Inspiration time
I stopped working as an employee to work both on my own projects and as a freelancing consultant almost two years ago. This last year has been more like a roller coaster than anything else before. From spending very little time on my own projects while working as an independent contractor on debt collection systems with lots of integration to working on large scale public websites in a fast paced startup and then slowing down to work mostly on my own small projects again. During this time I have moved with my family from Karlskrona in Sweden to the south of Spain and then back to Sweden. This time we moved to Kalmar.
Even though free time has been somewhat scarce I have tried improving my routines when it comes to development and coding. But as the workload has been going up and down a lot I’ve mostly used the few slow periods to relax. I haven’t been to a PHP conference since 2007 and a more general software development conference since 2006. I feel I’ve been, work aside, somewhat lazy the last two years.
So I decided it is time to read a bit more on agile methologies, Zend Framework, setup a completely new laptop development environment using Ubuntu 9.10, Zend Studio 7.1 and Zend Server. I will also try out Mingle from Thoughtworks for project management. Ok the last thing can be a bit weird having only one additional team member besides myself on current projects. But I’ve been interested in trying it out ever since hearing about it by Dan North from Thoughtworks in an software development conference a couple of years back. Expensive but interesting to see if it can be used in teams trying to stay agile even though they are spread out geographically.
At the moment I’m rereading the excellent book Practices of an Agile Developer. It is a brilliant book packed with inspiration that can help you develop and improve your habits for an agile approach to software development. It is good to browse through it every once in a while to remind yourself on how you should work 
Conveniently enough I was also just recently shipped a copy of Zend Framework 1.8 Web Application Development which I hope will be an interesting read as well. I also feel it is about time I read a more in depth book on XP or Scrum. I’ll see what good books I can find on that topic.
So the next few weeks, when I’m not working or trying to be a good dad to my daughters, I will try not to shut down my brain in front of the TV and instead study for a bit.
In my experience, trying out new things and reading a few good books, can do wonders to your inspiration and also give you more energy to face both challenging as well as more mundane, even boring, tasks.
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