When my ex-Mother-in-Law was young, she used to split her pocket money with her best friend; she would give her a “thrupenny bit” every week.
Fast-forward 40-something years later and they’re still best friends, only her friend was recently diagnosed with terminal cancer.
While we were leaving the hospital with the youngest, after a “swallowed something she shouldn’t have” incident (don’t worry, she’s fine), the Ex relayed the pocket money story and how she wanted to find a thrupenny bit to give to her mum.
Before we’d reached the hospital exit I had tracked down a couple of suitable coins in the eBay app on my phone, and payed for them using my PayPal account. A handful of taps on my phone and I’ve hopefully done something to help in this rough time. They should be here next week.
I’m not sure why I felt compelled to blog this little anecdote; maybe it was because it’s too long to fit in a throwaway tweet. Or maybe it’s because I thought it was awesome how quickly mobile lets us do little bits of good for others.
The Rumour Mill has been frothing for months about a “revised” version of 40K 6th Edition. In the last couple of days there have been leaks from White Dwarf Weekly confirming it was happening – and it appears to be a whole new edition.
Obviously, this is the Internet, and specifically, this is the online 40K community. Where previously we had people saying we needed a revision/new edition to “fix the imbalance,” “add clarity [about what is/isn’t official],” “make the game fun again,” etc, etc, etc… we now have much wailing and gnashing of teeth. The sky is falling! This is the “death” of 40K! It’s a “money grab.” Insert your favourite Games Workshop hate here!
Sometimes you just can’t make this stuff up. Ask for a new edition; get a new edition; complain there’s a new edition.
Some cheese with your whine?
So what do we know about what’s coming? Two main things:
There’s a “new” psychic phase, just like the magic phase in Warhammer Fantasy.
You now have the option of building your army in one of two ways: “Bound” (which uses the Force Organisation Chart), or “Unbound” which is a free-for-all, take whatever you want affair.
That’s pretty much all of the interesting details we know. If you want my opinion (and you wouldn’t be reading this if you didn’t) these are awesome changes to 40K. Why?
Psychic Phase
I hate the current implementation of psychic powers in the game. Having to remember to use different powers at different times in different phases is a massive pain in the hoop. Not using psychics right can lose you a game, yet at the moment they’re so fiddly that it’s all too easy to forget them until it’s too late.
I put “new” in quotes above because a dedicated psychic phase is not unheard of in 40K. We had one in 2nd Edition, and while it added an extra phase to the game, it was beautifully straightforward and it worked. I realise that at least half the player base isn’t old enough to have played with a dedicated phase, and so it’s a big, scary change… but trust me on this: the game will have one less potential point of frustration.
The FOC (or lack of it)
For years and years and years, players have been complaining they can’t field certain “fluffy” armies on the table because the force-org restrictions wouldn’t let them (think Space Marine “Reserve Companies” and the like). Guess what? You just got your wish. Got the points for it? By the sounds of things now you can take it in an “Unbound” list. What was the first complaint about this change? That it would be the death of fluffy armies. Seriously.
If you’ve been paying attention to Jervis Johnson’s column in White Dwarf, he’s been telegraphing such a change for months.
The one fair criticism which could be levelled at this change is that it opens the door for all sorts of spam-list abuses. Is that a game issue, or a player issue? Has everyone lost sight of “just because you can, doesn’t mean you should”?
Not to mention, we haven’t got any details of the “bonuses” given to Bound (FOC-using) lists. These could still turn out to be an equaliser.
If you’re playing amongst your good friends then sure, take that ridiculous list as a one-off, for the lolz. But taking it to your FLGS for a pick-up game? That makes you That Guy. What do we always say? Don’t be That Guy.
As for tournaments, I imagine they’ll be Bound-List-only, perhaps without the bonuses, depending how the chips fall on those. That way no one has to get their knickers in a twist any more than they do nowadays. It’ll be the same 40K the Internet Community have been anticipating the death of for more than a decade.
In a nutshell, I like this change because it brings so much freedom to the game. I can have a load of fun playing more-or-less what I want, without having to tick boxes on an FOC that’s grown to sprawl over an A3 page when printed… if I want to. Or I can have fun playing with a “cohesive” army and reap some in-game benefits for doing so. The choice will be mine to play the game how I want. GW have actually written into the rules what they’ve been trying to tell us for years: have fun, playing the game your way. We won’t know for sure until the rulebook hits the shelves, but as I said on twitter yesterday, 7th Edition sounds like it’s going to be a hoot to play.
Addendum: My Wishlist for 7th Edition
If I can wishlist for a moment, here’s some more changes I’m hoping to see in 7th Edition:
Less “Ignores Cover” – at the moment, there are far too many ways to apply IC, which essentially makes cover useless as a game mechanic. No cover makes it harder for assault armies to do their thing. Would need to be an Errata item for existing codexes though.
Less low AP – massed AP3/AP2 is too common, and exacerbates the prevalence of Ignores Cover, making anything without an Invuln save far too squishy.
No more random charge distance – seriously, I hate this bit of 6th. I need no other justification other than it just feels stupid to play.
Special Rules do not affect Allies, unless specifically noted – 80% of shenanigans gone in one fell swoop.
