The Half-Read Habit

By all accounts, I am a lifetime learner. I read a lot. I study and research a lot. I even give myself homework. Most of my reading is technical throughout the year (about computing, security, algorithms, and systems engineering) because most of it applies directly to my career/work.

But I am also interested in religion, philosophy and general science, so I diverge into these topics from time to time. The emerging trend is that I never finish the books I start reading, a bad habit that irks my wife; why would anyone start reading new books with so many others unfinished? How do you even maintain continuity in a jumble like that? You don't even want to know what my wish list looks like on Amazon.

So my summer pledge is to finish the books I already have (paperbacks first, then electronic) before I buy another book. And the trend is towards electronic books and less paperbacks.

Study Frenzy

I really don't miss school/college, but I do love to learn. So it is not surprising that from time to time, I choose topics to study and can sometimes overdo it, much like I find myself this week. Because of upcoming changes in my work environments, I've found it necessary to spruce up some technical skills. So I am currently reading:

• Ext JS 4: a technology for rich web user interfaces and mobile applications. You can produce some nice-looking and responsive websites and mobile apps this way.
• Spring 3.1: a technology used widely in Java to wire various components of an application. For example, I use it a lot to manage how I use Hibernate (data persistence), security, website presentation on the server, and application configuration, to mention but a few.
• Hibernate 4.1: my preferred library to handle interaction with databases, abstracting a lot of the details and allowing me to use ORM in my apps.
• Mule ESB 3.3: in an enterprise with different kinds of applications and systems, you need a data conduit that can connect everything together. I use this enterprise service bus to achieve exactly that, enabling legacy and other proprietary applications to communicate.
• ActiveMQ: a better way to move data reliably using message queuing. This is part of what will be implemented on the ESB.

All the above studies are skill/tool upgrades except ActiveMQ. Usually when I find myself using older libraries and technologies (or newer ones offer attractive features or fix old problems), I conduct a study to learn what's new and end up upgrading my entire code base. So it looks like the rest of the year will be consumed with completing this upgrade.

Besides these studies, I am also primarily still developing LeafCompass, the portal for landscapers. The first release is out, to be followed soon by a mobile version and a comprehensive support site.

As if that isn't enough, I am in self-taught mode for business administration: I'm feeling the itch to start ramping up my small business Strive Consulting, LLC and taking on more jobs, and eventually becoming completely self-employed. So I am designing a new app that will help administer that business too (so I can achieve operational automation and efficiency through technology).

Talk of busyness, I am! But the study frenzy seems like a necessary step at this stage in my life. I know it will pay off, so I do it despite how boring it is and how tired I end up.

Studying: WordPress

I've been waiting more than a year to begin upgrading my WordPress skills. At this point, I am interested in learning enough of this versatile platform to be able to develop themes, plugins, and sophisticated websites on WordPress.

I have three goals with this study, which I expect to last 1-2 months:

1. Be able to develop dynamic websites that use real-time and other sources of data from an Enterprise Service Bus. This is mostly for work, where we need a replacement for the wiki system. Content would be generated and posted from automation tools and other external processes.
2. Be able to develop entire websites in WordPress, coupled with a Java or Perl back-end or web services with SOAP. I would like to create technical publishing services this way.
3. Learn to design themes, develop plugins, and work comfortably with WordPress under-the-hood. Is programmatic full-access to a WordPress installation even possible? We'll find out.

This is the first of 3 books I will be reading, unless I find out soon enough that I cannot meet my goals using WordPress. I realized it is aged (published in 2010), but it is a good starting point. More technical discussions shall be posted at http://blog.strive-ltd.com/.