Okay, technically, that was on my old, hand-coded blog, and I'm lame even after almost 4 years, I haven't imported my
old blog into this one, but woo! 10 years!
Equally technically, I was posting something like blog posts on my old homepage, starting around 1998 or so. They
weren't archived or anything, I'd just insert a couple paragraphs between
tags on whatever I happened to feel like
writing about at the time, replacing whatever was there before. No, not a blog, but my blog was an extension of that.
My ideas about blogging have changed quite a bit. I originally wanted a place I could write anonymously about whatever I
felt like. Then I decided that blogging anonymously was horribly pretentious and nobody actually cared. Now I've
got Twitter satiating most of what used to drive me to blog. That's my current
excuse for why I don't hang out here quite as much, anyway.
When I started at my current employer (about 18 months ago), I got it in my head I should take advantage of their
training budget and proximity to uWaterloo (like the kids are calling it now) and take a course.
For one reason or another (sanity, mostly; also scheduling), I wasn't able to
take the compilers course in my 4th year. Compilers is one of the big
project courses. In terms of workload, it's well behind real time (the
train course) and graphics, but it's still nothing to sneeze at.
When I was an undergrad, I think I would have probably preferred to take graphics. But as you get older, you mature. Or
something. Yeah, graphics is cool and fun, but I think it would be a harder sell to get my employer to pay for it.
Particularly when your employer has its
own proprietary language to maintain.
For my part, I want to encourage people to make their own languages, because doing it makes you a world-class
programmer. Seriously. Not just a better programmer, but a best programmer. I've said it before, and I'm sticking with
it: having a deep understanding of compilers is what separates the wheat from the chaff. I say that without having the
slightest frigging clue what "chaff" is, but let's assume it's some sort of inferior wheat substitute, possibly made
from tofu. --Steve Yegge, The Next Big Language.
I don't know if I'll actually make my own language, or move to the compiler team at work, but I do know that
understanding this stuff is really, really useful and fundamental to software development. There's a lot of computer
science-y stuff that's not especially useful, but compilers are everywhere.
2010! All in all, I think it was a good year. Personally, I mean. I have some issues with it geopolitically, but I don't
think we need to go into that. And, for a change, it went by without any significant job turmoil. That's something!
Back in January, I got myself dragged into the long-running Northdale neighbourhood debate in the city of Waterloo.
Not something I enjoyed greatly, but I felt I had to dip my oar in. I
even presented to city council
about it.
I was interviewed by the (now sadly podfaded) The 100 Podcast about transportation issues and the LRT.
That's kind of cool.
[[Kwartzlab]] continues to be a great thing in our community, that I'm happy to
be a part of.
I ran an [[Ubuntu]] Global Jam, two release parties and helped host a LAN party with Eric. I started
holding Ubuntu Hours in Kitchener-Waterloo and IRC meetings for Ubuntu Canada online.
In the end, txwikinger and I became the new "contacts" for
the Ubuntu Canada Local Community organization.
I joined the office dodgeball team, leading
to a number of minor injuries.
I went to Bill and Tara's wedding. Eric and Alex get married
tonight.
Speaking of the Agile P2P, a number of us got together to start a technical book club,
starting with Uncle Bob's Clean Code. A number of agile
development luminaries, including Uncle Bob, have joined our conversations.
My blogging output flagged a bit, with
everything else going on. I took out some of my local politics frustrations on the [[Waterloo-Wellington Bloggers]]
Association, but that site is now defunct, merging with Wonderful Waterloo. That site
has asked me to contribute as a blogger, but I haven't pulled together a post yet.
The new season of Doctor Who was awesome! I thought so, anyway. Also, I now have a ridiculous amount of Doctor Who toys.
Ellen is still awesome.
I became an uncle. My sister Erin's son Grady was born in October.