Warning: This is highly reflective, VERY self serving, and above all LONG. I have a year of blogging to make up for and this will probably have to last you till well in to next year too.

I set my self a target back in February that I would be making money as a PHP programmer by the end of the year. The clock is ticking and the year is almost over. Did I finally achieve my dreams, or did I fall flat on my face?

Every story has a begging, and this one is no different…

SIX YEARS AGO…

I was going to be an actor. I was a fresh faced 18 years old, and I had just finished a two year course on performing arts. I had gotten top marks, and had been accepted to a number of universities, and was all set to go and study performing arts & drama, and become an actor.

But something was missing…

SEVEN YEARS AGO…

I had known for quite a while that I was interested in computers and the internet. I had been playing with the web since its infancy, back when AOL literally WAS the web. But it was nothing more than hobby really, something I did in my spare time, and only on school or college computers. Things continued much in that manner until 1999, when I finally got my own PC.

I was enthralled. I drank it all in and learned all I could. I very quickly got involved in level design for Half-Life, and became part of a cool site I had discovered called Wavelength. I’ve told this story elsewhere, but suffice it to say at this point I wanted to be a level designer. I had it all planned out. I was going to teach my self all the skills I needed and then move to America where the real work was….

SIX YEARS AGO… (AGAIN!)

But I was still training to be an actor. In the back of my head I think I suspected level design was always only going to be a pipe dream, but my conscious mind didn’t have a clue. I kept on with my acting training, and in my spare time did all the level design I could. A year after I first got my PC, I was ready to go to university. I was sorting out my money, and preparing to pack up my stuff.

Something clicked. My conscious mind finally realised what my unconscious mind had been screaming at me for years: I was a crap actor, and I would never make it. I might have enjoyed it in some ways, but I didn’t have desire to really make it worth the time. (I’m exaggerating here a bit for effect, the realisation actually came over a number of months).

I dropped out, and got my self working for a large cab company in London called Dial-A-Cab.

I spent quite a bit of time playing around online, and worked on a few levels and Mods, but I was never able to really finish anything. I told my self (and others) all kinds of excuses as to why I wasn’t getting any real work done, but in the end I eventfully came to the painful conclusion that I wasn’t really cut out for it, and that I would never be a level designer.

Long before my discovery that I would never be a level designer, I had taken full control of Wavelength and was working out how to re-launch with a new face and backend system. Again this story has been told, but in the end a buddy of mine named rkzad stepped up to the plate and made TWL 3.0 using PHP. The work rkzad did was outstanding, but I wanted more and rkzad was just too busy to oblige. If I was going to get the features, I was finally going to have to put up, or shut up, and learn PHP my self.

I was enthralled. I drank it all in and learned all I could. Like level design before, I couldn’t get enough, and spent as much time as I could learning and using PHP. This time was different. This time I actually got things done, completed projects, and on top of that had a blast doing it. I certainly have my share of incomplete projects, and ironically Wavelength is one of them, but unlike level design I hadn’t given up. Learning progressed…

TWO YEARS AGO…

Dial-a-cab sucked. Most of the people there were great, but the company left a lot to be desired. On top of that I felt under utilised and totally bored, even with a promotion. I wanted something better, and I finally had something I was good at.

Me and two of my rl friends came up with a plan for a great new online service for actors. The website would need a complicated backend system to control its automatic nature. It would be my greatest challenge to date, and the ultimate test of if I had finally found my niche in life. I think it came out pretty well. In my head, I had passed the test, and I had found what I wanted to do with my self. I wanted to be a programmer…

10 MONTHS AGO…

The challenge was set…

3 MONTHS AGO…

I started looking in earnest for a new job at the start of September, and while I received a number of calls from various employment agencies, actual interviews were very thin on the ground. As you can imagine, the entire process was extremely frustrating. I knew that I had the skill to do the jobs that I was going for, and I even had the proof with Actors CV, but my lack of commercial experience was holding me back.

Dial-a-Cab was becoming a worse place to work day by day, so I needed to get out. I was almost at the point where I was willing to give up my dream of being a paid programmer and go in to the computer support business as a first line tech, something I swore to my self a long time ago I would never do.

However, hope was on the horizon.

I had a promising interview with a huge company called Ladbrokes. If you’re in the UK, you’ll know exactly who that is, but for those of you who don’t know, Ladbrokes is a huge betting company, both on and offline. Basically it’s a huge corporate environment, where I would be a tiny cog in a huge machine. I had my first, and then second interview with them.

While I was waiting to hear back from them, I had yet ANOTHER interview with a much smaller company that goes by the name of Action Sports Media. ASM or Factory Media as it is now (they merged with two other companies) is a medium sized Magazine publishing company. They have 12 or 14 magazines, all dedicated to various “extreme” sports, such as surfing and snowboarding. They were after someone to produce a number of PHP/MySQL projects from scratch, and I would be the only programmer working there. I had my first, and then second interview with them.

You can probably see where this is going. Both companies offered me a job. I couldn’t believe it. I had gone from nothing, to two job offers in the space of two weeks. What a turn around!

Now all I had to do was pick which one I wanted to accept!

The two positions couldn’t have been more diametrically opposed. Ladbrokes meant I would have had a very structured environment, with someone telling me exactly what to do, when and how. It was also a very corporate environment; everyone was wearing smart business attire – shirt and ties.

ASM was a very free form position. I would have a huge say in how the system progresses, and ultimate control of what code does and doesn’t go in to my work. Of course I would still have a manager, but he would be taking my advice a lot more on programming matters.

There was only really one choice to be made. Action Sports Media LTD (now Factory Media) would be the one.

I had achieved my goals. I was going to be a professional PHP programmer (or scripter, if you’re Megasaxon).

PRESENT DAY…

I’ve been working at Factory Media for 2 weeks now, and it’s the best decision I ever made. I’ve learned a lot of new programming techniques in only two weeks, and come the New Year I hope to learn many more. We have a number of exciting projects under development, which I obviously can’t talk about, but the moment they are public I’ll blog about it. Probably.

I would like to say thank you to rkzad and Megasaxon for being the two people who primarily got me in to PHP and helped me through the early days of learning the basics.

At any rate, I achieved the goal I set my self back in February, and for the first time in what seems like a very long time, I couldn’t be happier.

That was long.