It’s been a year since the last post on this weblog. A year is a long time. The world has changed in many ways, and technology has advanced in just as many, but completely different ways. I have also progressed, in the sense that I’ve been exploring and learning about lots of new things in the world of electronics, software, and physical computing.
Some things have solidified, such as my main laptop, which is still the same as three years ago (an 11″ MBA), because the shiny big fast one went to my daughter Myra, who has a far bigger need for that sort of hardware – for her photography and video work. Another solidifying trend has been my touch typing, which is now at the point where I do so 95% of the time (editing code still makes me go for the hunt-and-peck mode, occasionally).
Other things have stagnated, such as most notably the work on writing The Jee Book. There are pages and pages with words and images on my laptop, but I don’t like them one bit, and will not publish these as it is today. There is not enough direction, passion, focus, and fun in those draft pages. It would diminish the excitement and joy this deserves.
I’ve given a few presentations and workshops in the past year, but nothing of substance has come out of it all with respect to the JeeLabs site(s). My goal for this month is to get back into higher gear in public. Writing has always been very fulfilling and its own reward for me – I’m looking forward to finding my voice on the web again, in some form or other.
Now the hard part… I could use your help.
A year in solitary confinement (just kidding!) has made it harder for me to understand what you’d like most from JeeLabs. Just to get this clear: I don’t think I can restart the daily schedule of the weblog, as it was up to a year ago. This isn’t only about the effort and energy involved, or the lack of material, but the fact that the resulting stream-of-conscience website that it leads to is a bit hard to navigate through. Also, the resulting collection of articles is really not very practical as a resource – there are too many bits and pieces of information in there which are outdated and at times even misleading by now.
What sort of topics would you wish to see covered? My own interests still tend to gravitate towards long-lasting autonomous wireless sensor nodes. What frequency and size of posts / articles do you like? Should the topics be spread out broadly, or rather focus on some very specific problems? How simple or deep-diving should the information be? Do you want more science and maths, or rather some detailed construction plans? Do you prefer a personal and conversational style (such as this), or more a factual information source?
As always, I will make my own independent choices, but I promise to listen carefully and respectfully to each and every comment you send my way (email to jc@wippler.nl).
