Blind man bluffs it in Poland - Day five

Blind man bluffs it in Poland - Day five

Oops.

After getting into the hostel at around 4:30 and eating a petrol garage sandwich, I'd set my alarm for 9am so I'd have enough time to get myself to the Gamma Factory in town, to attend the first day of sprints. I woke up at 11:45, checked my phone and saw the alarm was marked to go off on weekdays. Today was Saturday.

After all my talk yesterday of wanting to be part of the community, and signing up to attend a workshop on committing code to Django, I'd failed. If I turned up I was going to be late, I'd almost certainly miss the workshop and would end up walking around aimlessly searching for something to do.

All of this would've made me feel like a gaping arsehole, but for this simple phrase:

I regret nothing.

I'd had a memorable and potentially life-changing night, and one of the side-effects of having such a night is that you can't always be in tip-top condition the next day. So I got showered, dressed and out the door to my taxi.

Now, a note on being blind in the back of a non-English speaking driver's cab. In Birmingham, it's pretty common to have an Asian taxi driver. Sometimes they're first-generation immigrants and very occasionally their English isn't all that great. But I've never had a problem asking what I owed and paying. This wasn't true of Warsaw.

That's not a criticism at all. I don't expect people to speak my native tongue, but it does create a problem when you can't read the numbers on screen and they can't say them in English. But this is my problem, and I've tried to solve it in different ways. What tends to be the most effective is getting it written down on a receipt, as a) that's not abnormal and b) it's relatively easy to communicate.

So after hopping out of the car I headed indoors to the Gamma Factory, an interesting, sparsely-decorated venue which put me in mind of bits of the Custard Factory in Digbeth, but cooler and with a lot more spit-and-sawdust.

As I'd guessed, I wasn't able to join in with anything as people were hard at work on their own projects, so I took a seat and began work on my own idea.

For the uninitiated, sprints (which is a term I've only known inside the Python community but I'm sure exists outside it) are a little like hackathons. They're time set aside for working intensely to achieve a goal. That goal might be to fix a bug, start work on a new feature, or document an existing one.

Because I'd missed the intro, I'd forfeited my ability to work on Django or anything related, so I got to work on something I'd wanted to build for a week or so. I won't go into the details, but it's a hopefully useful tool that I can open source and deploy online for people to check out.

The sprints - certainly the first day - were pretty heavily over-subscribed, meaning the organisers didn't have enough food for everyone. But once again they rose to the challenge and went above and beyond, feeding people with chicken and rice, chocolate cake, and pizzas both vegetarian and meaty. This echoed the feeling I got through the whole conference. Obviously I don't have a previous one to compare it to, but I feel like the Polish organising committee really did their attendees proud. Hats off to 'em.

We had to leave at around 6:30pm and so I raced to finish my project. I'm happy to say I pretty much smashed it, thanks to having a good prototyping toolset (as I'd mentioned in yesterday's talks) and a bunch of code that only needed minor improvements. I'll be putting the results of that online as soon as I've got access to wifi and a clear head.

James and I had been working across from each-other all day, and we ended up in a group of people from across Europe, in search of a "real" meal before the unofficial "drink up", which was in a park by an overpass. We found a faux-Brazilian restaurant - a sort of Hooters affair - and chewed over the last three days of talks, then headed out on foot to the venue.

It turned out that this weekend marked a national holiday in Poland. Everything on Sunday was to be closed, and everyone who is everyone was outside drinking in a big public piss-up. It had a nice atmos; there were loads of people but the whole thing felt really safe and without the rowdiness you'd expect from a British affair, but then there aren't that many opportunities for Brits to drink outdoors so we kinda like to let our hair down when the time does arrive.

I tried throughout my week in Poland not to attach myself to someone like a leech, in the hope that they'd keep me safe, so I always had to strike a balance between letting the night take its course and getting home with safety in numbers. I hope James didn't feel like I glommed onto him too much, but it was for his company and the laughs, not for anything else that I think we ended up bumping into each other or hanging out. He did let me grab the first taxi, too.

