A long time ago, a friend used to talk about, ‘the luxury of time’. It sounded wonderful. Since I was part of one of the many rounds of layoffs at the company I worked for, I’m living that luxury… and it really is… wonderful!
Time is no longer an excuse not to create a place where I can share my thoughts about the things that currently interest me. So after many years of different.com’s existence serving all my other mundane services - here it is as my personal website.
Table of contents
Open Table of contents
The Incessant Tinkerer Problem
I am a GenX ‘maker’. From a very early age, I would hoard recycled junk under my bed so I had stock to build whatever caught my imagination. I grew up watching and helping my dear parents, cook, garden, build furniture, fix things, landscape the garden, re-model rooms, etc. It was an instilled natural instinct that I could make or fix pretty much anything. Everything was a curiosity and, without knowing it, a learning opportunity.
The term ‘life-long learner’ resonates, and for me it encompasses not only the joy of discovery, but getting hands on, the thrill of solving a problem, and sharing something I’ve made. I call it ‘tinkering’.
However, I have never been great at documenting these journeys. It feels like that gets in the way of doing the part that’s fun. I have huge respect for those who successfully juggle the two as ‘content creators’ on platforms like YouTube because you’re giving up time for joy to satisfy viewership. It is a noble mission to share the ups, and downs, of tinkering to help others realize they can do it too. I’m just not sure I’m made to do that.
Keeping Skills Sharp
Learning new stuff is always fun but maintaining the skills you’ve acquired through the years is tricky. I think it’s useful using your projects as a way of maintaining those skills. For example, building DIY Synth modules and tinkering with analog circuits recalled what I had learned at college for my engineering degree, writing a simple web app for learning how to deploy using containers on Kubernetes recalled my years of professional web development skills.
It matters because, as you learn more (and get older), the proverbial bucket you store all this information in overflows. You need to keep filling it up and plugging the rusty holes where possible if you want to stop the atrophy.
By the way, while I’ve had a lot of fun using Artificial Intelligence, it’s not at the expense of the risk of atrophy cloaked in the guise of power and productivity. However, that’s for another story.
Journey Over Destination
I’m not a fan those slick YouTube Maker montages of wonderful outcomes with some token problem chucked in now and then. Boring! The drawn out video diary of the journey, warts and all, helps me understand the process, the gotchas, the redirection of design decision, and discovery we love most. The journey always trumps the destination.
Now, I don’t know if documentation can do the same thing. Reading is more of a cognitive investment than a video, but writing what you’d want to find when stuck on the same problem in six months might prove useful to someone I think. I hope?
What to Expect Here
Think of this as a workshop journal that happens to be public. Notes-to-self while I’m figuring things out. Sometimes I’ll solve a problem, sometimes I’ll abandon it, sometimes I’ll just document where I got stuck.
What this won’t be? Polished tutorials or a portfolio. I don’t have the patience for either.
The Meta Irony
Yes I worry this might be another project that won’t be maintained, or some stereotype of a long stained lineage of tired developer blogs long since retired. I’m not sure if this will be different but, selfishly, it’ll be a diary for future-me - hopefully light and self-aware - and if you find it interesting, then that’s awesome.