When the Environment Is Right You Can Bring Your Whole Self to Work
To be able to ‘Bring Your Whole Self to Work’, to me, sounds like a key characteristic in a happy and healthy team and workplace.
Recent posts
2021: New Year, Goals, Plans and Resolutions to Make the Most of the new Pandemic World Order.
2020 felt like a long year, like a really long-ass year. As I look ahead to 2021 and what it holds, some planning and clarity around goals should make this a...
Checking Your Privilege: An Exercise in Not Lying to Yourself About How You Got to Where You Are Now.
Its hard to admit we wouldn’t be where we are without the privilege in our lives- yes, even me. But how good is it to be able to look inward, do some work, a...
Mentoring: Because Everyone Has Something They Can Give.
Mentoring was always something someone else was lucky enough to be involved with. I was fortunate enough to be able to answer the call when I was asked.
DevOps and Why Your Company Is Failing at It
Everyone want DevOps. Great things are promised and some companies even think they’re doing it because they have called one of their teams the DevOps Team. N...
Why its important to not discount ‘what you know’ when looking at ‘who you know’
Everyone says ‘its not what you know, its who you know’, while true in a sense, its the ‘what’ that’ll get you in the game.
Starting out building an AI Twitter Bot Project using GPT2 and Google Cloud.
With AI platforms in the cloud so readily available, I wanted to dive in and try it out. But I needed a project. So a twitter bot that can impersonate anyone...
The Human Side of Technology Solutions: A Tale of 2 Projects.
COVID-19 Level 4 Lockdown in New Zealand saw a lot of technology implementations and usage explode all over the internet (as well as the pandemic anxiety of ...
Learning to Read and Write (Better), Thinking About Learning in Public, During Lock-Down.
Lock-down is the perfect time to form some new habits or re-kindle old ones, cos what better time for this than now? And what better opportunity than the fac...
Too busy being busy: Documenting the whole journey, even the rubbish parts.
Every journey has its up’s and down’s and also a few questions marks. But its best to write it all down anyway. We don’t know how this ends yet!
When the going is slow so you think about your market validation. Wait, what even is that?
Pushing through the slow weeks (coding wise), and working your brain on other areas of the venture that needs some answers. Like markets and marketing. Reall...
When starting out and in doubt doing what you know is probably some good advice to follow!
Trying to figure out what to work on that would be profitable might lead you to start learning new things, which is not necessarily a bad things. But at leas...
Documenting the Journey: the hardest thing about getting anywhere, is starting somewhere.
You only regret the things you don’t do. So not starting something you want to do, for whatever reason, in the long-run, is setting yourself up for regret. I...
When you’re a contractor, what does working through the Holidays mean?
Contracting through the holidays, you make a choice between work and spending time with family. Often times working through makes more sense. But what else d...
Thoughts on Leadership
Leadership, like a fine wine, can get you drunk on power, abusive and not much fun for all involved. Some thoughts on leadership.
Rant: Fighting the Cloud World Takeover and Why You Dont Want to Win That War
The promise of the cloud world comes with a price, and its not just the often difficult pricing models of the providers. It’s the cost of revolutionizing you...
Rant: Project Work and People - Part 2.
Projects are hard. There’s a lot of moving pieces. Most of the time they’re done badly, but they don’t have to be.
Rant: Project Work and People - Part 1.
Working on projects, with people, to deliver, a project that every person can be happy with. Or at least that’s the goal right?
So I decided to run a Code Club - Part 2
When the planning and preparation is all done. There’s nothing left to it, but to do it. And afterwards, figure out if it was all worth it.
So I Decided to Run a Code Club - Part 1
Ive never had any life-long desire to work with kids, or teach anyone IT. That soon changed when I realised I had to do something about the lack of Pacific I...
Starting the year with a new contract: resolutions, goals and doing good work.
New Year, New Me? Or let’s just get on with the year? Sometimes the start of year ritual is old hat, but there’s plenty we shoud still consider during this p...
Taking responsibility for your IT skills if you want to be effective in your job, open up more options and future proof your career.
“There may be people that have more talent than you, but theres no excuse for anyone to work harder than you do.” - Derek Jeter.
Productivity tools and tips for your work as a DevOps Engineer - Part 2.
“I have all the tools and gadgets. I tell my son, who’s a producer, ‘You never work for the machine; the machine works for you.’ Quincy Jones”
Productivity tools and tips for your work as a DevOps Engineer - Part 1.
“The expectations of life depend upon diligence; the mechanic that would perfect his work must first sharpen his tools - Confucius”
You Are the Brand.
“Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.” Abraham Lincoln
Rant: The reality and pain of Legacy Systems, Change & Release red-tape, and Productivity.
While its a brave new world, dealing with legacy systems is very much a reality. What is it? Why it is and what we can do about it.
The skills that set you apart from the pack and how understanding them better may change the way you do it.
Most people know what the soft skills are that make them ‘good’ workers, but I dont think many people understand WHY this is, and how this understanding can ...
Rant: New Technology and Devops Is Useless If We Keep Applying the Same Thinking and Mindset That Devops Came to Save.
Its a brave new world, but the same flawed execution. Missing the mark, only faster and costlier.
The Work Life Balance Myth and Why we’re having the Wrong Conversation about Work.
My thoughts on why we’re going in the wrong direction on work life balance. How its not even the conversation we should be having.
A Quick Look at How AWS Cloud Cost Management Can Be a Pain in the Ass
A brief look at why AWS cost management can be a pain in the youknowwhere and why you shouldn’t underestimate it!
When a runaway Amazon EC2 instance shatters your AWS Cost Management Illusions
Have you been going along happily in cyberspace and then unexpectedly get a bill for things you aren’t using? No? Here, listen to my story anyway.
Patience and Perseverance for Progress in your Career and Work-life.
How patience and perseverance (or lack of) have impacted my life and career path.
An Evening with Alexa, Privacy and the Voice of the Future.
Buying into the world of voice-activated assistants and what they bring into your world (and your house).
The Contractor: Its Not Personal, Its Business
Usually its the company saying this. As a contractor, this is now your line too.
Working as a DevOps Engineer in Project Delivery
The origin story of working as a devops engineer on projects and project teams and why you shouldn’t leave DevOps Engineers to their own devices.
Understanding the pressure IT project work and how to manage stress that comes with it.
Dealing with the stress of delivering a project is hard, but understanding where this pressure comes from and who much is really warranted goes some way to m...
How to go from the dumbest guy on the team to contributing value.
“You can’t help being young, but it’s past time that you stopped being stupid.” - Scott Lynch.
Unchecked egos and badly managed expectations create hostile workplaces
Egotism is the anesthetic which nature gives us to deaden the pain of being a fool. - Dr. Herbert Shofield.
Doing deep work, problem solving and being interrupted in the workplace
To make real progress in creative thinking, problem solving, or other knowledge work, we need to keep out interruptions
The hard lessons learned from unintentional career as a Systems Engineer
“The Matrix is a system, Neo. That system is our enemy.” and other perspectives gained by learning and failing at various things in Information Technology.