As many/most of you know, I’ve spent the past few years running Terralien, a consulting shop focused on custom software development. Just last week we launched Full Stack iPhone, a new full-service iPhone development service that bundles up design, iPhone development and web development into a complete package. I mostly mention it here to show off what I’ve been up to, but of course if you know anyone that needs an iPhone application developed, definitely point them our way!

These are a bit random, but ones I wanted to share:

Can you tell who keeps sneaking the camera even though she isn’t supposed to?! (Hint – her name begins with the letter Elaine)

And…

We decided to see the sea this weekend. It was different than what I expected in that there were lots of bays to stop at, but not many ocean views. Jasper Beach was our first stop:

Since we are away from home (meaning grandparents and aunts) we had to make sure that Anne Marie’s birthday was very special. The “birthday” things we did today included visiting Dunkin’ Donuts, having a tea party:

(More in the full article…)

It seems like the theme of the Talbotts’ year was conferences – from California to Spain, and Toronto to Florida, Nathaniel attended 8 conferences and spoke at most of them, often with family tagging along. The Lord’s blessing continued to be very evident in our household as well, not the least of which was safe travel over all the miles covered!

All of the conference-going was but one symptom of the growth of both of Nathaniel’s businesses. Terralien, which does custom software design and development, continues to pick up steam, and was able to bring in a full-time project manager in the second half of ’09. With ongoing work with clients who first found Terralien as far back as 2005, and plenty of work helping new clients get their businesses off the ground, there’s plenty to manage!

Spreedly, a subscription management business that Nathaniel started with three co-founders a couple of years ago, really started to take off in 2009, and has 10 times as many businesses using it now as it did at the beginning of the year. Nathaniel often feels like he has two full-time jobs between Terralien and Spreedly, but he’s loving (almost) every minute of it, and wouldn’t trade it for anything. A lot of what he spoke about at conferences this year was entrepreneurship, either particular aspects of it or just generally encouraging folks to get motivated and start their own thing. If you ever need an entrepreneurial pep talk he’s always up for giving one!

Katie spent most of the year pregnant, but we won’t bore you with those details. Her current days are filled with taking care of a house full of energetic kids, which she enjoys a good ninety-five percent of the time. The other five percent she spends dreaming of having older children who can blow their own noses and pick out matching clothes. She also spent a lot of time this year researching homeschooling, and is becoming ever more grateful for the time and effort her mother put into her own education.

When Nathaniel went and spoke at a conference in Madrid, Spain over Thanksgiving this year, Katie and the baby got to come along. Since this was the first trip she’d made overseas, it was a definite highlight to the year. She hopes to get to repeat the experience again in the future, all except the part where she got lost for two hours in the downtown of Europe’s third largest city!

One of the biggest blessings of the year came in October as Etan Zeal Talbott was born two days after his due date. Although not the easiest Talbott baby, he has already captured our hearts with his smiles and coos of recognition and affection. At almost 3 months of age, Etan is living up to the meaning of his name – strong, firm one – as he is either crying with vigor, or smiling and joyfully wiggling with vigor. His motto in life seems to be “all or nothing.”

Elaine, now two years old, is still a bit of a baby to us all as she held that position longer than most of our other children. After 2 years, we are still mesmerized by her sweet smile, and even in the middle of the naughtiest situations she knows that a big grin will help diminish the punishment of her crime. The words most heard out of her mouth are, “Me! Me!” as she doesn’t want to be left out of any fun.

William is now three and finally getting some visible hair – poor guy was bald for quite awhile! He is talking a mile a minute these days after being the kid that just last year we couldn’t even get to try, and he has a quick, little boy sense of humor that he likes to whip out at the funniest times. One of our sources of joint amusement and annoyance this year has been William’s need to have something in his hands at ALL times; we often uncurl his fingers to find a dime, a small twig, a piece of cloth, a ball bearing, or some similarly random item wrapped up inside. We wouldn’t mind so much, but at nap time we end up removing the oddest things from his hands, his bed and under his pillow, things he has collected when he’s supposed to be sleeping!

