Welcome to
Ruminant Nation, my (mostly) technical blog. Allow me to be your host as I ramble on about all things geeky, covering a range of topics broader than you could shake a stick at. Actually, if my blogging keeps you from randomly shaking sticks at topics, than I will be serving my purpose. As I tend to have diverse interests and a short attention span, you can expect me to discuss a veritable smattering of subjects. While some of them may be interesting to you, some may not, so if the current post isn’t your particular cup of tea, check back later. Eventually I’ll hit on something relevant.
About Me
It’s all about me, isn’t it? Actually, that’s precisely what this blog
isn’t. I refuse to fall into the trap that ruins many blogs, that being a self-serving perspective that offers no relevance to the reader. That said, in case you don’t know me personally (lucky!), here are just enough tidbits to give you some context:
I’m a software engineer by day. I spend most of my time working on back-end systems that process goodly amounts of data, and on services that offer ways to interact with said data. I spend less time these days working on visuals and design that go into front-end Graphical User Interfaces(GUIs). That’s probably for the best, as I have no sense of taste. I mention this because you will see articles here brought about from some of the issues I’ve had to overcome at work. For starters, expect some posts about optimization, memory footprint reduction, and lots of database-related issues. Having said that, you’ll probably be surprised that I do the bulk of my work these days in
PHP. Please don’t hold that against me (for the PHP programmers among you, I’ll explain that comment in a future post… maybe).
When I’m not getting paid, I tend to fiddle with whatever shiny object strikes my fancy. I used to work with
Ruby on Rails. I dabble in
Java. I used to be really into
Geocaching, so I played around a bit with the
Google Maps API and some GIS stuff. I get my graphical ya-yas out by noodling with Photoshop and (believe it or not) Paintshop Pro, as well as raytracing using
POV-Ray or, more recently,
Blender.
On the less technical side, I am a hobbyist musician. I clarify “hobbyist” as I have a bunch of synthesizers and other gear that largely collects dust these days. I keep meaning to get back to it, but who knows? I have been farting around with a
JSyn, a Java synthesis library. If I make any progress on that front, I will share it here as well.
About the Blog
As will the subject matter, the level of “difficulty” in the material will range from “Are you freaking kidding me?!?” to “Say what?”. I actually enjoy helping people out that are new to coding, so there will be some beginner-level posts. While I don’t claim to be an expert in anything, I do have some knowledge of things that is at least of an intermediate level. Expect some more technically daunting tidbits from time to time.
Regarding frequency of posts, I’ll be honest. I have a bad habit of starting things and allowing them to trail off into oblivion. There’s a high probability of this blog becoming the same way. Hopefully that isn’t the case; I’m not quite as erratic as I used to be. My point is that I will make every effort to update this blog with at least some modicum of regularity. New posts should come out on average every week or so… at least that’s my intent. Actual intervals may vary as my interest waxes and wanes.
I am more than willing to take topic requests. If you happen to come across something here that piques your interest, I would be happy to explore the topic further if it would help you out. I’m also willing to have guest writers, should you feel compelled to either bring something new to the table or just to counter something I’ve written that is just plain wrong.
With regards to comments, I have seen way too many blogs where people waste time nitpicking irrelevancies. While I welcome and value your feedback, both positive and negative, I don’t want to dedicate space to every jackass on the Internet that has an opinion. Therefore, I plan to moderate comments, not to rule with an iron fist, but just to keep the quality high. If I feel your comment is pertinent, I will publish it.
As you can see, I tend to be wordy. Thanks for making it through my opening salvo of utter nonsense. While my posts will probably only get more verbose, they will hopefully be more informative as well. Either this blog is going to be a success, or I’m going to look back in a year at this post with the same sadness with which I view my failed past efforts. Either way, I appreciate your taking the time to stop by and read.
Thank you, and please come back!
