In late 2016 I tried publishing a weekly update to force a regular writing habit. It lasted four issues. They're collected here in one place; the originals now redirect to this page.
Weekly Update 1 (3 December 2016)
It's my first Weekly Update since my re-launch and I had quite a bit of activity this week. On the blog:
- It's a new Blog! (discussion of moving to a new platform, and the inspiration that got me there)
- Getting a drone for Christmas? Don't wreck it, learn to fly it. (how I learned to fly a drone)
These articles marked my return to writing here after only writing one other article in 2016. Here's to making up lost time!
Professionally I had a busy week on the East Coast speaking at two different Evanta CIO Summits (Washington D.C. and New Jersey). Both talks discussed Mind the Gap - Integrating IT and Security which boils down to reducing the number of tools that the Security team is using by bringing all of their actions into the same System of Action (ServiceNow) that the IT team is already using. This provides a number of benefits, not the least is that the Security team can leverage all of the rich information from IT's Configuration Management Database (CMDB). Then of course is the Single System of Engagement so your customers in the Enterprise can have a frictionless method to report their security issues.
I currently have 16 Draft articles for the blog (a leftover from running it on WordPress), they won't all see the light of day as some are just no longer relevant, but that means I have lots of ideas for new content so hopefully I can keep this going.
Weekly Update 2 (11 December 2016)
The second week of my new blog and I was able to accelerate the number of articles that I published, even during a heavy travel week at work. Two of the articles were product reviews, both of which are Kickstarter projects that finally came to fruition after more than two years of waiting:
- Ubiquiti - Configure micro-segmentation for IoT devices (the Internet of Things is a danger to the global network as well as your local LAN, here I discuss how I segregated my IoT devices into their own micro-segment in my home network, using Ubiquiti UniFi)
- 2016 - What I've Read (a collection of all the books I read in 2016 with short synopsis of each)
- Ube (now Plum) WiFi Connected Smart Light Dimmer (Lightpad) (a review of the Plum Lightpad smart dimmer, a project I backed on Kickstarter)
- The Temperfect Mug by Joeveo (a review of the Joeveo Temperfect travel mug, a project I backed on Kickstarter)
Professionally I spent the bulk of my time in Canada this week, which was quite a shock to my system from a temperature standpoint. I had a great time talking with many CIOs in Calgary and Edmonton, some customers of ServiceNow, some thinking about the platform. We discussed creating a Single System of Engagement for the Enterprise to enable Frictionless transactions for their employees.
The draft articles are being pared down slowly, one of which made it to a published state this week. Looking forward to what's in store next!
Weekly Update 3 (17 December 2016)
Time flies when you're having fun! I'm really happy to be back in Silicon Valley after returning from Calgary (and Edmonton). Nothing like being back, getting up in the morning to a crisp 50ยบ and going for a walk. The last week was relatively quiet as the year is winding down. This past week I published two articles:
- Cable TV Providers are in Trouble (my experience with Apple's new TV application for Apple TV, and a realization that if the Cable providers continue to put up barriers to accessing content, they'll soon find themselves bypassed)
- Serial - Driverless Serial Terminal Emulator for macOS (a long-overdue review of the excellent Serial written by Chris Kent, if you use USB serial adapters and connect to consoles, check it out)
I also updated my post on OSX Hints and Tips showing how to Repair Permissions under macOS (it's been gone from Disk Utility since Yosemite) and Rebuilding the Launch Services Database, if you have Preferences that are not "sticking" (in my case it was an inability to set a different Mail client as the default under Mail.app Preferences).
Professionally I'm spending time getting back to Inbox Zero and writing some blog posts for ServiceNow that I'll be sure to share here.
Thanks for reading!
Weekly Update 4 (15 January 2017)
Back from my break over the holidays! Back to work, son is back to school. I didn't publish any articles over the break, but that doesn't mean I wasn't working on one!
Back in January, 2010 (7 years ago now), I published an article on my frustration around Intuit's Quicken product, and specifically the lack of support for the Macintosh platform. The article got a lot of publicity and I ended up writing a series of articles on the state of Macintosh Financial Management software. The most recent article on the topic was published in February, 2011 and discussed my final decision: Quicken for Mac was dead and I moved to iBank (now called Banktivity). Well, it's now 6 years that I've been using iBank for all of my Financial Management and really, nothing changed. Until it did...more to come soon!
At the turn of the New Year, I also got a bit retrospective about my iPhone. Looking at my Home Screen it was a mess of folders. To run any application, with the exception of Menu Bar items, required two clicks, I also never left my Home Screen. I decided that was silly, certainly there are a bunch of items that I use frequently, they should be on the Home Screen (or menu bar) and everything else should be pushed to another screen. I also didn't want any folders on the Home Screen. I removed everything from the Home Screen and started adding applications back as I used them. Each time I ran an application, I thought to myself "am I going to run this again today?" If the answer was "yes", then I moved it to the Home Screen. Today here's what it looks like:
I've tried to group Audio, Social, Mapping, and Messaging together so I can get to them quickly. I obviously still have two spots to fill, which surprised me, so the organization isn't perfect. You'll also notice I still have a folder...the issue is that I do a lot of Home Automation and, in today's world, that's a lot of apps. They all get used relatively frequently (Ecobee, Alexa, Sonos, SmartThings, Ring, Harmony, Apple TV, Home, Automatic, and others), but there is no central application, so I decided to make an exception and leave my "Home" folder on the Home Screen.
It was an interesting exercise and is obviously still going on.
My wife also started her MBA, so proud of her!
Talk to you next week.