It's been a long time since I last posted, I know. I think about it every day. If I even have any readers left, I'm sure all three of you have noticed that my posts have been slowing steadily since the beginning of the year. Rather than let the silence continue, I wanted to update everyone as to why there's been such a change in my posting habits.
The original purpose of my blog was mostly to chronicle my developments with BitWise by providing a "behind the scenes" look for those who wanted to dig deeper into the life of BitWise and its chief developer. Sometimes I wandered into technology in general, or personal rants, but the focus was on BitWise. I always enjoyed that part of my work. By now I'm sure everyone has noticed that I've all but stopped posting about BitWise, and that there hasn't been a new version since June -- a long time between releases.
A funny thing happened at the beginning of the year. I was coming up on four years of work on BitWise, almost three years of them full time, and to be honest, burnout was setting in. BitWise had become a stable, mature platform, and could stand on its own. At that time, my brother approached me about working for him, quarter-time, managing the books and printing of materials for his accounting review system. For a change of pace and the extra income, I agreed. Working quarter-time would allow me to continue to pursue all of my other long-standing businesses, including BitWise and OxONet.
As spring came around, I had learned the systems and was comfortable in my new role. All of my existing businesses continued to function pretty much the same as before. I was delighted to have a daily diversion from “the usual.” I wanted to share all of these exciting things with my friends here on my blog, but felt that would be violating my "BitWise" blog.
As I continued working, I found a lot of aspects of my brother's business that could be improved, especially in the IT arena. As spring turned to summer, I was tackling more projects, including some large-scale IT projects like a new database, a new ordering system, and a new secure document distribution. Even though an update to BitWise did get released in May, by this time I was working half-time or more for my brother. As summer turned to fall, I found myself rewriting a custom software program, and the work for my brother had increased to around than three-quarters time.
BitWise is not dead, and I'm not leaving it for dead. I was, and still am, committed to maintaining BitWise and my other businesses, but as has been rather clear over the past 6 months, there's not a lot of development. Nevertheless, BitWise has grown anyway, a testament to its usefulness in our ever-cluttered Internet world. I still am active over in the forums, and am in discussions with someone about a few minor tweaks for their business environment, which is great. Overall, the number of bugs reported is minimal, and I think BitWise is in great shape and stands by itself among its peers.
My overarching fear this whole time (and it seems especially silly now that I'm writing it) was that if I posted about anything else that I was doing, everyone would think that I had abandoned BitWise completely, and that I was leaving it for dead. In the end, I suppose the silence did that all by itself, and I've missed out on sharing so many stories along the way. Taking a break from the constant BitWise development has been a relief to me, and tackling the many projects for my brother's business has been refreshing and rewarding.
So while I don't know how many readers I still have out there, I think it's time for me to convert this blog to a more personal nature, encompassing all of my various projects and businesses, whether related to BitWise or not. After all, this is kevinhock.com, not bitwiseim.com, and while my life is very much intertwined with BitWise, BitWise is not the whole of me.
I hope that breaking the silence will be the first step in bringing my blog back to life. Drop me a comment and say hello especially if you're interested in my continuing my blog -- whether about BitWise or not. I’ve missed you all and I’d love to hear from you.
Who what? Where am I? What's this blog again?
Oh yeah, I remember you. Welcome back!
Will there be new features in BitWise? And what about the open source thing?
I’m here and looking forward to more stuff from you :)
Wow, I have readers. Amazing. ;)
To answer the questions:
- Will there be new features? There's nothing major planned right now, but there's no plans not to add anything more. (Enough negatives in there for you?)
- What about the open source thing? Still under consideration.
- Who am I, and what did I do with Kevin? I sent him on vacation in Tahiti. ;)
I'll try to make up for lost time by posting about some of the projects I've worked on this year soon.
I support your decision about the blog, Kevin. and will look forward for the new stuff too.
Keep it up