer them what they were looking for. I was quite insecure to be honest. I had no portfolio to show that I am well or reasonable capable of using PHP, MySQL, CSS and HTML. I could only explain what I knew and did, what my experiences with PHP were sand what I wanted to learn.

After a week I heard the good news! I could stay in London!! Yeh.. now I couldn’t wait to get started.

The dev team and me

Feeling a bit insecure I hoped to be able to live up to their expectations. They sure lived up to mine. I got all the support I needed; during work and for school. I made some errors and felt very ashamed and I also made successes. The dev team was always open to my questions as well as to my suggestions. They were very clear in their expectations and in explaining different things. I could ask the same technical question like 3 times and still they wouldn’t be fed up with me

Due to my previous internship experience I actually expected not to be taken seriously because I was just an intern. To my surprise; my suggestions, ideas and opinions were taken seriously and I was more than just an intern.

I worked with new tools to help with the development of the website. I learned new coding tricks and more about Cake, JQuery and 3rd party API’s. I had the chance to apply my own SEO skills and on top of that I learned new, never heard of before, SEO strategies.

I tasted a bit of how the lead developer plans projects in an Agile, SCRUM, way; how to realistically estimate the time of each project. From start to finish I experienced how a lead developer manages it’s team and how he can get desired results from its team when time is limited. How to look at problems and how to try to tackle them. This is definitely something I’ll always take with me if I ever get a leading or managing role of any kind in my life. His managing capacities to me are a very important lessons, so is everyone else’s role within the company.

I’ll remember the deployment evenings/nights. The days working towards them were hard work but the deployments were always good fun and usually came with pizza or snacks as well

The rest of the Touchnote team

I am surprised how everyone in the company communicates very well and clearly. I think I always knew what everyone was up to, everyone was always well informed, we knew how the paths forward looked like, what the next steps were, what expectations are and no surprises other than good surprises. It is very fascinating and again very important entrepreneurial lessons for me. Examples of good behaviour is very important for my learning progression

Never was I asked/demanded to get coffee for the team never did I felt being treated as “the intern” or “the student”. Such a delight!

I was offered to stay after my internship but decided to go back home and continue school. It wasn’t an easy decision but school is something that has priority now. I just want to get over with it first.

Conclusion

I honestly could not have hoped for a better internship. I learned a lot; gained real practical experience with a professional company. It was fun and gave me more confidence in my role as web developer. Every person in the whole Touchnote team is very devoted to the company, hard working, professional, reasonable, fun, well mannered, respectful and friendly. What more does one need?

I sincerely hope that any future web dev intern will have similar positive experiences.

Thank you Touchnote Team!!

Side note to all students looking for internship in London

Key is to search well and thoroughly, apply to different internship jobs… It is possible to find decent, good and even paid internships if you are determined and know what you are looking for..don’t compromise in that! If I am able to accomplish what I was looking for then you sure can too.

My personal points of improvement

After this experience I thought of new challenges that I’d like to pursue.

Obviously some more web development skills; website architecture, JavaScript (or JS libraries), advanced CSS. I quite like to learn more about ZendFramework and more more hard core Linux commands!! That is so awesome.

Believe it or not. I quite like to be a (junior) project manager at least once in my life. For that I seriously need to work on my English communication skills; explaining technical situations to web novices at any time. Be able to clearly explain situations: what do I expect and what is happening, what do I do and what are my expectations.

I’d like to become more British in how I communicate so more British accent is coming! Bye bye Dutch accent.. Tot ziens!

Title: php|architect’s Guide to Enterprise PHP Development

Author: Ivo Jansch

First edition: June 2008

ISBN: 978-0-9738621-8-8

Publisher: php|architect nanobooks

I consider myself to be a newbie when it comes to profesional PHP web development. Sure I know how to CRUD, procedural-, object oriented development on a limited level, frameworks, functional designs, database designs, technical designs (all on a limited level). So yes, I know something but is my knowledge enough to be able to stand in the world of the real professionals? Therefore I might think and mention some stuff that is not related to enterprise. Please correct me whenever you come across such err.

What the title suggests to me

I think this book will guide me on how to become a PHP developer on an enterprise level.