Assault from Deep Strike – would make for some epic moments, and would be a significant boost for assault armies. Definitely of benefit if Ignores Cover remains as-is.
I doubt any of these will happen, but a guy can dream, right?
A friend, who writes the blog “Being Female…” recently wrote about her experiences on dating in her 30’s, with a focus on online dating. As part of her write-up, she wanted a male point of view as a counter-balance, so she sent me a dozen questions to answer. I didn’t manage to get my answers written up in time for her publishing the original article, but a promise is a promise, so presented below are the answers I sent through to her, plus a couple of anecdotes, which should be appearing as another blog post on her site in the near future.
These are just the straight answers to her questions. I’ve started writing up a wider PoV post, but it’s taking a while, so keep an eye out for it in the future.
Online Dating. Not for the faint of heart.
1. Why did you decide to go with on-line dating as opposed to ‘regular’ dating?
To give me more opportunities to meet someone. By the time I was single and dating again, my social circle had shrunk and were nearly all settled down. Plus you can’t go bar-hopping all the time! Online dating opens up your options by giving you more chance to meet people you might not otherwise.
2. How did you go about choosing your preferred site? Did you do a bit of research, and did cost play a factor?
I’d heard of most of the “major” sites before I started out, so I took a look at those. Over time, I’ve tried out most of them. Trying them out for a few weeks is probably the best “research” you can do. Each site has subtly different cultures and etiquette, so you almost have to “date” the dating sites at first to find the one you’re most comfortable with.
I’ve come to the conclusion that paying for a dating site isn’t really worth it as there’s so much “crossover” of people between the different sites. Plus paying for access to the site puts extra pressure on people to “get their money’s worth” (probably tying into the answers to 3 & 5) There’s an argument to be made that price filters out some of the really bad people (see – creepy/abusive messages) but equally, paying for something gives some people a sense of entitlement, making them just as bad.
3. Were you nervous when you first created your profile?
Not really. It depends on your attitude to things, I guess. If you’re keen to meet “The One” as quickly as possible, then you’ll put yourself under pressure to get your profile right, which is where the nerves come in for some people. I treat it like filling in any social media profile.
Relax, take your time, and learn to evolve your profile over time. Keep track of what changes you’ve made, and refine what’s in your profile based on what works.
4. How quickly was contact established – did you have to wait a while or were there instant messages?
It depends. If you’re the “new guy” then you can get pounced on pretty quickly on some sites, depending how much “choice” there was before you started showing up in search results. It also depends how good your profile and pictures are. I’ve had experiences where I’ve had a message within 30 minutes, and others where I’ve not had any in the first 2 weeks.
In my latest “go” at Online Dating, I created my profile one night while I was in San Francisco for a few days, thinking I was setting things up for when I got home. I woke up to dozens of “X likes you” alerts and several messages. I pretty much face-palmed myself as I was catching my flight later that day and so couldn’t follow up on any of them. Ladies of San Francisco: sorry!
5. One of the ‘myths’ about on-line dating is that the sites are populated by people who are desperate and a bit ‘strange’ – did you chat to anyone who you felt fit this description? Any funny anecdotes? (no names needed)
A couple have fallen in the “strange” category, but they’ve been the minority. It also depends on your definition of strange – I’m sure I’ve probably come across as “strange” to some people! It’s all relative! Sometimes the “strange” ones are the more interesting and fun people you meet.
As for “desperate” – btw, I’m not a fan of that description – I’ve talked to people who could match that stereotype. There’s been a few who place quite a lot of pressure on themselves to “meet someone” and often don’t realise it… and as a result they can come across quite “full on” and be very demanding. I try to give someone the benefit of the doubt though; you don’t know them well enough to know if there’s some external factor causing them to be stressed out.
6. How quickly did you meet any of the people you chatted to?
It depends how the messaging goes, “schedules,” and how open someone is to meeting a stranger off the internet1. Some people I’ve kept talking to online but never met.
For the people I have met: shortest time – a few hours. Longest – 5 months. On average, it is usually around 2-3 weeks.
7. Did the person/people you have met live up to their ‘chat’ i.e were they telling huge whoppers on-line to reel you in, only for you to discover they were nothing like that in real life.
The biggest disparity is usually in how they look in their pictures vs. how they look in real life. I’ve met people in person who barely resemble the person in their profile pictures. Side note:- having nothing but group shots with your friends in your profile is a massive pain2.
“Chat”-wise, often I’ll find someone isn’t quite the same as their online persona, but normally not deal breakingly so… they’ll be quieter, or less out-going, or not quite as into something as they maybe gave the impression they were. Alternatively, they might go all-out to impress, and end up not presenting themselves in the best light. I often put it down to nerves and try not to judge too much on just that initial face-to-face.
Tying into answer 9, some have turned out to be far more shallow than they seemed in their messages, which is always a disappointment.
