Having sorted out my office, and fixed one of my broken NAS, I decided to to look at my website.
Moved it to a new theme, and started enabling it for IndieWeb yesterday.

Wow. Bit of a hill for an old retired guy!
Still, got some mentions working, started working on some syndications stuff, checked I have h-card enabled, and got IndieAuth working.
That got me onto the IndieWeb wiki, ooh, they use Slack, better get on that…

IndieAuth got me to github; yes, kept meaning to learn about that… which got me to GitHub Pages, to Jekyll via Ruby
Diverting via static pages to Hugo

Unfortunately, less than a day later I’m contemplating the old adage one bite at a time

So, any first pointers?
All suggestions gratefully received – I expect the occasional “Ooh, I wouldn’t start from there”!

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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My son, @philellwood shared the following with me:

Thought you might appreciate this.

I’m on the train, with my Kindle, laptop, and phone. My phone is connected to 3G. I create a portable Wi-Fi from my phone, and connect the laptop and kindle to it. I use the internet to download a book, and then I use the “Send to Kindle” app on my laptop to wirelessly transfer the book that I have downloaded via the internet on my phone onto my laptop, back over the internet to Amazon’s servers then back through my phone to the kindle. I also transferred it to the phone itself, just for good measure. All by dragging a file from one folder onto an app icon. No keystrokes.

It was less effort to do that, than switch the USB charger from my phone to my Kindle and transfer it that way.

Future Shock?

When it becomes second nature for all, that will be Future Shock

sharing fruit

In a typically erudite post from David Cushman, he asks “What makes you share?”

While he discusses the virtues – or otherwise – of taking deliberately contrary positions, I think the highlight of the post for me is the following:

…the only way we can find others who care about the same things we do is through one or other party expressing that concern. Until you share your thoughts they have no value to you or your network. They contribute nothing to making your life better or the world a better place.
But the simple act of sharing what you care about can make change. When you share you allow others to access your thoughts and to discover you…

I mostly share to learn. The old saw is “the best way to learn something is to teach it”. I also think it’s better to make your views, interests and experience open to your peers – as it adds value to your interactions. I’m a remote homeworker, and reading my social media/shared stuff will give people a better idea of what I’m like – for good or ill…

To explicitly answer David’s questions

So what drives you to share?

The fascination of discovering what other brighter people have learned or thought – and how easy it is to learn these things.

What would make you share more?

The improving of the technology; for me it went something like delicious, blogs, my ongoing love – Twitter, and latterly posterous, bit.ly and Facebook with Selective Tweets.

So, what makes you share?

Image Credit: wlodi

transition

In the UK, we have a huge budget deficit; the coalition government have decided to tackle it and public spending is being reduced. Local authorities have to choose where to spend the money they have, and currently a number of them are planning to close libraries.

Save Our Library Day has just finished and it made me think about how I use libraries.

As a youngster, as a teenager, and into my twenties, I used libraries a lot. Somewhere quiet to study, somewhere to get hold of books to read for relaxation or for reference. In my thirties, as the father of young children, I took my children to the library, so they learnt about the wonderful world of books, and they could choose books that at first I would read to them, later read with them – and eventually that they would read themselves.

What’s changed for me? Well, for reference, the internet makes research and finding reviews much easier. I can read fiction and comment in blogs from around the world.

Most of the books I read now are those in which my my interest has been piqued by hearing others discuss it. Yes, OK, the internet is the biggest book club in the world. Now, I can get that book by going to the library and seeing if it is in; my local library, is lovely, but small, and open 4 sessions a week maximum. The other thing I can do is got to my Amazon account, and have the book delivered the following day.

If I overcome my distrust of the technology and the DRM issues, I could have it delivered to a Kindle in minutes. Why would I need a library?

But, of course, that’s not the point. It was a library that formed my life long habit of reading, reinforced by my parent’s book-filled household. [They took me to the library, too]. It was going to the library that helped my children form a reading habit, and learn the joys of reading. If libraries aren’t there for others, how will they get that experience, and learn that reading is for everyone.

I’m fortunate in that I can buy pretty well any books I want; I wasn’t always so fortunate, and as a student, and in initial low paid roles, I could always find books to read and learn from for nothing.

I won’t miss a library for myself.
I’d miss libraries for the damage their loss could cause to the lives of hundreds of thousands of people yet to come. I’d rather pay more local council tax than lose my library – even if I don’t use it.

How will you miss libraries?

Image Credit: lisabatty – and no, the British Library isn’t at risk, it’s just a lovely image of a library