Branching off

Well that went well, didn't it?

I know, I know. It was one of those hare-brained plans that seem to be brilliant at the time but then turn out 'slightly' different than intended. And to be fair, it was only slightly in this case. Yes, I did do the writing course and yes, I did enjoy it for the most part. But at the end of the day it involved two resources which were becoming scarcer as the course progressed: the old twosome of Time and Money.

So, That sadly didn't result in the major writing career I'd hoped it would. Nah, only kidding. I was hoping it would re-kindle the passion I had for writing many years ago but except for one fleeting moment of glory (they actually really liked one of my short stories!), it didn't give me the 'rush' I'd hoped for.

So, with two more pressing parts of my life taking precedence - trying to get our house ready to be sold and work ramping up considerably too - it's time to see if this blog can be used for other ends.

I actually quit the writing course just before Christmas, but with the two aforementioned time-consuming parts taking more than their fair share, I've only really had any inspiration and inclination to write something recently.

And something else happened as well: my work focus has changed significantly. And it's changed in such a way that it might just be interesting enough to do a bit more than just fire off the occasional post on Twitter or Facebook. It might be worth... Blogging about!

It's not a revolutionary change, but one that is quite near and dear to my heart: I've become a lot more embroiled with one of the core aspects of software development in general: Source/Asset Control and Build Management.

Like any software developer, I've had my fair share of run-ins with systems like CVS, SVN, Git, Mercurial, but when you're talking about not just source control but also gigabytes upon gigabytes of assets and on top of that trying to keep several tens of thousands of lines of code running, a more directed approach seems to be in order.

There's not much I can write at the moment that would make any sense: I'm looking at many different systems and methods to see what's out there that looks useful to what we need to do. I'm also starting from First Principles for myself to see if what we're currently doing is possibly due some refinements. And like so many 'core' things in this industry, there are as many opinions about that as there are developers (and some producers might have something to say on this as well. And artists...)

But, I'm pretty sure this is one subject I can write about at length once I get really going. So maybe it's time to rename or re-start this blog in some way. Or maybe start a new one? Who knows. Stay tuned and maybe I'll write another post in less than 9 months...