I ended Saturday night full to the brim with heavy beer, having eaten well and experienced a Polish piss-up. I think it went pretty well.

Photo by Father Jack

Posted on May 19, 2013 in Life and tagged , , (No comments)

Blind man bluffs it in Poland - Day four

Blind man bluffs it in Poland - Day four

If I finished yesterday feeling a little isolated, I finished today feeling like a king, all thanks to a fat grey cat.

Last night I tentatively considered doing a lightening talk, as I thought it would be a great calling card: an introduction to a guy who's been using Django for a while and knows his stuff, but has yet to become part of the community. So while I was waiting for my non-existent pizza, I worked on a slideshow on the off-chance that I could get to talk.

In the first break of the final day of the conference, I put my name down for a talk. However, it turned out that there were so many before me that it would be almost impossible for me to get on-stage. I wasn't super upset about this because I thought part of the battle was getting up the courage to sign up.

I enjoyed the talks and managed to hook up with a chap I'd been drinking with on Wednesday night, called James (or Ogre). Even speaking to one familiar face was heartening enough, and we discovered that the closing party was to be held at the conference venue, which meant I could relax.

As the final talks gave way to the lightening round, my stomach started churning. I knew I was almost certainly not getting picked, even though they'd asked people to shorten their talks and scheduled in something like 24 talks.

But towards the end, a name was called and then I was asked to come to the stage to prepare, which basically meant sitting down with one of the organisers and readying my laptop for connection to the projector. After a bit of faff I was plugged in and ready to go. And this here is my talk, recorded from my iPhone.

The reaction I got to the cat that looked like a pierogi sealed the deal, or so I thought, but throughout the night and the following day I got comments from people telling me how inspiring they found it.

Every compliment was of immense value to me, but I couldn't help but take a special degree of delight from comments by Danny Greenfeld, co-author of Two Scoops of Django, contributor and multiple conference speaker.

I think it's fair to say that it had the desired effect. It introduced me as a shy guy with some good ideas but no foothold in the community, and gave people an excuse or a pretext to come over and talk to me.

Shortly after the lightening talks ended and I stopped shaking, we all had a group photo taken and we dispersed for an hour before the party began. I spent that hour in the company of some of the incest and most fun people I've had the pleasure to know. I can't list them all 'cos I'm in an airport with no Internet access and I don't want to miss people out, but you know who you are, and I love you.

When the party broke up we headed to a garage for more beers, and drank them on a grass verge, as an impromptu session of lightening talks took place. "Respect the speaker" became the catchphrase of the evening, and I headed back to my hotel via taxi with a couple of pleasantly drunk Austrians.

I crawled into bed at around 4:30am while the sun was coming up, feeling several kinds of fuzzy. I'd done it. I'd won DjangoCon and Poland. I felt like a king. I'd stuck my neck out, put myself "out there" and the response I got couldn't have been much better.

Thank you.

Posted on May 18, 2013 in Life and tagged , , (No comments)

Blind man bluffs it in Poland - Day three

Blind man bluffs it in Poland - Day three

Thursday in Warsaw wasn't one of my favourites; it just felt like nothing really went as well as it could do. This is my third day in Poland for DjangoCon, so maybe check out my earlier posts if you want to catch up.

It all started with a trek to the venue. Like an idiot I stuck slavishly to the map on my phone, but like an even bigger idiot I used Google Maps rather than the admittedly beleaguered Apple offering. They're both pretty inaccurate as I don't think I'm in quite the bustling metropolis that maps tend to excel at, but Wednesday worked and Thursday didn't. I ended up in stinging nettles, tramping in water and performing more u-turns than your favourite political hate-target of choice.

