Commits, Pathways and Cogs

12 Nov 2016

Of Commits and Cogs

The Cloud: For A Rainy Day Reason

So, when I came to an abode hit by a ‘forced entry’, my heart sank. Not only was my trusty HP 450 - i3 15.6 Notebook missing but the pending ‘commits’ to my github file and blog repository. Oh, the GeoHipster sticker, and only one, on the lappy was gone too. A week later I got a 1GB RAM Machine donation from a friend. Without giving it a thought, my way back up was via Portable QGIS for spatial data work. With fingers crossed, I should be able to set up my blogging environment again (Aha! I had documented the procedure as a blog post).

From this unfortunate encounter i learnt that

• The cloud is there for a reason. Stay in the cloud to avoid a rainy day.

• Commit often. It’s a great backup.

The loss of my machine was a major drawback to the blogging commitment I had made. In it all though, It dawned on me from a friend’s loss that

You can steal a man’s resource or equipment but they’ll always have the idea and dream with them.

So I continued to blog, albeit offline.

The takeaway from this post is: Commit Often, Backup Often, Avoid the umbrella.

Drive The Cogs

Recently, well 2015-2016, I got to sit in on a number of meetings at my day job. I enjoyed the conversations, dialogue rather but, it all got me thinking. My greatest contribution was to do with spatial, after the fact, at the back of my mind I would be thinking how can all this we are discussing about be made into some cool system?

People around the table were mostly planners, higher management decision makers. Technical details is not on their lips but, technical gets my endorphins going. Technical, systems, database …

I’m forced to take out the magnifying glass and inspect the path I am treading. The short of it: I enjoy pushing and seeing the cogs turn!