Now we are 50

This week marks the beginning of my 50th year on the planet. I'm not one
to put stock in "milestone" birthdays (birthdays that are evenly
divisible by 10) but some people find value in reminiscing and
reflecting on previous decades of their life, and I'm all about the
reminiscing and reflecting here. So, if this is the reminiscing and
reflecting because I can now divide my age evenly by 10 then so be it.

While cleaning up some file folders I came across some notes from 2010,
the time I was laid off from what I considered at the time to be my
dream job (working for an open source company). The notes were the usual
stuff I've written over the years: being hard on myself for not doing
more, worrying about my career, and admonitions of buckling down and
doing better. Reflecting on what transpired is enlightening. I got a new
job and over the next five years I still struggled with not feeling like
I was doing enough and wondering if I should be focusing on the things
that I wanted to do. I felt like I never had time to do the things I
wanted to do. I kept finding excuses.

Fast forward to 2020 and I'm sure there's a digitized piece of paper or
a scrap in a notebook that says exactly the same thing I said 10 years
ago. The difference though is I have made time. I wrote "The Mediocre
Programmer" in the mornings for 10 minutes a day. I put out over 200
episodes of Open Metalcast. I helped my family through some difficult
times. All the while I did it I still felt this urge to do more.

The difficulty with more is that more is never enough. You can't sustain
more. The end-goal of more is the known universe and despite what
science fiction tells you to believe you can't own the whole universe
(Sorry, billionaires).

When I think about the overarching theme of the last decade one word
springs to mind: "healing". This was a decade where I had my longest
bout of unemployment yet, It's the one where my assumptions about who I
am were tested to the fullest. It's the decade where I faced my fears
the most. It's the one that brought me the most challenges and the one
where I finally feel like I don't have to consistently prove myself.

It's the decade that bot me to think deepest about what is important to
me and who is important to me. It's the decade where I let go of many
concepts and ideas that I thought were sacrosanct.

It's also where I'm finding out who I am and saying "fuck the impostor
syndrome, because I'm fantastic."

Let's just say that 50 is just around the corner and I'm ready for it.
Buckle up, world.

http://decafbad.net/2021/09/11/now-we-are-50/

#misc #Adayinthelife

Pepper&Carrot Fate Accelerated request for help

I'm looking for folks who have expert Fate Accelerated eyes (and a
passing familiarity with the comic Pepper&Carrot at
https://peppercarrot.com/) to take a look at
an incredibly rough-draft of an RPG that I've been building for
Pepper&Carrot using Fate Accelerated. You can view the game
rules and look at
the source and issue tracker on
Framagit.

What I am looking for: 1) Does the magic system fit the world described?
Magic in Hereva is plentiful, and is essentially our Physics. It is
cheap but requires Rea, which is the effort into making a spell work. I
wanted to reflect that in the magic system, so I'm hoping that came
across.

2) Do the Stunts make sense for the world described?

3) What else should be added in the core book? I'm hoping to create a
book that folks who are familiar and unfamiliar with both Pepper&Carrot
and Fate Accelerated can pick up and play. There's obvious issues with
the layout and issues with the ordering of chapters, and missing content
related to creatures and what to do once in this world, but with this
scaffolding in place what more would you like to explore in this world?

Please feel free to ping me here, on the framagit repo, or via the email
address on my About page.

Thank you for reading this far, and for your indulgence in helping an
amateur designer with low Fate experience get better at this. :)

http://decafbad.net/2021/08/31/pepper-carrot-fate-accelerated-request-for-help/

#misc #Adayinthelife #Fate #GameDesign #RolePlayingGames

Designing a Well Lived Life: Checking In (August 2021)

Checking in for August for my "Designing a Well-Lived Life" blogging.
This is about making small changes during the year to make larger
changes.

This past month I spent recharging myself. This meant that a lot of
things went by the wayside while I was relaxing.

• Work on my game projects at least three times a week: I didn't work
  on this in lieu of relaxing.

• Meditation and mindfulness: I did some meditation in the morning.
  Hoping to do more of these in the morning.

