I'm not very good at being bad at things. In fact, I have a track record of giving up on things if I'm not immediately good at it. (So I guess I'm good at giving up on things?) This is a tale of learning to persevere and accepting the effort that goes into learning new skills.
Inspired by Robb Knight I want to build my own /now page. As a teen I used to use PHPCurrently on my personal website to list what I was listening to, thinking, feeling, even what my MSN display picture was. Here's an objectively terrible screenshot from peak Evanescence phase, circa 2004.
And just as Robb did, I want to automate as much of it as I possibly could. No matter how many apps I try for tracking books, games, TV etc., I always forget to actually update them. Everything I do requires a sign-in these days, and it's all internet based, so why shouldn't I be able to automatically generate a page based on the data these companies have on me?
I'm still sad about Twitter.
I don't usually do these end-of-year reflection posts, but at a time where I feel like I'm finally starting to hit flat land again after a year of climbing hills, it seems like a nice thing to do, and a way for me to reflect on my own achievements.
I've been speaking at conferences and meetups on and off for nearly five years now, and a few people have asked me what the process is for preparing a talk. So I thought I'd share how I approach it.