So I started a new job on the 4th of January and to say things have been a little hectic would be an understatement! I have already traveled to Phoenix, Arizona for a conference, to a customer site in Sydney and now I am in Madrid for a training course. Needless to say that sort of travelling, plus the massive amount of stuff that I have to learn for the new job doesn't really leave that much time for posting. Unfortunately this means that new posts from me will probably be few and far between for a while (unless I am stuck somewhere and have a wave of inspiration wash over me when I miraculously have no work to do).
Hopefully when things slow down a little bit I will have the time and the inspiration to write some more posts but for now things will likely remain a little quiet.
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Sunday, January 2, 2011
Most Popular Posts of 2010
Perhaps 2010 is a bit rich, as I only really started this blog in June. All the other blogs out there seem to be doing a most popular posts of the year past so I may as well join the crowd.
Overall I must say I am fairly happy with the traffic that I have been able to generate to the blog. I never really set out with the intent of attracting lots and lots of readers. However I must admit that I get a little thrill when I check the stats and see that people have been viewing my posts.
The most popular post, Synology Disk Station 211J Setup Part 1, has more views than my entire blog received in the first 5 months of its existence. The second and third most popular are the two follow up posts to the most popular post, Synology Disk Station 211J Setup Part 2 and Synology DS211J to Samsung Story 3 Backup. This is altogether not too surprising.
What does surprised me a little bit was how much search traffic I receive, indeed most of my site traffic is from google. I guess it shows the importance of getting the keywords and that sort of thing right if you intend to get a lot of traffic into a blog. It also showed to me why there are so many sites out there dedicated to new hardware reviews, it is all well and good for me to try and write about the things that I find interesting, Stuxnet, Memristors, employee performance evaluation and career development and self improvement, but what really pulls new readers into the site is content on new hardware and software.
I don't see these observations really changing what I post on here very much, I will continue to try and improve my writing style and hopefully find the time post longer posts with more detail and background. I find that I enjoy the writing, but at times struggle to think of good topics to talk about.
Over the coming weeks I'll either post a lot or not much at all depending on whether the mood strikes me. I have some plans for background posts, talking about my Theses for example but I haven't had the time to put them together yet.
Monday, December 27, 2010
I have a confession to make...
I am not a coder!
Ah, that feels better, like a weight has been lifted from my chest.
Now, let me explain what I mean. I can code, I understand different design patterns, I can break a problem down into tiny little pieces, I can work out the sticking points. It just doesn't rock my world. I'd prefer to spend an hour reading about a new system, a new type of database, Apple's latest shiny new gadget.
At heart I guess I would prefer to spend my time fiddling with a large system and getting it running than staring at strings of characters and sword fighting while I wait for it to compile. Alright, maybe I wouldn't mind the odd sword fight in the office.
This is all well and good of course, I've got a new job that should help me do what I like, but in the past it has caused me a few problems. Firstly there was the boss that told me that I had to do programming for a while because every Systems guy worth his salt has done some programming. This led to a particularly painful part of my working life, where I slowly lost motivation as I repeatedly flung myself at the near vertical learning curve and slid back down to the bottom. Secondly there was the company I worked for that repeatedly told itself that it wanted quality software but didn't practice what they preached, it took a year of badgering from me to introduce code reviews. This was a problem because even though coding wasn't my Raison d'être I cared about whether the product I was working on was good and I know enough about coding to recognise bad code and coding practices when I see them.
Begrudgingly, I probably have to admit that my boss was right, I did need to spend a year or two trying to be a coder to come to the conclusion that I am, in fact, not. This lesson was important because I didn't really know what I was, and I was probably telling myself that I was a coder. There are several reasons for this I guess, I like creating things, doing something constructive and I once had the misguided impression that if you weren't crunching out lines of code then you weren't creating things, you where just assembling parts that someone else had built, not adding something new to the world. Now of course I realise that it is probably harder to be a full systems guy than a run of the mill coder. You need to understand a whole lot and see things that others probably wouldn't be able to see.
I guess the round about point that I am getting to is that, despite what you see around, there is plenty of space in IT for people who aren't coders at heart. Sure, I'm not going to Zuckerberg together a billion dollar website from my dorm room in the wee hours of the morning but equally no site like Facebook works without a whole lot os Systems guys in there doing the hard yards to keep the thing going.
And there concludes this holiday ramble.
Ah, that feels better, like a weight has been lifted from my chest.
Now, let me explain what I mean. I can code, I understand different design patterns, I can break a problem down into tiny little pieces, I can work out the sticking points. It just doesn't rock my world. I'd prefer to spend an hour reading about a new system, a new type of database, Apple's latest shiny new gadget.
At heart I guess I would prefer to spend my time fiddling with a large system and getting it running than staring at strings of characters and sword fighting while I wait for it to compile. Alright, maybe I wouldn't mind the odd sword fight in the office.
This is all well and good of course, I've got a new job that should help me do what I like, but in the past it has caused me a few problems. Firstly there was the boss that told me that I had to do programming for a while because every Systems guy worth his salt has done some programming. This led to a particularly painful part of my working life, where I slowly lost motivation as I repeatedly flung myself at the near vertical learning curve and slid back down to the bottom. Secondly there was the company I worked for that repeatedly told itself that it wanted quality software but didn't practice what they preached, it took a year of badgering from me to introduce code reviews. This was a problem because even though coding wasn't my Raison d'être I cared about whether the product I was working on was good and I know enough about coding to recognise bad code and coding practices when I see them.
Begrudgingly, I probably have to admit that my boss was right, I did need to spend a year or two trying to be a coder to come to the conclusion that I am, in fact, not. This lesson was important because I didn't really know what I was, and I was probably telling myself that I was a coder. There are several reasons for this I guess, I like creating things, doing something constructive and I once had the misguided impression that if you weren't crunching out lines of code then you weren't creating things, you where just assembling parts that someone else had built, not adding something new to the world. Now of course I realise that it is probably harder to be a full systems guy than a run of the mill coder. You need to understand a whole lot and see things that others probably wouldn't be able to see.
I guess the round about point that I am getting to is that, despite what you see around, there is plenty of space in IT for people who aren't coders at heart. Sure, I'm not going to Zuckerberg together a billion dollar website from my dorm room in the wee hours of the morning but equally no site like Facebook works without a whole lot os Systems guys in there doing the hard yards to keep the thing going.
And there concludes this holiday ramble.
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