{"id":2126,"date":"2013-11-08T13:35:59","date_gmt":"2013-11-08T01:35:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.deltics.co.nz\/blog\/?p=2126"},"modified":"2013-11-08T15:50:06","modified_gmt":"2013-11-08T03:50:06","slug":"setting-the-record-straight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.deltics.co.nz\/blog\/posts\/2126\/","title":{"rendered":"Setting The Record Straight"},"content":{"rendered":"<span class=\"rt-reading-time\" style=\"display: block;\"><span class=\"rt-label rt-prefix\">[Estimated Reading Time: <\/span> <span class=\"rt-time\">2<\/span> <span class=\"rt-label rt-postfix\">minutes]<\/span><\/span><p>Commenter Alexander <a href=\"https:\/\/www.deltics.co.nz\/blog\/posts\/2104\/comment-page-1#comment-15576\">complained that my blog had become &#8220;really, but REALLY boring&#8221;<\/a> recently.  I was surprised because I thought I had been posting a <strong>lot<\/strong> of interesting, technical material lately and I wondered why Alexander seemed to think I was spending most &#8211; if not all &#8211; of my time on opinion pieces.  So I went back and looked at my recent posting history.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>In the last month (30 days, more or less).  I have published a total of <strong>22<\/strong> articles of which:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>16 were broadly technical in nature<\/li>\n<li>4 were op-ed pieces about Embarcadero\/FireMonkey<\/li>\n<li>1 was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.deltics.co.nz\/blog\/posts\/1989\"><strong>very<\/strong> general coding humour<\/a><\/li>\n<li>1 which <a href=\"https:\/\/www.deltics.co.nz\/blog\/posts\/1919\">may have been sarcastic<\/a> but hardly &#8220;critical&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Given that this is a <strong>personal<\/strong> blog, reflecting my <strong>personal<\/strong> interests and concerns, I hardly think that <strong>18%<\/strong> of output being <em>opinion pieces<\/em> is an excessively dominant proportion.<\/p>\n<p>And I might add that the 18% figure is reached using a <em>very<\/em> crude count simply of the number of articles.  If you measure the output by the number of <em>words<\/em> or the <em>time<\/em> spent producing it, the percentage would plummet well into the <em>very<\/em> low single figures.  <\/p>\n<p>Even that figure of 22 articles also does not include the 2 pages for ADB WINLOG (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.deltics.co.nz\/blog\/adb-winlog\">info\/download<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.deltics.co.nz\/blog\/adb-winlog-user-guide\">user guide<\/a>) for example.  Not to mention the development of the application itself.  Or the coding that lies behind the posts on Smoketest.<\/p>\n<p>I could go on.<\/p>\n<p>The point being that heartwarming as they are, concerns that I am unduly and obsessively focussed on some sort of vendetta against Embarcadero are <em>ridiculously<\/em> misplaced.<\/p>\n<p>But whatever the proportion involved, the fact that the opinions I am moved to share revolve around Delphi and Embarcadero&#8217;s handling of it reflects only that I actually <em>give a damn<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>There is plenty else I could write about concerning my other interests such as my <a href=\"http:\/\/500px.com\/deltics\">photography<\/a> and musical interests (I recently joined a newly formed rock covers band &#8211; as lead vocalist &#8211; following a 2 year break after leaving <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=TrQM9FB7v7w\">a previous band<\/a>).  Musically I also dabble on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=k1x7q2VQx4w\">bass, keyboards and recording<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Contrary to popular opinion I <em>do<\/em> have a life.  \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n<p>This blog is just one part of that and is very specifically a <strong>Pascal blog<\/strong>.  And Delphi is still my primary Pascal environment (though Oxygene is rapidly overtaking it).  <\/p>\n<p>But I can start posting my photos and other things if it will reassure people that I am not feverishly scouring the internet desperately hunting out every little thing about which to criticise Embarcadero.  \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/farm3.staticflickr.com\/2532\/3737640205_56079cc700.jpg?w=640\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"rt-reading-time\" style=\"display: block;\"><span class=\"rt-label rt-prefix\">[Estimated Reading Time: <\/span> <span class=\"rt-time\">2<\/span> <span class=\"rt-label rt-postfix\">minutes]<\/span><\/span> Commenter Alexander complained that my blog had become &#8220;really, but REALLY boring&#8221; recently. I was surprised because I thought I had been posting a lot of interesting, technical material lately and I wondered why Alexander seemed to think I was spending most &#8211; if not all &#8211; of my time on opinion pieces. So I [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1TKYv-yi","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":39,"url":"https:\/\/www.deltics.co.nz\/blog\/posts\/39\/","url_meta":{"origin":2126,"position":0},"title":"Settling in to a new Blog","date":"02 Aug 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"I've tried numerous aborted attempts to kick off a blog in the past.