The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines a Sensei as a teacher or master, especially of Japanese martial arts. A more nuanced definition is: “One Who Has Gone Before”. I like that phrase as it disposes of the concept of mastery, a Sensei is someone who has traveled a path and attempts to lead others along that path.

What does this have to do with IronPunk?

Primarily that this site attempts to document a path in the hopes that others can follow it more easily. Much like martial arts, many of the skills necessary to accomplish the tasks can only be learned experimentally. You must try, and sometimes fail, to learn new skills. While I am not a master of any of the skills I present on this site, if I am a master of anything it is failing.

Sometimes it seems that I have to exhaust all of the wrong ways to accomplish something before finding the right way. It is by failing that we learn best and if we only did what we knew how to do, we would never do anything new.  It is my hope with this site to assist readers to fail more productively to succeed faster than me by avoiding the pitfalls and obstacles I have encountered and still get the benefit of those mistakes by learning from mine.

So now on to some housekeeping. The section of the site that you are now reading, the Timeline, is exactly what you would expect from an informal blog. Organized chronologically it documents the process of making an IronPunk DRO and any thoughts that process inspires. It may be somewhat meandering at times but hopefully will stay primarily on topic. The Development section contains essentially rough drafts of documents.  The section is organized by topic so that you don’t have to read though months of chit chat to figure out what terminal connector to buy or how to square a vise. The Resources section is much the same only the documents are considered reasonably complete. Complete enough at least to get a version number.

My expectation is that ideas will start in the Timeline. I’ll use that as fodder for more structured documents that will be developed in the Development section and later graduate to the Resources section. As more multimedia and other resources are created/discovered and projects are created, I’ll add sections but for now these will do.

Thanks for reading

This post is a seed
The site, possibility
With work it will grow