Getting to started

This is the story of how I finally got around to signing up to a blogging service and getting that first post up there.  It isn’t all that exciting; there wasn’t any lighting, an explosion or even a bear attack, but this is my blog and my story so I’m going to tell it.

About a year ago things finally clicked together that as a software developer I should probably be showcasing my work and what I know, building a brand as it were.  It had nothing to do with the countless posts on building your online brand, it just came to me.  I swear.  Around this same time I came across a couple of developers talking about how building your blogging engine is a good way to showcase your work and try out new ideas with your development (can’t find any links anymore).  This really appealed to me; there’s always something new coming along and work isn’t always the best place to try every shiny thing.  So I got started.  About a year ago.

I got going at a fair clip on things, was working with the latest version of Rails (2.0 at that time) which was neat because they’ve added a lot of interesting things, but then life pulled me away.  I got married, so a lot of time was spent planning that, we bought a house and we even moved in.  It’s been a crazy year.  Even with everything going on I’d still try and pull a minute or two away to work on things.  I even managed a pretty decent design and logo.

Then I read this article by Jay Fields, someone I really respect within the rails community, on blogging.

Don’t roll your own, you don’t need the maintenance headache.

Hm.  Ya, shit, he’s right.  It’s been fun playing around with building the blog, but I wasn’t getting anywhere (though I did end up with a 17 message thread in gmail of post ideas).

With my new direction I did some research and decided on using Typepad to host my blog.  Now things aren’t quite how I’d like them (I don’t have full control over the html with the plan I got) but hey, at least I’m here.