After attending the PHP GeekMeet in Cluj, I’ve talked briefly with Andrei Gheorghe and remembered a presentation that he held some time ago at Wurbe, about Microformats.

Well, what can I say? Microformats are cool idea, that will allow scripts to better retrieve the information from the Internet. Of course, if people actually use them. So I’ve decided to be among the pioneers in this matter and post my own resume on the web, formatted as hResume. Here

I’m going to hold a presentation about Zend Framework at PHP Geek Meet in Cluj, Romania. Everyone’s invited.

Read more about the meeting here – link available only in Romanian.

I’ve seen this video today

…and it made me think a lot about my life and my career. Most of the technologies I’ve studied in a classroom are now obsolete. Or were already obsolete at the time I was studing them. It’s very morale damaging knowing that you’re studing something just to pass an exam and that you’ll never use that knowledge ever again. But I wasn’t discouraged by the educational system and I’ve spent a lot reading and experimenting on my own and that’s how I’ve got a pretty good programmer. Really! I was always appreciated by my work colleagues and considered to be the guy that they could always ask for help. But still, I can’t even write a louzy string comparison in ASM without using Google. That’s not because I didn’t want to learn that or that I consider ASM knowledge to be useless and obsolete like other people do, but because there is simply to much information out there and not enough time to learn it all. And it multiplies at an ever increasing rate. Ajax as we know it -- with the XMLHttpRequest object -- was coined in 2005, less than 4 years ago. Now it’s impossible to find a job description in the web programming field that doesn’t include Ajax. Today’s experiments will be next year’s job requirements. Our generation will always have to adapt to world that’s changing like never before.

So I’ve decided to expand my education and skills and I’ve made a list with things I want to do this year:

• improve my knowledge of the Zend Framework -- the target is to pass the Zend Framework Certified Engineer exam
• improve my knowledge of the Linux operating system -- the target is to pass the Comptia Linux+ exam
• improve my command of the English language -- the target is to pass pass the Cambridge exam
• learn a little bit of German -- no ambitious target here as I can’t really set a target, now that my level in German is below zero
• get my bachelor degree -- after all these long years, it’s about time
• take a race driver course -- a hobby for now, but one can never know what the future holds;)

I’m not sure if I’ll be able to complete the list, but I’ll try hard and I’m going to look back to this post on the 31 of December and see how much I’ve accomplished. And of course, start a new list with “to-learn”s for 2010.