Getting started blogging
December 18, 2015
My first blog post
So here we finally are, me writing my first blog post. I have been thinking about starting my own blog for a while now. Let me try to explain what finally made me take this step and what I am hoping to achieve with this.
Let me introduce myself
First things first: I wanted to have a place where I can introduce myself to the world, or at least to anyone who stumbles upon this blog for whatever reason. Actually I created a website version of my CV for that, so let me introduce myself: Hi, I am Carmelo Scollo. While we are talking about my first timers, that website is also my first personal website. I will try to integrate this blog with the website or the other way round, but for now I think the link will do.
My motivation
So, what made me finally come around to start blogging? Well, it actually has to do with that very first website of mine. Creating that website, which is actually just a CV, was both very fun and very rewarding to me and allowed me to experience the benefits of writing. The rewarding effect came from the fact that for the first time in the past 5 years I took the time to look back and to acknowledge what I actually did in these 5 years. It gave me the chance to look at my life and my career from a new point of view. Instead of being unhappy about my situation and questioning the value of my time and how I am spending it, I was taking a step back, looking at what I achieved and for the first time in 5 years I actually felt a sense of pride for what I did. I suddenly felt like I actually did achieve something and started to want more. This to me is the true power of writing about what you do. You can not write about something, without reflecting about it. Taking the time to reflect, helps you to really understand. The fun part about writing my CV - a task that did not sound like fun at all - was the way how I did write it. I like to code and so I wrote my CV like a developer would do: With the help of code! Instead of starting up a word processor I visited JSON Resume and really started digging the idea of having your CV inside a JSON file that could be rendered in any way you like, really. All of a sudden instead of being bored writing a CV, I was using a little Node.js application I wrote and a German version of a print friendly theme I found to create my CV. The result can be seen here.Using the browser’s print feature I had a nice looking PDF ready to submit along a job application. That was the foundation for my website. I simply added another theme to my little application, an English translation of my JSON CV, hosted everything on my private git server, put a little Jenkins job on top of it and all of a sudden I had a continuously deployed CV website. Anyway, I submitted my CV to Daimler AG and they seemed to like it and the way I created it - the job description was also about DevOps, so I guess I did hit a nerve with my self-deploying CV - and they invited me. One thing led to another and I am actually starting to work with them in January 2016!
My goals
Experiencing the power of writing was what made me start this blog and I am planning to write about what I do, so that writing about it helps me to really understand and appreciate what I do. Sharing my technical adventures on the internet, on Github or any forum really, has always been greeted by friendly, helping people and so I hope for this blog to become a place where I can discuss technical things with people who are interested and to help by illustrating the things I do, the problems I encounter and the solutions that I find. Ultimately I would love to be able to stay in touch with my current colleagues at IBM. Maybe this blog can help and I will see some of them around here.
Let’s get started
So, let’s see what will become of this blog. I already have some posts in mind, like how to migrate a CVS repository to git, getting started with Let’s Encrypt on a Synology Diskstation with both Apache and Tomcat and to showcase my continuously deployed CV website. I am looking forward to this!