| |
 |
Friday, January 03, 2003 |
|
In the spirit of the New Year, here
are a few of my favorite things from 2002 in no particular order.
- Time to look at technical things
Five months of not working gave me plenty of time to look at
technologies issues and to get more hands on than I had in a number of
years. A number of the things on my list are fallout from that time.
- Weblogs (personal)
I credit Radio Userland
with showing
me that weblogs could be more than teenage diaries. I'd come
across that form of weblog in LiveJournal. (LiveJournal's "show me a random
LiveJournal" feature was addictive.) I wasn't interested in keeping an
online diary, but looking at blogs from other Radio users showed
me that a blog could be more technical focused; that resonated
with me as something I could do.
Radio's aggregator feature also introduced me to the community
aspect of blogging.
- Weblogs (professional)
I got a job at Georgia Tech at the end of May '02, and started
working on on Tech's project to roll out a
campus portal. Partly so I could digest what I'd found, and partly to leave
something for those who followed me, I started a weblog and a
Wiki. The weblog took on a following when we found that
the software we were using for the project -
Campus Pipeline's
Luminis product - could directly read RSS files and make
them available as portal "channels".
I used the weblog to document our early efforts with our portal software
installation and technical explorations. It also gave me
an excuse to try MovableType, which I liked it so
much, I'm considering it for my personal blog.
- HTML and Emacs
This was the year when I finally got comfortable rolling my own
HTML. We're not talking fancy HTML, not building wonderful sites
out of frames (bad) or CSS (good), but just being able to build
web pages using simple tools. My preferred method of composing
posts for blogs is now Emacs 21.1 on Windows, the Emacs HTML
Helper mode, and ispell. It ain't fancy, but the tools fit my hands. (Back in June I wrote a little piece about my tools of choice: Emacs, Screen, and Pine.)
-
VMware
VMware has allowed
me to indulge my love of playing with systems without having to
have lots of computers. If you've got a P4 with 512MB of
memory, gigs of free disk space, and VMware, you can go to town. On
my Dell P4 at work, I have a Debian install which I use for
my primary work server, Redhat 7.3 and 8.0 installs, three small
Debian installs I used for testing firewalls (set up a
firewall install, and put two more instances of Debian running
'behind' that firewall - with all three running on the same P4 at
the same time), a copy of Win XP, a FreeBSD 4.6 install, and just
this last week, a FreeBSD 4.7 that I've
been using to learn lots about FreeBSD. Nothing gives you confidence
that you can tear down and build back up a system like VMware.
(Before I did a 2.4 kernel upgrade on my home system, I tried it
out in VMware.)
- Libraries
I made good use of our public library and the Georgia Tech
library this year. Each has advantages: as a staff member, I can
check out books from Tech's library for up to a year(!). And
DeKalb County Public Library's excellent web interface has
allowed me to search for books I've
heard about, put them on hold, and then get
email when they come in. DeKalb County also lets me review my
holds, books checked out, and lets me renew books, all via the
web. Wonderful!
- Getting my hands dirty
At CNN from '96 to '01, I managed other technical people: I never got
to put my hands on
boxes system. At Georgia Tech, I've been playing the role
of web architect, managing no one, and doing much more hands-on
technical work. Fun stuff. I'd still like to get back to
managing, but it's fun to see that my technical skills are still good.
1:40:05 PM 
|
|
© Copyright 2003 Paul Holbrook.
|
|
