I have only really had a couple of personal sites in my fairly lengthy time using the web. I had a personal programming site from the tender age of 14 showcasing my (at the time questionable) skills as a C++ programmer. It also came with what I rather gloriously called a graphics library written in C using mode 13h, a DOS based 320×200 256 colour graphics mode. I called it dang.h (Dan graphics). It featured such oddities as hand written straight line drawing algorithms (Bresenham’s if you’re interested). I also featured my favourite games of the week, notably Blood and Carmageddon.
Then came the ill-fated (although technically still running) thewatchblog. To be honest I should make more of that site, it explores very briefly one of my other passions, watch collecting. However I could never find the commitment to post regularly to it and lost interest.
But one of the best moments I remember as a web host was one day receiving an email from a chap using my dang.h library. He expressed his gratitude and asked for some pointers for some new development work he was considering. It was only a small, and possibly the only, piece of feedback I ever received from that website. However I remember being immensely pleased at the concept. Traffic has been relatively slow on this blog initially. I’ve had 6 comments … all spam so far (and one genuine from a friend). But, I was very pleased when looking at my natural traffic today I saw the following:
My first natural search traffic
Promising, but what was even better were the search terms that led them here:
- acl 9 rails
- actionscript prevent focus out
- adobe flex determine component focus
- restful_authentication
I’ve still got a grin on my face looking at those. That encourages me to the fact that people might stumble across this site for knowledge and find what they are looking for. And it has certainly given me a boost to carry on publishing my tech findings. Now, just waiting for that elusive first comment… (no that’s not a plea)!
And yes I do mean that in the geeky sense.
Who?
Welcome, my name is Daniel and I’ll be your guide for this journey, please keep hands and feet within the vehicle at all times.
So, another blog added to the (ugh!) blogosphere. Could there be anything left to say out there, any unique sentences left to be uttered? I’m sure there are plenty of combinations of words left to be spewed forth. To rephrase, are there any worthwhile sentences left to utter? My inner cynic says no but my literary heart says yes so let’s go with that for now.
What?
I’m a programmer by trade and by passion. I found myself consuming lots of material from the web for years and thought maybe now was the time to give something back. Plus I love hearing (and second best reading) the sound of my own voice. So the best of both worlds really. My craft has until recently focused solely on Java based websites. Fairly complicated sites to be fair, I currently run the tech team for the best looking business directory out there bview, and worked for the insurance comparison website simplybusiness (Phil the SEO man made me give him a link I swear).
This was honestly the first pickup that came up
But for fun in my spare time I’ve been focusing on the newer languages out there, Ruby On Rails (hereby RoR) being the main one. For a man who wouldn’t touch a language without a compiler (and ideally a virtual machine to run it in) I’ve branched out into the wonderful world of scripted languages. And decided for some things, I like it. My first foray was the whimsical (and occasionally NSFW) the pickuptruck, an answer looking for a question. It’s actually a great Twitter powered, user generated Web 2.0 extravaganza for pickup lines. I’ve even branched further into Flex, the dark programmer’s Flash tool with XML and everything! I’ll shortly be reporting on the app for that, needless to say it’s pretty “flash”.
Why?
I’m hoping this site becomes a useful resource for people to pick up advice on whatever technology I happen to be using this week. And a place for me to vent my spleen, my doctor said I should get the hosting on prescription to reduce my blood pressure.
As to the name of this blog, there are deep seated psychological reasons for it and I will be using my posts to exorcise demons and hopefully one day reveal the truth.