8. Have you had a relationship with someone you met online (For purposes of the blog, I would probably define a ‘relationship’ as being with someone you have dated exclusively for 4 months or more, but I know these things are dependent on situation and do not follow any prescribed timescale – people develop feelings or fall in love at their own pace)
In those terms (and probably in any other sensible definition) – no. Most have been 2-4 dates, then realise it’s not what one (or both) of us are looking for and fall out of contact. Some have been a few dates, then it develops into a friendship rather than relationship. Others have just been random, almost haphazard… date one or more times, fall out of contact for a while, get back in contact, repeat.
9 Do you think people on-line don’t give dating relationships a chance to work i.e. rather than work at getting to know a person, if the person doesn’t meet the picture in their head from the get go, they move onto the next person quickly. The grass is always greener syndrome – looking for a partner where no work is involved in the longterm.
Absolutely. I’ve had some horrific experiences with this that have nearly put me off the online dating thing entirely. Obviously you need to “click” with someone, and find them (at least moderately) attractive, but there’s been times where I’ve met someone after exchanging messages + photos for a few weeks… and you could see the disappointment written all over their face when we actually met. Which makes you wonder how much attention they were paying in the first place, but never mind. Not surprisingly, those dates didn’t last very long!
By all means, you can know by the end of the first date if someone is or isn’t a match, and some things are decent indicators… but I’d question if you can accurately tell within the first few minutes like some people I’ve met have done. At least give it until the end of the date and any follow-up communication3.
10. How many people do you think it is acceptable to date at any given time?
I wouldn’t say there are any hard-and-fast rules here… it would depend how much effort you were putting into establishing relationships with the people you are dating. If you’re actually trying to build a solid relationship, I don’t see how you could honestly date more than 1-2 people at a time. Maybe 3 at most, if you have the time. But equally, if you’re just starting out, there’s no harm in having a different “first date” each night of the week if you’re able. As time goes by, you’ll naturally find yourself dating less people at once as something becomes more serious.
If you are planning on “dating around” with multiple people, it’s only fair to be upfront about it so there are no misunderstandings!
11. How long would you date someone before removing your profile from a dating site, if ever?
No set rule… whenever you feel “comfortable” in the relationship, I guess. With my last girlfriend (who wasn’t met online) I took it down after about 4-6 weeks, partly because she was away for 2-3 weeks of that time and it wasn’t certain things were taking off.
12. Any other comments or observations you would like to make?
I could probably write a book here, but I’ll keep it to only one aspect:
Online dating can be both a very rewarding experience of meeting interesting new people, some of which you’ll share some good (possibly great) times with… and the most exhausting, dehumanising, soul-crushing experience I’ve come across. One minute you can have your ego inflated and be feeling pretty good about yourself; then you’ll find it burst, torn to shreds, set on fire, then the ashes blasted into the cosmos.
Over the 2-3 years I’ve been using online dating, I’ve rarely been able to keep at it for more than 3-4 months before I need to take a break… by which I mean completely take down all profiles (delete, not just disable), unsubscribe from any email newsletters, and remove any apps from my phone. I’m in the middle of such a break just now.
“Burnout” is a very real thing you have to be careful of. You also should be in the right frame of mind before starting online dating, or you won’t give the best impression of yourself – leading to less “success” when going on, or even in attracting dates – creating a downward spiral.
Never, ever, ever jump straight into online dating on the rebound. Ever. Trust me on this.
So why do online dating at all? Because when you do meet someone you click with (even if it’s only for a short time) the feeling is awesome. When online dating works, you’ll have a lot of fun, and meet some great people along the way. One of whom might be “The One” you’re looking for – which is the whole point really.
Yes, really. Some people do go into Online Dating reluctant to meet anyone they’ve met on the Internet. ↩
Don’t be that guy/girl. Please. For your own sake. ↩
Speaking of – if you do a vanishing act (ignoring messages, etc) after spending a couple of weeks getting to know, and then going out on a date with someone – then you suck. It doesn’t cost anything to at least say “hey, sorry, things didn’t ‘click’ for me.” You might not be interested, but there’s no need to be an ass. ↩
I recently had fiber broadband installed at the house. This meant switching provider, and getting a whole new router. ISP routers, by-and-large are terrible, and this one was the type which only allows changing a limited set of options through the web-based admin page.
For a while it was working fine enough, but I started getting lots of DNS issues; accessing sites was terribly slow due to looooooong lookup times – when the lookup succeeded at all! I looked for the option to switch to using the OpenDNS servers, but there was no way to do this through the UI.
Of course, I figured someone had to have run into and fixed this problem before, and with a little hunting around, I was proved right – Pete Cooper had documented how to change these settings through the archaic and arcane wonder of telnet.
Logging into my router through the console, using Pete’s instructions, it soon became apparent his steps had been broken by a firmware update – only a couple of the commands worked. But now I had a lead, I was sure I could figure it out. With a little digging around, and judicious use of the help command, I was able to put together this sequence of commands to update the DNS settings:
# To list your current DNS servers
dns server forward dnsset list
# To a new primary DNS server with higher priority than the default
dns server forward dnsset add set=0 dns=208.67.220.220 label=None metric=4 intf=Internet
# Add the secondary as above
dns server forward dnsset add set=0 dns=208.67.222.222 label=None metric=4 intf=Internet
# Save our changes
saveall
With the commands entered, my web surfing instantly got a massive speed boost as the DNS issues went away 🙂 I should point out that I left the default PlusNet servers in there as back-up. If for some reason I can’t connect to OpenDNS, the router will fall back to the PlusNet DNS.
