The Blog Welcomes 2013

Happy New Year! The blog is making a few changes for 2013.

 

Rename

The blog is renaming from SG Hill's Adventures in [Agile] Development to SG Hill's Adventures. It's a little overdue, as nothing has been written here on development in quite some time and SG Hill's Tidbits of Development exists.

 

Comments

The old system was the blogger default. Comments were reliable, but cumbersome. Earlier today I integrated disqus, a five-year-old startup company focused entirely on comments. Hopefully it's easier to use -- give it a shot!

 

Theme

The old theme was one of the blogger originals. This new one is a little better supported :)

Introducing SG Hill's Tidbits of Development

Wow! It's already March!

In what seems like the blink of an eye, we've gone through:

• two project extensions in Los Angeles
• significant progress on another application for said project's client
• a theme park
• faux Christmas carols in Colorado's Breckenridge
• a personal project transition to GitHub
• 200,000 miles on United, and 50,000 on American
• significant fitness-related changes
• ...and more

All without a single [Adventures] blog post.

Yikes!

Problem

For quite a while now, I've been spending a large portion of time on purely technical tasks. In some ways, this makes it more difficult to blog — at least in part because those interested in the content of this blog (read: virtually everything but code) may not necessarily be interested in how I've helped improve my project's JavaScript with a healthy pragmatic refactoring, for example.

I've increased my technical immersion over the last few months. As we can see with this fun chart below, the result is fewer blog posts.

I'm learning more than ever these days in very specific, technical categories. This is in no small part because I have the unbelievable privilege of working with some of the best software developers and consultants on the planet at ThoughtWorks. My coworkers are often willing to help, but their example alone is enough to really help push me toward continual improvement. I'm frequently finding myself in situations where the code I've written two months ago is flat out embarrassing — which is most certainly a wonderful thing. These learnings don't quite seem to fit with the majority of the 77 posts that have preceded this one, however. A trap I've fallen into is a half-written post that never ends up published because it doesn't fit the flow this blog has carved out.

Solution

A great idea that was proposed by Sumeet Moghe at the end of TWU XVIII is advice I'm finally ready to announce I'm following: split into two blogs.

1. Adventures in [Agile] Development
2. Tidbits of Development

So, What's The Difference?

Good news! I've taken the liberty of creating a mindmap that was timeboxed to 5 minutes whilst traveling on an airplane.

Rationale

All of the above adds up to why I've started a second blog, or created a dev branch, if you will. My intent is to have a code-centric corner of the world where I can write about improvements I'm making and hopefully get feedback on where to go next and how to make things better. As a secondary benefit, I hope to simply have a log that documents the progress of a young developer, if for no other reason than I wish there was something similar I could read while in school.

Fun Fact Cronotrons may one day be the official unit of time estimation.

SG Hill Goes Public

While not exactly an IPO, I've recently heard of a rather neat service aimed at travelers. You've possibly noticed the new box on the right from TripIt alerting fellow blogfans that I'm currently in Los Angeles.

There are a handful of post-worthy features of TripIt --

1. data-tracking
2. contact-alerting
3. keeping everyone in the loop

After registering, you forward itineraries to a magical email address at TripIt. The service then adds a trip to your profile and begins to tally miles and locations visited.

As can be expected of almost every app these days, there is a friending and social networking portion. If you'd like to connect and compete with miles, then certainly head over to my profile. At the time of writing, I'm the leader of my six connections by over 10,000 miles (Thanks, Bangalore!)

Welcome, TWU XIX!

Less than two months after the start of my Indian adventures we're set to welcome a new batch to Bangalore. TWU XIX had it's first day today with four Chicagoans. The good news is at least two of them will keep the proud Chicago-blogger tradition alive.

If you'll recall the start of my adventure, I headed out on a flight halfway around the world on my second day. Fellow Metro-Detroiter Damon has topped me, I believe; he moved to Chicago just three days before hopping a plane to India. You can follow Damon at his blog Training in Bengaluru.

Nan was also scheduled to leave with Damon. There was a visa issue that delayed things a bit, which ended up being quite a lot of fun.

As we waited for the visa to arrive, we covered some awesome subjects like Java and Test-Driven Development. It probably goes without saying, but we also covered the ever-evolving topics of fashion and styling. There's great news here as well -- Nan made it to ThoughtWorks University XIX and her adventures can be followed at her blog.

All the best to the new undergrads. I simply can't wait to hear about their experiences.

