I launched my personal blog (LifeinTECH) in 2008.

At the time, I had just started a new job as a Telecoms (Network) engineer. Over the past 14 years, LifeinTECH has followed my journey in technology, providing a location for me to share my thoughts and projects.

As I look back on the 300+ articles (approximately twenty-one per year), It is gratifying to see the trends that have followed my career through multiple engineering roles, to architecture, culminating in my current position as Chief Technology Officer (CTO).

LifeinTECH is non-profit (no advertisement or tracking) and is not associated with, or sponsored by any third parties. This is important, as the primary audience for LifeinTECH is me!

I find writing a powerful way to organise my thoughts and work through complex topics. It also provides a mechanism to help retain (and structure) information (like a journal).

The advantage of having the content public is that others can also (potentially) benefit and/or contribute. It also acts as a nice portfolio, capturing acomplishments and providing insight into passion areas.

Architecture

LifeinTECH follows the JAMstack web development architecture, using the Jekyll Static Site Generator. It is hosted on Netlify, secured using HTTPS, with a certificate provisioned from Let’s Encrypt.

I leverage the Netlify “Starter” plan, which includes 100GB bandwidth and 300 build minutes per month. The advantage of this plan is that it is completely free, whilst still offering modern capabilities, such as Custom Domains, CI/CD, GitHub integration, CDN, Site Previews, Serverless Functions, etc.

The site is configured as a Progessive Web App (PWA), meaning it can be installed on compatible systems. Only the twelve most recent articles, including the “About” and “Ninja Caves” pages are cached for offline access.

The following Jekyll plugins (Ruby Gems) are leveraged to enable and maintain specific futures.


This architecture (JAMStack + PWA) delivers exceptional performance and reliability, whilst also having a very low compute/bandwidth impact (with cached content).

Analytics

As previously stated, LifeinTECH does not target a specific audience and is not associated with or sponsored by any third parties.

There was a brief period in 2009, where I added referral links, which provided an income for a gadget fund. However, I found this biased my writing and removed the enjoyment of the process. Therefore, these were quickly removed.

As a result, traffic is fairly modest. In January (01-JAN-2022 to 31-JAN-2022), LifeinTECH was viewed by 3,400 unique users, covering 5,220 page views.

LifeinTECH

Over the years I have seen peaks (as many as 1000 unique users per day) but would state the January 2022 traffic flow has become fairly typical.

LifeinTECH also hosts the executable files for my game “Ninja Caves”, as well as the associated Privacy Policy, which is linked to the relevant App Stores (Apple App Store, etc.)

As a result, it is not uncommon for LifeinTECH to pass 50GB of used bandwidth per month. Thankfully, I have never crossed the 100GB limit of the Netlify “Starter” plan.

LifeinTECH

Over the years I have used multiple hosts, including Heroku and GitHub Pages, usually gravitating to the best “free” service.

Outlined below are links to my most common areas of interest.

I have also published several series, which are a collection of related content, for example, my series on the creation of a “Modern IT Ecosystem” for a hypothetical enterprise business.

Finally, I have dedicated pages for applications I have designed, developed and released.

I am not a professional software developer, therefore these projects are usually “hobby” based, developed in my spare time or as part of a hackathon.

2022 and Beyond!

In 2022, traditional blogging has become less popular, replaced by micro-blogging, vlogging and an infinite number of social networks.

Recognising the goal of LifeinTECH, I have no interest in shifting to a more “modern” approach. I believe there is power in traditional blogging, especially when used as a journal, helping to document, structure and share thoughts/projects.

Therefore, expect to see a steady stream of posts to LifeinTECH, usually biased toward my latest area of interest. Although not the primary goal, I hope the content can help others and I always welcome input.

Finally, it is important to reinforce that LifeinTECH is my personal blog and in no way reflects the views or plans of my employer.

lifeintech