The Dan Gaul Weblog

Many of you may not know, but I’m currently the lone developer for Designtechnica. We do have a graphic designer, but I do all the coding. As Designtechnica grows the work that keeps piling up on my plate grows exponentially. We launched the new site earlier this year, and there are still bugs that I havent had time to go back and fix because of higher priority features.

Hopefully that will change soon, at least the “lone dev” part. I’m going to be looking for some part time helpers, but I need to setup a dev environment that is beneficial to all who participate. My setup right now is not the best environment. I have a linux server here at home that acts as my host environment for testing, and also storing all the code. My actual dev machine is a Windows XP machine. There is no versioning control system, since I’m the only guy editing/creating new files. I had good intentions to use CVS, I swear! I just never got around to it since I had a gazillion other things to worry about. So, I’ve done some research, and I’m going to convert one of our older live servers to a developer/test box. The best versioning control system I’ve seen so far from the quick research I did was Subversion. I’ve used Bugzilla for a while at my previous job at RealNetworks, and it worked excellent, so I plan on installing that as well.

With a dev/test server up with Subversion and Bugzilla installed will not only allow better control of source, but it makes the task of hiring part-time devs easier. How? By having the environment setup for them already. I wont have to open up my home server to the net, and I dont have to keep it on 24 hours a day, which I can’t currently do anyways due to the ol’ wife.

So here are some questions for you more informed people out there:
What are your thoughts on Subversion, especially versus good old CVS?
Is there another versioning control system I’ve overlooked that is on par or better than Subversion and CVS?
What are the setups of some other web development people?

What is this thing, and who is this Dan Gaul character?

This is my blog. It will contain my rants, things I think are interesting, work issues, my love for hockey, coding, and anything else I find relevant. As for who I am, I’m a husband and father of two boys (5 years and 3 months respectively as of this writing.) I’ve done many things in my life so far; I started skateboarding when I was in 6th grade. I stopped when I was 28 when I broke my back (burst fracture of the L1, but that’s a different story.) Some people call me a computer geek, even though I dont necessarily think so. I started toying with computers on a Commadore 128, teaching myself BASIC, using it to create basic forms and draw. I upgraded to an Amiga, but the parts for it were so expensive, and being in 8th grade when I got the Amiga, it basically sat and colltected dust. Fast forward to when I was in college, and my interest in computers got rekindled on a Macintosh computer. I dont even remember the model, but I upgraded to a 386, then a 8500/120 Mac, then a 486. To keep a long story short, I went to community college at first like lots of other kids. I didnt know what I wanted to do, and by the time I did, I had run out of money (I was paying my own way from money I received from an automobile accident.) I was going to University of Washington at the time. When I started looking for a job so I could save up to go back, I ended up at Microsoft as a contractor for two years. I left Microsoft and went to Clarus Corp, then to RealNetworks for 5 years. I eventually left to focus full time on Designtechnica with Ian, and I haven’t looked back.

Well, this is probably more history than most people would want to know about me. Feel free to contact me and ask questions: dangaul AT designtechnica.com