Life is a funny old thing. When I left working for an employer back at the end of 2015, I never dreamed I would, in the short space of 5 years time, come back to being employed full time again. Back in June of 2019, I shared the news that I had accepted an increased… Read more about Taking on new (old) challenges
Category Archives: Experiences
ASUS Zenbook 15 UX533FD review – an Ubuntu friendly developer laptop
I’ve always been a fan of Dell laptops. While often a little more pricey than their counterparts, their laptops are usually well built, typically run Ubuntu without any hassles, and Dell have great after sales service. My last two laptops where Dell. I’d been eyeing the Dell XPS 15 for about a year, and I… Read more about ASUS Zenbook 15 UX533FD review – an Ubuntu friendly developer laptop
Nobody likes you when you’re 43
When I met my wife in 2000, I had just turned 23. The previous year, Blink182 had released “What’s my age again?”, and she took great delight playing it for me. Today, I turn 43, meaning it has been 20 years since that event. Amazingly, my 23rd year was probably my own personal “rock bottom”,… Read more about Nobody likes you when you’re 43
An experiment in dark vs light themes
It all started, effectively 2 years ago, with this tweet. I’m not sure when I started following Brent on Twitter, but he posts interesting stuff about Laravel and PHP, and I’ve learned a bunch from his blog. Sometime last year he tweeted this and as I dug deeper into the conversation, I realised something. I… Read more about An experiment in dark vs light themes
Thoughts on the last 20 years.
As the year comes to a close, and I sit here in the small town of Wilderness, drinking my last beer of 2019, and watching the last fire of 2019 burn down, I contemplate the past 20 years of my life. 20 years ago (at around this time) I was a lost 22 year old,… Read more about Thoughts on the last 20 years.
Additions and upgrades
It’s been just over two years since I moved into my current office space, and just over a year since I last wrote about it. As my two major hobbies outside of my work as a developer are jiu-jitsu (which not many folks can relate to), and computer hardware and peripheral upgrades (which most can… Read more about Additions and upgrades
Taking a break from my WordPress community activities
It’s a funny old world. Over the course of the past few years I’ve seen a lot of people take a step back from contributing to WordPress, and I never thought I would get there. But here I am, writing about taking exactly such a break. When I joined the WordPress community back in early… Read more about Taking a break from my WordPress community activities
The Process of Writing
The general recommendation to becoming a better writer, is to write every day. Besides high school creative writing, I am mostly a self taught writer. I’ve never completed any official copy-writing courses, even though I have three purchased on Udemy from about 2 years ago. I generally don’t understand the finer details that would take… Read more about The Process of Writing
The two worst things you can say to your freelancer.
I’ve been freelancing full time for just over three years now, having spent 10 years developing for either digital agencies or small to medium sized businesses, in various roles. In the 3+ years since I switched to freelance development, the two sentences that I’ve heard/read the most from clients, and the ones that illicit the… Read more about The two worst things you can say to your freelancer.
The Answer to Life, The Universe, and Everything.
Today, I turned 42. If you’re a fan of sci-fi, specifically Douglas Adam’s “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”, you’ll understand both the importance of this number, and the reference in the title. I do think it’s sort of apt that the number 42 was used in this context. When I hit 40 I felt good… Read more about The Answer to Life, The Universe, and Everything.