Anne Marie is four, soon to be five, and she has matured into a beautiful little girl – inside and out. She is learning how to help more around the house and her newest accomplishment is mixing up the orange juice (from concentrate) by herself. Being such a big girl meant she needed a bigger bed, and Aunt Claire moved out in August after living with us for three years, allowing Anne Marie to move into the grown up bed and start sharing a “girl’s room” with Elaine.

Katie regularly stops by Nathaniel’s upstairs office to tell him the latest funny thing the kids said, and it’s often Anne Marie that said it. The most recent one was when Anne Marie, in response to a question, told Katie that some clothes were hanging on the chiropractor, when what she meant was that they were on the treadmill. She has her parents convinced that someone can be extremely smart and extremely blonde all at the same time!

Reuben is six now, and his big accomplishment this year was learning to read; we now get regaled with a running commentary on the road and store signs as we drive around town. Reuben has a desire to know EVERYTHING, with “why?” and “what?” ranking as his favorite words. Much like his daddy, Legos are one of his favorite things, and he’s always showing off some new creation he has constructed, usually a vehicle of some sort. Unlike his daddy, he is fascinated by real car makes and models, and can name most of those he sees on the road. Of course, the one thing his daddy did teach him about cars is that Honda’s are the best!

The best part of writing a Christmas letter is just remembering what we did ourselves in 2009 – what a whirlwind! We hope you enjoy the peek into our family, and that if you’re ever in North Carolina you’ll look us up.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from the Talbott Family!

It’s time to metaphorically set pen to paper for the fifth time and record for our newly born son why he has the name he does, and what the promise and the warning are that are bound up in it. First, though, the vital statistics:

Name: Etan Zeal Talbott
Born: October 3, 2009 at 4:15am
Length: 21.5 inches
Weight: 7 lbs., 15 oz.

Etan, your mother and I had your middle name figured out first: Zeal. One of the defining characteristics of your pregnancy was your mother suddenly putting her hand on her stomach or giving a little jump as you moved around. Now, all babies move in the womb if they’re healthy, but you moved very often and very strongly. Because of this we wanted to give you a name that reflected the passion of your earliest days, and Zeal seemed to fit it perfectly.

“My zeal has consumed me,
  Because my enemies have forgotten Your words.”—Psalm 119:139

Now, both your mother and I thought you were going to be a girl, so we hadn’t picked out a boy first name when you were born. I laughed out loud when you came out (I was right there!) and I saw that you were most definitely not a girl, and from now on I can tell you that we’ll always have both a boy and a girl name selected! In the two days after you were born, your mother and I spent a lot of time with the baby name books, and I came across the name Etan, a variant of Ethan, and loved both the name and the meaning – “strong, firm one”.

When the pieces are put together, the meaning of your name is “firm, strong passion”. Lest you think that it’s all about brute strength, know that in Scripture Ethan the Ezrahite was renowned not for his physical prowess but for his wisdom, said to be second only to Solomon. So I challenge you as you learn to speak and articulate and someday read these words to be a man of strong, passionate ideas; a man who is known for force of reason and not simply for force.

The warning in your names is in the two of them apart. Strength without passion lumbers along and is not touched, but also does not touch the world. Barak was such a man – strong and mighty, but with so little drive that he refused the privilege of leading the Israelites into battle. On the other hand, passion without strong resolve is flighty and prone to be controlled by the lust of the moment. The so-called “strongest man”, Samson, was an example of untempered passion – so much drive and potential, all wasted because he couldn’t rein in his lusts.

The promise of your name is in the two parts together: if you will live a passionate life while tempering that passion with strength and endurance, you will be an unstoppable force in whatever you put your hand to. The world needs more strong, passionate men, and I challenge you to grow into your name and to be such a man. Emulate David – zealous and passionate for God, and yet strong and articulate in his life and worship. Of course there’s another warning in David: beware wandering on your rooftop when you should be out in the battle.

The fun thing about writing this is that your eldest brother is almost old enough to read his name post for the first time, and it makes me all the more expectant of you reading yours in a few years. I love you, my little Etan Zeal, and I know that by God’s grace you will grow into your name in ways that I can’t even guess at now.

“The LORD bless you and keep you;
  The LORD make His face shine upon you,
   And be gracious to you;
  The LORD lift up His countenance upon you,
   And give you peace.”—Numbers 6:24

P.S. Photography by the amazing Joy of Joy Lyn Photography. She also did our wedding, and we highly recommend her for any fine photography you want to have done!