• Work with less distractions and more focus on deeper work
  (Relentlessly prune bullshit): Made some progress with this, but
  there are times when social media or other things start distracting
  me. More practice needed.

• Walk or ride the recumbent bike at least four times a week: Didn't
  work on this much this month. Hoping that the cooler temperatures
  bring some more walking opportunities.

• Get further out of debt: Making progress with this.

• Play more games: I did take some time to play some games over the
  month. There were times when I sat down to play a game but my heart
  wasn't in it. But there were times when it did work and it reminded
  me why I like games and playing games. (Trust me, this is more
  revelatory than it seems.)

• Spend at least one night a week working on programming projects: No
  progress.

• Declutter and make our place more alive: I have renewed my
  commitment to this task. I'm starting to embrace more minimalism.
  More to come.

Onward to September.

http://decafbad.net/2021/08/30/designing-a-well-lived-life-checking-in-august-2021/

#misc #Adayinthelife #Seachange #ZenHabits #SocialMedia #Computers

Was just looking at most popular tags in use on the server and #adayinthelife came up, mostly with posts shared via feedDiasp* so TIL about the feedDiasp* script http://debakel.github.io/feedDiasp/

Open Metalcast on indefinite hiatus

Just announced that Open Metalcast is going on indefinite
hiatus.
I have mixed feeling about this. On the one hand it's closing out a
chapter in my life that was really important for ~9 years. It was
something that I thought I would be doing for many more years to come.
And yet there's also the feeling that I need to focus on other things in
my life at the moment. I needed a break and that break turned into a
multi-year thing. Here's the rub though: I didn't really miss doing
episodes. I miss sharing the music, and I miss scraping the internet for
new music, but I don't miss thinking "It's another week, I need to put
together another episode". It started being too much, and started
overtaking time that I wanted to allocate to other things.

So this is closure for something that I've been thinking about for a
while now. I might start it up again when I have more of the mental
bandwidth, but for now putting it on the shelf is exactly the thing that
I need to do.

When I'm ready I'll pick it back up. But for now it's on to other
things.

http://decafbad.net/2021/08/21/open-metalcast-on-indefinite-hiatus/

#misc #Adayinthelife

Games as work

I was recently browsing Pocket when an article caught my eye. The title
"All Work and No
Play"
grabbed my attention. The article mashes two perspectives together. The
first is about plight of game designers who are working untold hours for
low pay and no job security, and the games that these developers are
creating. The second is about the types of games they're producing. The
more interesting perspective for me is about the games that are
produced, though this is not to say that the low pay / long hours of the
developers is any less important.

The article is a review of the book Press
Reset
which deals with the stories and situations of various video game
developers and the studios that have collapsed around them. The article
posits that much of the games of the 21st century are reflections of
those who have created them, and the games that they're creating feel
like extensions of 21st century work. This is interesting because I've
felt that many of the games (video games, board games, etc.) hew close
to the tasks of work. Worker placement games have a feeling of managing
little meeples and directing them to be in the right place and the right
time in order to get scant resources for creating an economic engine.
We've turned our play into an extension of work. The rewards are victory
points, or score or some other trifle. Many games have an in-game
currency where you can purchase different items to customize your
experience so you can perform better in the game or add a minimum of
personalization to your character.

This line of inquiry into games and game design makes me think about the
games that we've had over the past two decades. It's also giving me
another perspective on why I've bounced off of many of the newer board
games and haven't taken to a whole lot of video games as of late: they
just feel like more work.

