When you talk about technology where do you start. For me, the starting point is where I am professionally. I work for an aerospace company that is large and I work on an aging program, (limits what new technology is used). I work with SGML/XML technologies and that focus is on large defense publications.

My experiences are based on the tools that I use. Below is a list, but they are the only the current list. I have experiences that go back in time, but I will not bore you with that trip down memory lane of old tools. Today, I work with:

  • PTC’s Arbortext Editor (SGML/XML editor) [work and home]
  • PTC’s IsoDraw (graphics editor) [work]
  • Adobe’s Illustrator 10 (graphics editor) [work and home]
  • Adobe’s Photoshop CS3 (photo/graphics editor) [work and home]
  • Adobe’s DreamWeaver CS3 (website editor) [work and home]
  • Adobe’s Lightroom 2 (photo workflow manager) [home]

Languages

  • Perl
  • Javascript
  • ACL (Arbortext)
  • Some Shell both Windows and Unix
  • HTML/XML/SGML

I plan to talk about my skills (or even the lack there of). I am 49 years old and been doing technology for a long time, but found that my skill are a bit aged. I decided to improve my skill set by doing blogs, working with web 2.0 technologies and sharing data with people like you. To be honest in my day job, I spend most of the my day mitigating defects, I do not get to spend much time coding. I have to leave the “heavy lifting” to my co-worker, Joe. He and I make up the software engineers in the department. Together, we do a lot of production. We have to spend more time than I like working on the “content”, but our jobs really about creating the “container”, or tool sets (DTDs, FOSIs, Scripts, Etc.). I use those two terms to describe how publications work. We build the “container” and the writers, fill it with “content”. I am not a technical writer, but I do work with them.

Most of the tools mentioned are about my day job, but I am not limiting it to that. Anything I like or dislike I will mention. I will share my tool-chains on how I organize my day or how I find cool stuff.