August Update
I cannot even believe it's August already. Find out what I've been up to.
The Book
Okay, let's just get this out of the way now. I had planned on getting the Jekyll Guide finished by the end of August. That, unfortunately, is not going to happen. There were a lot of different things that contributed to this, but mostly, it was timing.
During the research phase of the book, I discovered that there was a bug in Jekyll. I worked with the team that manages Jekyll to get a fix in for it and it was officially included in the 2.1.1 release. Then, I had to wait for Github to upgrade the version of Jekyll that they support to include this version.
I'm super excited to announce that Github has finally done this! The reason this is so exciting is that there are a lot of awesome upgrades to Jekyll that will make working with a static site much easier. Because the book I'm working on relies heavily on publishing to Github, I also needed to wait till this happened so I can test everything out and make sure what I'm telling you to do, you can actually do.
I hope to get back into the swing of things over the next couple of weeks. I am also debating on what direction to take the book. At first, I wanted to focus solely on working with Jekyll. Now, however, I think I want to make it more of a "Publishing your site on Github with Jekyll" guide. We'll see.
The Blog
One of the other things I have been working on is redesigning this site. There are a lot of things I have learned over past year with regards to Jekyll and I would like them reflected in the design of this site. I also want to put a fresh face on the blog.
I am hoping to launch the site redesign by the end of the month. That is a very soft goal, though. What can I say, life has been getting in the way. Speaking of...
Life
Let's start with work. Work has been getting increasingly more hectic. My boss just took a position at another college which is awesome for him. Unfortunately, that means more work and responsibility for me and the other members of the PR team. We have been frantically trying to get all the things The Boss was responsible for onto our plates.
For the time being, we will be reporting to the President's office until a replacement is found. Unfortunately, that could take a while. I don't really want to get into the details here, but let's just say we are on a "hiring freeze" at the moment.
Outside of work, life has been pretty good. I have decided to try and do more crafty type things. There are several reasons for this and I will go into more detail in a future post. As a teaser, I decided a year ago that I would learn a new skill or craft each year. The only stipulation is that it must produce something tangible. Last year I taught myself to knit. This year it has been learning to sew.
I really enjoy working with my hands and having a thing to physically hold when I'm done is incredibly satisfying. So, look for the new post about all of that. It should be out in the next week or so.
I have also been focusing a lot lately on brushing up on my development skills. There are areas that I don't feel as confident in - like javascript - and I really want to level-up. I've been reading a lot of different materials and taking online courses to help with this. So far, I feel really good about how I'm progressing.
I've also really gotten into listening to podcasts again. I used to do this a lot. I'm not really sure why I stopped listening, but I did. Thankfully, I've gotten back into listening to them again. This is due in large part to getting hooked on cycling. I just recently purchased a bike and have been loving it. I'm currently at a point where I'm riding about 12 miles which takes me just around an hour. This is perfect for most podcasts.
Anyway, that's what's been happening lately. The next few weeks are going to be nuts but I am really going to try and keep myself on track. I really want to get this site updated and then finally start making progress on the book. Till next time, have a great day!