Definitely some areas to think about. More to come.

http://decafbad.net/2021/08/07/games-as-work/

#misc #Adayinthelife #VideoGames #GameDesign #Rants

A moment of perfect beauty

Today I had a moment of perfect beauty. I was getting an oil change for
JoDee's car. I wasn't sure if it was going to go over half-an-hour so I
asked my dad to come pick me up. Well, situations happened and I called
my dad. He forgot. That wasn't a problem though, because I know that
they've been busy with their move and thinking about all of the things
that need to make it happen. It also didn't seem like this was going to
take over a half-hour so I started fretting on what I would do. Usually
I just wait in the lobby, but because of COVID I decided to just take a
walk instead. There's a park behind the dealership so I just wandered
around the park. They're putting in a WWII memorial in this park so I
noticed one of the free lending libraries had a "Kilroy was here"
painted on the side. That made me smile because much of the computing
literature I read when I grew up had little doodles and what-not in
there, and one of them was "Kilroy was here". As I kept walking I
noticed a skate park where I'm sure folks learned or practiced their
skateboarding. I've never done any skateboarding (I look like a newborn
calf on rollerblades) but I admire folks who put in the time and energy
to make stuff like this happen. I made my way to the other end of the
park where I noticed something glimmering in the light. It looked like
it might have been a gazing ball or something like that, as though
someone made a little shrine over by the tree. Curious to find out what
was there I moved closer to it, only to discover not a shrine but a 16oz
beer can sitting perched within a tree. It was my creativity that turned
that into a small gazing ball adorning a makeshift garden. During the
walk I realized that my purpose is to use my creativity to make the
world ever so slightly better. My heroes have always been folks like Jim
Henson, Sid and Marty Krofft, Chris Crawford, and a myriad of game
designers and creative people. I adore creative folks. My job is to take
all of my talents and use them in whatever projects might come along.
Maybe that means I'm a dabbler in many different creative fields, but
even if one person can find a moment of perfect beauty in whatever I've
created then it'll totally be worth it. Even if it's just sharing the
story of a well-perched beer can nestled in a tree during a walk in the
park while waiting for an oil change.

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http://decafbad.net/2021/08/02/a-moment-of-perfect-beauty/

#misc #Adayinthelife #DeepThoughts

Designing a Well Lived Life: Checking In (July 2021)

Checking in for July for my "Designing a Well-Lived Life" blogging. This
is about making small changes during the year to make larger changes.

• Work on my game projects at least three times a week: This month was
  also difficult for me to do anything related to game design. I found
  myself struggling to do my normal work and found that game design
  was just something extra to add to that pile. I'm going to take
  August off from doing game design just to recharge myself and
  determine if this is something that I still want to pursue.

• Meditation and mindfulness: Not as much as I would have liked.
  Whenever I did take the time to meditate I enjoyed it, and whenever
  I slowed down to be mindful I felt more relaxed and present. Useful
  skills, but I don't tend to remember to do them as often as I
  should.

• Work with less distractions and more focus on deeper work
  (Relentlessly prune bullshit): I've been finding myself doing this
  organically with my desire to pull back whenever I'm overloaded.
  Still need to work more on the pruning piece (I'm still not quite
  where I want to be regarding non-bullshit) but can say that there's
  been movement on this.

• Walk or ride the recumbent bike at least four times a week: Warm
  days make it more difficult to do this, though I have brought out my
  juggling stuff to do more exercise. Also the exercise bike got
  folded up when we had the possibility of a flooded basement, so I'll
  need to unfold that again.

• Get further out of debt: Making progress on this. Can see the light
  at the end of one of our credit cards. Still spending too much on
  physical and PDF books. I think part of that is looking for comfort.

• Play more games: You'd think this is an area I'd excel at given the
  stressors of the month. Leave it to me to turn playing games into a
  chore. WE did manage to play a game of Azul on the last day of the
  month, but overall I'm struggling to get the energy to do any solo
  roleplaying or to sit down and play literally any games (Zaccaria
  Pinball notwithstanding). Need to give myself more fun and
  exploration.

• Spend at least one night a week working on programming projects:
  PyOhio was yesterday and it's the firs time in a while that I have
  thought "I should do more programming" in a long while. Maybe August
  could be the month where this gets more attention.

• Declutter and make our place more alive: Trying to keep stasis
  between incoming and outgoing. Made some headway, but more to work
  on here.

