Friday, December 11, 2009

Relaunch of the Digital Ice Works Blog

I started this blog over five years ago. Blogging was newish then, and I was interested in learning more about the technology behind blogging, and how it fit within the larger framework of website design and implementation. I did a few posts, but then other priorities intervened, and the site has lain fallow ever since.

After rereading those initial posts I have decided to leave the first post as is (as a kind of historical marker), and delete the rest. It is somewhat surprising to me how many of the goals laid out in that first post are still germane. One thing has changed though: I have decided that the topics upon which I wish to discourse can best be handled in two blogs rather than one.

Topics related to books, movies, physics, public policy, PG Woodhouse (and Rex Stout), disco rollerskating, Web V2, gadgets, (and a lot else on the front burners of the 21st century) will be carried in my sister blog: PandaMusings.

My intent here will be to provide a log of what I'm working on, issues confronted, decisions and progress made, etc. I will also use this site as an "aide memoir" to record techniques, tips, tricks, and what have you against those "senior moment" days where I have the remembrance of dealing with an issue, but not the details. My professional life is one great big push down stack: that pushes down too much, and pops up too little. (I often find that I need tools to help recover what I've forgotten about prior activities.)

This blog will concern itself with hardware and software topics of interest to me as a working IT professional. Included will be (contrast this with the list from five years ago):

  • scripting (mostly power Shell)
  • OS and application deployments using MDT 2010
  • To partition or not to partition
  • my local network and audiovisual topology and architecture
  • Web/e-mail naming and hosting
  • OneNote
  • SharePoint
  • Expression Web Tools Suite
  • XHTML, CSS, XML, XSLT, etc.
  • Windows live technical/developer issues
  • Hard drives, UFD's, and SSD's
  • virtualization/booting from VHD's
  • Latest Windows desktop
  • Latest Windows server
  • Office Live Small Business
  • IPV6
  • Developer tools and utilities (printing, editors, etc.)
  • Stuff I'm dogfooding (office 2010, MDT 2010, power shall version 2, etc.)
  • UFD Booting
  • WIN PE
  • Blogging Technology

As I mentioned above I have deleted all the posts from five years ago save the first. They mostly dealt with issues that have been solved, or made irrelevant by the passage of time (e.g. where to store images to be used on webpages and blogs). There were also a number of posts having to do with which blog hosting and blog posting technologies to use, appropriate blog and webpage layout and customizations -- all of which are still relevant, but, since the blog posting ecosystem is today quite different (and much improved), I will repost on these issues with more current information.

People often ask authors from where do they get their ideas. This does not seem to be a problem for me as I have pages and pages of notes on topics that I want to blog about: the problem is in the doing. I do not type well, and in the past I have preferred to write and compose in longhand. Recently I have been using Dragon Naturally Speaking, a voice-recognition program, with quite a bit of success. I originally had problems with composition, but as my facility with all the ins and outs of the package has increased, my writing output (and productivity) has skyrocketed. I particularly find it very convenient to edit and correct text using voice. This post was done completely using NaturallySpeaking.

It is my hope to be able to spend one hour per day on each blog -- so far I have not come close to meeting this goal.

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