Given that I rely on WordPress for my blog and have made a few tweaks here and there, Matt’s announcement of WordCamp in San Francisco on 8/5/2006 sounds appealing to me…and a lot of other WP end users and developers!
WordCamp
Reply
Category Archives: Site
I’ve burned my feed
I’ve thought about leveraging FeedBurner for awhile now but have been too busy to research the fuller benefits of such usage as well any potential switching costs in order to make a decision…until now. Thankfully FeedBurner is both listed on the WordPress Codex (here) and supported by a useful plugin that makes the cost to switch (from WP to FB) trivial. (Thanks, Steve Smith.)
You should now be automatically redirected to http://feeds.feedburner.com/craigrandall when accessing http://craigrandall.net/feed/. Please also feel free to cut over directly to my FeedBurner-based feed if you wish: http://feeds.feedburner.com/craigrandall. Of course, if you encounter any issues from my move to FeedBurner, I’d be grateful if you would kindly take the time to let me know.
Cheers!
Blogging review and intention
2005
About a year ago, I acquired the “craigrandall.net” domain and set out to employ WordPress as my blogging foundation. Both moves have paid nice dividends. My domain has been easier for contacts to recall and WordPress has allowed me to focus on creating content rather than maintaining infrastructure.
Looking at the year’s content creation, I’m pleasantly surprised but also motivated to change my emphases a bit in 2006. I benefitted greatly over the past year by the writing of others, averaging over a solid read a month. I had more inspirational posts than posts about my site. Still I seem to spend an inordinate amount of time posting about my site.
Seventy-four posts in 2005 is an OK pace. There were only two months where I didn’t average a post per week. But I’m less interested in quantity and more interested in quality. Compared to 2004, I did post more about my thoughts in 2005 and less about aggregating the thoughts of others. However, in 2006, I intend to carry this trend further by writing more from the gut and perhaps somewhat less in quotes.
2006
“Resolution” is a bit strong; so, I’m going with “intention” instead… Having just reflected upon 2005, I intend to focus moving forward on the following subjects (in no particular order):
- Areas of personal expertise and/or passion
- More reflections on the books I read
- Services and SOA
- WinFS – Microsoft’s next-generation integrated storage
- Enterprise content management (ECM) – including email archiving, identity management, basic content services (BCS)
- Open source projects of note
I’m sure that I’ll still take some space to share aspects of my life outside work and to describe how my site continues to evolve. However, I intend to tip the balance in favor of professional content. Perhaps in the process I will benefit from more interaction with my readership, but I know what is in my control and what I can only hope to influence. 
My intention stated here is motivated in part by my recent read of The Success of Open Source. That is, open source credits its membership based more on creation (evidence of skill) than it does on credential. It’s still always a good idea to have an up-to-date resume and to leverage tools like LinkedIn, but blogging is living and evolving evidence of being “fit for purpose.”
More on The Success of Open Source in a subsequent post…
New year’s intentions
“Resolution” is a bit strong; so, I’m going with “intention” instead.
Looking back on 2005, I intend to focus during 2006 on the following subject (in no particular order):
- More reflections on the books I read
- Enterprise content management (ECM) – including email archiving, identity management, basic content services (BCS)
- Open source projects of note
- WinFS – Microsoft’s next-generation integrated storage
- Similarities and differences between .NET and J2EE
- Services and SOA
- Areas of personal expertise and/or passion
I’m sure that I’ll still take some space to share aspects of my life outside work and to describe how my site continues to evolve. However, I intend to tip the balance in favor of professional content. Perhaps in the process I will benefit from more interaction with my readership, but I know what is in my control and what I can only hope to influence.
My intention stated here is motivated in part by my recent read of The Success of Open Source. That is, open source credits its membership based more on creation (evidence of skill) than it does on credential. It’s still always a good idea to have an up-to-date resume and to leverage tools like LinkedIn, but blogging is living and evolving evidence of being “fit for purpose.”
New Theme Imagery
It’s fair to say that Peter Gabriel‘s Up CD artwork inspired my brother to create my current theme imagery. I grabbed the link colors from his latter two-disc Hit release. Appropriately, the teal is from the second “Miss” (or not-yet-visited) CD; the magenta is from the first “Hit” (visited) CD. Like I said in my previous post, WordPress upgrades are so dead-simple that they yield time for other things.