The Highly Anticipated Blogger Blog Stats Exposé: September Edition

It's becoming more and more fun to write these posts for three reasons:

1. My [famous] week one Pecha Kucha set the bar for 100 visits
2. The questions continue to roll in: "How many hits?"
3. Who doesn't love a little transparency?

	September	August 13 thru September 30
Unique Visitors	223	277
Visits	649	962
Page Views	2,152	3,283
Average Time	6:10	6:54

September Visitor Location Leaders

13 countries on five continents make up the September visitors. August's vistors were from 6 countries on four continents.

1. Bangalore, Karnataka, India - 262
2. [Metro] Detroit, Michigan, US - 114
3. Chicago, Illinois, US - 54
4. Galesburg, Illinois, US - 52
5. Denver, Colorado, US - 39

September's Most Popular Posts

1. Dance Night at the Orphanage
2. Bangalore's #1 Socialite
3. Free as in Freedom: Funniest Pecha Kucha Talk Ever
4. A "Comfortable" Round Three of Pecha Kucha
5. But What About The Actual University?

Fun Fact If you Google earliest hot shower, I'm now surprisingly in the top five results.

The Highly Anticipated Blogger Blog Stats Exposé

As referenced in my Pecha Kucha for ThoughtWorks University XVIII, I set the enormous arbitrary goal of achieving 100 hits on my blog. Since that time, we here at the blog (me) have had a number of questions about what the actual numbers are. Without further ado, let's break them down as of 11:59pm 2010-Aug-31.

Note metrics began August 13th.

The average visitor...

• Stays 8:32
• Views 3.64 pages (posts)

In total, users...

• visited 309 times
• were 86 unique people
• are from 6 countries in North America, South America, and Asia
• in the US are from 10 states
• from Michigan have arrived 106 times

Of note...

The night of the Pecha Kucha saw 44 hits from 29 people. The days before and after each saw 11 hits.

Seriously, wow.

GIDDY: Adventures in Blog Subscriptions

Welcome to the first GIDDY post. What is GIDDY? It's General Information Delivery, Delivered for You. As always, it's delivered via the most efficient means.

Long-time followers, by which I mean those who have been reading for two weeks now, may have noticed the right bar of this blog evolve a bit. Allow me to explain, because these widgets are quite confusing.

Google Friend Connect

Friend Connect comes as a default widget on Blogger blogs. It shouldn't be much of a surprise, because Blogger is a property of Google. More surprising is how little friend connect actually does. I assumed anyone who followed would be emailed an update when I posted. Unfortunately, that isn't the case. If you use Google Reader, the blogs you follow are added to your reader account automatically.

Bonus 1 I get to show the world how many followers I have.
Bonus 2 You get your avatar on my blog's front page.

RSS Feeds

Really Simple Syndication feeds were added by request. These allow people to easily subscribe to multiple websites and are best viewed in an RSS reader like Google Reader or Mozilla Thunderbird/Microsoft Outlook.

NEW: Subscribe by Email

Rejoice! I now have implemented the most-requested feature to date: automatic email updates! It's a 5 step process.

1. Enter email address
2. Click 'subscribe'
3. Enter the CAPTCHA
4. Submit the form
5. Click the link in the verification email you've received

Coming Soon

Tales of a camping weekend...

Pecha Kucha: How To Get 100 Hits On Your Blog

Pecha kucha (Wikipedia) is a simple presentation format designed to make presentations rapid and concise. The style is 20x20, meaning the presenter presents 20 slides for 20 seconds each. The slides move forward on an automatic timer. It's more challenging than it sounds at first.

Tonight was ThoughtWorks University XVIII's first of five pecha kucha nights. We'll be doing nine presentations per night, one night a week, for the remainder of the university. I signed up for the first week and was more than a little nervous to find I not only was going last, but following the amazing Sumeet Moghe.

My time quickly came and I promptly headed to the front of the room to give my presentation -- How To Get 100 Hits On Your Blog. I handed my phone off to Richard on the way up and captured the entire affair in HD*. I think it went well, but I'm absolutely open to feedback.

Slides

The slides of my colleagues are also available on slideshare. We had a wide variety of presentations; covering China, Chinese cuisine, time, the Kennedy Space Center, mobile communication and Disney World.

Note The video will be available soon.
Due to multiple YouTube upload failures, please enjoy the video below hosted on Vimeo (also available in high definition).

Pecha Kucha from Steve Hill on Vimeo.