Winamp shutdown yesterday. Even though I hadn’t used it in years, this makes me a little sad, as Winamp was iconic. It was a hero of the early world-wide web, helping to kick-start the internet music age for a great many people like myself.
I first discovered Winamp around 14 years ago, during my first year at university. Back then, you could run Winamp from any old folder without installing it, so everyone used to have a copy in their network profile. This was the early days… MP3s were still a rarity here in the UK, so you would listen mainly to CDs (Windows Media Player was a world of suck on Windows NT), or the 2-3 MP3s you had downloaded from Napster.
As time went on, MP3s became more and more common, and Winamp became the defacto music player for a lot of people. Imitatorssprung-upelsewhere. It was small, customisable, and with plugins was able to do almost anything – like managing an MP3 Player, if you were the early-adopter who splashed out a few hundred for one of the early, pre-iPod devices. Ahem.
Then the iPod happened, and with it, iTunes. Once iTunes for Windows hit, that was the end of Winamp’s glory days. Owned by AOL, it sank into irrelevance. Full-blown music library management, with integrated store and device management, was the order of the day – all things Winamp was woeful at, even with plugins – relegating Winamp to a niche of nostalgia and a small number of users who couldn’t do with out some feature or other. Winamp 3 was a mess, Winamp 5.5 moved away from the minimal UI. There was even an Android version. It was terrible.
By that time, we had all moved to streaming music services. Why store gigabytes of music files on your computer, when someone else can do it for you, and high-speed access is increasingly common? The need for an application like Winamp was increasingly shrinking. At least Spotify has honoured your legacy by releasing Spotiamp.
And so yesterday, Winamp ceased to be. The site is still there, and for now at least, it seems you can still download v5.666… but that will be turned off soon.
So long, Winamp. You really whipped that ass for as long as you could.
Thanks to the travelling, my body-clock was a little on the fritz, which meant I was wide-awake at around 4am local time. Not ideal, but it meant I got to see a fairly spectacular sunrise, coming up over San Francisco Bay. Feeling a little inspired, I set my camera up on its tripod, opened the window shutters, and experimented with a few long-exposure shots. I need a little more practice (sunset, anyone??), but I’m pretty pleased with how a couple of the shots came out.
The remaining photos are from a walk I took along the pier-front (Embarcadero). I didn’t go all the way along – I was tempted to walk right around as far as Fisherman’s Wharf (I started at South Beach), so I might get a few snaps of the Golden Gate Bridge, but I decided I would cut back into downtown at Market Street, so I could get a few things for my stay. I think I’ll make my trip up that way on Tuesday, perhaps taking in a ferry ride of the Bay, and maybe a tour of Alcatraz.
As I’m writing this, I’m 36,000 feet over Canadian airspace, on my way to San Francisco (you may have guessed this already, from the title). By the time you’re reading this, I should be safely on the ground again (no in-flight wifi to let me post from the air. It’s a little bit of a impromptu visit; I certainly hadn’t dreamed I’d be making this trip, even as recently as a couple of months ago. But that’s by-the-by at this point – there’s no turning back now!
This will be only my second trip to the United States – my first being Houston in 2011 – so I’ll be very interested to see the (no doubt many) differences. It’s only a short trip too, as I fly back to the UK on Wednesday, so I’ll need to try cram a lot in to make the most of it!
I have one particular bit of business to do while I’m in town1, but the rest of the time is mine, and to be honest, it’s a very welcome break. Things have been so hectic and stressful over the last few months (and not entirely in a good way) that I’m in desperate need of some “R&R”. Hopefully this trip will provide some of that!
As this trip might be a once in a lifetime thing, I’ve packed my full set of camera equipment, so hopefully I can get some memorable photos while I’m here. If I can manage, I’ll try post them up while at the end of each day.
Now, if only I wasn’t missing the live broadcast of The Day of The Doctor, this trip might’ve been even more perfect. Guess what my first priority is, when I land?
I received an email from a developer the other day, who had forked the repository for my “IIS Express Here” shell extension on GitHub [editors note – no longer available]. He had noticed there was no license information available in the project, so asked if I could either add a license, or give him written permission to adapt my code and share it to others (as is the spirit of GitHub and OSS).
To be honest, this wasn’t something I’d thought about before, and was a bit of an oversight on my part. I’d not really considered the need to add explicit licenses to my repositories. After all, the code is out there anyway – it’s open to use on GitHub, and I’ve often shared it on this blog… if someone wanted to copy the code, they could, right?
Unfortunately, this creates a grey-area, which some are naturally uncomfortable with. Can I use this code in something else? Can I modify it at all? Do I have to pay royalties if I do?
