The First Post

Introduction

I’ve had websites now and again from about 2003 or so. Nothing great. Nothing useful. Nothing visited. I mean, there was that time I made a website for my chemistry department to coordinate registrations for a Webelos and Boyscouts badge-earning event. That was cool because it was written entirely in Notepad, used SQL and PHP, and respected no one’s privacy. So, I got had that going for me in terms of websites.

Anyway, I’m trying again, and I thought this first post would outline that hell process. Let’s get started.

The Why

There are really two reasons why I’m trying this again:

• Peer pressure
• Need? Marketability? Income?

A friend of mine, said he had a blog and on that blog was an article on how to start a blog. With so many blogs coming at me in a very short period, I felt it was my duty to start one too. Of course, that was about 6 months ago. It’s been a slow process.

The altruistic and/or Stewart Smalley side of me, should such a thing exist, says I’m good enough and I have something to offer. I searched for what that was and came up with a site that focuses on accountability, assessment, evaluation, K12 policy, and using tools to accomplish tasks within those areas. I was at the zoo looking at meerkats when the idea came to me, or at least part of it.

Operationalization

The blog that started this charade suggested many things to get started. It was a good overview and I took that information, researched a bit more, and started the first iteration that never got off the ground. I went with WordPress, it seemed easy and relatively customizable. It wasn’t, at least for me.

• it felt too boilerplate and the themes were for “picture essay” blogs of vacations in the Alps or people who take photos of their restaurant orders
• there was too much monetization to get something decent; they are nickel-and-diming every single thing
• the host is too close to WP, its single integration and I like to diversify
• speed was not the name of the game in WP, its dynamic - great - but that comes at a cost I don’t like

I mean, WP is not bad at all, it’s just not for me. Enter the notion of static websites and Jekyll/Ruby

My brother-in-law posted an article where he referenced moving to a static website. I though it intriguing I’m reading about it and then he posts something related. #ontherighttrack (that’s still okay to do, right?) Anyway, I researched a bit more on Jekyll and I try it. To make a short story short:

1. Try Jekyll.
2. Talk to my Brother in law, he mentions some options and I hear about Hugo/Go.
3. Leave Jekyll.
4. I have a site again.

What is it? “Hugo is a static site engine written in Go.” It’s simple to use and I can remove all the cons I mentioned about WP earlier. There are a lot of tutorials and an extensive support community to help along the way. I suggest you give it a whirl.

Future Development

I have a lot of things in mind to talk about on this site. Here are few areas:

• Value-Added Model (VAM)
• School Grading Systems
• Teacher Evaluation Policies
• Data Analysis
  • Using Stata from beginner to advanced.
  • Using Excel. Eh.
• Business Intelligence / Analytics. Probably PowerBi or Excel.
• Program Evaluation and Return on Investment

There will be more, but that was my large-scale road map. Check out the About for some more information too.

‘be seeing you.