Seems it’s time to get serious about raising the bar on my tech skills - particularly syadmin ones.

This month some things on the shopping list are:

1. Improve my text editing skills in Vim with Smylers’ power usage tips and vim creator Moolenaar’s "7 habits of effective Vim"
2.  Get a LOT more familiar with Linux shell utilities like sed and grep
3. Learn how to use the Linux/UNIX make utility
4. Make my own Ubuntu packages for cooler Moodle deployment and, for good measure
5. Build and deploy some Ubuntu server appliances for VMWare using JeOS

Buckle your seat, Dorothy, cos Kansas is going bye-bye!

Over the past few months I’ve switched to using Git for managing source code. Mainly I’ve been using it for small Rails projects and for managing Moodle code changes.

One ongoing frustration has been having to switch to Subversion when working on our main Rails sites, like AAIBS (and this one). Imagine my joy then in discovering Scott Chacon’s great (free!) screencast demonstrating Git with Rails & Capistrano. 

Over the next few days I’m therefore going to be moving this site to Git… and deploying to the GridService at MediaTemple. I’ll be sure to post my deployment scripts here.