State of the Mission: Friday, 9th December 2016

Update (2020-02-24)

This blog is now powered by Jekyll on Github.

Original Post

At some point I’d like to build my own blogging tool, or help to improve an open source one, but in the meantime Blogger gives me what I need and does a good job of formatting the posts for mobile devices as well.

In the long term I’d like to become independent of Google’s services – it’s heading in the same, invasive, politicised direction as Facebook and Apple, so it’s important but not urgent yet.

My first task is to transfer the contents of my Pastebin to Gist.

My first major project is a career research tool composed of a web scraper and an analyser.

It’ll start by parsing job ads for key words, and ultimately seek out a variety of data points to give a complete overview of what professions are in demand, what skills are up-and-coming in said professions, and what the prospects of someone starting out are.  It can be done in various languages – Python comes to mind – but I think Ruby and Rails will give me everything I need.  Maybe some JavaScript too.

I’m up to Chapter 38 of Learn Ruby the Hard Way, and find it to be one of the best resources I’ve come across.  In fact, I’ve suspended my Code Academy account until I’ve got everything I can from Learn Ruby the Hard Way, it’s really as good as that.

On Monday, I had a very encouraging catch-up with a local technical recruiter, and he laid out the Three Ps that in his experience are the key ingredients to success: Passion, presence, and projects.

As you can see, I’m putting everything to do with this mission on my blog, which is a big part of answering the question: What do I have to show for my efforts?

I’ve been thinking, tinkering, reading, deliberating, and pondering since July, and the more good stuff I have to show for my efforts, the better my chances.  As soon as practicable, I want that to be my Github repository, but in the meantime it’s my blog.