It wasn't very long ago that I was raving about my new position in the not for profit world, but things change and I decided to move on after six months.

Essentially the direction I wanted to take things there ended up different to the way the board and others wanted to go, and I wasn't really happy going along so we parted ways.

I took a few weeks off to sort out a horrendous house moving experience, I've done some reflecting, spent a bit of time learning some new technology and I'm ready for the next step.

What I am good at, is looking at a problem and determining a good technology (or not technology) solution for it. I spend a lot of time knowing about the tools out there to achieve various tasks, and I'm good at making those things work together. I also am able to explain the technology side to the business people who might not have a deep understanding of most of these things.

On the development side, I'm also very interested in the tools to make a low friction development environment, things like good source control practices, continuous integration, automated deployments, unit testing etc

So I've decided to go more towards solution architecture consulting, maybe a little bit of training and mentoring.

I also like having my own working space, and flexibility in my time so doing this for myself makes a lot of sense.

I'm still working out what sort of structure this is going to have, so stay tuned for a part 2 blog post. In the meantime, if you have any nice projects, or other ideas, please feel free to get in touch.

A while back I hinted at some exciting stuff I had going on, and that I planned to blog about it soon. Well, “me”, “blogging” and “soon” are obviously not terms that should be seen together, but that’s life.

At the beginning of March, I took up a new role as Director of Technology with the Inspire Foundation.

Inspire is a fantastic non-profit that runs a number of programs to help young people change their world. I’ve mentioned them in the past, I worked on ActNow with Leisa back in my Massive days.

Inspire decided that they needed to bring more of their web development in house rather than having to rely on third parties so much, and asked me to be in charge of technology.

It’s a bit of a dream job for me, but it did take me a little while to commit to it. I wasn’t sure about giving up my working at home full time and being able to be with the kids all day. However my job was involving me in all sorts of nasty company and project politics and in the end I decided that the amount of grumpyness I was bringing into the house was negating the benefits of me being there. As soon as I made the decision and started work, I immediately knew I’d made the right decision.

We have lots of fun stuff going on, and now I have this out of the way I might talk about them a little more on the blog. For starters, we’re making some tweaks to ActNow, a rebuild of Reachout is in the works and a couple of other things.

I’ll stop rambling now.

We never expected a girl, especially not a 10 pound 1 redhead. Her big brother isn’t quite sure what to make of it all, I’m sure he’ll come around though.

Thank you Meg for the welcome.

Captured on YouTube. Miles loves it too.

My blog is back online.

I recently moved house. I'm no longer living in Erskineville, we've moved a few suburbs across to Leichhardt, in what was one of the most stressful few weeks I've known for a while.

My blog was hosted on a server in my house, when it came time to move I decided to move it to a hosting company, but ran out of time to actually move it. The blog was waaay down on my priority list at the time so it stayed offline until I had a decent net connection and I could get it all working again.

Hopefully now I have the move out of the way I might even find some things to write about again. But right now, I need sleep.

I don't normally jump on blog memes like this, but Phil is hassling me, and he's had a hard week :)

So here it is, five things you probably don't know about me from reading this blog.

1. Despite working in IT and/or data processing for about 9 years, I actually have a music degree. You can guess which of my skills I find it easier to make a living with.
2. As a child I lived in a bus for six months. My family converted a bus into a mobile home and used it to travel around for holidays. We all lived in it for a few months while building a house on a bush property 3 hours out of Sydney.
3. In my last year of high school, I was in a band with some friends called "Merkin Blues Band". Through that, I got the nickname Merkin. There is a group of people who still call me this. When a few of us moved away we held an all night outdoor music festival in the bush. We invited our friend's bands and called it Merkinstock.
4. Last year I signed up for a kickboxing class. What I didn't realise at the time was it was run by GLMA, the Gay and Lesbian Martial Arts association, and mostly female. There are not many situations in which a white, heterosexual male is the minority, and everybody is assuming something else about you. It resulted in a few funny conversations, "what, are you straight ?". I had a great time doing it, but people get a laugh when I tell them about my time in the lesbian kickboxing class.
5. I have a 15 month old son named Miles. He was born on my 30th birthday, which was also Father's Day. He likes riding bikes too. 

So that's me. Next up, Lela and Fernando.

Christmas has come early.

As I wrote in my last post, I've just come back from some time in Seattle. I got to spend a lot of time by myself wandering around the city, which was an interesting experience so I thought I'd write down some of my thoughts.

