2018 : A Year in Review

What a strange year this has been for me from a technology perspective!

The Good

Lots of good things have happened over the year.

  • I did presentations at 15 separate tech events, as well as a talk to students at a local university. I do some talks at work too, but you can’t really count that. Even though I had some drama at some of the conferences, the presentations went well for the most part.
  • I was one of a group of people named as an “Oracle Code One Star” at Oracle Code One 2018, based on the speaker evaluations from last year’s Java One conference.
  • I got a Lifetime Achievement Award at UKOUG Tech18. This sounds a bit like being put out to pasture, but it’s just another speaker award based on the speaker evaluations from UKOUG Tech 17. You can only win three awards, so your third is called a lifetime achievement award, and you aren’t allowed in the race in following years.
  • I wrote over 150 blog posts, which averages at about one every 2.5 days. That sounds like a lot, considering I feel like I’ve not had much time to write this year.
  • I wrote over 90 articles for the website, which is more than one every 4 days. That also sounds like a lot. I just checked and in the last 18.5 years I’ve averaged more than one article a week. Crazy.
  • I’ve been putting a bunch of stuff on GitHub. It’s all stuff I’m messing with, as opposed to “real projects”, but it feels nice.

The Bad and the Ugly

Followers of the blog know this has been a tough year for me, because I keep moaning about it in posts like this.

When I’m travelling I pretty much write a daily diary on the blog, which reads like, “Which country did Tim puke in today?” I can’t have another year like this year.

Work has been hard this year, and will continue to be for the foreseeable future. I feel like I’m trapped in an abusive relationship with work. There are some big projects happening over the coming year and cruising is not an option. I’m not really sure how I’m going to cope. Time will tell I guess.

Next Year

Not resolutions as such, but some things I am thinking about for next year.

  • I’ve got to sort out my crappy lifestyle a bit. I’ve let everything just go to wrack and ruin this year and it shows both mentally and physically. I’m convinced it’s a big factor in the way this year has gone. I’m not going to make any rash promises, because I know me, but if I can just tune in again things might get better.
  • I’ve turned down a few conferences already for 2019. I will still be doing some, but I’m not sure how many. My confidence has hit rock-bottom and I just need something to dig me out of this funk. I tried to muscle through it this year, and it’s caused more harm than good.
  • It would be nice to do some YouTube videos again. I keep meaning to, but similar to the conference presentations, I’ve lost my mojo. I have no goals as far as numbers are concerned, but it would be nice to think this time next year I can say I’ve done some. At the moment, I’m enjoying putting together Fortnite game play videos for nephew #2 and nephew #1 has started to use my GoPro to record his downhill mountain biking, so I’ve done the first of what might be many of those for him.
  • As far as the website goes, it’s more of the same. Having some time over Christmas has allowed me to do some more learning and writing and I just feel more positive about things. It feels like getting back to my roots.
  • Work? It’s the classic case of you can work hard, or you can work long, but you can’t do both. Like a number of other people the days are getting longer and longer, but the backlog is not getting any shorter. I’ve just got to push the keyboard away and leave. It will all be there in the morning and I’ll be in a better position to deal with it.

Happy New Year everyone!

Cheers

Tim…

iPad. Thoughts so far…

In one of my previous posts I mentioned I bought an iPad whilst at OpenWorld. Well it’s a few days old so I thought I’d write a little something about my thoughts so far.

I was originally very skeptical about the whole iPad thing. I switched from a 17 inch laptop to a 13 inch MacBook Pro to reduce the weight of the bag I was lugging round at conferences. At OpenWorld I got so sick the weight of the MacBook I decided to buy the iPad and I must say, from a weight perspective at least, it is a massive improvement.

Having not been part of the iPhone crowd I was initially very confused by the interface. Reading content was a breeze but editing and typing was truly arduous. Over the last few days I’ve got used to it and for the most part it is OK. I’m typing this blog post now using it. Having said that, without a separate keyboard it is not a good device for content generation. Simple text is fine, but cut & paste is a complete pain. Don’t even get me started on pasting hyperlinks into blog and forum posts. Too much effort.

Where it really comes into it’s own is for reading content. I’ve got Kindle for iPad and the books are really neat and easy to read. I’ve also moved some PDFs of the Oracle docs onto iBooks and they are much easier to read on the iPad than the Kindle. Very impressive. The screen does suffer in bad light compared to the Kindle, so if you are only going to read novels, then save a load of cash and use a Kindle. If on the other hand you want to browse the net, check emails and do some minor content generation, like blogging and twitter, then the iPad is great.

Two other factors that weigh heavily in it’s favour compared to a laptop are the instant on/off and excellent battery life. No more hassle at conferences and on planes. Just switch it on and go.

It’s early days, but I think this will now replace my laptop for everything except presentations with demos.

Cheers

Tim…