I'm aware at this point that I've probably got family and friends reading this who'd been concerned for my survival. I can't really do a lot to allay those fears other than to say that, in all honesty, the same thing happens to me in Birmingham on a not irregular basis, so really Warsaw is just another place for me to get lost. I can deal with that in daylight, so I made a pact with myself not to travel on foot at night. That's how I survive, and I'm still in one piece with all my belongings :)

Anyway, back to the con. Day one had brought with it a nice few coffee-break chats with all sorts, but for whatever reason today just didn't happen for me, and I barely said anything to anyone, apart from a nice chap from the south of Poland who talked mobile development with me before the lightening talks.

There is a point at which this is down to other people. Pretty much everyone I've spoken to has been nice, but I haven't felt bathed in the warm glow of inclusion that I maybe expected, perhaps unfairly. I don't think you can blame people; most are here with people they work with or otherwise know, and the ones who had come alone tended to be the more receptive. I don't know what I'd hoped ,maybe to merge into a group or find some guys at the hostel hat might want to grab a drink, but maybe I either set my sights too high or just didn't put enough effort into making conversation.

In fairness, the reticence of others might not be completely imagined on my part; I guess people were pretty hungover this morning as the first night party went on tip the wee small hours, so I'm told.

After a longer walk home than was necessary, due to me forgetting the right combination of turns - but it's difficult to be downhearted when your'e walking in the gorgeous sunshine Warsaw's enjoying right now - I tried to order some pizza from the Internet. It didn't turn up, and I had no number to contact the nearest branch (I'm sure I could've looked into it more, but I was already feeling non-plussed and didn't fancy an argument involving me being an ignorant Brit trying to make himself understood). Luckily I'd had the good sense to opt to pay on delivery rather than beforehand, so I just let it go and assumed that my pizza went the way of yesterday's cab. Whatever.

In the end, I spent the evening working on a lightening talk of my own. For the uninitiated, this simply involves popping your name on a list on a first-come first-served basis and, if you get called up, you get to plug your laptop in and present a five minute talk. So I put one together and, unless a strange fear grips me, I'll submit it.

Today was by no means a disaster, but let's see what tomorrow brings.

Photo by Scott Robinson

Posted on May 17, 2013 in Life and tagged , , (No comments)

Blind man bluffs it in Poland - Day two

Blind man bluffs it in Poland - Day two

My second day in Poland marked the first day of DjangoCon Europe 2013, the web conference I'm attending on my own. If you've not been following the story, you can catch up.

Map apps - however clumsy a phrase - are µy saviour, and I suspect the saviour of anyone who finds navigating the physical world, or following directions tricky. They tried to teach me mental mapping at school, but much like with Polish phonetics - as I've gradually found out - it just doesn't sink in.

Via a slightly circuitous route I was able to get to the venue with plenty of time to spare. With so much time to spar in fact, that the water urns hadn't yet reached anything approaching boiling point. So I trudged off to find breakfast, which ended up being a KFC, and was back in time to kick off my first DjangoCon.

I've really enjoyed it so far, but will blog about that separately. I got through the day largely incident-free, apart from a slight snafu at lunch involving a ticket I didn't know I needed, but had in the bottom of my bag. I was able to walk back with some people who were in the same hotel as me, and ended up finding a much nicer route (not to be replicated the following day though, but more on that story tomorrow).

My main problem seemed to be with getting to the venue for the first night party, which was on a street called Rac?awicka. Despite researching Polish phonetics and asking on Twitter for the correct pronunciation, it turns out that there are some sounds I just can't replicate, 'cos it took my poor driver three attempts to finally find the place, with one of them involving me showing him the street name in a tweet (and that wasn't even the last attempt).

On the way back, I think someone nicked my cab but I was able to hop in with a bunch of guys who were heading back to the hostel, and were kind enough to refuse my offer of payment. Have you ever been in a cab with a group of total strangers, only having your basic trust in humanity and assumption that you'd heard the street name right, for company? Well, it's a weird feeling, but kind of liberating.

As I write this, it's lunchtime on the second day of the conference, and I'm sat on my backside in the shade, looking like the guy they get in to frame the stock photography shot before replacing him with the hot girl. Also I have things crawling up me, so I should probably get up.

See you in a bit.

