After a four and a half-year hiatus…
[which isn’t rare nowadays, having looked through my blogroll and RSS feeds] I thought I ought to attempt to make some sort of update and tidy up here.

In my last posts I set out some aspirations

Blogging: I was going to share more content here – that failed abysmally, although I remained active on Twitter and Facebook

Coastguard: I was part of a Search and Rescue Team – after another bout of illness affecting my main work, I resigned, completing 9 years service.

Family & Friends: I intended to visit people more – and I did, although for differing reasons – including travelling in our motorhome, which I bought in advance of retirement – but as it turned out, not much in advance.

Work: after some more mental health issues, I returned to work, working in the DDoS space, which I was enjoying – but I got a generous severance offer; which I took, leaving work in July 2015. and taking my pension in 2016. When I reached 60 this year, I decided there was no way I’d look for further work, and I gave up my clearances, certifications, and memberships.

Personal Development:

  • I was going to work on my security knowledge, and I did – but my interest is now academic only!
  • I intended to improve my physical fitness – I walk daily and now row regularly in a Coastal Rowing Skiff
  • I intended to do more to keep abreast of technology – which I do – playing with Raspberry Pis and home automation
  • I intended more outdoor activity, I got that by taking up an allotment, growing fruit and veg for us – but still need to do some hammocking!

Photo Credit: StephenMitchell Flickr via Compfight cc

Oil Rigs
Oil Rigs at Rest

New Year, New opportunities

I’m not a great believer in New Year resolutions, often finding them a trite way of setting weak aspirations; however, the happenstance of calendar dates does give an opportunity to both look back, and look forward. So these are “sort of not-resolutions

My last year or two  have been challenging in family and health terms, and some sorting out at work has been testing.

I’m fortunate both with my family and my employer – and I have much to be grateful for, so I thought I’d set out some things I’d like to do.

Blogging: I have sadly neglected my blog, for Twitter, Facebook and occasional Tumblr forays. I am going to share more content here – although I may play a little with both Medium and ghost. Some of it will be technology related; some security; some knowledge management, and some more personal… I’ll try to keep my Scottish Independence thoughts elsewhere.

Coastguard: I’m part of a Search and Rescue Team locally – I intend to work more at this and step up to a more senior team role.

Family & Friends: I intend to make more effort to leave my lovely Scottish eyrie and actually see more of people this year

Personal Development:

  • I have achieved a couple of security qualifications last year, CISSP and SCF; I intend to further my security knowledge and my general architecture knowledge
  • I intend to improve my physical fitness
  • I intend to do more to keep abreast of technology – particularly Internet of Things type activity and cloud based work
  • I will do more outdoor activity, including regular sleeping outdoors – particularly in my hammock that I have used for 8 years on and off.

Work: I have said I’m lucky in my employer; I want to make sure I work with some wider teams in the company and build my contributions across our security and architecture team.

What about you?

Have you any aspirations/goals you’d like to share?

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Cromarty CG

Please, can we have a website?

How many of us get questions like that?

I did, and the Cromarty Coastguard website was the result.

So, the answer was “Yes”.

Recently, my local Coastguard Team decided they wanted to get a quick team website off the ground. Most of the team are happy with the internet for searching for technical information, they all use email, but they’re not really content providers of any sort.

They seemed astonished when I said that they could have a website, with their own domain name within a day or so. They were then a bit surprised by the number of questions

What’s your website for…

Usually the first thing you should decide.
Are you:

  • providing a service
  • sharing information
  • building your brand with it
  • selling something
  • or just learning HTML/CSS

We wanted an information site, which would highlight the work we do for potential new members, and provide some easy reference material.

Who’s going to manage this?

The idea was, “Oh, the team’ll do it”. I’ve heard this before, so wanted to make it as easy as possible for people to provide content. I’ve offered to help admin things, but I expect the Station Officer will take a lead.

What’s it going to run on?

It’s a tiny wee website; I’m not expecting huge traffic. I expect regular changes as we respond to incidents and do training exercises. I thought I’d better get a content management system(CMS) . I’d heard about Joomla and Drupal… but I’d also read about using WordPress as a CMS. I blog with it, so am familiar with it. I’d been thinking about moving a couple of other hobby sites onto WordPress, so this was an ideal opportunity.

So, our website runs on WordPress.com, with its own domain name. I’ll watch the stats with interest, and see how many members author content for it – and look for any links for other coastguard sites.

From request to up took 2 days; much of which was finding content and getting the domain name up on WordPress.com. I’d certainly use WordPress again for a hobby/small site.

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