Overall the month was more about maintenance than anything. I think
August will focus more on recharging and refocusing.Ever onward.

http://decafbad.net/2021/08/01/designing-a-well-lived-life-checking-in-july-2021/

#misc #Adayinthelife #Seachange #ZenHabits #SocialMedia #Computers

Python: Multiprocessing under Linux and Windows

Ran into an interesting issue with the Python
multiprocessing
library under Windows, where the code that I had written would hang. It
was the equivalent of this:

from multiprocessing import Pool

...

with Pool() as pool:
    results = pool.starmap(foo, arglist)

This was in part because of how Windows was forking / pulling back the
results.

The work-around I used was the following:

if os.name == 'nt':
    from multiprocessing.pool import ThreadPool as Pool
else:
    from multiprocessing import Pool

...

with Pool() as pool:
    results = pool.starmap(foo, arglist)

Which did the trick. This is because ThreadPool uses Python's native
threading (which is Global Interpreter Locked, yes) to handle
multi-processing instead of the OS-level forking / spawning.

Posting this here in case I run into this again.

http://decafbad.net/2021/07/27/python-multiprocessing-under-linux-and-windows/

#misc #Adayinthelife #Python #Computers

Obstacles in games

I've been thinking a bit about how obstacles are portrayed in games.

Picture if you will a locked door. It's an older door. There is a door
mat in front of the door. How do you get in?

This door puzzle shows up in several text adventures (I first
encountered it in one of the Zork games from Infocom, if memory serves,
though I might have read about it in a review of Deadline). What quickly
becomes apparent is that the game is relying on several key things. The
first of which is that you can't break down the door, no matter how hard
you try. The second is that if you look in the keyhole you'll notice
it's blocked. The third is that the game hopefully presented you with
the opportunity to grab a letter opener.

It also requires you to have an idea what type of door and lock you're
dealing with. My great grandmother had these doors. The locking
mechanism used a Skeleton
Key. If you left the key in
the hole then someone could see that it was obstructed.

The designers of the puzzle devised that you could get into a locked
room by sliding the doormat under the door. Once it was in place you
could use the letter opener to move the key out of the hole and onto the
mat. Once the key hit the mat you could carefully pull the mat and get
the key. Voila! You can now open the door.

I decided to try this with my great grandma's locks. Sure enough, it
worked. I felt so clever that I knew how to defeat these locks once and
for all (assuming I had a doormat, a letter opener, and a skeleton key
lock with a key carelessly left in it).

Clever puzzle? Sure, but there's a few flaws with it.

The first is it assumes familiarity with the locks of this era. I
happened to have access to this lock so I could demonstrate for myself
that it worked. That was over 40 years ago. I doubt that anyone today
looking at that puzzle would even think to try this puzzle. Today's
locks don't offer such an easy way of defeating them.

Worse, what happens if the door remains locked? Most times it means that
the character doesn't get access to whatever is behind that door. Unless
they figure out the correct incantation of words or actions they remain
blocked from gaining access. At some point the door becomes less of an
obstacle and more of a frustrating impediment to progressing in the
game. It's even worse if the rest of the game is locked behind that
door. Sorry, but you must have door knowledge and a letter opener to
unlock this content.

I can also say that the locks I encountered weren't anything special.
You probably could pick it with the letter opener or bash the door hard
enough to gain access. The solution to the puzzle would make the player
feel clever, but only after they figured out what the game designer was
trying to achieve.

Thing is, it didn't add anything to the story. The only things that I
got out of it was a chance to play with my great grandmother's locks and
an anecdote to tell other folks.

Many games mistake locked doors, locked chests, and obstacles as
gameplay, but if they only serve to keep the player out unless there's
certain conditions that are met I wonder if they're really serving their
purpose. In GUMSHOE any
clue that is related to the investigation is automatically granted to
the players in the interest of keeping the story moving. So if you
happen to be on the wrong side of a door and there's a core clue behind
it the system allows you to use your investigative abilities to route
around it. Perhaps that means the door can be easily picked, or the wood
is slightly rotten, or you now know the name of the person who has the
key. It offers a more rich experience than doing one thing in order to
overcome the obstacle.

