There is a school of thought that a blog is a useful tool for personal development - a tool for change. Learning a new programming API is only part of what blogsphere participation has achieved.
A year of blogging has passed since I started this blog:
My initial aim for this site is to follow my progress of figuring out how to write a Cocoa application using Python.
I’ve gone through a lot of changes, largely motivated by a desire to discover what I’m passionate about. This led me from being a respected manager to a rookie employee in a new state with new peers and a new industry to learn.
This blog was originally intended to investigate a few things:
- A return to hands-on product creation; programming
- Learning Cocoa and Python
- Finding out about blogging
- Improving my writing style
These are on-going lessons to be learnt, and will remain in focus. However, I am also going to broaden my scope. This has been slowly happening over the last few months.
On the way to discovering what I enjoy, what I’m passionate about, I found light as a starting point. This has evolved into a fairly healthy photography hobby, and has kept my plugging away at Photoshop over the years. I think I am now considered intermediate. I’m going to focus a bit more on design too, of both software and everyday things.
My restated goals for the site are:
- Enhance existing programming knowledge: Haskell, web, Cocoa/Python, DB, QT
- New programming topics: OpenGL, and other graphics processing
- Communication, such as blogging and my recent Toastmasters experiences
- Things I’m working on at now: C++, Qtopia, Embedded Devices
- Design aspects: Photography, Photoshop, Software and User Interfaces
- Include more personal thoughts in my writing
This last point is a chance to include more of my life, and hopefully focussing on communication will keep the cliché count down.
With the revision of focus, the tag line for the site is changing. Gone is “Can a snake (Python) eat chocolate (Cocoa)”, and in is “Beauty through design”.
Has blogging been worth the effort? Totally! I’m very excited about where it will lead next.
Geoff
ps. I will be sparse on contact for the next few weeks as I journey through China and Norway.