I think the end goal that I have in mind for this website — aside from the obviousness of blogging — is to be able to update from wherever I am. As I’ve switched to Jekyll, this isn’t as easy a task to accomplish, as say, something built on Wordpress, or even Grav. Both of those CMS’s have Admin areas that you load up in a browser to compose your pages in. As far as I know there’s no admin plugin available for Jekyll. Not that I’ve looked that hard.

I’m intending to write most my posts on my iPad. I know there are various Markdown editors available, but currently I’m using the iOS version of Scrivener. I’ve setup a project where I’ll write my posts, that is currently synced to Dropbox. Currently I’m using iA Writer, and will hopefully get this to sync with Dropbox, or similar. This isn’t something that’ll be completely fool proof anytime soon. After all, I’m quite the fool and excel and breaking stuff. I’ve also finally uploaded the site to the domain, so I’m not just talking to myself on my local machine. Now I’m talking to myself in the great wide open digital domain.

There are still a few things to button up before I’m completely happy:

• Being able to creat a post and seamlessly upload it to i-am.ski
• I haven’t tested how images will look yet
• Still need to setup RSS Feeds (not that I’m at all popular, but you never know and it’d be nice to have them setup in advance. Besides, once they’re in place, they’re low-maintenance)
• Fix the icon in the footer
• Get descriptions for each category in place
• Code refactoring; I suspect there’s a lot of unused CSS that I could remove
• Setup a /now page

Otherwise, I feel pretty good about the state of the site. Good enough to currently show it to the public at least. The list above can be worked on in my spare time.

After a failed update and a couple of months of apathy, I'm finally back to having my site looking how I want. Simple and clean is the name of the game here.

The fallout took place when trying to update Ghost and basically things did not go well. I wasn't in the mood to troubleshoot (again!) after that first go round, so I figured I'd revisit later. Later became days, which turned into weeks... before I knew it, five months had gone by and I was still looking at the "I broke it again" html page I'd thrown up.

I decided to move on from Ghost, and opted instead for Jekyll, a static site generator. The big benefit here is there's no need for a database. No database means less maintenance, less overhead, fewer options for script kiddies to try to take over my site (who'd want to??). It also uses Markdown which is something I've been wanting to get more familiar with.

I'm also going to collect all my previous posts (at least those that I can find) and import them here. There are posts from Wordpress and Blogger that date back quite some years. I plan on dating them when they were originally posted, so there will be posts back from the early 2000's. I won't be posting items that were simple one liners ("It's snowing!" for example) and would've been better off as tweets.

Now on to the fun of importing entries and ripping out all the extraneous markup that some of these tools add. Joy.

In one of my previous entries, I mentioned that I have a hard time getting better than proficient at something:

one of my bigger shortcomings -- at least in my eyes ( and if you think there are other, bigger ones, please keep it to yourself, thank you very much) -- is my lack of digging deeper and really getting to know how to work with, and learn what it is I'm tinkering with. So lately I've been trying to focus on just one Digital Audio Workstation (DAW). I've been working with Bitwig, because it's still fairly new (v3.0.3 as of this writing), and somewhere down the road I'd like to be someone other people turn to to learn this software. Then I can brag about how I've been using Bitwig since v1.0. I even have the badge to prove it. A bit childish and maybe narcissistic, sure... but it's the small things.

Like any piece of creative software, whether it be Affinity's Photo or Designer, Scrivener, or Ableton Live (Bitwig's main competitor in the DAW field), they're all easy enough to do something basic up front, but the real power comes from digging deeper, and learning the ins-and-outs of the software. And of course, the more one digs, the more complicated the software can become. Bitwig is no different, so I've been trying to break it down into smaller bits, making the knowledge easier to digest. The smaller bits also help with trying to keep focus, an issue I'm constantly struggling with.

I'm not, however, taking a very practical approach. It would make sense to start at a high level, learning the basic interface to an expert level. I know the basics well enough to feel comfortable working through the project.

It's gotten busy at work.

I mean... BUSY.

For a few months there I didn't have much to do. Mostly bug fixes here and there. And then we had a new project start and I was given the Bootstrap/UI duties for that team. And then a second project spun up, and it was decided I could be a "shared resource", and I was given the Bootstrap/UI duties for that project.

And then third project came about.

And a fourth.

Currently, I am on five scrum teams. Yes. Five. Now, I don't always have work or bugs for all teams at any given time, but there are days when I'm heads down for a solid 8-10 hours.

It shouldn't (hopefully) be for long. If it is, I'll burn out. Thankfully I have a good scrum master who's always checking my point totals and making sure I'm not going batshit crazy. Two sprints ago I was given a total of 13 points. A full sprint's effort is typically 8. That was a crazy week.

But hey, at least I'm not bored.

I'm not a fan of the "Open Office" concept.

I get that it's supposed to foster creativity and collaboration. That productivity is supposed to increase. A worker in an open office is more approachable and communication increases.

Perhaps that's all true. Personally, I don't buy into it. I think rather than fostering collaboration it's fomenting animosity towards fellow co-workers. Case in point: my desk is maybe 4' x 2'. I have a side divider that's probably 16" inches tall, and a divider on the back of my desk that's maybe 2, 2 1/2 feet. Before I switched from sitting on the left side of my desk to the right, I was literally about a foot away from my co-worker (thankfully, no one sits to my right). The person who sit across from me is at least 6'2" and likes to stretch his legs out under the desk. I don't blame him at all. We end up kicking each other a lot, as I like to do the same.