Init Blog

My first post

Like most people, at the start of 2025 I set myself several goals and resolutions for the year. One of those goals was to start writing about the things I find interesting and come across in my day to day life. I think the main reason I decided to set this as a goal was because I enjoy reading blogs and articles from so many other talented people that part of me felt I needed to give "back to the community" as it were, despite the fact most of my writing will probably only be read by me, my long suffering girlfriend and someone stumbling across my stuff by mistake. The other reason I've embarked on this journal journey is that far too often I lie in bed unable to sleep because my brain is still thinking about many of the things I should have left at the bedroom door and I'm hoping writing some of these things down will help to give my brain some sort of temporary closure or relief.

So, let's see if I can keep it up for longer than 2024's "15 minutes of daily yoga" goal which lasted about 25 days...

What stuff to write about

As much as I tried when I was younger, I was never able to consistently contribute to a diary, so any sort of daily journal style writing is out the window. Not only do I not have the discipline to write something everyday, my life also isn't interesting enough to have noteworthy events on a daily basis. So to start with at least, I can keep my writing focused to the things that occupy my brain the most and allow myself to write about them as and when I can. These are:

It's a bit of an odd mix when you put it all together but for some reason these are the things that my mind enjoys spending time consuming and doing.

Software

Software probably occupies my mind the most, not only do I enjoy writing software (most of the time), but it's also usually the medium in which the most interesting puzzles crop up. For context, I was formerly a software developer, and am now the CTO of a technology company, so it's an area I've enjoyed teasing my mind with for a while now. I don't get as much time "hands on" programming now as I used to, and I do miss it, but I find I can usually scratch that itch by watching other people solve problems or read about some particular topic in depth. I'll expand more on this in my first tech post - see, I'm already holding myself accountable to write more!

Cooking

Cooking brings me so much joy, it is the most wonderful form of escapism for me and whilst my plating is fairly dreadful, usually the resulting food is pretty yummy.

I want to clarify that I explicitly do not include baking under the umbrella term of "cooking". Baking is a hateful science that yields dramatically different results depending on if your kitchen was 18°C or 18.1°C or if the humidity was 64% instead of 65%. I deeply admire anyone who is good at, and enjoys, baking but it is not for me.

I find with cooking I can really focus in on just what is in front of me, it allows me to escape all of the stress and worries of the day and just enjoy creating this one thing. I don't favour any particular cuisine or style of cooking, it can be anything from a cosy french stew like Coq au Vin to a rich chocolate mousse to a bowl of macaroni and cheese. Every now and then I try and cook something a bit fancy and have friends around to sample it at their own risk, but most of the time my cooking is simple but effective. I'd like to start a collection of my favourite recipes and this seems as good a place as any to do this.

Formula 1

I've been a Formula 1 fan since 2017, and yes I know that coincides dangerously close to the timing of the first season of Drive to Survive and all of the connotations that this carries, but I was a season too early so ha! I've always loved the idea of Formula 1, ever since I was young, but as we didn't grow up with Sky TV (just like poor Rishi Sunak) I never really got into it. As fortune would have it, a few years prior to this I started dating someone who was into Formula 1 and importantly did have Sky TV and this allowed me to get into Formula 1 when it was Hamilton vs Vettel, Mercedes vs Ferrari. My natural British bias kicked in hard and I started rooting for Hamilton and I have been ever since (it's been a tough few years).

So why do I enjoy it? In a nutshell it's watching teams push the absolute limits of engineering where person and machine must act together in perfect symbiosis, trying to go as fast as possible all whilst battling 19 other cars around you. That is unless you're Stake F1 team, then it's just a case of making it to the end of the race.

I probably won't write about this too frequently, but every now and then I have some thoughts which I'd like to note down and who knows, maybe other people will find them interesting.

Music

I've been singing since I was 8 years old, and I've always sung classical music. Probably wouldn't have been my first choice as an 8 year old but actually it's taken me all over the world and allowed me to sing in some of the most incredible places like St Mark's Basilica in Venice and Westminster Abbey. I sung all the way through school to the age of 18 then had a bit of a break but then at about 24 I picked it back up and I'm now in a choir in London where we sing 3 concerts a year as well as a few services here and then. I like this slightly more casual approach as it was rather intense at school and most London choirs I looked at joining required me to commit all my Sunday's as well as my first born child so I'm glad I've managed to find a way of continuing my singing without having to sacrifice my weekends.

I intend to write about any interesting pieces that I'm currently singing or any notable pieces I have sung in the past but this will probably be less frequent than the other topics I write about.

How to write about stuff

This is quite an odd one, I'm not really sure how to write about stuff, I don't know what tone to strike, I don't have a particular writing style or a particular persona I'm trying to display to the world. I'm hoping I'll sort of find my style as I write more and more and I suspect if you were to ever read through all my posts, they'll change as time goes on (hopefully for the better).

Where to write about stuff

There are so many places I could write my posts. You've got your purpose built blogging platforms such as Medium, Substack, Blogger etc. Then there's the numerous ways I could use a developer platform to customise my own site like Wordpress, Wix, Ghost, in fact, the product my company offers is a Low Code Development platform, I could build my own site in that in about 30 minutes! Now, all of these options would undoubtedly be fast, efficient and result in a high quality experience (ignoring my writing). So naturally, I will not be going with any of these options...

You see, one of my other 2025 goals was to become more familiar with web technology so that not only can I sound like I know what I'm talking about when I talk to my React developers at work but also I can actually get more stuck into the technical discussions. This means that, against everyone's recommendations, I will be writing my own site. My first post about software will cover my journey building this site and if you're reading this on a browser rather than in my notes app then I guess I built it, if you're not reading this then I guess I didn't manage it in the end.