But licensing is hard, isn’t it? All the different types, with different caveats, liabilities, and legal mumbo-jumbo… well, yes, it can be hard. The good folks at GitHub have a solution: ChooseALicense.com is attempting to demystify open source licenses so you can pick the right one for your project. More than this, when you create a new repository on GitHub, the site will ask if you want to add a template license during the initialisation process:
Coming back to the developer who emailed me – I mailed him back to let him know that IIS Express Here is now licensed under the MIT license. This fits best with how I see the code and projects I share on this blog (unless noted otherwise) – free for anyone else to use, but with no warranty, so if something goes wrong then I’m not liable and it’s not my responsibility to fix it. I haven’t got around to updating all of my repos with licenses, as I’m evaluating each one in turn, based on my goals and even whether the project is going to archived.
For someone who’s primarily a developer/support person, I spend a lot of time setting up and configuring – or fixing – servers. I guess this came from an eagerness to learn and I got tarred with the “Linux/Server” Guy brushes at some point!
My interest in Operations has had an uptick again recently, so I’ve been doing a bit of reading of late. This morning, while waiting on news about some work-related activities I’ve come across a couple of interesting articles:
My First 5 Minutes On A Server; Or, Essential Security for Linux Servers by Brian Kennedy is a fantastic little quick-start for securing a Linux server. It’s not everything you need to do, but as noted in the article, it sets the foundations for a secure server which is easy to keep secure. Do these steps first, then go about securing any additional services you need to run.
One thing I’ve been wondering about, is setting up my own email system, rather than run on Google Apps. As convenient as the Google platform is, I do sometimes think I’m trusting them with a bit too much of my information. Recent revelations about the NSA/GCHQ, PRISM, and whatever-comes-next, from Edward Snowden haven’t done much to allay those worries.
But Google Apps is convenient. It wraps my mail, calander, contacts, and many other things into a nice package that is available everywhere and syncs across platform, with Push notifications, search, and other modern conveniences… but never the less, I’ve been thinking about how I could move away from the “Do-No-Evil” Empire, which is why Drew Crawford’s excellent, in-depth article “NSA-proof your e-mail in 2 hours” was a great find. I might spin up an instance on my dormant Joyent account and give it a try on one of my spare domains, so I can evaluate the process and benefits before deciding on moving my primary mail domain.
Other topics which have crossed my path this weekend are system configuration, maintenance, and automation using tools such as Chef and Puppet. The idea of taking a known-good environment and replicating it with just a few commands is definitely appealing – particularly when it comes to tasks such as setting up development/test environments! I haven’t gone too far into these topics yet, but I’m hoping to find the time in the next few weeks to go through some of the articles I’ve found.
That cool little “Coder for Raspberry Pi” project from Google which I linked to earlier doesn’t just run on Raspberry Pi. You can run it on any old Linux PC (Mac works too, but the instructions are slightly different).
I set it up in less than 2 minutes using these commands (note that I’m running Debian Sid):
sudo useradd -M pi
sudo apt-get install redis-server
cd ~/projects
git clone https://github.com/googlecreativelab/coder.git
cd coder/coder-base
npm install
npm start
Node.js is also a requirement, so if you don’t have that, you’ll need to install that at step 2 as well.
Once everything is up and running, point your browser at https://localhost:8081/. You’ll need to specify a password the first time you run Coder, after which you’ll be able to try the environment out. It’s pretty neat, and the sample clone of Asteroids is quite addictive!
This sounds like it could be pretty cool. I’m going to take a look at it over the weekend, as it might be a good way to get my son into coding for the web.
Skills are much like muscles: if you don’t use them for a while they start to atrophy. They say you never forget how to ride a bike, but there are many skills where you will forget things if you don’t do them frequently. The collection of skills needed to be a developer are no exception to the rule.
I’m somewhat speaking from experience here; my current role and workload has removed me from day-to-day development work for about a full year now. I still need to dive in to the code base every day to research issues or change requests, but actually writing something is quite rare these days. I’m aware of the skills problem, and I’ll describe below how I’m trying to address it, but never the less I’ve been self-concious enough about it I’ve recently found myself resisting taking on development tasks. I know it’ll take me a lot longer to get up to speed and complete as one of the developers who’re working on the application every day, and the time-scales involved are usually very tight. It’s a vicious circle: I’m rusty because I’m not doing development, but I’m avoiding development because I’ve been away from it for too long. In the corporate world it’s very easy to get rail-roaded into a niche – and incredibly hard to get out of it.
Time away for a developer is exacerbated by the speed in which technology and techniques moves forward in our industry. What was cutting edge a year-ago is old-hat today, and may even be something you’re encouraged not to do any more. If you haven’t been practising and keeping up developments then you may not be aware and get yourself into all sorts of bother.
So what can you do?
Read. Lots.
Subscribe to a load of developer sites and blogs in Feedly, for one source, but a more convenient way I’ve found to stay on top of things is using Flipboard:
Follow other developers on Twitter (actually, you don’t have to, but it’s nice to), and create/add them to a list, such as “Developers & News“.
Within Flipboard, add your Twitter account if you haven’t already.
Still within Flipboard, go to your Twitter stream. Tap your name at the top and select “Your Lists.”
Open the relevant list, then tap the subscribe button.