For some reason I think everything discussed in this book is what every Ibuildings developers knows, but that is just an assumption. This, perhaps romanticized, idea does make me want to become a developer of Ibuildings or any other company that creates applications based on the knowledge shared in this book. I’ll make that a requirement of a company before I apply as a web developer anywhere.

I expect to be introduced to sources, like books or websites, and coding techniques of how to actually code for an enterprise web application. I expect to be able to measure my level of skills compared to professionals by this book.

This book is seen through the eyes of a newbie…!

Oke, enough wandering, lets get on with it…

My life and Ivo’s book

This book took me by the hand and lead me through the different important facets in a software development life cycle. It is interesting to read that only a few things mentioned in this book is taught at my school, like functional and technical designs. This book was a major source of inspiration for me during my current schoolproject. As I could test my knowledge in the group. I realised I was slightly annoying when it came to functional or technical designs as I wish them to be a little more perfect than the others. Ivo’s book confirmed that my desire for a certain perfectionism is nessesary in real life situations for a successful application on large scale. What better situation is there to test this in a dummy environment like school?

After reading this book I partially regret that I have not chosen the subject of software engineering. But the freedom of my current subject is fun as well, I might say that what I learn is business knowledge that might come handy in web based software projects. As we CMD’ers need to look beyond the software. Most of the time we deal with the audience of the application.

Ivo’s book

Chapters that were most interesting to me, simply because most is new to me or Ivo addressed bits that I wish to learn more off:

4. Requirements gathering

5. Planning

6. Architecture

10. Development

11. Quality assurance

12. Optimization (eg. Micro optimizations)

To me, one of the strong things in this book is the part about PHP succes factors and challenges. I have read different articles of people writing about why PHP is a failing language. When you read an article like that, it becomes obvious that these folks are PHP haters. Reading the challenges from a PHP evangelist is nice though. He is honest and doesn’t mask the challenges PHP will be facing.

I so love his part about “Being an Attractive Employer”. Even non technical employers should read this! The outcomes is not only better for the worker, but for the employer as well: win-win.

I like how Ivo addresses the ‘start from scratch’ or reuse components. As a noob I figured all companies wrote major parts of their software themselves. So a new world opened for me. Now I know that it is perfectly ok to reuse other apps that allow me too.

The planning the project proces part in chapter 5 is an eye opener as well. Most of the projects tend to last longer than planned and Ivo points out what the cause is and how you can prevent it.

Just like my current education thought me, Ivo confirms it: the preparation of documenting, determine the architecture, is always important in large scale projects.

And there is so much more that interests me! Just read the book and you’ll be as well.

Concluding thoughts

I wish school would teach me about the things Ivo mentions, like subversion, the architecture of large scale web applications, testcases, unittesting, debugging and source control. Unfortunately this is not yet going to happen, so I have to teach it myself (with the help of the #php_bnl guys at freenode.net).

Guide to Enterprise PHP Development is truly is a guide and nothing more than that, and certainly not less. Codingwise it doesn’t get into much details and I have not been able to measure any of my PHP skills yet. To do so I will have to read books that focus on these things.

This book hightlights the aspect that comes with web development on an enterprise level. Ivo will show you some tools he knows and lets you choose which one to use. I order to really work with the software, you will need to consult the manual of that software as this guide only point at it with a brief note about it.

Dutch Summary

Specially for all Dutch PHPers out there, I wrote this for a phpGG newsletter a few months ago:

“It is not about the code, it is about taking PHP beyond the horizon”

“PHP is ready for the next level”. Wat houdt dat in, en hoe merken wij dat? PHP wordt op steeds grotere schaal toegepast en voor steeds grotere projecten gebruikt. Ivo’s boek gaat niet over het bouwen van huizen met legostenen, of het bouwen en onderhouden van een stenen huisje. Het gaat over het bouwen van skyscrapers, en daar komen verschillende aspecten, die een zeer belangrijke rol spelen, bij kijken. Ivo leert je hoe, en naar welke aspecten je mo et kijken om er voor te zorgen dat deze skyscrapers de test der tijd kunnen doorstaan. Kortom, wat komt er allemaal kijken bij een PHP enterprise? Ivo’s boek kun je zien als een samenvatting van die aspecten. Ivo betrekt je bij alle aspecten die komen kijken bij het opzetten van een enterprise, en verwijst je naar informatie die dieper op de stof ingaan. [Kana Yeh]

~

Sofar my first book review..  I hope you like it and if now then I definately need more practice 

This exact review is posted on my PHP website as well

Waarom aangeschaft?

