About me

I am an open source software developer though I am no zealot. Open source and its dirty hippy friend, Free Software are beautiful practical concepts and have changed my life and yours for the better. For me personally, technology is about solving problems rather than blind faith in any approach. Of course, in most cases the Open/Free software alternative technically kicks the ass of any proprietary solution.

It is very important to have strong opinions, sure, as long as they remain weakly held. Things change fast in technology and a person needs to be prepared to change their mind. Clinging to that favourite language, editor, platform, convention or design pattern might have been a best practice yesterday but the demons of depreciation creep into all aspects of our craft. The opposite is true too. Fashionable development is just as dangerous and amateurish as dated technique. Being on the bleeding edge is fun but jumping on the latest technology before its market proven is irresponsible. Its tempting because we like to fancy ourselves as passionate about our craft.

But software development is not about being a passionate developer. It is significantly more important to remain dispassionate. Judging solutions based on their merit for solving a problem from all perspectives requires a level head. Those perspectives can mean different facets of a project such as: time, cost, quality and measurability.

All this really means understanding audience for whom you build that technology. Keeping the goals for those whom will use the software you build aligned with the goals those whom are paying for the software to be built in the first place. And one more thing, the most important thing, you need to be happy too! You must learn to take joy in the creative science of writing software.

About This Site

I built this particular blog over a few hours using some rather kick ass technology. Jekyll is a gnarly Ruby gem that has too many dependencies but not so many that I’m going to try and roll my own solution.

This blog is being hosted on GitHub via their sweet ass pages feature and a clever CNAME file hides that fact behind my rather abused westcoastlogic domain in which I post irrelevant garbage that captures my attention on tumblr and elsewhere. Some people read tabloids, others still watch sitcom television: I, proudly, collect interesting and funny images found in temporal corners of the internet.