On Friday 30th September, a colleague and I spoke at Devops Days 2016 in Wellington. It was an awesome experience, and the first time I’ve spoken on technical and non-technical topics at an industry conference. The talk I gave is available on Speakerdeck . I’ve also embedded it below: I think that the one thing that I took away from Devops Days NZ 2016 was this. ...
Casey Gerald is an amazing speaker. He spoke at Webstock about belief, and doubt. He spoke about how each time he became invested in a belief of something greater than himself, he was inevitably dissapointed. Each time he entered a different phase in his life, he believed in something new, and each time that belief was broken. He began to believe in doubt, he believed it might not be possible to believe in anything at all. ...
We started Overtime last year bemoaning the lack of social eSports being played in New Zealand, not fully understanding the reason behind that absence. Well, now we do. It’s really hard to do it properly. It takes a bunch of time, coordination, and passion. Fortunately we still have the passion, but unfortunately, our time has dried up. We won’t be running Season 2 this year. Instead, Troy and I will be spinning off the software we wrote to manage the first season, and working on that to the point where it’s a viable product in and of itself. Our new tournament as a service will be called BattleStack - and we’re very excited to be working on it. ...
So it struck me that the more I reflect and refine the thoughts I have on the speakers at Webstock 2016, the more I want to write it down somewhere. Alcoholism will eventually take my brain, so it would serve me well to log down my thoughts. It’s also good practice for building opinions and learning how to communicate better. Heather Armstrong, for those who do not know, is internet famous. I didn’t know that. I’m not her target market and of course, that’s okay. But what is she doing at webstock? ...
Over the last few days, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking. Thinking about what, and why should you care? I’m not sure I know the answer to those questions any more. What I do know, is that I want to go back to webstock next year, regardless of whatever else is going on in my life at the time. These words are coming out like treacle right now, I don’t usually have a problem communicating like this. ...
It’s been a while between posts. Here’s Why: I’ve been on holiday for two weeks! It’s been pretty good. I spent a week in Ohakune, in the central Plateau of the North Island of Naw Zealand and another week in Russell, much further north. It was awesome to get away from Auckland, but I’m ready to go home. I have spent my time organising my reading list for the upcoming year (scheduled for reading are gems such as Code Complete, Continuous Delivery, The Fundamentals of Security and The Mythical Man Month). I’m excited, I’ve got about 60 books lined up for the year and I can’t wait to get stuck in. ...
Oh the times, they are a changin' The past month has been crazy. In the past month, I’ve started a new role, my son has started crawling, I’ve helped launch the second season of Overtime on a brand new technical stack, they only thing that hasn’t changed is this blog, I’ve been neglecting it. Work has slowed down a bit before christmas, so now seems like a good time to post an update. ...
Thoughts on Design. I’m losing faith in the design of my website. It looks dated. I’m not really sure what to do with it other then give it an overhaul. But that requires coming up with a new look and feel. It requires implementing that. But muh effort, Muh time constraints and other such excuses of the weak willed. I’m going to learn about design. Rather then just minimally modifying a template, I’m going to look at every piece of this website and give it some love and attention. It’s been quite neglected. ...
This is an article I wrote for Spark Ventures I’m currently Interning for them) on how I got my internship, and how others can break into the IT Industry. My writing style still isn’t great, so it was good to be given an excuse to practice! ================================= I have loved technology ever since I was a wee nipper. I confused a lot of people when I joined the Army after college but that decision was key (more on that another time though). I left the Army in time to enroll in Semester Two 2013 at the University of Auckland. I sit here now, on the top floor of Spark City in Auckland, and I feel very, very fortunate. ...
I’m donating blood today. It’ll be my 20th donation. Probably around 4 were whole blood, another 6 were plasma, the remaining 10 being apheresis aka platelet donations. I’m O- so my blood is quite useful, it can be given to anyone. Mostly it goes to newborns. That’s always been a pretty cool thing for me, but when my own little one was born it made things quite a bit more important. Tobias was born premature due to a rare condition my wife had. He narrowly avoided the neo-natal intensive care unit (a few days earlier or a few tens of grams less and he would have gotten a sweet incubator) ...