I’ve been hosting my blog on Blogger for the past 10 years. For the past couple of years, I’ve been looking at rebooting my blog, trying to decide whether to stick with Blogger, write my own blog platform (like all developers at some point) or move onto WordPress. I’ve never needed to set up a WordPress site previously, so this seemed to be the perfect chance to learn something new! So, my new blog will . . .
I’ve picked up my own .dev domain and have set up a very basic website at paulhadfield.dev. The site is hosted in Azure and I’ve set up continuous integration/deployment up in DevOps pipelines. As well as scratching that itch of creating my own website, something I’ve been talking about for a while, it will allow me to learn more about various Azure technologies. This is part of my plan to look into becoming a certified . . .
Wow – looking back over my posts, my last review of the year was in 2013. Interestingly it feels like I’ve just had a very similar year and I’m feeling excited about 2019, the same way that I was for 2014! During the course of 2018, I’ve had 4 roles in 3 different companies – no wonder it feels like a long year!!! Over the past 5 years, the role I started back in 2013 . . .
Working in software development, a decent pair of headphones is a must. I’ve lost count of all the pairs that I’ve owned over the years! I’ve had some really good wired pairs but they’ve tended to die an early death when kicking my chair back to scoot across the office to speak with a colleague and forgetting I have them on my head or around my neck. I did try wireless headphones once before, a . . .
I’ve recently been lucky enough to get a Surface 2 Pro to play with – the top of the range 8GB RAM, 256GB storage version. I’d been looking at the Surface 2 for a while, wanting to see what Windows 8 is like on a small touch screen device – I still think the surface could go either way, it’s not getting the traction of other mobile devices/platforms and Windows 8 is certainly not without . . .
I’m just looking at my post from last year “looking forward to 2013”! I’m still in a hands-on development role, but now in a different company. Many of my goals for last year are still relevant for this year. Time management has to be right at the top of them; getting the right work/life balance whilst doing a job you love is always difficult; even more so when there is just so much new cool . . .
2013 certainly didn’t turn out as planned, the less said about the first half of the year the better; so moving on (which I did!) In the second half of the year I joined a company which has managed to get me excited about and enjoying programming again! It has been an insanely busy 7 months into which (as well as the normal .NET stuff) we’ve managed to cram learning to program iOS and Android . . .
First and foremost, the biggest change in 2013 is that I will be responsible for and managing the development team. To help the team with the challenges we will face in 2013 I will need to stay hand on too, so that should make time management critical just to make sure I can personally fit it all in. This will probably be the biggest challenge I have faced in the last few years and something . . .
2012 has been a full-on year with lots of change. I started the year in my previous role, preparing for a transition into a newly created role of “Solution Architect”; moving away from both day to day coding and purely concentrating on .NET applications/systems. It sounded a really interesting challenge but another opportunity presented itself working for my current company in another newly created role of “Technical Team Lead”. It was a hands-on development role, . . .
It’s been over 2 years in it’s current form and I really must get around to updating my website. As you can see, I went for a really retro “early days of the web” approach; possibly even with the caveat that it’s best viewed in a text only browser. So moving on, time for an update – I’ve not drawn up any designs, so that should be interesting but the site will probably just be . . .