Tag: devdawn

Things are slowing down. By that, I mean, my fervour to constantly push Dev Dawn. I’m not sure why this is happening … actually, I think it’s a mix of a few different things.

The "new" feeling is no longer there. Dev Dawn, though still really young in terms of other blogs, is no longer a new thing in my life. It’s been around for a while.

Work is picking up, major. Am "Under the Hammer", so to speak. Crunch time. Boom.

My creative ideas seem to come in waves. And when the tide is out for a particular project, it’s hard to go swimming. Not impossible, but a lot harder.

Yeah.

Now that I’m writing this though, I’m wondering what’s the point of having a mope. I still love writing my thoughts on Development, pushing my understanding.

So this is a snap-shot of the pillar shifts that can happen in the span of a short time. Down, Up, Down, Up.

Purpose.

It’s a word that echoes hope.

It’s amazing looking at what people have said about purpose. Quite a few of the Purpose Quotes from Brainy Quote are on the money.

Existence is a strange bargain. Life owes us little; we owe it everything. The only true happiness comes from squandering ourselves for a purpose.

William Cowper

Purpose is deliberately thought-through goal-directedness.

Answers.com, Wikipedia

How strange is the lot of us mortals! Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose he knows not, though he senses it. But without deeper reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people.

Albert Einstein

Even Homer has something to say about purpose.

Kill myself? Killing myself is the last thing I’d ever do. Now I have a purpose, a reason to live. I don’t care who I have to face, I don’t care who I have to fight, I will not rest until this street gets a stop sign!

Homer Simpson

Okay. So maybe the quotes were a little over the top, and are in regards to our purpose for living. But each project we undertake can have the same application. We need clarity of purpose.

A Blog begins with Purpose. Whether that purpose is to general babble about daily life, pointing out generic seinfeld humor towards each and every individual that you encounter; or whether you decide to write about your daily efforts to tame the rarely seen Drop Bear, it’s with a purpose that you come to this.

It’s possible to jump in without much direction and make a successful blog. This has no doubt happened throughout the long course of blogging history, and if that happens for you, kudos.

However, for most of us, our blog needs a purpose.

Take Dev Dawn for example. I started it without much purpose. I had a vague idea about global domination … but that was about it. Over the last few months though, the purpose has gradually coalesced into something more defined. It’s not finished yet, but it’s a lot clearer than when I started.

The purpose of Dev Dawn is to help people (myself included) become better Developers. Now this is pretty specific, but that’s okay. Narrow is good.

Which reminds me. Darren Rowse has written Ten Rules for Profitable Blog Startups, which is a Blog take on Evan William’s Ten Rules for Web Startups. Both of these are excellent reads, and they have so much experience and wisdom in this field.

So back to Dev Dawn. Although I started without much purpose, this wasn’t a bad thing. What is important is that you quickly adapt and take hold of the information and wisdom that you have at your fingertips, waiting to be surfed. I’m not talking about reading tutorials on how to start a blog (like this one, ha ha). If you don’t already have a purpose, then look around at what else is going on. There are so many cool blogs to read and discover. You can be the Enterprise, soaring into the Final Frontier, or something like that.

Anyway, finding a purpose can be as simple as looking at a review site, and thinking, I could focus on reviewing the stories about Drop Bears. Well … you get the idea.

So, my first step in understanding how to blog, how to create and develop a blog, is Purpose. This is where we begin.

Here is Stu, me. I’m bigger than your average bear, and not so grumpy … most of the time.

Description Tags

Loud, Excitable, Simple, Iron-Skinned, Eats A Lot, Belly Laughs, Hairy, …

History

I’ve had an amazing life. In that I am so very blessed, and have been, despite the ups and downs we experience in life.

• Got beaten up a lot in late primary school/early highschool.
• Went to a Boarding School in Sydney
• Grew.
• Learned that most people felt wierd about the fact that my Dad was a Presbyterian Minister.
• Grew.
• Found that after a while, friendships were made despite any eternal differences.
• Grew.
• Found out about the power of being cool.
• Wasn’t Cool.
• Was Cool.
• Grew.
• Finished School and started Uni.
• Kept growing.
• Preached on the lawns at Sydney Uni while slowly doing a Bachelor of Science
• Played a lot of touch footy.
• Went to a lot of camps.
• Made some very close friendships.
• Met my wife.
• Around four weeks later we started going out.
• About seven weeks after that, we got engaged.
• Then, around … six months down the track, we got hitched.
• Part-Time Uni while doing Youth Work.
• Part-Time Uni while working at Dick Smith Electronics.
• We get pregnant.
• Again with the Uni while working at a Deli.
• Finished Uni, finally, six years after starting. Who says dumb people can’t finish stuff :) … heh.
• We move northward, into the great Australian Outback … sort of. It’s dry, and lots of flat country.
• Have three children, all of whom bring so much blessing it’s amazing.
• Start getting into development by accident, learning how to use the first windows version of Clarion.
• Start thinking I could do this on my own, plus the drought means people start running out of money. That, and bad management.
• Developing Systems becomes my main endevour for a couple of years.
• Not enough money is coming in. Too much hard work, not enough smart work.
• Get my current job.
• Move back to Sydney and start my current job.
• Learning (brain) curve spikes out of control. So much stuff is getting plugged into my head I’m beginning to wonder just how much of a newb I was before.
• Still learning.
• Started up a little blog called Dev Dawn.

Future

• Dev Dawn becomes a raging massive huge and unalterable success, projecting us into stardom.
• We cannot walk out of the office without being swamped by fans of all shapes and sizes.
• We refuse to "Sell Out To the Man", whoever that is at the time.
• Dev Dawn becomes the last bastion for hope against the evil oppressors.
• We triumph over the dark abyss that is Goosoft, the Microogle Overlords.

  Finis

There are a lot of little changes going on. So many that I’m having trouble keeping up.

Although anyone reading won’t be able to see it, we’re now using the excellent Wp Tiger Administration plugin by Steve Smith. Awesome stuff. Changes the entire administration process, very easy on the eye. It’s funny, cause it’s Mac/Apple, and I’ve almost exclusively never used the other side to the force. I mean … Brett, don’t get angry … It was a joke … hey, put down that bat! …

But anyway, kudos to all the peeps that are giving out their work into the webnet. It’s an exchange of information/ideas that makes this a very exciting time to be in development.

Where to begin? Well … at the beginning. If we lived in the world of The Princess Bride, then we would be Vizzini.

No. That’s not right.

If this were Joss Whedon’s Serenity-Verse, then we would be Mr Universe.

No. Again, not right.

Dev Dawn is about Ideas.

That’s better. More to the point. Ideas are what we are about. Not just having them, but doing something with them. Dev Dawn has purpose. There is much of it that isn’t known yet … but what is, follows.

Ideas are the life-blood of development. But they are only the beginning. You need a foundation. You need planning. You need the excitement to get an idea from fragments of words in space to released production. This is what Dev Dawn is about. Putting forth ideas, moulding them, fleshing them out into constructs of reality.

There is more. Community is a big part of it. Establishing a library of information that will help people to better understand what Development is. How to take an idea and transform it, make it a worthy goal.

Again with the phrase, the summation, the mission statement … Information :: Conduits Of, Interfaces To.

keywords: Ideas. Purpose. Development. Planning. Excitement (Fervour?).