Indirigible?

If anything, most people think “blimp” when they hear the word “dirigible”. But the word is actually quite old, long before there were hot air balloons or helium or hydrogen filled flying vessels. It’s original meaning is “something steerable”. So anything that can be guided by someone is technically “dirigible”.

Based on that knowledge, I have chosen to create the word indirigible, for which I assert the meaning of “self-guiding”, not steerable from outside. It’s something I think we all should be – by all means, learn from what’s around you, but apply your own values and reasoning to the the knowledge you gain. We need to take responsibility for ourselves. That’s what indirigible means to me.

Hello world!

Hi all, I’m Dave Lane. I’m a yank (USA) expat who has moved to New Zealand (Christchurch, the shaky city) to live the “American Dream”. I spend a lot of time working on my computer, and try to make up for that by doing a lot of physically dynamic things when I’m not (like being a dad to two young, active boys, cycling up hills, dancing (swing), and generally making mischief).

I’ve spent about 20 years as a commercial software developer, starting as a research scientist (my educational background’s liberal arts, with a degree in Physics and one in Mechanical Engineering, and a broad range of other stuff), the past 15 years being almost exclusively focused on the Web working for my own open source software company. The technical site of this stuff is pretty familiar to me. But I’m happy to be returning to this site, to fulfil the requirements of the DS4OER course!

I originally set this WordPress instance up for fun in 2012, and then moved back to other open source web platforms, like Drupal. My main professional blog is actually a Drupal site.

These days I work with the Open Education Resource Foundation and am taking this course to learn more about the educational aspects of OER given that I’m already pretty comfortable with the technology aspects. And I can see I have plenty still to learn!