This time on a mac

There’s been less activity than normal around here. Looking back, I missed last year completely. That’s more than a blip, that’s a complete year. Not sure what happened, I think it was a perfect storm...

Those that know me know that I started practicing Karate in 2015 and my facebook feed has been filled with belt exams and karate videos. I’m highly motivated to obtain my first degree in under three years, so three times a week in evening classes and weekends makes it difficult to find a few extra cycles to experiment and blog. On the plus side, I’m probably the most fit I’ve ever been, I've dropped nearly twenty pounds, toned up and dangerous.

The other major shift for me was professionally work wasn’t selling the projects that suited my skills. I kinda had a crisis of faith of sorts, where I felt I had to choose a new religion. I switched into managing more people, bought a mac and learned Swift, and explored leveraging my .net and WPF strengths in Xamarin. Work would eventually pick up later in the year, but in true agency fashion it involved dusting off my Unity3D skills, learning how to rock a HoloLens and learn Python and Ruby while I was at it. There’s loads to blog about it.

I want to touch on the macbook reference above. I feel like I’ve made a career out of bashing apple. (I ended many arguments in the 90s with apple fanboys with my favourite argument killer: “...but it’s a mac…”) Buying a mac for me was huge slice of humble pie. I still use a PC at work, but my mac is now my playground and go to device when I want to do something that isn’t “work”. I’m writing this on a mac, trying out blogo today.

One last thing, to accompany my macbook I switched to an iPhone and parted ways with my Windows Phone. I’m no stranger to iOS as I’ve had an iPad and iPhone in the past, but I was on Windows Phone for years with three different devices. I loved the platform, and still do, but I got tired of waiting for apps that the rest of the planet had. Apply Pay and wallet are awesome. I may still buy a lumina to play with UWP with Xamarin.

So what should you expect this year around here? Well, hopefully I can make good on promises to blog more, but expect to see a combination of development and agile delivery practices. You’ll likely see some Xamarin, some UI automation, maybe a HoloLens. From an agile delivery perspective, expect some tips and tricks to bring to your team as well as a focus on DevOps and Test Automation.