Bij het luisteren van muziek is geluidskwalitiet enorm belangrijk voor mij. Hoge tonen moeten niet te schel zijn bij een hoge volume. De lage tonen moet vol klinken en voelen.

Na het zien van een advertentie in, geloof ik, de Quest was ik enorm benieuwd naar de nieuwe in-ear hoofdtelefoon van BOSE®. Zoals BOSE® het product beschreef, leek het precies voor mij gemaakt te zijn… Zodoende heb ik de BOSE® in-ear hoofdtelefoon gevraagd voor mijn verjaardag in 2007.

Nu, bijna 1 jaar later neem ik de tijd om een review te schrijven.

Eerste indruk?

• €100,- ?!?!?!?!?!?
• Elegante, beschermende draagtas/etui? Heb ik die nodig?! Ik heb zakken of een laptoptas waar ik mijn mp3 en oordopjes altijd in opberg.
• Innovatieve, zachte siliconen oordopje (eartips)? Hm.. bestaat er ook een maat tussen M en L?
• Kunnen de siliconen oordopjes ook vastgezet worden?
• Geluid….. WOW! Heerlijk die lage bas tonen
• Op de afbeelding zien de oordopjes er toch net cooler uit

Pros:

• Heerlijk geluid! De bas van een nummer is merkbaar aanwezig.
  Dit is precies wat ik zocht!
• Het product is zwart
  Dat is toevallig mijn favo kleur!
• De verschillende maten silicon eartips zijn makkelijk van elkaar te onderscheiden.
  Ze zijn ook makkelijk schoon te maken.
• Snelle levering als je silicon eartips nabestelt
  Vooralsnog gratis. Je moeten bellen met met de NLse helpdesk
• Apart design
  Anders dan andere oordopjes

Cons:

• Slechte kwaliteit splitsing omhulsel audiokabel. (zie Afb.1 en Afb.2).
  Ik ben het gewend om de audiokabel onder mijn trui te hebben, zodat ik mijn mp3 in mijn broekzak kan houden zonder dat ik per ongeluk met de audiokabel ergens blijf haken. Ik moet nu enorm voorzichtig zijn anders heb ik geen werkende oordopjs meer. Ook maak ik de audiokabel regelmatig schoon met een doekje. Hiervoor pak ik het stukje vast waar de kabel wordt gesplitst….
• Je raakt de silicon eartips makkelijk kwijt, te makkelijk!!!
  Om een voorbeeld te noemen: Zo ben ik er één kwijt geraakt toen ik op de fiets zat. Ik kwam iemand tegen, trok de oordopjes zonder geweld uit mijn oren zodat ik de ander kon verstaan tijdens het fietsen. Na het gesprek wilde ik verder luisteren en weg was één silicon eartip.
• Nabestelde silicon eartips komen in maten S, M en L
  …. terwijl ik alleen M heb.
• Volgens BOSE.nl behoort er ook 1 klem voor kleding en 1 draagkoord in de doos te zitten
  .. Deze ontbraken in mijn doosje.
• Omgevingsgeluid nog steeds duidelijk te horen
  Misschien is dit toch een voordeel, vooral in het verkeer!
• Slaat over als ik deze oordopjes aansluit op mijn Sansa e250 en het geluid voluit zet. Het zal wel aan mijn Sansa liggen…?

Afbeeldingen

Afb 1.

Afb 2.

Conclusie

Geluid cijfer: 8

Goed geluid, vooral de lage tonen. Wat betref geluidskwaliteit wil ik niets anders meer.

Kwaliteit cijfer: 3

Kwaliteit van het product zelf valt enorm tegen, ik had anders verwacht. Oordopjes van €5 zijn zelfs steviger in de splitsing en raak je niets kwijt waardoor je niet meer kunt genieten van je muziek!

Usability cijfer: 0

Ik moet zo voorzichtig zijn om maar geen silicon eartips kwijt te raken. Ook voorzichtig zijn vanwege die zwakke splitsing!

Helaas heb ik het bonnetje niet. Poor me!

Productinfo BOSE® in-ear hoofdtelefoon op BOSE Site