Category: General

Being a Web Developer

Before I start blogging about some more technical matters I want to write a little about being a Web Developer.

I love it.

For me it is just about the perfect job, exactly the right mix of science and art to keep me interested and focused. Over time I have come to appreciate it in other ways as well, and this is what I really want to write about.

As a bit of a lefty socialist type I like to think that I can make the world a little bit better. When I started Web Development as a professional back in the year 2000 I felt that I had in some ways just become part of a machine. I was working at an agency (although they didn’t call themselves one) and more often than not my work was just a way for people with money to make more money. Such is capitalism.

Over time my skills improved, my knowledge of usability and accessibility increased, and I realised something. My work could dramatically improve people’s lives. And that is pretty damn cool.

I’m having problems with blogging

This blogging malarkey is not going well.

On the first day of this year I wrote that I hoped I could average a post for each week of the year. So far I have managed 3 posts. Including that first one. I did at least say it would be an average, but with 18 weeks already passed I need to up my game.

I have a few subjects I want to blog about, ranging from the last London BarCamp, and the experience I have had with speaking at BarCamps, to how to markup and style an accessible basic form (a seemingly simple topic, but something I still see people doing wrong).

However I’m not happy about the format. It feels a bit messy for me to write about a range of topics in one place. I think this might be part of why I haven’t posted much. Including this one, 3 of my 9 posts have been about politics in one form or another, 3 about BarCamps, and 3 about the blog itself. While I am fairly sure that most, if not all, of the people subscribed to my feed are also people I work with or have worked, with in general I don’t think that a combination of politics and BarCamps is going to appeal to many.

I’d like to write much more about politics, particularly human rights, but this is preventing me from wanting to post technical subjects, such as web development, in the same place.

I have a decision to make then. Either I leave everything as it is, and get over this idea of separation; or I create multiple sections to this blog each with their own feed; or, as I have alluded to before, I follow a Neil Crosby approach and have several separate places to blog and use this site as a portal to my presence on the web, which could host a combined feed for anyone who, for some reason, just wants to read what I have to type.

The latter feels more right, but involves thinking of names for the other domains or just subdomains (tech.ianpouncey.com for example), and I’m not certain that apathy won’t set in and I’ll just end up with multiple blogs with no activity.

This is the same over-thinking that stopped be from starting a blog years ago. I have to put up with it though, my mind just doesn’t seem to work any other way.

If any of the < 20 people likely to read this have any advice please comment. You'll be part of an exclusive group if you do - so far I've had five comments. Two of them were made by me.

Happy New Year!(?)

To anyone who may actually read this blog, may I wish you a very happy 2009, and I hope you had a great Christmas.

After 5 posts in the space of a week or so I seem to have lost the initial impetus I had when this blog was shiny and new. On a more positive note I have more of an idea of where I would like to go with it, probably more along the lines of a central point for anything else I do online. As with much of what I have done online recently I’m stealing this idea from Neil Crosby. Thanks Neil.

Anyway, what better way to get some momentum back than a post of the first day of the year. I don’t think I’ll be able to keep this going in the same way that The Hodge has planned, but hopefully I’ll be able to average a post for each week.

First Post!

After many years of procrastination, I have finally started my first blog.

What it is going to be about remains to be seen, but I suspect I’ll be writing about web development, particularly accessibility and usability, and might include the odd political rant and my views on various human rights issues.

This is a weekend for firsts for me. First blog. First blog post. And also my first BarCamp, which will hopefully involve my first crack at technical public speaking. I’m attending BarCamp Liverpool, the first in the city and billed as the biggest in the UK so far. Post #2 will in all probability be about day 1.