Welcome to David Thorne’s websites

Welcome to my personal website. It is mostly designed to act as a way for people to get my CV / resume, my public SSH and GnuPG keys. You can also access my infrequently updated blog where I talk about my life away from work, mostly surrounding fitness and Cystic Fibrosis awareness. You can also find a list of public speaking events I have done (With links where possible). For my technical writings please consider visiting my company website David Thorne Ltd.

This site is infrequently updated.

Developer burnout is real, we need to talk about it

     |  David Thorne

Disclaimer: I am not a mental health professional, nor have I ever claimed to be. This post is about my experiences with burnout, and steps I have taken that have worked for me. Your mileage may vary and if you are considering getting outside help, make sure it is with an accredited mental health professional in your local area. Important note: This article was written over the most of 2016, through many drafts. [Read More]
Mental Health  Community  Drupal  Drupal Planet  Burnout  Depression 

Site update - the update!

     |  David Thorne

No excuse, no excuses. This is more of an explanation and apology than an excuse (Although I am sure there are some who see them as something highly similar!) The update of davidthorne.net has been delayed. I’ve finally commissioned a designer, and we’re going to be working on the new design by January (The delay is mine, I was in hospital over late October and half of November). The content reorganisation is mapped out (As soon as I work out a good way to share it I will, I intend to open source as much of the process I use as possible), the code I want to write for displaying my CV [github. [Read More]
PHP  Drupal  Symfony2  Laravel  Cystic Fibrosis  Personal 

Now officially Drupal 8 certified

     |  David Thorne

Today (27 Sept 2016) I took and passed the Acquia Drupal 8 certification. At DrupalCon, there is usually the option for a single retake exams in the event of failure. Thankfully I didn’t need that, but it was a nice safety blanket to have. Surprisingly I did best in terms of result by section in front end (Which is usually my weakest subject) Which was a really pleasant surprise! [Read More]
DrupalCon  Dublin  Certification  Drupal 

100 days of code

     |  David Thorne

Some links have been stripped from this article due to age and inaccessibility. I came across a post on medium entitled “Join the #100DaysOfCode” [medium.com]. I love the idea, although given my health and the fact I have a life, I’ve decided to adapt it to my circumstances. I have committed to coding 100 hours of code over the next 100 days. I will publish any and all code I produce on a relevant repo on my github [github. [Read More]
100DaysofCode  Fads I probably wont stick to  PHP 

Davidthorne.net now on Drupal 8

     |  David Thorne

Some links have been stripped from this article due to age and inaccessibility. On 17/01/2016 this website [davidthorne.net] relaunched on Drupal 8. Although the default theme has stayed the same, we are also working hard to update this. Other blog entries coming soon including the almost obligatory “life update” detailing my change of job, hopes for 2016 etc. One small downside to D8 at present is I haven’t figured out what I am missing to get disqus working, so it’s currently disabled (Not that anyone ever comments anyway! [Read More]
PHP  D8  Drupal  2016 

Podcasts and the idea of a codecation

     |  David Thorne

Some links have been stripped from this article due to age and inaccessibility. An insight into how I “learn”. I have a 25 mile commute to work. Due to the vagaries of the traffic, it takes between an hour and an hour and a quarter. That’s as much as 2 1/2 hours a day in the car. I fill that time by choosing to listen to a combination of the radio and podcasts. [Read More]
PHP  codecation  Geek 

Davidthorne.net :: Drupal 8 upgrade

     |  David Thorne

Some links have been stripped from this article due to age and inaccessibility. Well the time has come for me to trial Drupal 8. I’m wanting to upgrade “early” as due to work pressures I probably won’t have massive amoutns of time to do so in the near future otherwise. My initial aim is to do a direct upgrade from Drupal 7 to Drupal 8 “As is” (Including sticking with Bartik as my default theme). [Read More]
Themes  Drupal  D8  Omega  Zen  Bootstrap  TWIG 

Updates and Certifications

     |  David Thorne

Links have been stripped from this article due to age and inaccessibility. So much time has passed (Well over a year in fact!), so I thought I would update the world with yet another promise to “blog more” (Which I’ll probably fail at) and also with what I have been doing. First and foremost (From a working perspective), I’ve started working at Ware Anthony Rust [war.uk.com] as a Drupal Developer way back in May 2014. [Read More]
Drupal  Certification  PHP  Laravel  Symfony2  Theming  Zen  Omega  Bootstrap 

Acquia Certification

     |  David Thorne

Some links have been stripped from this article due to age and inaccessibility. So in March 2014 Acquia (The company run by Dries Buytaert [buytaert.net], the project founder of Drupal) launched it’s certification program [acquia.com]. Whilst I am not necessarily an advocate of having a certification for every PHP framework or CMS that exists, but I do feel that Drupal did need something. A little History As is the case with a lot of PHP frameworks or open source projects, you find a large variety of abilities irrespective of experience level as a PHP developer. [Read More]
Certification  Drupal  PHP  Personal 

Pet Projects

     |  David Thorne

Some links have been stripped from this article due to age and inaccessibility. So I have several pet projects. Let’s be honest most developers do. How I define a pet project is maybe slightly different to how most would though. To me a pet project is one that isn’t important (As the majority of the time a pet project never is) but to me they are ones that are useful for a particular reason. [Read More]
Tutorial  PHP  Zend2  Symfony2  Development