Blog Posts

I wanted to give my site a bit more of a personal feel to it with the redesign. I am also trying to stick to my thoughts around using only HTML and CSS. To serve both of these needs I have created my site as more of a desk top / drawing pad style feel. Front Page I spent a bit of time browsing Code Pen and CSS Tricks to implement the following front page.

This week I started on the cleaning up of my site. One of the main reasons I am doing this, apart from refreshing the site a bit, is to learn and optimize the HTML and CSS. My current site uses Bootstrap under the covers, which has been fine and will probably be fine if I wanted continue down this path. However I like the idea of crafting something just for my needs and learning new things.

It’s been a fairly long time since I have played around with Hugo, mainly because it just works and I don’t generally need to touch it. And, with the way static site generators work, I have no real need to update it unless I want to leverage new functionality. This site used to run on version 0.27 and Hugo is now up to 0.59, quite a big jump. There is a raft of functionality that has been added so I might as well take advantage of it.

It’s quite easy to break good habits. By that I mean all the good stuff you are supposed to do, like work hard and look after you health, eat right etc. It’s REALLY easy not to do that stuff, because it is hard. It is hard to get up, day in and day out, and work, or exercise, or eat healthy because there are so many different things you can do that are lot’s more fun.

So I have been on this journey of being more social for almost year and a half now, trying to be more forthcoming with what I have learned and achieved over my years in IT. I am also a big fan of data and statistics, they are great ways to try and measure growth for me rather than comparing against someone or something. So while I have a little bit of time, and as I am nearing 12 months since the last review, lets have another look at what my growth has been.

Image by Michael Glass on Unsplash So, a couple of weeks ago I finished working for the Queensland Government. Most of my ten years within Government was spent working within the Department that provides Child Safety, Youth Justice and Community services, though I did do a stint in Health as well. Ten years is a long time so I thought I would take the time to reflect on my time within Government and some of the amazing people I met and things I did.

Image by Pexels on Pixabay on Unsplash I have been taking a number of digital media units as part of my University work because, as an IT person, public speaking and being more open is an area I am always trying to work on. This trimester I took a Social Media unit, looking at how social media, online communities and your online identity play a part in different fields.

Image by Alex Iby edited by Glenn Prince on Unsplash This blog is pretty new and, as my first ever post hints at, I’m starting to be more public with the work I do. University has been the catalyst for that change however it relates to a subject I have been reading and investigating for quite a while, personal branding. Personal branding is the image and representation of yourself, particularly in the online world (Michael Page, 2017).

Roughly five months ago I began this journey of being more social, and being more forthcoming with what I have learned and achieved over my years in IT. I am also a big fan of data and statistics. So as we near the end of this year, lets have a look to see if things have improved and where to from here. Image by felipe lopez on Unsplash What I started with We are starting this review with my very first post on this site in July 2018.

Image by rawpixel on Unsplash I had a marketing e-mail hit my Inbox the other day trying to sell me some courses that the sender offers around design, a profession normally associated with creative talent but requires a lot of experience in developing it as a skill. While this was not an overly uncommon occurrence what was interesting was part of their marketing spiel detailed the authors own learning journey (which mimics mine), which is essentially trying to figure it out for yourself, and how some people prefer more of a guided learning journey.