I strongly believe in student culture (not in the drinking sense!!). Rather, always learning, always trying to expand one’s mind and always being prepared to overturn what has just been learned.  Much of my work is software development, so many of my personal projects revolve around that. However, variety is indeed the spice of life, so I try to vary my interests.

I have been itching to get this page updated, for about two years (as of Oct 2015), so here are my now-current projects:

Current Projects

Tech

I have a plethora of tech projects which I am trying to take on, at the moment.  These are the main reasons why my blog sees only sporadic updates.  It should be stated that, with all of the below, there is no start date or deadline.  But ado being in any way furthered…

• Home hosting project:  I moved house in the summer of 2015 and have gained additional space which I can use for hosting my own rack of servers (with “official” agreement, too)!
  • Dynamic DNS service selection:  which one(s) to use?
  • Creating a physically-sound location for hosting one or more servers.  Physical security is a must, as is continuity – e.g. backups, power, network, etc.
• Picking up Emacs/OrgMode again.  I keep switching on and off from this.  I love the speed and flexibility of Emacs.  I hate the uphill climb of elisp.
• Run a Friendica server.
• Friendica mobile client.  Due to work-related projects, I have developed my knowledge and understanding of mobile web development quite well.  I foresee this being of use in packaging up an HTML5-based Friendica mobile client using Apache Cordova.
• Develop a password importer for when migrating from Chrome/Chromium to Firefox/IceWeasel/IceCat.  (I have already covered this process a little, here)

Blog

• I am a writer at heart, but often am without enough time to create the sort of content I envisage.  As always, this blog is one of my key personal projects.
• Expanding upon the technical.  I love the world of tech, but there is too much happening in it these days to keep track and be productive on your own stuff at the same time.

Social

• I attended #MozFest2015 near Greenwich in London, early November.   Here’s how I got on at MozFest.

Health and Fitness

• Surfing:  Due to my house move, I now live very near the coast.
• Swimming: A couple of times each week I try to get in the pool and swim a mile. Great, complete-body exercise.
• Vegetarianism: Something I never intended or thought I’d like, and something I’m not wholly committed to either. But the health benefits are obvious.
• Juggling: To assist the left-brain, right-brain connection, juggling is high up there on the list. I juggle for fun and to help my mind think through seemingly difficult challenges.

Retired from:

• Kung Fu: For the mind as well as the body, I recently started learning Kung Fu. An exhausting workout and stretching regime, coupled with a challenging set of co-ordination-based movements such as Wing-Chun kicks and punches.

Reading & Writing

My reading interest is vast and, conversely, is limited by my lack of time for it.  Plus, I consider myself a slow reader (although, in reality, I’m probably about average).  However, instead of listing books I have read, I’ll list those subject areas that pique my interest the most:

• Social/technical comment on the current state of our world, post-Snowden revelations.
• Science Fiction
• Computer programming, systems and the hacker (NOT cracker) culture

If you have read something that you feel might appeal to me, please drop me a line!

Stuff I tend not to read so much these days (through lack of time):

• Philosophy and Spirituality
• Social science; Economics
• Self-Help, therapy, cognitive behaviour, perception & reasoning

Work Projects

My company and employer is Warp Universal.  I’m lucky in that it keeps me in a regular supply of tea and biscuits!

Current projects:

• Customer projects & providing support to customers always comes first.  This is a project in itself 🙂
• Company website.  Often too busy to update, and yet have so many ideas for content and development.
• WarpHost.  The brand which represents our web hosting services and support.
  • A project related to this is implementing a mobile version of the site template.
  • Help content also needs updating and expanding upon.
  • I believe it’s not fully WAIG-compliant with regard to sufficient text/background contrast.Emacs

For Consideration

These are my current projects under consideration:

• Converting my blog to Jekyll.  I currently use a mixture of WordPress and Emacs/OrgMode for updating my website.  I like this combination, as various features are quite convenient.  However:
  • WordPress is, sadly, rather susceptible to being cracked;
  • Adding functionality to WordPress inevitably comes via plug-ins – known to add another element of riskiness to one’s web hosting
  • However, it seems a little more straightforward implementing IndieWeb principles into WordPress, using third-party services, than it does implementing a full IndieWeb site using Jekyll.
  • Benefits of Jekyll also include its static file nature and relative ease of templating/adding a new theme.  There’s a lot less work involved in re-theming a Jekyll site and testing it, than there is a WordPress theme.
  • A disadvantage is doing the conversion itself.  This is no small task.  And the more I blog using WordPress, the more posts & pages I create which will need converting.

As it happens, I decided not to use Jekyll.

• Archiving older project pages.  I found that when updating this page after some years, I would like to keep hold of my older content (hence the “I no longer do this”-style comments, above).  But this is inefficient.  Neither of us, dear reader, really needs to know about stuff I’m not doing any more.  Where to put it?  Some kind of archive, perhaps..?

This is it, for now.  Any suggestions, comments, etc are always welcome.