Bikes! Lots of them. Bike commuting is fairly common around Seattle, much more so than Sydney. A bunch of my new co-workers commute by bike, unfortunately I won't be working anywhere near them. Not only that, there are lots of lovely quiet country roads to do long rides on in the area, these are a bit harder to find around me. Next time I'm there I will have to hire a bike and get some riding in. The logistics and timing this time around didn't really make it possible.

Probably linked to the number of bikes, both the motorists and pedestrians are more polite and patient in Seattle. From walking around Sydney for years, I have developed a nasty jaywalking habit. I was pretty much alone in this while walking around downtown Seattle. In Sydney, you often can't trust the cars to do what they are meant to, so I tend to walk when I assess it to be safe, so I am in control of the situation rather than some lights. In Seattle, the motorists are more patient and obey the lights, so pedestrians stop and wait their turn too.

Moving away from the topic of transport options, I wasn't expecting much in the food and beverage department based on what I've been told. I have to say I was surprised. I ate some really good food in some of the downtown restaurants, Seattle is known for seafood, and it didn't disappoint. The area also has a lot of small breweries, and I had some really good beers over there. I was particularly fond of the Pike Brewery Pale Ale. I figure that the staff in these places must really rely on tips, because the service pretty much everywhere is great.

While I was there I also managed to go up in the Space Needle and admire the view. I was also able to attend Mark's wedding in a private suite at Safeco Field, where we got to see the Seattle Mariners defeat the Texas Rangers.

I'd hoped to see some good music while I was there, but it didn't happen. There just didn't seem to be much of a scene anywhere I went. I've since found out that there is some good stuff but it happens outside of the downtown areas I spent most of my time, and you need to know where to find it. Maybe next time. I did see some buskers who were really good though.

Obviously I was expecting wet weather the entire time. I got really lucky  there, with nice sunny days most of the time.

It seems I don't have a very strong Australian accent, and most people must expect Australians to sound like Crocodile Dundee or Steve Irwin because I kept being asked if I was English.

All in all, I liked Seattle. It's a really nice place, I was expecting it to have a lot more differences to Australia than it did. Have we reached a point where all major western cities are essentially the same ?

A couple of other travel related things.

Airport security. Yep, that sucks. However it wasn't as bad as I thought it could have been (and I'm sure having white skin helps here a lot). I figure that the people in those jobs are enjoying it as much as I am, so I smile and be polite and nobody seems to give me any hassles. Juggling a laptop, overloaded bag, a jacket and a pair of shoes through the scanning area is really no fun though.

On Monday morning  (the 11th) I looked out the hotel window and saw the American flag flying half mast on the building across the street. It really hadn't hit me until then just where I was and when. It was very strange being over there for the 5 year anniversary.

Lastly, I really missed Sam and Miles while I was away. I was very happy to get home.

I've held off writing this for a few weeks because it didn't really seem real yet, however the last week of international travel has changed that.

As of the end of August, I'm no longer a senior developer with Massive Interactive. Most of this year I've been working on a huge project which really hit home that I'm burnt out as a developer and in need of a change.

As luck would have it, such an opportunity arose and I went with it.

I've taken a position as a Solutions Architect with thePlatform, working on designing and managing integrations with thePlatform's Media Publishing System for Australian clients.

thePlatform is based in Seattle, so I've just spent a week there meeting everyone, getting some training, and finding out how everything works. It was a fun week, so much to learn in a short time.

When I started this blog, in my About page I wrote that I was very interested in where the music industry was headed with new technologies. Now I'll be very closely involved with some implementations of new technology for digital content delivery, it's exciting to be back on the cutting edge.

Over the last 18 months, with so many concurrent projects, I've not been vigilant enough about keeping my skills current. While I've been getting .NET 1.1 and SQL Server 2000 to jump through all sorts of hoops, I pretty much let the launch of the newer versions of these platforms pass me by. Two years ago I had all sorts of grand visions about being an early adopter of SQL 2005 and knowing lots about it before anyone else did. Unfortunately it just didn't work out that way, the projects I was working on didn't call for it, and with so much on I couldn't commit the time to diving in. While my new job isn't a coding job, I do have to be current with what people are using to develop solutions today so I finally have the mental bandwidth to start exploring the "new" stuff. I'm definitely looking forward to that. In fact, I've already started.

I am going to miss working at Massive. I made some great friends there and worked on some cool and high profile projects. It can be a fun environment to work in, unfortunately if you let it, it can also be draining. I let it.

Of course, I also can no longer call myself a bike commuter. I'll be working out of my house most of the time. But given the weird hours I'll have to keep to be in touch with the US, I am going to have some time in the day to go for a ride :)