Daily Archives: May 1, 2006

Some goals for May

Last month I set myself some goals in the hope that “going public” would be good spur into making me get them done. I was partially successful:

  • Complete tagging system for Geograph – early in the month it became clear that the Geograph server wasn’t coping well with traffic and photograph uploading was becoming a struggle. I stopped working on tagging and switched to completing “Guppy”, a desktop application for queuing uploads. I’ve got the basic framework almost complete, so a new goal will be to release it during May
  • Learn Python – I did enough to convince me to continue using it. I used it a couple of times when I might have otherwise turned to Perl. It’ll be a while before I’m truly up to speed, but I’ll most likely use Python now if I need to write more than 100 lines of Perl.
  • Release Pastebin source – success! I’ll continue enhancing it over the next month now that I’m on a roll. Had lots of positive feedback and ideas I’ll incorporate.

I think that if I hadn’t publically stated those goals, I would not have published the pastebin source or bothered with Python, so it’s been useful “life hack” that I’ll repeat! So, what to aim for in May?

  • Release Guppy – I’ll get a working beta of Guppy out there to aid Geograph contributors.
  • Lose a few pounds – I could do with losing a couple of stones, which doesn’t quite tally with geeking out in front of a PC every waking hour developing software. But, I’ll aim to lose half a stone and at report back on how I did it!

Blogging, I finally get it.

This blog has now completed its first full month, and I’ve managed to average one post per day! I’ve had various aborted attempts at doing this in years gone by, but this is the most active I’ve ever been.

One of the reasons is that I think I finally “get it”. My previous attempts at blogging were more about collecting daft links I didn’t want to bookmark but might want some day. I can do that now with del.icio.us. Now, I find myself using Technorati to track topics I’m interested in, and when an interesting post pops up, I try to relate it to things I’m working on or past experience.

I was quite surprised and encouraged that many posts with more original content attracted comments, so I’m going to try and do more of that. It should be an exciting month for Geograph, so expect many posts on that topic.

It seems you can’t fully appreciate the blogosphere until you immerse yourself in it!