\u00a0 The usual pattern is feverish enthusiasm at the outset, finding tools, creating an identity, tweaking artwork, an initial post or two etc etc, which rapidly diminishes into disinterest as I find that the hassle of setting up\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Blogging&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1080,"url":"https:\/\/www.deltics.co.nz\/blog\/posts\/1080\/","url_meta":{"origin":2126,"position":1},"title":"Why Delphi Cannot (currently) Support WinRT","date":"23 Aug 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Nor for that matter can any other unmanaged compiler except Microsoft's own C\/C++, apparently. Who would have thought that in a forum reply in a thread about and entitled \"HTML Builder\" you would stumble across crucial, technical information relating to the paucity of WinRT support in Delphi ? But it's\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Delphi&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":624,"url":"https:\/\/www.deltics.co.nz\/blog\/posts\/624\/","url_meta":{"origin":2126,"position":2},"title":"Another One Bites The Dust","date":"25 Feb 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Another commercial Delphi component vendor has apparently decided to pursue a direction that no longer involves supporting at least some of their Delphi components on a commercial basis. \u00a0Fortunately in this case they have decided to open source their products. \u00a0So, if you are using the Luxena DBExpress drivers for\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Delphi&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":711,"url":"https:\/\/www.deltics.co.nz\/blog\/posts\/711\/","url_meta":{"origin":2126,"position":3},"title":"Bring Me Problems, Not Solutions","date":"18 Jan 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"The most important lesson I ever learned in this business... Be cautious or even suspicious when a specification\/question is provided in the form of a request for a specific technical solution. When someone presents a request in this form, the first thing you should do is obtain an understanding of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Delphi&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":633,"url":"https:\/\/www.deltics.co.nz\/blog\/posts\/633\/","url_meta":{"origin":2126,"position":4},"title":"As If One Blog Wasn&#8217;t Enough","date":"25 May 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Today is a special day indeed, marking as it does my first contribution to the blog of the product I work on, announcing a technical overview of the forthcoming new version of Flow, the middleware, EDI and integration solution developed using Delphi by us at Flow Software,\u00a0here in New Zealand.","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Blogging&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":630,"url":"https:\/\/www.deltics.co.nz\/blog\/posts\/630\/","url_meta":{"origin":2126,"position":5},"title":"SHAutoComplete: Calling Once, Calling Twice&#8230;","date":"24 May 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"The usually exhaustively complete Raymond Chen over-looked a crucial factor in his most recent posting on his excellent\u00a0Old New Thing Blog regarding\u00a0SHAutoComplete. In his post he discusses a technique for disabling auto-complete in a common dialog, but along the way discusses why calling\u00a0SHAutoComplete twice cannot be used to remove flags\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Delphi&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.deltics.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2126"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.deltics.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.deltics.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.deltics.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.deltics.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2126"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.deltics.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2126\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2136,"href":"https:\/\/www.deltics.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2126\/revisions\/2136"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.deltics.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.deltics.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.deltics.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}