Point being that stalling progress in order to figure out a puzzle isn't
terribly interesting. As game designers we tend to forget that the
obstacles in the story are only interesting if the characters can route
around them. If the player isn't able to deduce what needs to happen in
order to get around an obstacle then perhaps the character can have some
knowledge that the player lacks. (e.g.: Kayleigh may never have seen a
skeleton key door, but intrepid reporter Vivienne Sinclair may have
opened more than a few doors with this little trick.

"I made significant progress in this game" is way more interesting than
"I finally got the damn door opened". Let's give the players more tools
to have their characters be successful.

http://decafbad.net/2021/07/11/obstacles-in-games/

#misc #Adayinthelife #GameDesign #RolePlayingGames

Working through the fear

There's one element of programming that I wish I had learned early on.
One of the things that programming books (especially beginner
programming books) do is try to make it seem like programming is fun.
They create cute experiments for you to tinker with in the hopes that
you'll become fascinated like they were and keep plugging away with
programming. That's all fine and good when you're starting out, but when
you start hitting harder problems the calm "you can do it" attitude
seems to melt away into the "why haven't you memorized this" or "why do
you need to head to the manual for this?" The expectations ramp up, and
it feels like weakness to try something and fail.

I think one of the reasons I glommed onto programmer post-mortems like
"Programmers at Work" and "Coders at Work" was to figure out the
emotions that these folks must have felt while they were working on
their amazing tasks. Unfortunately most of the time these books are
either humble-brags about how great it was that they solved the problem
that transformed them from a programming citizen to programming royalty.
Rare is the case when a programmer will admit that they didn't have the
answer, or how they tried several things that didn't work only to find
the one that sort of worked. I think our industry needs more of these
breakdowns of how a project came together. The one that I point to as
one of the best is the Source Code for Eastern Front
1941
by Chris Crawford. The reason this is so great is not because of the
commenting of the code, but more about the why of the code. It's not
just a list of "these were the technical decisions that lead to me
deciding to use this data structure" but also "this is how my design
process came together and what I found didn't work". It highlights that
game programming in particular and programming in general is more
iterative rather than prescriptive.

I wonder how many programmers have been fouled up thinking that they're
somehow defective because they couldn't keep the whole program in their
head, or had to keep referring to documentation because they needed to
find some syntax that wasn't intuitive to them. How many programmers
might have been helped with a mentor saying "no, this is exactly how you
should be feeling, and here's how to deal with that fear". How many
nights of frustration-leading-to-burnout might be avoided if we
acknowledge that we're human beings programming a machine and not vice
versa.

Learning to be OK with not knowing and understanding the fear that it
causes is one of those skills I wish I had been taught better. I think
it would have helped me get further along with my journey.

http://decafbad.net/2021/07/04/working-through-the-fear/

#misc #Adayinthelife #Computer #Programming

Designing a Well Lived Life: Checking In (June 2021)

Checking in for [June] for my "Designing a Well-Lived Life" blogging.
This is about making small changes during the year to make larger
changes.

This past month was rather busy. I've been helping my parents to move
into a smaller place, and much of my time on the weekends has been spent
helping them process, pack, and move things. It's also resulted in me
decluttering over here, which has been both exhilarating and tiring.
This has overshadowed much of my intentions for the past month and made
it difficult to really focus. I've been exhausted and crabby and loathe
to get up to do any more work. But, this is a practice ground and the
one thing I can do is keep trying and keep plugging away. Hence, that's
why I'm checking in this month.

• Work on my game projects at least three times a week: This was the
  first thing to go. I've not been getting up early (which is when I
  tend to work on these) so I haven't worked on them at all. By the
  time I'm done with work the last thing I want to do is more work, so
  I keep putting these off. What will help is if I decouple the time
  that I work on this and pull back from needing to be refreshed. Even
  if I can give these a little space they might prove less burdensome
  and more enjoyable. Definitely an area to work on.