Wow, what a great conference FutureRuby was! A lovingly curated talk schedule, a carefully planned set of parties, and a room full of smart Ruby folks made for one of the best conferences I’ve been to. If the “spiritual successor” to FutureRuby shows up next year (as FutureRuby was the spiritual successor to RubyFringe), you will not want to miss it.

I had the privilege of opening up the conference this year, and given the theme of the conference I used it as an opportunity to get philosophical and to encourage everyone to take personal responsibility for their vocation. It’s been awhile since I wrote out a talk, but I decided to do so again for this and thus I present you with the full text, almost verbatim as it was given:

How Capitalism Saves Ruby From Corporatism

Give it a read and let me know what you think. And if you read it and it inspires you to go out and take action, I’d love to know that, too! I’m hopeful that a hundred flowers might bloom from this one little seed.

Update: video of the talk is now up on InfoQ with the caveat that the content is 99% the same as the essay.

I’ve decided to jump head-first into offering some training via Terralien with the Lean Startup Primer. For a little more background, check out the post on the Terralien blog.

If you like tech talk, you might enjoy the interview I recently did in the lead-up to the RubyRX conference. You can watch it over on the Terralien blog.

Are you a Rubyist? Then hop on over to the Terralien blog and find out why you should be at RubyRX.

2008 in the Talbott household managed to be busy without being too hectic, noisy without being overpowering. There was much maturing on all of our parts as we’re settling in to the routine of a six-person household, and the children are starting to get to the point of helping to clean up messes as well as make them. The highlight of our year was our summer trip to the North Carolina mountains. It was four wonderful weeks of a little work, lots of play, and just generally enjoying each other as a family. You can read all about it in the write-up Katie did a few months ago.

One of the amazing things this year has been watching the kids grow and learn. As their personalities develop and their minds start to understand the world, it’s great to get their unique perspectives on everyday things. Reuben (5) is the leader of our small pack. He’s the family’s living day-timer, keeping us informed on when it’s trash day, who’s turn it is to pray at the noon meal, and if Katie’s forgotten something he considers important. He’s begun doing some relaxed schooling this year, memorizing some Scripture and hymns, learning letter sounds and simple mathematics, and various other tidbits that he likes to tell us at the weirdest times. His greatest discoveries are not while bent over a book, though: after a nap one day he told Katie, “Circles are ‘o’s. I figured it out while I was restin’ today.”

He’s also been picking up a lot of theology this year, and loves to share it with his siblings, often while in the car. A recent car conversation went something like this: “Did you know that baby Jesus came and grew up and then was crucified? But that’s okay because he was raised from the dead three days later and he is going to come back. I don’t know when though. I think it’s going to be a long time…”

Anne Marie (almost 4) is becoming quite the little mama to her younger siblings, hugging on them and telling us exactly what she thinks they need. She’s also started a bit of schooling alongside Reuben, and is learning to write her letters. She’s decided that “easy” letters like “T” are fun to write, but a “hard” one like “M” is enough to bring her to tears.

When Anne Marie’s not learning she’s often teaching us some new vocabulary: “I want to do diarrhea” was her recent way of telling Katie that she wanted to read a book about ballerina’s. Katie also heard her exclaim, “There’s a thing to blow your hair off!” upon seeing a hair dryer, and “Can we eat some pine cones?” when asking if we could have ice cream cones.

William (2) has so far been our quiet, content child. He discovered a love for Legos this year, and will often sit for an hour or more just putting them together and pushing them around on the floor. He’s still very difficult to understand when he tries to talk, but he’s obviously more interested in learning to talk in the last few months, and has been showing rapid improvement. And even if he has trouble getting out clear words, he can certainly communicate when he wants to – he’s got a lot of tenacity when it comes to being understood.

Elaine (1) is still “baby” to us in some ways, with a sweet personality and a precocious ability to apply it towards charming those around her. In a few years Nathaniel may have to buy a shotgun and use it to keep the boys away, and in the meantime he’s trying his best to not get too wrapped around her pinkie. Her communication abilities are not far behind William’s, and she picks up new “tricks” at an amazing rate. It’s probably a survival instinct: she figures she has to be quick or she’ll get run over!

