My Life in Progress

So...I haven't given much of an update since I returned from Alaska.

Things have been going really well so far. I'm enrolled in a few classes: two web programming courses (PHP and Ruby on Rails), an entrepreneurship course, and a couple real estate courses.

Web Programming:

The PHP course I have been taking for about a month now and I am really enjoying it. In contrast to what I learned in my programming course at UC Davis, these classes are a lot more fun, because I can see all the progress I am making in an internet browser.

I am really into the progression of the internet and how sites are becoming more interactive with the users and with other sites. A popular example of this is Housing Maps. Housing Maps is what they call a "mashup," because it is a combination of data pulled from Craigslist and the Google Maps application. I am currently adding some Google functionality into my personal website and will post again when I finish all the integrations.

I will also be starting a Ruby on Rails course at the end of the month. Ruby on Rails is a framework, which essentially is a structure that speeds the development of an application. It is very popular in the Web2.0 community and was written by 37Signals to serve as a framework for their popular project productivity suite. I would check it out if you are looking for ways to organize your projects.

Entrepreneurship:

I'm also enrolled in a course titled "Owning and Operating a Small Business." I think this is something I could have used before running my previous business, but it's better late than never. The course essentially leads us through the steps necessary to evaluate business opportunities. I am planning on writing a business plan (our course project) on a commuter vehicle concept developed by my friend David Parrott. It's a motor assisted recumbent bicycle that is fully environmentally enclosed (and environment friendly too). I will update with progress and would love to hear any feedback, as other opinions are really beneficial when evaluating business options.

Real Estate:

I decided to get my real estate license. I took the test about a week and a half ago (fingers crossed). I wouldn't say it's a complete passion of mine, but my mom is an established Realtor in San Francisco and we have some collaboration ideas in mind. There is a lot of speculation that the California market is cooling down, but we may have identified a niche within the cooling market. More on that later.

As I develop my personal websites, I will start to blog more actively. I plan to keep a separate blog of my personal life and another that will document my learning process of web technologies in hopes of helping others learn. When that fabricates (hopefully soon) I will post those locations. They are in progress though. ;)