Just passed the test and become a Certified Lasso Developer (CLD), but that’s only part of the update. There was a time when it was a monumental challenge to build websites with data pulled from a dynamic source. As various technologies developed, FileMaker realized it too needed to make things easy for users to integrate their databases with their websites. So they went out and found the best way to do it, licensed the technology, and built it directly into FileMaker - that technology was Lasso.

Back then it still wasn’t easy, these tools had a long way to go, and FileMaker had a long way to go to become a robust enough platform to build sophisticated websites. Still, developers like myself pushed ahead, sweating out code, eking out as much flexibility and performance as possible, rebooting crashed servers in the middle of the night, and managed to produce innovative and dynamic websites.

We’ve come a long way, Lasso is no longer directly built into FileMaker, but the two are still a well integrated combination of technologies. FileMaker has maintained its ease-of-use along with the power to integrate into web pages as fast as visitors can click. Lasso has also come a long way and was recently acquired by a company with plans to make it one of the top languages on the web, with the willpower and “pockets deep enough to do it”. Given the massive amount of customer interaction, revitalization, leadership and software updates that they’ve sustained since the transition five months ago, it’s clear they mean business.

One part of their new ecosystem is the Certified Lasso Developer program, and I’m stoked to display the badge of membership, along with the special distinction of being one of the first 100 developers to pass the test and become a CLD. Lasso’s future looks ever brighter and I look forward to building and work on more Lasso-based systems.

Once figured out it’s such a simple and easy way to share dynamic content on other people’s websites, just a single line of code. This one is from my friends over at WebExercises, each day we should see which ‘Exercise of the Day’ has been chosen from their huge database of exercises. The following code...

<script src="http://www.webexercises.com/widgets/exotd.lasso?id=HSJSEH" type="text/javascript"></script>

...shows this result:

Exciting things just keep happening, and we’re not even over the first month of 2009. It has been a long-time goal of mine to build and release a software solution to the general public. I’ve come close many times, with many interesting solutions, but never had the opportunity to take it all the way. Today Dr. Cruz and I released v1.0 of WebExercises Desktop. Countless hours and sleepless nights went into the making over the past 4 months and it has been well worth the challenge. There’s still a lot of work to be done, and I’m sure many updates to come, but the solution is available to the public and can be demoed and purchased from the website.

Updated 2/4/2009: Check us out in the Apple Downloads pages.

2009 is proving to be an exciting year so far. After much hemming and hawing I’ve decided to run my own web server and offer highly customized FileMaker, Lasso, MySQL, PHP, and Website hosting services for my clients. The final decision was actually made by a surprise win with an extremely low bid on eBay for a brand new Apple Xserve. This thing is, as they say, totally off the hook. After a few hardware improvements, some very expensive software licenses, and the obligatory blood, sweat, and tears, we now have a state-of-the-art server:

- 3.0GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon 5400 series processors
- Independent 1600MHz frontside bus per processor
- 6 Gigabytes of 800MHz DDR2 ECC fully buffered DIMM memory
- 2 drive mirrored RAID 1 hard drive system for redundancy
- 1 Terabyte hard drive for backups
- Mac OS X v10.5 Leopard Unlimited
- FileMaker Server 10 Advanced
- MySQL 5
- Lasso Professional 8.5 (soon to be upgraded to v9)
- Apache 2
- PHP 5.2

Even after turning up all the websites and databases my clients can muster, it’s only running at 5% capacity.

Many thanks to my clients, especially Dr. Cruz and WebExercises, for agreeing to let me take over their hosting requirements and helping to fund this venture. Also many thanks to the fine people at digital.forest for their technical support, encouragement, and excellent co-location data center in Seattle, Washington.

Give me a call about hosting services and trying to make this thing work a little bit harder to earn its keep.

Pictures courtesy of digital.forest technician Derek:

...and rings, and vows, and a really great party. It was a perfect autumn day and on October 18, 2008 at Two Brook Farm, joined by 150+ friends and family, Angie and I tied the knot.

If you’ve found your one true love, that you want to be with forever, I highly recommend it, worth every expense great or small. I don’t normally get political, but having just experienced the joy and love that day I can’t imagine why ANYONE should be denied the right be married, in every sense of the word.

Updated 1/9/2009: Just figured out how to add photos to the blog - took me long enough. Obviously I’m the brute on the left standing beside my beautiful bride.

On the balcony of our room at the Grand Wailea, over looking a perfect blue Pacific Ocean, and only moments after the bellboy left, I proposed to the woman of my dreams and Angela Michelle McCourt agreed to be my wife. We ordered champagne immediately, it was a great day and a great way to kick off a week long vacation on my childhood home of Maui, Hawaii. Many thanks for the patience of my clients to spare me the time, amidst many important projects, to leave and take this next big step in my life. Will hit the ground running when I return as who knows how soon or how big she'll want the wedding.

Haven't had so much as a spare minute since the start of 2008, and can hardly believe we're already two months in. I will confess to a short weekend ski trip and hope for at least one more, but I thought that being my own boss I'd give myself more leisure time - yeah right. This new External SQL Source (ESS) feature in the release of FileMaker 9 sure is stirring up the pot and creating all kinds of new possibilities that people want to take advantage of right away. If you're running FIleMaker and need to exchange data with MySQL, Microsoft SQL, or Oracle based systems then this is the feature you've been waiting for. Or if you're using FileMaker on the web, and it just isn't quite fast enough, then this will make the switch to an SQL back-end all the more attractive.

"Congratulations! Your application to the FileMaker Business Alliance (FBA) has been approved."

This just came today and I can't be more pleased. It took some doing, I've been hounding them since late July to let me join. Many thanks to the handful of clients that were contacted by FileMaker and responded positively about the quality of my work. You can read some of the benefits of the FileMaker Business Alliance. One of the more useful for my clients is that I can resell licenses at prices better than FileMaker's volume discount, and with no volume requirements. To provide a little transparency here, I do make a small percentage on the sale, but only to help recover the hefty annual membership fee.

It's official, as of today, August 15th, 2007, I've incorporated in the State of California under the name Maxwell Klein Consulting, Inc. - I know real original. Update your records and remember, no more 1099s!

There was a huge amount of information to process in order to make this decision, and if it weren't for my exuberant, helpful, and affordable tax advisor, it would have taken far longer to take this particular leap - many thanks to Tony. It's certainly not for the faint of heart, it would be impossible to list all the links I followed for information, but one resource that really helped put it all in perspective was a book (yep, a real book actually printed on paper) titled Inc. and Grow Rich. Also, I'd recommend using a service like MyCorporation.com, they've made the whole filling process completely painless.

Felt like it was time to share a little of what's been going on since making the leap and becoming an independent consultant at the start of 2007. Well, I also really wanted to play around with the Blog feature of this website development software, RapidWeaver, and see what it was like to share information via the 'Blog' medium - I know, a little late to the party.

Seems like just yesterday, it was both a stressful and exhilarating decision to make, but so far so good since starting my own business. Been able to keep busy, which was my first big concern. There have been a few ups and downs, but mostly ups. I've made a lot of great new connections, followed up on some exciting improvements in the various technologies I use, and added a few more skills and techniques to the arsenal. There's been some hard work and challenging problems to solve, but I've enjoyed every minute of it. Many thanks to all the people I've had the pleasure to work with thus far.