Your list will be added to your Flipboard sources and you’ll have an always-up-to-date magazine of what’s happening. The reason I suggest Flipboard is that it grabs the link in a tweet, pulls in the article, and will try to reformat it into something you can easily flip through. It makes reading on a tablet so much more enjoyable. Some of the links you get will not be relevant, but a large amount of it will be gold. I try to set aside 30 minutes a day to go through at least the headlines. If work is exceptionally busy I’ll aim for twice a week. Saving to a “Read it Later” service like Pocket is useful for storing the most interesting articles.
What about books? Yes, by all means, read plenty of technical books. They’re usually in far more depth than even the best online article. With tablets, eReaders, and eBooks, the days of thick tomes taking up lots of space are behind us, and no longer a major concern (at least for me). There is however, one major issue with books – they take a long time to write, and are often out of date quickly. The technology might have moved on by the time the book is published. Schemes such as the Pragmatic Programmer’s “Beta Book” scheme help a lot here – releasing unfinished versions of the book quickly and often, to iron out problems before publishing. Of course, you also need to be aware of the topic to be able to pick out a book about it!
Be Curious. Experiment.
Reading all the material in the world will not help you anywhere near as much as actually doing something. The absolute best thing you could do would be to develop side projects in your spare time. Admittedly, if you’re busy, time can be at a premium! Probably a good 99% of side projects I start lie unfinished or abandoned, simply for lack of time. So instead, I perform small experiments.
Curious about something? Do something small to see how it works, or “what happens if…”. Personal, recent, examples would be:
Looking into static site generators, and as a result, learning about Jekyll, Github pages for hosting… and as a result of trying out Jekyll templates I brushed up on Responsive Web Design, looked into Zepto, and fell in love with Less.
Trying out automating development workflows – installed Node.js (which then allowed me to run this), setup some basic Grunt.js tasks, Imagemagick batch processing, and some more Less.
Running Linux as my primary OS, and no Windows partition to fall back on – so in at the deep-end if something goes wrong… but it’s helped me brush up on my MySQL and Apache admin skills again, as well as generally working with the command-line again. The other week I fixed someone’s VPS for them via SSH – something I would have struggled to do only a few weeks ago. In case you’re interested: the disk was filling up due to an out of control virtual host error log, which I had to first diagnose, and then reconfigure logrotate to keep the site in check.
An earlier example, from before I was entirely away from development: I wanted to see what was different in CodeIgniter 2, so I made a very small app. My curiosity then extended into “how does Heroku work?” – so I deployed to Heroku. I couldn’t pay for a database I knew how to work with, so I tried out a little bit of MongoDB. Then it was the Graph API from Facebook… so again, I extended the application, this time with the Facebook SDK.
Little experiments can lead to a lot of learning. I would never claim to be an expert in any of the technologies I mention, but neither am I ignorant.
Shaking it Out
I’d still need a major project to focus on and really shake off the “ring rust,” to get back up to full development potential, but I’m pretty confident it wouldn’t take as long as if I hadn’t been working on the trying to keep my skills as fresh as I can.
No doubt by now you’ve seen the video above – “I Forgot My Phone” – a fairly sobering take on how social interactions are being affected by the rise of smartphones. Yes, it’s a little bit embellished for “shock” value, but there’s definitely some truth to it. I meant to share it last week when I first found it via Twitter, but this article on the New York Times reminded me about it, and I thought I’d share a personal anecdote along with the video:
Being “that” guy who pulls out his phone in the middle of dinner/a date/conversation is something I’ve been wary of for a a year or two now. Even though, I’m sure I’ve still been him more than once. Possibly the majority of us (certainly those of us with smartphones) have been at some point. We pull out and check our phones constantly, often ignoring the people around us in the process – sometimes for an imagined notification. And then we wonder why our batteries never last a full day…
The last 6 weeks I’ve been forcefully trained out of the habit, and I’m kind of glad. The office I’ve worked in since the end of July is a bit of a black spot for data connections. I can get a weak GPRS (2G) connection if I’m lucky – there’s also no WiFi in the office (shocking, I know!) to use as a back-up. Most apps time out on me with anything less than HSDPA it seems, so I can no longer use my phone as a distraction while I’m in the office. Slowly but surely I’ve found this lack of checking my phone has even crept into the days I’m working at home – on these days it’s not unusual for me to finish the day on 80% battery or more!
My current disconnect from Facebook has been both strengthened by, and in turn reinforced this new habit and the idea I don’t need to be checking my notifications all the time. I’m finding that even if I do hear the tell-tale “ding” of a notification I’m less likely to rush and check it immediately. I may be imagining it, but I’m feeling a little less anxious these last few days, perhaps because I’m finally at a point I’m not anticipating when my phone is going to go off next.
If you wanted to try something similar for yourself, you can fake it by going into your phone settings and turning off 3G and/or 4G connections. It won’t work for everyone, but it’s worth trying for at least a few days, right?
Another thing you can try with friends as a means to reclaim your time together is any time you are together is play a variation of the “Phone Stacking Game”. See the image at the bottom of this post for the basic rules.
These days I’m checking/using my phone during the times I’m commuting, while heading to the shop on my lunch break, or otherwise as and when I feel like it while I’m on my own. It’s quite nice to own my smartphone again, rather than it owning me.
I’ve spent some time this weekend making doing some much-needed housekeeping here, in order to keep it tidy and in a healthy state.
