Welcome to my blog!

After reflecting on what I wrote about in my first couple of posts to this blog, and what I named this blog, I thought I should dedicate a post now to welcome you, the blog reader, to this blog...

This blog is the result of a couple of things, I think some of them good, some of them bad...

I still need to reassemble my domain, www.binaryshift.com, and a la 43 things I thought creating a placeholder blog would motivate me and make me accountable to bring my domain binaryshift.com back to its "glory days" (and maybe even surpassing them...)

Also, some of my blogging coworkers have been wondering why I haven't been blogging for ages (I've been lazy)

Anyway, what really led me to start a new blog (I've blogged a bit in the past, and I'll explain later why I stopped blogging where I was blogging) was a little while ago, I saw someone reading a newspaper article on how Google had just introduced software that would enable web applications to run offline... I was a little bit curious and that day read about Google Gears....

So I'm reading about Google gears and I'm thinking, "wow this is soooo cool... offline web applications are going to be huge.... so they've released the API that enables you to do this, but are there are any starter apps out there?" Come to find out Google Reader is the first big gears enabled google web application, and now I'm thinking, "wow, now I can start reading blog postings on BART"... Now you're probably thinking "I've been able to do that with x (y and z)", which is probably true, but I work on a bunch of different machines (3 at home, 1 at work, a different one on the way to work), and I never invested the time to figure out an infrastructure to read blogs and stay in synch... So anyway, a couple of days go by, I do the occasional synch and set up the odd blog or two, and one of them happens to be the official google test automation blog (which I had never heard about)... I saw that one and I'm thinking "oh yeah, this is a maven trap (ala "Tipping Point") since I'm test infected! So I see the a posting on "TotT" and figure out that means "Testing on the Toilet", and it just happens to be non-work day for me, so then I'm thinking "oh yeah, my co-worker just set up a blog for ASP.NET technical questions with blogger, maybe I should just set up a blog there too", and the rest is history... (blog created, posting with link to testing on the toilet created).....

Fastforward a few days, and I'm talking to another co-worker, and he's basically asking "do you like testing?" and I essentially said, "I see it as an essential part of developing software"... (and when I say developing in that last sentence, I am referring to the "coding" aspect)...

I see testing (especially automated testing) as a way of measuring progress, giving you the tools to that can enable you to say "I'm done this (for now)", giving you confidence that you haven't broken anything (by enabling you to re-run existing tests), and creating feedback loops... However, I'm not surrounded by co-workers that have the same view or passion...

Anyway, this is part of the chain of how this blog came about... It's time I share some of my thoughts again with the world, and the coming together of a day away from work, blogging, toilets, testing helped a bit too...

While I've been making a living as a software developer for a number of years now (and have explored things like Agile methodologies and some of the coding related XP practices including continuous integration, TDD and refactoring), I (unfortunately) haven't worked in what I consider a true XP shop (yet)... that is, one that includes other practices like story cards, pair programming, and iterations, etc...

I have spent a little bit of time here and there with Ruby on Rails, and have used pure Ruby and PERL to automate certain tasks at work while working on PowerBuilder and .NET projects at work

As of late, since I'm working at an Investment Advisory firm, I've taken some business, finance and accounting classes to build up some financial and business knowledge. These classes are offered either online or at night time at UC Berkeley Extension in San Francisco. I've met some nice people (teachers and classmates), and have definitely learned a thing or two. I'm 2.5 courses away from completing all the courses required for the Investment Management finance certificate.

In my (limited) spare time, I love to do racewalking, ride my bike, and tinker around with a very special, revolutionary music making program used by some very cool artists (many mentioned here)

I think that I now have the thoughts, energy, and means to do a post a day (my current goal). To remind myself, and to inspire others, my sources of inspiration for postings will include:

- the ideas in my mind that I've wanted to put down (and not just on testing)
- my reactions to other peoples' blog posts and web pages
- conversations I have with other people
- comments on links from my online bookmarks

Thanks for reading, and I hope you find this and my other upcoming posts entertaining and informative!