So it’s been a little less than 2 weeks that this blog is live. I wanted to give you an update about what is going on as the Blup (Blog Update \o/) #1.
Tips & Tutorials
I’ve been quite busy since I started, trying to find good tips and good topics for tutorials. Most of what I published was related to my day-to-day work. From now on, I’m going to create a few project with technologies I’ve wanted to test for a while. These projects will be used as examples to write tutorials about the chosen technologies.
The first one, which is already started, is a really simple web app build with angular.js and pouchDB. The first version will only work with local databases available in the browser. In a second version, I plan to add remote support with data synchronisation.
The second project is going to be something like a tweet aggregator. I want to build it with two sets of different technologies : Ember.js with Rails 4 and Angular.js with Golang. Yeah Golang, I really want to try it and start using * everywhere :D. I’ve also wanted to try Ember for a while and now that the version 1 is out, I have no excuses !
The next project is a Sencha Touch hybrid app. I’ve always wanted to have a published app but I never found the time to do it. Now that I told the world, I have to do it :)
Last year, I created a chat web application with Node.js for a school project. I thought it could be interesting to share with you how we build it.
After rechecking this Node.js web chat, full of realtime magic thanks to Socket.io, I wanted to try Rails 4 live streaming and see what can be done with it.
Well, that’s quite a lot and it won’t happen in 2 weeks. I’m still working full time and I have a mémoire to finish (and maybe start…) before the first of October.
Mémoire
So yeah, my mémoire. 50 pages. 1 month. 1 man.
Subject : How the modularisation of a web application can allow a company a fast diversification ? (It actually sounds better in french)
Every time I try to work on it, I get caught by Hacker news, a new post idea, or you know, anything that would be more interesting (quite a lot!).
So how do I plan to write it and find the motivation while still doing many other things ? Well, I’m not sure yet. I talked a bit with Philip Alexander, who is currently writing a book, to get advices about time management and writing.
He gave me a good advice, which I actually knew about but never thought about applying it to my mémoire. It’s actually quite like programming and the refactoring process.
You code something. Then you realize it sucks. So you rewrite/reorganize some parts while keeping the logic.
Not trying to get things perfect at first makes it much easier, at least for me. I just have to write 2 crappy pages that future Thibault will review.
That’s the process I will use to write my mémoire. Everyday, I’m going to write around 2 pages of content. But before writing, I will refactor what I wrote the day before. I want to finish the writing process before October 25, leaving me with 6 days to review and ask relatives to read it.
To get more motivated, I have been thinking about what I could do with this mémoire after getting my degree. The first and only idea that came up was to extract some parts, rewrite them, add new content and publish it as an e-book about writing modularised web apps with Rails.
Screencast
Screencasts are so cool. I love them. I want to do it myself but it’s going to take even more time than writing tutorials. Anyway, I will check what I can do, hoping to start screen casting soon !
Blog Statistics
So far, my blog has received 114 visits by 72 different people. The average visit duration is exactly 5 minutes. Most of the traffic comes from Thailand (where I live), followed by France (where I come from) and USA. I consider it a good start since it’s the first time I make content available online.
So that’s it for the next months. I will keep creating new content for this blog, finish my mémoire and start creating screencasts. I will write Blups every 2 or 3 weeks to let you know about the overall progress.
