Time to Celebrate, indeed. I've (finally, after battling a full-time job, family needs, winter and the odd bottle of red wine) just implemented the latest version of Morphfolia (v2.4.0.0) on to this site.
I'll now be able to go back to a quieter life.
[sigh]
Well, that was nice - now back to the fold!
I've been compiling a list of things I want to write about - things I'd been putting off while I dedicated all my time to completing the release. I wouldn't go as far as to call this an
apology (see #3), let's just say I'm balancing any guilt I have with the cold hard logic that I'm only human (tell that to my kids). And I must confess this post is something of a test to see how the upgrade has gone (the first request to the 'new' site was successful - no errors! so that's a good start).
Anyway, here's what will I be talking about (to myself, anyway, for the next 2 years while people discover me); and as I have a reputation as an 'ideas man', and I'm a self proclaimed 'jack-of-all-trades' I think/hope it'll be interesting...
Architecture / Solution Architecture
I'm a solutions architect by day. It's a very interesting area and I think I can add some value here, I'm particularly keen to look at the non-technical aspects of the job - you'll find no shortage of content about technologies you can use but not so much on the issues that solution architects face, how to deal with them and some real-life examples. How do you be an effective architect without losing your oxygen?
Culture
I'm interested in the culture we live and work in. Chris Andersons work on 'Free' deserves some attention for a start; is 'free' too cheap? Will Twitter ever make money? (do we care?)
Security Fear and Doubt
Security is an area of interest for me, I follow a few security blogs, and so whilst I might not provide any new and original security thinking I will pass on anything that I think helps people secure themselves without falling prey to FUD. For example, did you know you can be infected by Malware distributed through Google AdWords? Are you up with some of the new ways to monetize scareware? And if you want a nice fire-side read try an old favorite of mine: Legacy Futures in Cyberspace (To deal with future problems, it helps to look forward).
Personal Opinions and Experiences
You might not have asked for my opinion, but you'll get it anyway. Do you worry about technical debt? Hell, I worry about knowledge debt (all the things you think you need to know - like trying to keep pace with developments in technology). At what point are business rules so self evident that they don't need to be explicitly stated?
Technobabble and Technology
I am a geek, after all. You don't tend to spend over 3 years developing a CMS part-time (in the middle of the night) if you're not a bit geeky.
Speaking of which - the journey I've taken so far isn't one that's necessarily travelled a lot - a lot of developer friends I know have a pet project, but not many have set-up a business around it, had a go at planning a business with a view to actually doing it - and all on their own. If you're a developer on a software project it can be easy to say to pick holes in the thinking of people on the business side - but if you do it yourself you'll see it's not so straight forward as it seems on the surface (a bit like why they can't understand why software development is so hard).
Smack-Down
Watch whilst I conduct smack-downs! I get these from my sons all the time, like: "Dad, who'd win between Darth Maul and that old wizard (Gandalf) on Lord of the Rings?" and "Dad, who'd win out of all the Clones in Star Wars and the German army in world war two if they had laser guns?" Watch me attempt to compare these apples and pears and then try and magically find some nugget of truth or knowledge that is relevant to how we develop systems. Watch me smack-down MOSS with Morphfolia (I'm no religious, but the phase 'David and Goliath' comes to mind).