I’ve always found good blogging is more than just adding post after post. It takes a bit of effort behind the scenes; tending to the older content, keeping the “static” pages fresh, and removing any crud that’s accumulated in the sidebars. Keep these things in order, while feeding in good content, and your blog will grow. At least, that’s my theory. Things are slightly different on this particular blog, because it’s a personal blog, not a topic blog – so growth isn’t a primary concern. Hence the title: it can grow and be healthy, but I don’t expect it to be big.
With all that said, what have I been up to?
Site Theme
I decided the new(ish) Twenty Thirteen WordPress theme just didn’t work for me or how I see this site. It was nice and colourful, and good to have as a change, but it wasn’t really “me.” Instead, I’ve switched back to the “Standard” theme (which has been “retired” it seems), with a few tweaks. It’s more structured, and described as a “meticulously designed, hand-crafted theme.” I like things to have a bit of craftsmanship to them, and within that show an element of “control”; Twenty Thirteen felt just a little too chaotic for my tastes. I may still adjust some small parts, but mostly I’m happy with things now.
“Elsewhere” Links
For a while now I’ve maintained a sidebar list of other places you can find me: social media, profiles on various sites, etc. I’ve tidied this up to remove services I no longer use, or don’t use frequently enough for you to bother with. The four sites in the sidebar now represent the other places you can find me, that I care about. Apart from Google+… not many people really care about that one, and I’m no different (maybe one day). Google+ is there to maintain my authorship information in Google.
Pruning Dead Content
Last year I would cross-post a lot of my Instagram shots over here. Then I deleted my Instagram account, and all those photo posts started showing as broken images. I’ve finally got round to clearing them out. I may have missed one or two, so if you spot one, please let me know!
Consolidation
Over the last couple of years I got it into my head that my blog had to present a “professional” image. An employer (or potential employer) might read it and decide not to hire me based on something I posted. As a result I fragmented my personality across the web, using a different site or service to post content in tailor-made silos. This site was just for technical posts which would show my expertise and how “professional” I am.
It was a stupid idea. It was stressful to maintain, and not as enjoyable. As a result, each site would languish for months without any update, and anything I did post was as much out of guilt as anything. I’ve given up trying to manage these sites, or “reboot” them. From now, this site represents the one “true” me. If an employer isn’t going to hire me over, say, one of the hobbies I’ve written about on my blog, then chances are they’re not somewhere I’d be happy to work at.
I will still use some services for specific needs: Twitter for things too short to fit here, and quick conversations; Facebook or Flickr for sharing photos of the kids with family or close friends, etc. Anything else should end up here. I’ve already imported the content of some other blogs into the archives, and I’m picking through an export of my old Tumblr, to see if there’s anything there worth adding (not likely!).
Re-Injecting the Personal and the Personality
Directly related to what I’ve written above, it struck me when I was reading through the old posts I recovered from previous incarnations of this blog, was how personal I used to get on here. That has been missing for a few years now, and as a result, a lot of the personality and “voice” has gone. Somewhere along the line I became overly private and cautious about what I was posting, and I honestly don’t know or understand why any more. It can’t just have been the employer reason mentioned above. Did I think I would be seen as some sort of narcissist? This is something I will try to address going forward. I’m also thinking about addressing it going back too. There are large gaps in this blogs chronology which could easily be filled with retrospective and back-dated entries about what was going on at the time. Some of it could even be quite useful for myself, as a way to reflect.
I’m not 100% certain though. While it could end up OK, I don’t want to post something inaccurate because my memories of the events have been tinged or faded by time. Especially where there’s other people involved. It’s OK to make a mistake about something just about me, but it’s not OK when it could impact or upset someone else.
I have made a baby-step of a start though. I have added some photo galleries to the site. Most were taken in the last year, but I’ll be going back and picking out other suitable subjects/events to post up. Galleries are backdated to the event/date they were taken, to distinguish “old” ones from any I post in the future. There will be a mix of subjects, from holidays, random photo-shoots, modelling projects… whatever really!
What Next?
Going through this exercise ties-in to some thoughts I’ve been having recently about my “digital identity,” who controls it, and what it means. These thoughts inn turn, have spun out of me stepping away from Facebook for a while. I’m trying to shape these thoughts into something fully-formed so I can share them on here.
On Thursday night I deactivated my Facebook account. It’s something I’d been considering for a while, as I’ve found using Facebook lately to be less a useful “checking up on friends and family” thing, and more something slightly depressingly monotonous which I continue to do out of sheer force of habit. It just so happened on Thursday there was a trigger which finally led me to push the button.
I admit, for a moment, I did consider deleting the account full-stop. Deleting you Facebook account is notoriouslydifficult to achieve. It seems to have gotten better and easier over the last couple of years, even before you consider services such as the new JustDelete.me.
For better or worse I decided that in all likelihood I would return to using Facebook one day… that this was just a temporary hiatus to give me space to clear my head. So, as the title of the post indicates, here came the hard part.