Posted on May 16, 2013 in Life and tagged , , (No comments)

Blind man bluffs it in Poland - Day one

Blind man bluffs it in Poland - Day one

I often joke about how I've jumped out of an aeroplane, but that I'm scared of public speaking, even though I was an am-dram kid. I know, I'm a bucket of contradictions. But, partly because I was never allowed to let my eyesight become an excuse (rightly so, natch) but partly 'cos I refuse to be defeated by a world more easily navigable to most, I like to try and square off against fearful situations and poke them in the face.

So as I write this, I'm sat in my room at Hostel S?u?ewiec in Warsaw, Poland. This is the first time I've left the country on my own to go to an event in which I won't know anyone. To be honest, I think that would make most people nervous, so there's definitely some douchey overcompensation going on, but nobody's perfect.

Naturally there are some challenges at play and unfortunately they all involve other people:

  1. I don't speak Polish
  2. I can't see very well, so explaining that might be difficult, if it were to come up
  3. I'm doing this by myself, so I don't have anyone to lean on. In all situations, I have to take the initiative

There are ways to mitigate at least some of this, though. For one thing, I got from the airport to the hotel by showing the name and address of the hostel to the driver on my iPhone. When the journey ended, he luckily spoke enough English to tell me the amount I owed, without any further kerfuffle.

So far everything's gone pretty smoothly, but I've yet to venture out of my room, and I'm unlikely too now, given that it's getting gradually darker. Luckily I packed enough food and water to last me the night, and I've a few episodes of Parks & Recreation to lull me to sleep before the fun really begins tomorrow.

It dawns on me that I haven't really explained why I'm in Poland in the first place. Well, every year, a group of people organise a conference in a European city, for the web framework I love, and cut my teeth on around 2009. The framework's called Django, and the conference is, predictably enough called DjangoCon Europe. That's in fact the bit I'm least worried about as, once we hit the "Convention floor" as it were, it'll just be another con, and it won't matter that I'm in a different country or I don't know the layout because pretty much everyone else will be in the same boat.

So yeah, I feel a little guilty that I'm probably not going to venture out tonight, like I'm somehow not taking proper advantage of my situation, but there's such a thing as pushing one's luck, and I don't know that it's that wise to be wondering around a darkened, unfamiliar city while my face is lit up like a Christmas tree with a nice, reflective Apple logo infront of it.

I really hope I meet some likeminded people and form a friendship or two. I'd much rather be heading out to a bar with a bunch of virtual strangers than lying on my single-serving hostel bed, but that for me is perhaps the biggest challenge of all, and unlike my travel arrangements, there isn't an app for that.

Let's see what tomorrow brings, eh?

Photo by Henri Sivonen

Posted on May 14, 2013 in Life and tagged , , (No comments)

Meditations on thirty

Meditations on thirty

On Thursday my speedometer clocked over from 29 to 30. I feel as though part of my generation and of that just before it is bound always to push milestone decades back one year, so that 40 is the new 30, 50 is the new 40, and so on, because although we all live longer, we're still part of a culture that places certain expectations on these arbitrary numbers.

I don't know how I feel about that though. I've been through a week of a sort of frustrated depression, which oddly enough was lifted around the time the clock struct midnight on the 8th, the day after my birthday. Thursday wasn't fun; I just wanted to draw the curtains and flip the outside world the bird , but I'd been looking forward to the weekend so I could spend time with the people I love.

Yesterday was good news for a man with crippling self-doubt, as it showed me that there were people who quite simply wanted to spend time with or around me, and would make special effort to do that. There were maybe fewer than a handful of people who I think would have been there out of duty if this weren't the case, but I felt like everyone was there because they either like me or have absolutely no problem spending time with me. That's nice if it's a few people, but there were around 25 of us moving from pub to pub throughout the evening; workmates, family members, friends, friends of friends and partners of friends.

My only regret is that I didn't think to take any photos, as it would've been nice to have had a memento, but that doesn't diminish what it meant to have so many people there because they wanted to come.

