Herein you’ll find articles on a very wide variety of topics about technology in the consumer space (mostly) and items of personal interest to me. I have also participated in and created several podcasts most notably Pragmatic and Causality and all of my podcasts can be found at The Engineered Network.
Site Refinements
I’ve been very busy the last few weeks focussing on refinements and tweaks for this site as a whole with a few additional features supporting the podcasts hosted here as well. A quick summary for those that are interested:
The Server
I’ve migrated the site to a new VPS, now running an up-to-date CentOS 7 x64 server located in San Francisco which should present significantly less loading delay times for readers in North America. The first VPS had become bloated and hard to update and it was time to start fresh. Improvements as a result of the upgrade include:
- Search functionality now working properly
- Faster page load times
- Statamic restructuring and switching to Parsedown also improved the speed of the site
The Podcast Live Stream ShowBot:
- Q&A Table now added
- Client-side reset functionality between episodes for Administrators (okay, so that’s not an end-user feature but it makes my life easier)
- Time stamp of suggestions/questions made, now in a relative format
Podcast-specific Additions:
- Past podcast guests are now listed, including links to the episodes they appeared on
- Integrated Guest/Host/Sponsors throughout the site reducing site overheads when updating
- Look-aheads for future episodes now fully automated
- Tweet links from the schedule now allow anyone to tweet a link with the times and time remaining until the next episode goes live
I will be taking a break from site improvements for a few weeks so I can focus on the content and preparation for Pragmatic but in sneak-peeks I’ve lined up a special guest for the 50th episode, and yes, I will be doing a “Christmas Special” for Episode 51 which is going to be a bit different.
Half A Million
If you had said to me a year ago that the podcast I was about to start would have half a million downloads in its first year I would have laughed, shaken my head and raised an incredulous eyebrow. And yet, here we are.
This morning LibSyn reported the official half-millionth download of Pragmatic. Technically the show probably passed that milestone a few weeks ago because the first five episodes of the show were originally hosted on Amazon S3 and their stats are somewhat less easy to follow and aren’t included in that figure as a result. That said there were also a few extra with the feed troubles after I went Indie so I figure it should balance itself out.
The response to the new additions to the show including site memberships and voting on topics have been very positive and the show continues to grow and for that I am very grateful.
Thank you to every listener, every supporter, every guest and co-host that has appeared on the show, and thank you in advance to those yet to appear. You’re the best :)
By Popular Request: Addenda
Hardly a new idea, I know, but after many requests from fans (particularly of the live show) and guest-hosts I’m putting together a new feed that is, well, an Addenda of material that didn’t make the first cut, but upon reflection either could or should have.
For the moment it will consist of excerpts from pre and post episodes of Pragmatic and Tangential. In the case of Pragmatic I’ve been very strict about what content goes in and if it’s off-topic it often gets cut. Now that material has a home.
Addenda will not be regular or probably very long, but here it is for those that asked.
Guest Appearance: The Engineering Commons
After nearly three months of trying to find a timeslot between my visits to site and their busy schedules (who knew it would be so hard to get four Engineers calendars to align?) I appeared on The Engineering Commons Podcast as a guest.
The Engineering Commons is a podcast I listen to regularly and it’s an Engineers podcast made by Engineers for Engineers. I had the pleasure of talking with Jeff Shelton, Carmen Parisi and Brian (Adam couldn’t make it) about why I got into Engineering, my PLC Programming language gripes and also about why I’ve done what I have with the structure of the Pragmatic podcast.
It was a great pleasure speaking to the guys and I’m very grateful to have had the opportunity.
Note: Any of my appearances on other podcasts are listed on the Podcasts, As A Guest page.