A little about me, so that any readers (as unlikely as that is) have some idea of where I’m coming from with what I write:

I make my living writing software, and have for about the last 10 years. I say “about” because for at least 3-4 of those years, I was technically a research scientist who happened to write (bad) software as a way to automate some of the most boring parts of my job. I never went to school for computer science – I was a psych major. I never went to a bootcamp – I didn’t even know they existed, so I was pretty much self taught with the help of Google and Stack Overflow, with an assist from Wikipedia when I ran into conceptual difficulty. I’m pretty OK at what I do – at least, I keep on moving up in the field, so I’ve got that going for me.

For recreation I’m a pretty bog-standard geek. I like to tinker with stuff, from little side software projects to electronics and the like. It’s not just tech I potter with – I live on a farm, so I’m doing some agricultural projects as well, mostly around growing stuff to (eventually) be sold at farmer’s markets and the like.

Demographic stuff – I’m a middle aged woman, which, given my career choices, has lead to a few people referring to me as a unicorn. I don’t like that term (hence the title of this blog) because it implies that there’s something magical or special about me based purely on my not fitting the demographic profile of the typical developer, and also it implies that I have a giant growth on my forehead, which I most certainly do not.

Lastly, the reason I’m doing this blog thing is because I made it a goal to write more, and I figure documenting the various things I do is a good way to do that. Also, though improbable, what I write might help someone else, so bonus.