I try to ignore the self-imposed pressure that is expected of a "thirty-something". I've managed to avoid the trappings of a meaningful relationship and a burgeoning family, and my plan to own a house by this age was knackered earlier in the week. But since over the past couple of years I've come to understand that I'll probably always be single, and I'm very lucky to have a place of my own, the only pressures really come from other people and that's a sign of their own expectations, not mine.

Some of the expectations we have are arbitrary or based on tradition. There's no need to marry and have kids at any age if you don't want to; we all have our own ideas of "settling down" and not everyone wants to do that anyway. The right-job, right-house, right-family thing is a construct which the generation that went before mine began, I think, to reject. But it can be difficult sometimes not to look at people of your own generation who have those things and not feel a tinge of envy. I'm very jealous of my brother foe example, as he's been able to tread a path that's always eluded me. I can't say whether that path would've been right for me, but it's never shown itself.

Although I sneer at it as yet more homespun wholesome folksy nonsense, as I get older I can't help but begin to appreciate the American "thanksgiving" tradition. Its wide-eyed, earnestness aside, the idea of having a day to recognise things for which we should be thankful makes sense, and as I grow as a person I try and remember how lucky I am. I'm lucky to be a white man form the West, basically for better or worse (ie: worse), the top of the pile in society. I'm lucky to be able to hold down a job, to have nice things and to buy nice things for others. I'm lucky to have people to buy nice things for, and I'm especially lucky to have friends who probably treat me better than I treat them. I'm lucky to have my natural tendency towards selfishness tolerated by good-hearted people. I'm lucky to be part of a society that lets me get fat but stay relatively healthy, and I'm lucky to be able to be self-aware and to know how cushy I've got it.

That doesn't mean that you don't wake up on some days and think the world's against you. It doesn't help you fight off the spiders that wriggle into your brain and fuck up the wiring. Those things are at once natural and unexplainable. And yes there are missing pieces in my life (not because someone else says they're missing but because I've felt those gaps since I was a teenager), but my life is already pretty full, so would I even have room for that "final piece"?

In the last ten years I've had four jobs, flown to Ireland, Venice, the US and Australis, jumped out of a plane, helped run a radio station performed at Beatle Week in Liverpool. I've started podcasts, built apps, run businesses and fallen flat on my arse aplenty. I've had my heart lifted and broken, I've made friends and learned how to deal with people who don't like me. I've helped people make things and do things. And I have loved.

And I have been loved.

Photo by Colin Milligan

Posted on March 10, 2013 in Life and tagged (No comments)

Tech Wednesday PM and other stories

Tech Wednesday PM and other stories

It's been a while since I've attended a Tech Wednesday event, but I forewent my gym session to pop along and drink beer and eat pizza with a bunch of relatively likeminded people, and get shown some cool stuff. And there is cool stuff to be seen.

Most notably, the two presentations I enjoyed the most were from apps I already knew about and have supported: Whisk and Droplet, but I also liked Paul Rhodes' tour of Loggable, a time tracking system that takes a reflective approach by helping managers figure out where project time is really being spent, so as to make the process of quoting for future jobs a bit more profitable.

Also on show was Appacts, a mobile analytics platform similar (to my mind) to Testflight and HockeyApp, but without the useful thing of being able to store and distribute your app files for beta testing. Plus, I use Appcelerator Titanium in my mobile development, which comes with a decent enough stats package for my needs.

Overall I enjoyed the do, and am definitely looking forward to more of the same. I'm hoping to make it to more meetups, as I'm beginning to forget what a social life is like. I'm also really chuffed to have bought a ticket for DjangoCon, which will be my first time to mingle with fellow Djangonaughts and my first trip to Poland.

So, next up is Multipack, then WordPress Birmingham. Where else should I be going?

Photo by Elliott Brown

Posted on Feb. 6, 2013 in Life and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , (four comments)

Alright 2013, let's do this thing

Alright 2013, let's do this thing

First off, here's a quick note to all those who pretend not to see the significance of the calendar changing from one day to another, as if moving from one 365-day period to another isn't in some way worth marking. Well done, you're very clever and I love you. Now go and put your energy into something positive. And yes, I still love you. :) Now, let's move on.

