Class methods, aka those declared with a + in Objective-C, are horribly misused. In most languages I deal with, there is a difference between methods and functions–functions are used either as a map in the mathematical sense, or to imperatively perform an action, while methods are bound to a given ‘receiver’, and thus the actions they expose are something the object they are invoked on performs, and any map they represent is a transformation of that object into one of its properties.

Two weeks ago, I started work at Tumblr. For the first time in my life, I’m working on a team. Not only am I working on a team of iOS developers, but they are incredible. I’m really enjoying the hours that I spend at work, but there’s ultimately something missing.

I’m one of twenty-two (I think?) interns, but none are on my team. I like all of the people I work with, but they’re all older than me, and it shows. They all have people to go back to at the end of the day; they have lives outside of work. At the moment, I don’t. I have an apartment in Little Italy, but all my friends are back in Chicago or in Scarsdale. I’m in my favorite city in the world, less than a mile and a half from the coolest office I’ve ever worked in, and yet it still feels like I’ve jumped off a cliff.

Unfortunately, I haven’t hit the ground yet. I don’t think I will until September, when I pack up again. And I think that’s part of the problem. I’m on my own for the first time, and I can’t even settle down because I’m uprooting again so soon. I’m incredibly excited to be facing these new frontiers, but it’s still scary. Going off the beaten path means it isn’t obvious what I should be doing. It means I don’t know who to turn to when things don’t feel right. Hell, it means I don’t even know what’s supposed to feel right. I know that, generally speaking, I’m headed in the right direction. But there are just so many new things facing me; I’m unsure of how to make all the little things fall into place.

Two weeks ago, I found out I was leaving college for a year.

No, I’m not dropping out. No, nothing bad happened. Yes, I promise it’s an amazing thing.

tl;dr: I’m working at Tumblr this summer, moving to San Francisco in September to work at Stripe on CocoaPods full-time for three months, and in the process taking a year off of school. See my announcement and Stripe’s

For the past several months, I have been working as the Lighting Designer on the UT production of Sleuth. It was my twentieth major theatrical production, and very likely my last.

I just want to thank the amazing production team for letting me go out in style. Sure, it was (at times) an incredibly stressful process, and there was an abundance of sleepless nights for us all, but in the end we put on a show that had us saying, ‘No fucking way they allowed us to do this.’ Guess what: we did it.

I got to work with an incredible director, whose vision for the show guided us through broken glasses, creepy sailor laughs, and lots of sidelight. It was a blast. I couldn’t have done any of it without my Master Electrician. He put up with me adding crazy tower positions and using a par as a special. He wired up a desk lamp with LED strips. He helped me focus when I got behind schedule.

Our actors were also a treat to work with. UT/TAPS Presents: Brotanks will never be forgotten. You made a two and a half hour show entertaining, simultaneously gut-wrenching and hilarious. Even though you guys forgot lines and broke stuff, you made the show come to life.

Leaving theater is bittersweet, it was always going to be. All I can say is that I couldn’t have picked a better production to end on. Here comes one last fade to black.

I installed the Reeder 2 for Mac Public Beta yesterday. When I installed it, I had over 2,000 unread news items, and this has been after months of culling my subscription list. At this moment, for the first time since I switched from Google Reader to FeedWrangler, I’m at 0 unread items.

I sure did miss having Reader on my Mac. This weekend has felt like a great ‘welcome home’ from one of my favorite apps.