The First Post

Over the last few months, my creative juices have gradually begun to flow again. For the first time in a long time I feel excited about what I do.

It’s also become apparent that a large part of what I do is write. I’ve been knocking out a few articles and demos at work, and have been pleasantly surprised by the positive response. The ideas seems to come fairly easily, but I still have trouble with a few things.

Editing is hard.

Pressing publish is scary.

Getting into a rhythm will take time.

Those are all things I’d like to get better at. With a new year upon us, it seems like an ideal time to dive in.

In the wake of Twitter’s implosion, there seems to be a sudden uptick in people talking about blogging, and renewed interest in the idea of “owning your own content”.

It would be lovely to tell you what this blog is going to be about. Truth is, I don’t know.

What I do know is that I’ll try to follow my usual principles, namely

Readability counts

I’ve been writing code that is approachable for humans and computers alike for almost a decade now. Sure, the rules of English are a little more complicated than the rules of most programming languages, but I’d hope a lot of the same ideas apply here too.

A lot of the content here is going to be about technical (and technological) things. That shouldn’t mean you need a computer science degree to understand what’s going on. (For starters, I don’t have a computer science degree)

I want the articles here to be as approachable as possible. As long as you’re curious, you’re welcome.

We might as well have fun

Most technical writing gets very dense and takes itself way too seriously. That’s not my style.

The blogs and videos I like tend to be on the lighter side. They embrace a bit of whimsy.

Luckily, the goofy style seems to be what comes most naturally when I’m writing too.

Stay curious

I hope I have a few new ideas to share, the kinds of original thinking that ChatGPT would still struggle with.

But also, I’m curious to hear what other people have to say. Your feedback is very welcome.

Right now, this site is brand new and doesn’t support any kind of comments. That is something I’d like to address. For now, your thoughts are welcome over at comments@thefred.space .

With all that in mind, I think it’s time to wrap up. So here I am, pressing publish for the first time in a long time.

Watch this (fred)space.