Katie’s been learning a lot this year about managing a household with six people, and it’s been amazing to see the patterns settle down to a comfortable cadence. There’s of course always laundry to do, but in between loads she manages to get lots of deals off of Craigslist, participate in a local fresh produce co-op, make our home ever more appealing with her decorating skills, and spend lots of quality time with Nathaniel and the kids. She also cranked up her graphic design skills this winter and put together a calendar for the grandparents using an advanced photo editor called “The Gimp”. It was a lot of work, but the results were rewarding.

Nathaniel spent the year continuing to grow Terralien, his web application development consultancy, taking the lessons learned in 2006 & 2007 and applying them to get a more streamlined process and develop long-term happy clients. His side business Spreedly also hit some important milestones, and looks to grow even more next year. He spoke at two programming conferences this year (RubyConf and RailsConf), and also got the chance to preach a few times at church. And, of course, there was much time spent doing daddy things, like tickling kids and chasing them around the house – both of which he excels at!

It’s hard to smoosh a full year into one letter, but we’ve done our best! As always, you can reach us anytime at katie@talbott.ws and nathaniel@talbott.ws, and follow our latest happenings (when we remember to post them) right here at http://blog.talbott.ws/. Now, ya’ll have a fantastic 2009, m’kay?

I feel honored to have been invited to keynote at acts_as_conference in sunny Orlando, Florida early next year. I’ll be there February 6-7 not just giving a talk but also enjoying the vibe of what is sure to be a fantastic regional conference. As a big proponent of personal responsibility at all levels I love the conference’s focus this year on making ourselves ever more relevant by improving our skills and taking charge of our own paths as practitioners. Bad economy or not, it’s always a good time to stay relevant.

I hope to see you there – don’t miss out on what’s sure to be an amazing conference!

My company, Terralien, is building a product of our very own. Come follow along at Codename MC!

The trek to RubyConf has become something of a yearly milestone for me, as I’ve been making it now for eight years running, a period that encompasses more than half of my professional life. So far it hasn’t let me down, either in learning or in meeting interesting people, and this year was no exception.

One of the best and hardest things I do every year is to give a talk, and this year the topic was Fear of Programming. After getting very positive feedback on my pre-presentation of it at the October Raleigh.rb meeting I was pretty excited about giving it to the wider RubyConf crowd. I think the results were fantastic, but you don’t have to take my word for it – I was surfing Google for the talk the other day and ran across all kinds of great feedback:

Marty Haught (search for “Fear”)

Friday was probably the best day of the conference for me. I really enjoyed Fear of Programming by Nathaniel Talbott and it seemed the audience did as well. There were no slides and Nathaniel did a great job of going over his latest musings on how fear keeps us from being our best when programming. I think we can all relate in some form or another.

Peter Dierx

Great session from Nathaniel Talbott. This session could be applied to everything that people want to excel in, and the fears that come along with it. Here it’s about programming of course so the audience was asked what they feared about the app. All kinds of answers. Code base in general, deployment, sloppy testing or no tests at all. What about security, or testing your code in different browsers. People were very honest about it.

James Avery

This talk was something I am very familiar with. [...] It was a very open talk with no slides and lots of audience participation, it was almost like an open space.

Ariel Valentin

This was a pretty engaging talk. No slides just us.

The Twitterverse also had some nice things to say:

So, do I mention this all just to toot my own horn? Well, I’ll readily admit that it’s very rewarding to give a well-received talk, and that I’m enjoying sharing my excitement with you. But my main motivation is simply this: to get you to listen to and/or watch the talk! I think it’s a really important topic, and I want an even wider audience to get exposed to the ideas and questions within so we can make it an ongoing conversation in the community rather than something everyone thinks they struggle with alone.

Are you juiced to check the talk out? There are two spots to experience it: you can watch and/or listen to the RubyConf version over at Confreaks, and you can also listen to the pre-presentation I did at Raleigh.rb which is available in the Raleigh.rb podcast.

One last teaser: I’ve been asked to give the talk as a keynote at a conference early next year, and I have some fun ideas for how to make it even better. Watch for that announcement and I hope to see you there in person to continue this conversation!

