Who am I?

I’m Stephen Ryan (blogs name gives it away I’m sure), from Dublin, Ireland. While I went down the path of computing via Computer Applications in DCU, and while I may not work primarily as a programmer, I still write a lot of code, some of it is even passable, my main time sink is currently as a Site Reliability Engineer (SRE), with a very strong focus on the Reliability side of things.

I’m a strong believer that effort towards completely removing a problem, when realistic, is much better spent than drawing a line in the sand.

Throughout the years, I’ve tried my hand as business, starting and running an Irish Web Hosting Company, as well as running a number of high traffic web sites. Running your own thing provides a huge insight into how decisions really work when you are dealing with your own money and time vs someone else’s.

My Cycling

Funny but true story, I got back into cycling from a discussion while on the bus home from Top Gear Live – a petrol head car show. Early on I got bitten pretty hard, going full on transforming from a, lets kindly say pudgy person, to a fairly athletic cyclist, training on a well defined plan, taking on La Marmotte, a 174km, 5000m of climbing event in France on a near pro level race bike, to joining Swords Cycle Club and trying some racing, my first result being a good one.

After picking up a knee injury, I stepped back for a while, did some cross training and took on the Dublin Marathon. Sadly this didn’t fix the problem and the following year I ended up having some knee surgery which did throw me back a bit.

In the years since I’ve tried my hand in the gym while also still keeping up cycling in some capacity. Even on the low side still managing a few thousand km a year. Cycling is one of those few sports where weight actually matters, so it has always remained a conflicting set of priorities.

Why do I write / what will you find on this blog?

Blogging started as a way to force myself into actually sitting down and spending time to write different things. Writing is a great way to organise your thoughts, something I forget every few years.

Sometimes I may use writing as a way to research a topic, detailing all the main points, and saving that information in a public way for later reference. Other times it could be an almost diary like write up of an event, especially around the cycling side of things. Especially when training for the more hard core events, I found the writes up to be useful preparation so this is my way to pay it forward while also keeping my own memories in check.

Hopefully over time I’ll develop some sense of direction and be able to talk about things in a coherent manner but do not expect there to be any pattern or cadence. While I do write a lot, not everything meets the bar of going public, or is suitable, and sometimes the writing in my day job eats up all those cycles.