Okie it’s time to post and get this site off the ground!
I have been working on this site for a while and given that this is my second attempt at blogging I am understandably nervous. In any case I decided I need to start at some point so here goes.
Who am I?
Well the answer to that is on the About page linked above so I am not going to spend much more time belaboring that point.
What am I going to talk about here?
Well for a while I considered maybe I should have a separate blog for work related stuff, another for my political views, another for my hobbies and interests (yes I do have those!) and maybe yet another for my rants. But then I realized I don't really have the time nor the inclination to post that many separate blogs and I heard about this wonderful thing called Tags and Tag Clouds so why not just start small! So in a nutshell, you are going to hear about everything under the sun that I think I should have an opinion about and some things that I know I should NOT have an opinion about but still do. It is mostly going to be focused around software security though. But I will also talk about some of my experiences with travel (which if you know me – I do a lot of – and no I don't mean that leisure travel!) and consulting in general besides all of the above.
How often will I be posting?
Well to answer that question I have to give you a little insight into my definition of blogging. In my world view there are two types of bloggers. Some bloggers basically thrive on links, linking to stories that interest them and their readers, nuggets of information and so on. Others take the time and effort to craft insightful posts which shed light for the rest of us over some topic that they are truly interested about. I plan to do a mix of both. I don't think I will be blogging every hour or two – in fact I would surprise myself if you ever see more than a couple of blog posts a day. But at the same time I will link often enough to other blogs, stories, videos etc that I think are interesting. And then every so often, I will make the time to write what I like to call an "opinion piece" on some topic (again probably most likely – software security related) offering what I hope will be some insight and outlook that could be useful on its own to readers. These will be the longer, well crafted posts as opposed to the speed linking.
Aah hah! That is probably the most important part of the site as far as I am concerned. To start with I plan on putting all the stuff that I have written for SoftwareMag, MSDN, Foundstone etc. up there – articles, white papers, webcasts - you name it. The long term plan though (and I am secretly conspiring with some other folks on this – shhhhhh) is to make it into a community effort – at which point this site will morph into a software security wiki and my blog and other personal artifacts will move elsewhere and certainly off the home page. The idea is to create a knowledge base around software security and a central repository for the vast amount of research and innovation that has gone on into this field of security. Currently, the wiki is setup so that you can only contribute if you are logged in and all users who sign up here have to be approved by me. That's just to keep the spammers away. I could use all the help I can get so if you feel like contributing shoot me an email or better still sign up and if it looks like a legitimate address I'll approve it. In any case if you don't hear from me after you sign up and your account doesn't seem like it is enabled definitely send me an email. There is also a sandbox area on the Wiki which we can use for collaboration if needed.
Over the next week or so I will start getting most of my work up onto the Wiki – unfortunately I have not found an easy way yet to go from Word to Wiki so it will have to be by hand for now unless one of you knows a better way. CS-Wiki is turning out to be amazingly easy to work with. Also did I mention that all of the content will be licensed under Creative Commons?
What is that picture above?
That, my friends, is the result of pain stakingly joining 9 pictures of the Yosemite Valley to create one panoramic image. Photography is one of those hobbies and interests I guarantee you will hear more about as time goes by. Yosemite National Park is certainly one of the most beautiful places I have been to and if anyone of you has not I suggest you get on the bus and head down there as soon as time permits. You will not be disappointed.
Acknowledgements
Three sets of people deserve a ton of praise for this site – firstly the folks at Orcsweb who are hosting this site, email and all – best technical support I have ever seen at any technology company period! Telligent and Rob Howard – Community Server what else can I say! Finally, Eric Falsken who created the CS-Wiki Community Server plugin that makes the wiki on this site possible. In fact if I have one complaint about the Telligent guys is that they don't have a wiki in Community Server (yet? ), but Eric has done great work to make up for that. One thing all three of these have in common is quick and responsive customer support. Man what a way to wow your customers!
By the way I am going to try and do most of my posting through Microsoft Word (yeah, yeah I know 5 zero days and all but I just don't like having a million different applications installed on my computer or on the web – so since I spend so much time with Office as part of my day job I might as well give it a shot, plus can I get a hoohah for spelling and grammar checking!) – let's see if it works out. If anyone has suggestions about a different publishing mechanism I am all ears – one critical feature I need though is offline editing capability so no web only editor is gonna work for me.
Finally, the usual yada yada disclaimer, all of the opinions expressed here are and always shall be (unless explicitly mentioned otherwise) my own and do not reflect on my employer in any way, shape or form (yawn :o)! I promise this is the last time you hear that – I am not going to right one line of a blog post and follow it with 10 lines of legal jargon that is mostly meaningless anyways!