• Meditation and mindfulness: This was also pushed aside. Even two
  minutes felt like a bridge-too-far. Need to reconnect with this
  practice each day and not feel burdened by just giving myself space.

• Work with less distractions and more focus on deeper work
  (Relentlessly prune bullshit): Mildly successful. There were periods
  where I was able to work without distractions but the more tired and
  exhausted I am the more I seek comfort in external sources
  (Mastodon, Youtube, BoardGameGeek, etc.) Pulling back on needing
  comfort may help here.

• Walk or ride the recumbent bike at least four times a week: My
  exercise this month was moving boxes, whether it was at my parents
  or at the post office (shipping off things to the Internet Archive).
  Not sure if I can claim this as mindfully exercising, but at least
  I'm moving, so calling this a win.

• Get further out of debt: Ho boy. I'm still making progress on our
  credit card debt and paying off bills, but I've also been finding
  myself purchasing more RPG games this past month. I need to curb
  that spending considerably, and hope that with the price increase at
  DriveThru RPG on premium color books that will be a slight
  disincentive to keep funneling my money into RPG books.

• Play more games: The next thing to get set aside was my desire to
  play any games. I've been reading a lot, and have a backlog of games
  that I would like to try out, but at the moment I'm not feeling the
  space to play any of them. We'll see if I can make some progress on
  this next month.

• Spend at least one night a week working on programming projects:
  Even with Coffee House Coders being once a week I've not done
  anything related to external programming projects. My headspace in
  this area is essentially moribund.

• Declutter and make our place more alive: Made some significant
  progress in this area out of necessity. With an influx of stuff
  coming in I have become way less patient to keep anything that isn't
  being used anytime soon. This has resulted in me listing a bunch of
  board games for sale/trade, donating books and 78rpm records, and
  just making space where I can. At the very least I can say that I've
  made some headway to removing some of the cruft that has been
  building up.

July is going to be an interesting month. I still have boxes of stuff to
ship out, and hopefully we can unload some of what we have taken on when
things settle, but for now despite my complaints I'm relishing the
progress that I have made with decluttering. If I can keep the mindset
that I don't have to think about things when I'm not the curator of them
then I think that will help me gain more energy in other spaces and help
me to reconnect with my projects and designs. Even so, I still need to
give those designs and projects space to thrive.

http://decafbad.net/2021/06/30/designing-a-well-lived-life-checking-in-june-2021/

#misc #Adayinthelife #Seachange #ZenHabits #SocialMedia #Computers

Pulling back from board games

I'm finding my tastes are pulling back from board games. There's several
reasons for this. The first is that I've had way too many games that
have just sat on shelves unplayed. I got caught up in the moment (damn
you, Rahdo, The Dice Tower, and Shut Up and Sit Down for making board
games seem lie fun!) and found myself checking out a lot of different
games. Unfortunately many board games seem to scrimp on the rulebooks
which can make learning them more complicated than they need be. And
while there are many resources for learning board games it feels like a
chore just to get to where you can play your first few solo-plays before
unleashing the game on the rest of your group. That feels like work to
me. The second reason is that board games are now optimized for a more
ephemeral experience. Witness the number of games that are tuned to
attract audiences on Kickstarter, with their large plastic pieces,
miniatures, exclusives, and stretch goals galore. They're not here for a
long-term engagement. At best these games become highly sought after
until the next big thing rolls around to take its place. Worse, some
companies have a difficult time with reprints after the initial
Kickstarter and have to rely on expansions and what-not to keep an
influx of cash. Lastly, many of these games have one unique thing that
drives them while surrounding that with a bunch of mechanics and victory
conditions that are more of a chore than fun. If the game is more about
what I can't do on my turn then you're essentially driving me through
your game design like a tour guide. Also, if it's impossible to
determine who is "winning" because the cards or what-not aren't tallied
until the end of the game then that's a silly design.

So I have put up a good number of games for trade or sale with more on
the way. Check my Board Game Geek page (link below) for more details.

