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James Edward Gray II

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Who is James Edward Gray?

My dad.  That and the fact that James Gray is a super common name are the main reasons you usually see me go by my full name:  James Edward Gray II.

As for who I am, I’m just a programmer.  I don’t think of myself as much more involved than a lot of other programmers I know, so it always surprises me when people want an interview.

Where and when did you start programming?

My parents gave me a Colecovision Adam (an early computer) when I was 13.  It didn’t do to much, but it came with a 1,000 page manual for programming Basic.  I read that book over and over again, teaching myself to program.  To be honest though, I understood very little of it at the time.  I drew pretty pictures with it line by line and pixel by pixel, plus wrote some super simple games.

By the time I reached high school, we had to have a graphing calculator.  Again I read the manual that came with my TI-86 to learn its flavor of Basic.  I built a graphical Blackjack game with it that used nearly all of its memory (likely due to bad programming on my part) and shared it with pretty much the whole school (it had an I/O port that could take a “link” cable).  That got me in trouble with most of the math teachers as students spent too much time playing games instead of doing math.

Luckily for me though, one of those math teachers taught a Pascal class.  He convinced me I needed to take it and it was all downhill from there.

You favorite Languages/Frameworks? And why?

Ruby is my main passion, though I dabble in other languages at times.  I build Web application with Ruby on Rails as a day job.

They remain my favorites, because I feel like they help me get what is in my brain into a workable form better than anything else I’ve used so far.

What does your typical day look like?

Lately, I don’t feel like I have too many typical days.  Having a new daughter makes that trickier.

Mostly though, I cross the hall from my bedroom to my office and build Web applications for the majority of the day.  I try to sneak in some playtime with the baby when I can.

What do you do in your free time?

Ruby is my favorite toy.  I still can’t believe I make money playing with it.  So, for some part of most days, I build software for money.  For the rest of the day, I usually just leave off the “for money” part.

I’m also terrible at managing free time.  As I get more of it, I just commit myself to more things.  Eventually I feel pretty overwhelmed and stop renewing commitments.  That gives me more free time, so the cycle starts over from there.

I’m just not happy unless I’m spending a huge chunk of time programming or doing something else for the programming community.

Current favorite apps?

Most of my recent playing with applications has been on the iPad, a gift from my sweet wife this Christmas.  I’ve been playing games on it, like Drawn, and learning new ways to communicate with my computer using it, like Instapaper.

What OS do you prefer?

I use Mac OS X all day every day.  I was on Macs even before OS X, but having Unix under the hood makes it even better, in my opinion.

I use Linux for servers like most everybody else.  Ubuntu is probably my favorite flavor.

I did some Windows programming very briefly and just didn’t like that at all.  I’m glad some do, but it’s not for me.

Recently, I also enjoy playing around in iOS.  It seems relaxing to have to manage so much less.

Small picture for your Workplace?

Here is my desk with the two most important work tools on it, my laptop for the programming and the baby for distractions:

Name something that has inspired you recently?

My wife and daughter inspire me every single day and then tolerate all the time I spend away from them working on crazy schemes.  My girls are all I need!

What do you prefer (and why)? Freelance work or full time employment?

I’m a spoiled freelancer who will probably never go back to work for any one company again.  I love the freedom to work when it’s convenient for me, the variety of projects I get to touch, and the perk of getting to travel to neat new places with my family.  I’ve been asked to join some companies I love and it was hard to turn them down, but none of them could compete with these benefits.

What are your personal projects and goals for 2011?

That’s a tough question.  I literally have 33 items on my project list at the moment.  I never hurt for ideas, just the time to complete them.  Because of that, I’m leery to promise what I will get to.  I’ll tell you what I do know though.

My current project is the Red Dirt RubyConf. This is the second year I’ve helped organize that event.  We work super hard on building a world class program that we would want to see at a Ruby conference and we succeeded beyond our expectations last year.  So, naturally, this year will be bigger and better.  I encourage all Rubyists to check us out.  We’re worth it.  I know because I’m totally unbiased.

After that, I swear I’m going to complete a blog migration I’ve been working on forever now.  I have a new design and I built a fun new backend for it.  I need to get that online.

Finally, I hope you’ll see one new thing from me this year that I’ve never done before.  Wish me luck!


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