Well now, I have a blog. Isn't that grand? No, probably not. Still. Here it is. And for some reason, you're reading it. Well, I don't promise to make sense, be right, be polite, politically correct, correctly spelled, grammatically correct, lacking in profanity, or any of that nicey nicey rubbish. After all, I'm Australian, and aren't we all down-under here, just a bunch of dumb, drunk, and stupid yobbos? Further on the disclaimer, I also don't promise that posts I make on here will be overly
polished, well considered (or for that matter, involve any prior thought
or consideration at all), and I most certainly reserve the right to
change, revise, or reverse my opinion on any post presented herein. So if I say something here that offends you… You know where the close button is, it is totally your right to go right on and use it — I won't be offended, that I do promise. And on that note… Let's get on with the show.
Truth be told, I'm not really Old as the title of this blog suggests… That is to say, back in my very early 20's I
decided that people 30 and over were Old, people 40 and over were
Elderly, so on through Antique, Ancient, Prehistoric, Primordial, and
anyone 90 or older were from Before Time Itself. Well… It comes to
pass that I'm now Elderly, fairly recently as of my writing this post,
in fact. So lets just call this part of my mid-life crises, and move
on, shall we?
Okay… I've been thinking about having my own blog since the late 90's, but in all that time, there's been a few less things I've particularly wanted to post on one, than I have fingers to count them on (and once or twice, rather glad in hindsight that I didn't have a blog to post them on). So why now? Well I was trying to find something I'd written some time ago to re-post to someone, and it occurred to me that if I'd written it on my blog — the one I didn't have — I'd know were to find it.
Thankfully, my younger brother started his own blog
just recently, which reminded me that there are web sites that do all
that for you — if he can start one, I figure it's about bloody time I
did too. And so now that I'm Elderly (see below), I have. Not so much
for you, to be honest, though someone may be disturbed enough to enjoy reading my ramblings,
but more as a repository of some of my own thoughts and opinions…
Admittedly, I suppose, way back then, I actually did kind of have a blog of sorts… Though it was more so just a personal webpage (and I didn't use it either, so don't be expecting many — or at least consistent — posts on here), but that was generally because my idea of webpage aesthetics are a little, well, lacking, and more-so because when working on my own projects, I generally prefer exploring new ideas over perfecting old ones. So shortly after writing my first web pages, amounting to what would be my first couple blog posts, I set about crafting some shell scripts to wrap it up in a basic template system, followed by some active content using CGI, and then I set about writing (and occasionally re-writing) myself an entire web server to host it on (but ended up hosting more useful things which got all my attention)… And why? No particular reason… Mostly just because I could, and because the challenge of writing the web server was mostly more enjoyable than that of writing the pages it was actually hosting. All in all, it ended up being a significantly comprehensive and capable little web server, that I was quite proud of if I do say so myself, and which currently resides on a hard drive that went deceased in between implementing a backup strategy, and realising I no longer had the benefit of several distinct University accounts functioning as my backup system — oddly, I now do backups.
Further along those lines — and to round out this now rather long and exceedingly rambly introductory post — I am, I suppose, a hobbyist programmer and electronic engineer. Somewhat
regrettably, due to that pesky thing called life (and it's bothersome
dependency on money), I've let both of those slide a little too much for the past decade
or so. Although I have a good breadth of knowledge on both areas (and continue to learn and expand), being
more of a tinkerer than even a serious hobbyist since leaving
University has allowed the detail skills to slip a wee bit — it takes me a
little while to remember the specific differences between a regular
binary search algorithm, and finding the insertion point into a sorted
list using binary search, or driving the segments of a 7-segment display from a microcontroller lookup table, over the particulars of a constant current source to properly drive those same segments. I'm also afraid things like Python, Arduino, and Google Search
have spoilt me so. Though I am working to rekindle those skills (I didn't study Embedded Systems because it sounded like a high-paying career!), perhaps I'll post something about that sometime…