I don't think board games as a while are necessarily bad, but I'm
finding that my patience for the current trends of expensive games with
exclusives (or worse, "legacy games" that customize the game during
play) are not for me. I'm more apt to bring up a RPG and play with that
because it doesn't require as much for me to get started and the stories
can be more interesting. We'll see if that changes in the future, but
for now I'm removing a lot of "adventure" games, point-salad Euro games,
and games that don't have a strong solo component. I'm also pulling a
lot of games that are "single-taskers" where I can replace the gameplay
with a printed board and Looneylabs Pyramids. If I can replicate your
core mechanics with those then that's one less thing I'm keeping in my
collection.

We'll see how this all turns out.

http://decafbad.net/2021/06/21/pulling-back-from-board-games/

#misc #Adayinthelife #BoardGames #Games

Understanding Your Spectrum by Dr. Ian Logan

One of the things I like about "retro" computing are the books of the
era. There were a ton of books of varying quality, but the good ones
really dove into the internals of what was going on with the machine.
"Mapping the Atari" by
Ian Chadwick was one such book where Ian spent a lot of time checking to
see what various peeks and pokes did on the Atari machine (Atari didn't
see fit to provide a lot of documentation about the machine unless you
gave them some serious cash). Conversely the Commodore and Sinclair
machines were well documented by their creators. This allowed for more
in-depth books about the machine (and even books with the complete
source code of the machine, such as Complete Timex TS1000/Sinclair ZX81
ROM
Disassembly
and The Complete Spectrum ROM
Disassembly.

Understanding Your
Spectrum
is a fantastic book that I wish was available (much like the ZX Spectrum
itself) in the USA when I was learning. It not only covers the basics of
the machine (what hooks to what, what the board layout is) but then
explores the operating system of the machine. I don't recall this level
of depth in many books that I saw in the wild when I was growing up ,
and I'm not sure I would have known what to do with them (I didn't have
nearly as much knowledge about computers as I do now) but I would have
appreciated at least this level of detail. It really pulled back the
mystery of what was going on in the machine.

It got me thinking that many of today's machines would benefit from this
deep-level dive. I know there were books that gave a cursory overview of
the internals of the machine but having an expert guide like Dr. Ian
Logan who can explain what's going on with the machine would be a huge
help. It's not that we need documentation; we need explainers to
understand what we're looking at.

So here's to Dr. Ian Logan's "Understanding Your Spectrum", one of the
great tour-guides that helped make the ZX Spectrum an exceptional
machine.

http://decafbad.net/2021/06/12/understanding-your-spectrum-by-dr-ian-logan/

#misc #Adayinthelife #Computers #ZXSpectrum

Working from home; anecdotes from a strange career

It's no secret that the COVID-19 pandemic changed how people work. Many
folks got their first taste of Work-From-Home when they couldn't go into
an office. Unfortunately now we're starting to see articles on places
wondering if we should go back into offices or asking what we're missing
by not being in the office. Some folks are even starting their
siren-like calls for employees to go back into the office despite there
still being a pandemic.

I'm in a unique position in that over my career I have had multiple
working arrangements. I've been full-time in an office, full-time
remote, and several combinations of remote and in-person work. I present
these as anecdotes in the hopes that we can think a little deeper about
how best to proceed with asking folks back into the office, and
understand that our current solutions for working from home might work
better if we made a few tweaks to them.

Note that I'm a programmer / system administrator so most of my work is
in front of a computer. I understand not everyone is able to exercise
this level of privilege. I also believe that we put way too much
emphasis on folks having butts in seats when their job doesn't have any
human contact at all. Also, full disclosure: it is my hope that I never
need to go back into an office situation ever again. I prefer to work
from home, and if given the choice I'll gladly take working from home
over an office any day. But I hope my insights will help make this an
attractive option for those who aren't completely sold on total
work-from-home.

My first jobs were in the automotive industry. Both places were starting
to get work-from-home (remote access) but they considered these
solutions to be used as a last resort. The expectation was still that
you would be in the office. This lead to me driving into the office one
day during a snow storm and almost slipping off of the road. When I
arrived I found that few people were in the office. Had I been given the
opportunity I would have worked from home on that day.