The process of deactivating your account in itself is “reasonably” straight-forward: Go to Account Settings > Security, then click the small link under the main list of options. Facebook will first try to emotionally twist your arm into staying, by showing big profile pictures of some of your friends. It’ll ask you why you’re leaving, then ask for your password, and then, just to be sure you really, really, really do want to deactivate, present you with a CAPTCHA image for verification. So far so simple. The difficulty comes in staying deactivated.
Deactivation only lasts so long as you stay logged out of your Facebook account. Log back in for whatever reason and it’s instantly reactivated again. Fine, just stay logged out then? OK, consider how many sites, services, even apps on your phone connect with Facebook, or even use it as their user login mechanism (the “Facebook Platform”). My iPad is logged in and connected to Facebook at the OS level, never mind using an app. Now factor in how many other computers you might be logged into Facebook using – often this could be 2 or more (say, home plus work). In my case I had to unlink iOS on my iPad from Facebook; uninstall the Facebook app from both the iPad and my phone; uninstall the Facebook Messenger app from my phone; logout from Facebook on my work laptop and some browser sessions on my iPad; change my OpenID settings on StackOverflow; and log out/change settings on a few other sites and apps… All so I could be as sure as possible my account wouldn’t spontaneously reactivate itself. There’s probably some that I’ve missed, so chances are I’ll need to deactivate again at some point.
I’m not (entirely) blaming Facebook for this though. Facebook has had to grow, and has done so by spreading itself across the web, to be more than just a profile and social stream. By wanting to opt-out of a profile for a while, I can no longer “like” an interesting blog article; I can’t try out that buzz-worthy new service or app that relies on logging in using Facebook; I can’t click that link to the apparently-hilarious cat meme my workmate just posted… OK, I’m not really going to be bothered by that last one, but you get the idea… there are now certain things – increasingly common things – I can’t do on the web any more, just by wanting out of Facebook for a while.
Tonight I was hoping to watch Dredd, and The Amazing Spider-Man, as I’ve got a free Friday night, and for some reason, none of my other choices appealed to me… Explaining more would be a tangent, so lets continue with the story.
I was at the supermarket, and both films were on offer (DVD versions). I thought about picking them up, but thought “no, I’ll only watch them once, so having the DVD is needless clutter.” I figured I’d look on Netflix, or as a fall-back, rent on iTunes.
Neither film is available on Netflix, which sucks a bit, but never mind, let’s check iTunes… Neither film is available to rent1, so I’d have to buy… But the cost of Dredd is twice what the DVD would’ve cost, and The Amazing Spider-Man is almost an amazing three times the price! That to me seems like a bit of a rip-off.
So if I want to watch those movies at a wallet-friendly price I need to either a) go back to the store and buy 2 discs I don’t want, or b) pirate them. Neither option is appealing, so I’m unlikely to be watching these films like I’d hoped to.
It’s 2013, and we’re heading to a world where physical media is on its way out. So why is digital still so bleedin’ frustrating?
as an aside, finding films to rent through the iPad version of the iTunes Store really, really, sucks! ↩
I just caught up with Game of Thrones season 3 (because, y’know… it happened), so I decided to post up various thoughts about the the show.
Note: I haven’t watched season 2 at all… I have it on Blu-Ray, but haven’t got around to watching it yet. I’ve read the books, so I know ~80% of the story… I just wanted to watch season 3 for the build up to that thing everyone is traumatised by.
The Theon Greyjoy plot-line was more interesting (and IMO) better done than in the book.
Roose Bolton is one of the most compelling characters on the show. In the books I barely paid attention to him. I get an older Daniel Craig’s James Bond feel off of him.
Roose Bolton’s Bastard is… well… a complete and utter bastard. I like the show’s portrayal of him, and the actor is very convincing.
Arya Stark looks almost no older than in season 1.
On the other hand, Brann Stark looks quite a bit older. This could cause the show issues in the future?
What happened to Arya’s Braavosi sword, Needle? In the book it’s a touchstone for her character, but in the series it seems she’s lost it?
Tywin Lannister is a scary dude. Scary, scary dude.
I think I prefer the Melisadre plot-line from the book, but I guess it meant we get to keep Gendry around a bit longer.
That thing(spoilers, but awesome) in episode 9 came across as a lot more ‘clinical’ than in the book, and as a result seemed all the more brutal. Not sure which version I preferred more yet.
Daario Naharis reminds me of Brad Pitt’s Achilles in “Troy”. That is not a good thing.
Awesome odd-couples in the show: Arya and The Hound, plus Brienne and Jaime.
I remember when WordPress first appeared. I’d deployed the b2 blogging engine a couple of times before, and anything which made b2 easier to install/use/adapt was welcome. Amongst the (many) blog systems I’d tried up to then, b2 had the lowest technical barriers but was still an exercise in frustration to get installed and configured. In those early days of blog systems each product had its own quirks, and their own belief about what a blog was and how it should work. WordPress always tried to come across as “the Writer’s” blogging system; once you had it setup to your preferences, it would stay out of the way. For the most part, anyway.
WordPress was never perfect, and it’s still far from it, but you have to admire any system (particularly on the web) which is still going strong after 10 years, while remaining fairly close to it’s original vision and principles. It made writing on the web more accessible to a generation of users, and for all its faults that should be celebrated.