Hi! It’s Katie here. I have purposed many times to type up a blog post for talbott.ws, and as you can tell, haven’t in a few years. Well, now that we are on a nice long “holiday” (as our English friends say) I think I have the time.

We rented a house in Franklin, NC for a month. As I type this we are just beginning our 4th and last weeks stay. Nathaniel has been working 4 day weeks from here and took one week completely off.

It’s been great living in a climate and surroundings similar to the one I grew up in in Oregon. There’s been little to no humidity. The mosquitos only come out in the evening and only eat on you if are tasty (like Nathaniel). There are hills and trees all around, and cows, donkeys, and chickens within ear shot. The temperature has averaged in the mid 80’s. And there’s clean mountain rivers to swim in.

I think the kid’s highlight has been the water element. There is a small stream within walking distance which we visit often. We’ve visited a river and a lake (Thorpe Reservoir) which we did get to swim in. We also just today filled up a 8 ft. by 18 in. pool that was on clearance at Walmart – I couldn’t pass it up – and the kids have been having a blast in it. Up to this point our poor kids didn’t have much experience with water beyond the bathroom tub and rain drops falling overhead.

We have been learning about bee and wasp stings this week. Reuben got stung 3 times because he was playing too close to a wasp’s nest, and William was stung today by the bee he was rescuing from the pool. Sometimes it’s hard seeing your kids learning life lessons…

The lesson I’ve been learning, is how to manage a house and kids (and serve a husband) without obsessing and stressing over it all. Being here has given me a new perspective. These past weeks on vacation I have had few responsibilities. I weekly clean the bathrooms and vacuum the house, and feed the family with meals that have been thought through and are mostly prepared. It’s been pretty low key. If I was back home, I would have wanted to rearrange the furniture weekly, decorated some part of the house, stressed over how messy the toys were, stressed over how I wasn’t able to do any deep cleaning (like wash window’s, or dust baseboards – or just dust for that matter!) as well as the normal house cleaning and unthought meal preparations. I think it concerns Nathaniel a bit that I want to keep a house like my grandmother does, but I have 4 kids that she doesn’t. :-)

The kids have been extremely cute these days. Elaine (14 months) is now walking like a pro, William (2yrs) is talking in two word “sentences” instead of one. A conversation with him recently went like this, “William, what are you doing?” his response “si si here.” (translation – “Sit, sit here.” or “I’m sitting here in the pool on this inner tube.”) Reuben (5) has been sounding out words and excitedly telling me what letter they sound with, as well as telling me what time it is. Anne Marie (3 yrs) is loving pink, hair and clothes. It’s a good thing she is a girl because she looks like one (with beautiful natural curly hair), talks like one (“I want a pink motorcycle when I get big.”) and acts like one.

I’ve been expanding my knowledge of graphics and started using GIMP (a shareware Photoshop like program) for digital scrapbooking. I have been wanting to do digital scrapbooking for over a year now, but they don’t have many program options for Macs. It’s been a slow process, but fun and addicting. I’ve been learning a lot and wishing I was single with no responsibilities so I’d have more spare time to devote to it – wait a minute… if that was the case then I wouldn’t have any cute subjects to scrapbook about! And I have been taking too many pictures on this vacation!

Some other fun things that we’ve done is gem mining. It’s a win win situation with those who have small kids. Dirt – Water – Pretty rocks – It doesn’t get much better than that. For the “small fee” of $30 we were given a bucket of dirt, sat down by a elevated stream of water and given screens to wash the dirt in. Did I mention that the kids loved it? The buckets are “salted” with semi precious gems so we got some nice rocks. Our fish back home should appreciate the new additions to his fish bowl. (And if you all know our obsession with rubies, you will laugh to know that we did get some rubies in our haul.)

There are some beautiful water falls in the area and some great white water rafting that we will have to come back for someday. I don’t think our kids could handle the hikes to the falls, and there’s a 40lb weight limit to the rafting (which none of our kids would meet). Vacationing with little ones has it’s limitations… but then, we have enjoyed just chillin’ on this trip.

Well, that’s all for now. If you haven’t taken a “holiday” in a while I highly recommend it!

~ Katie