(This is one of my rubrics for working from home: if the local schools
are closed then you should be allowed to work from home. Your job is not
worth you getting maimed or killed, and doubly so if the weather is
treacherous. Stay home.)

The one thing that I liked about being in the office was that I got to
know folks. We'd go to lunch and talk about all of the strange shit that
was going on in our lives. We had time to talk during work, and could
shoot-the-shit. That's one theme that will be running throughout this
post: have the ability for folks to decompress and talk with one
another.

My next major job change was for a company that had a fully remote
support staff. I spent about a year and half working with folks that I
mostly knew over voice chats on Skype and IM. Overall it was good, but
there were times when I didn't know if I was making folks angry with me
or if I was screwing up. I missed a lot of cues that could have helped
me better understand how folks were reacting. This company also had a
local office that I drove to once. The relationships that folks had
there were way different than the relationships I had with my team. Had
I not known a few of the folks there outside of work I would have felt
even more isolated. It wasn't until an all-hands meeting that I met the
rest of my team and got to chat with them. While I enjoyed this job I
also found myself burning out and stressed out.

One of the things that might have helped out is more video chats with
the rest of my team and the ability to "hang out" during work. I know
that's not generally thought of as part of work, but it might have
helped us to get to know each other better. We did have chats in IM
about various topics, but even having a regular "hey, how are things
going outside of work" chat might have helped us. That's something that
I missed from being in the office.

My next fully-remote position started with me meeting my manager and the
rest of my team. That was a marked improvement over my previous job.
Unfortunately I was also in a situation where my manager left for
reasons and the only other folks I had to talk to was the rest of the
folks I was working with. My new management had no idea what I was
doing, and it became apparent that it wasn't going to work out
long-term.

The next job I had was three days at the office and two days working
from home. If I had to go back into an office then this would be the
compromise I would accept (though I'd prefer two days in the office, and
three days working from home). This allowed our team to bond in the
office while still giving me the ability to work on things in solitude.

My latest job started as contracting-from-home. It's a small company but
it has enough conversation for me to not feel completely left out. This
is currently my preferred working style.

What I learned over this career is that working from home can feel
isolating if you're not allowed to have the ability to communicate with
the rest of your staff. That doesn't just mean your direct team but also
other folks in the rest of the company. This doesn't all have to be
about work, either. I think part of the stress that folks have about
work-related chats is that there's the requirement (imposed or
otherwise) that everything on the business equipment needs to be only
about business. That's fair, but it also means that your staff will find
other ways to find the warm human contact that we all crave. In the old
days it was the office phone (and the cell phone). For me it was IRC. In
most cases it's having lunch or kibbitzing before a meeting in a
conference room, or wandering over to someone else's cubicle. If you're
going to go remote you need a place for folks to connect with others
that isn't strictly about work.

Another thing I learned is that it does help to see faces. Having voice
and IM-only conversations with folks on my team made them feel more
distant. The technology has gotten better for face-to-face conversations
so let's do more of that. And no, it doesn't have to be studio perfect.
Be human. Humans are messy creatures and we should celebrate our
messiness. If something happens that isn't "business" then celebrate it.
If your cat jumps on the desk then celebrate that you have a cat. Give
yourselves the ability to be human and not just an automaton that turns
money into work.

The more we loosen our formality with the tools we have the better we'll
be able to use them. Sure, there still need to be boundaries, and sure,
not everyone is going to want to be on camera 8 hours a day. But if we
give ourselves permission to be less formal and give ourselves the
ability to connect more deeply with folks over IM and video then we'll
be able to forge new ways of working. We need to stop making video chat
into a perfect broadcast. It's possible to have an entire workforce
that's remote and engaged with each other in ways that were impossible
in the workplace. Let's explore those while we have the opportunity.

http://decafbad.net/2021/06/11/working-from-home-anecdotes-from-a-strange-career/

#misc #Adayinthelife #DeepThoughts #Career