Yesterday I spent the first, and last New Year's Eve in my flat. I moved in in 2006, and since then have had six NYE parties away from the place. But this year I'm hoping to move my sweaty bum up the next rung of the property ladder, so this will probably bet the last time I'll get to count down to the new year in Flat 17. I spent it with my cat, some chicken and some whiskey. It was great.

I don't see much point in being All Reflective about 2012, as I don't tend to learn things from year to year, but moment to moment. Also, roundups of the year are a bit, well, 2012 frankly. But I've been back at Substrakt for a few months and we're now in our new offices, so the future is very much our sea-mollusk.

I've no big Life Dreams or plans other than to move to the new place and start seriously nest-egging as much as possible, once the post-move dust has settled. I'll be thirty in March and it'll be nice to have something to show for it - or at least be moving towards something - other than a collection of Steve Jobs' brainchildren and a cat somewhere on the autistic spectrum.

Nymbol, what was 2012's Next Big Thing is now my Current Big Thing, and Andy and I are working hard to bring it to the masses, after running some product trials (which we're currently doing). It's an engine that powers mobile apps that are about objects and places, so to accompany the trials I'm also working on an app that will showcase a little of what Nymbol can do.

More on this, and many other things to come in the next 12 months. Once I've tipped out the current storm from my house-moving teacup, I'll be able to share some of the pitfalls of moving from my personal experience, but for now I hope your horizon is looking as bright as mine.

Catch you soon, -Mx

Photo by SashaW

Posted on Jan. 1, 2013 in Life and tagged , (No comments)

Back in competitive weight-loss

After I finished going to Fat Fighters in March, I slowly tumbled off the wagon, and I think I know why. Accountability was the thing that helped me keep track of what I put into my face, and proved a bigger motivator than the GroupThink or "inspirational" messages.

So I now have a new weight-loss partner, someone who admittedly doesn't need to lose as much as me, but who's a bit better at self-motivation than I am.

I've been in a great routine lately, cooking healthy meals using whole foods (rather than processed ingredients) so as long as I can keep that up and just cut out the nonsense.

Self-indulgent enough? Yeah, that'll do for now. T'ra a bit!

Posted on Nov. 11, 2012 in Life and tagged , (No comments)

Why I don't do Facebook birthdays

Why I don't do Facebook birthdays

I don't mind Facebook, especially as it's easier to manage what goes into my stream than it used to be. It's good at mapping the connections between friends and family members, but the "social graph" it represents is 2D, whereas our social world isn't so flat. The fact is that some people mean more to us than others, but Facebook's flattening effect puts them all on the same plane.

I have a large family, a small cluster of old school and uni mates, a number of Internet friends and even some real-life ones (I know, jealous right?) so barely a day goes by when there isn't a birthday in my Facebook sidebar. But do I give the same level of attention to my friend's mum as I would a cousin, or an old school friend the same time as I give to a colleague I see every day?

Plus, seeing a list of names and mechanically running through them doesn't feel to me like giving much of a crap. I'm certainly not dumping on anyone who does that, as at least you're doing the courteous thing, but to me it just feels... disingenuous. And then you've got the problem of missing someone out: "Oooh that Steadman... he says happy birthday to his milkman but he won't even poke his own dad!" (or something).

Now pretty much everyone enjoys a birthday mention, but isn't it that bit more special when someone remembered off their own bat - or put it in their own diary - rather than being reminded by their digital butler? You must have watched that film scene where the secretary buys a gift for her boss's kid, which has every outward appearance of being thoughtful and fatherly. Well, it feels just a little bit like that to me; it's not really me who's wishing the happy birthday, it's my digital butler, and I'm just acknowledging it with the click of a mouse and a few strokes of a keyboard.

I'm not ungrateful for birthday messages on Facebook, but I know I'd much rather have someone join me for a drink.

Photo bo Dan Taylor

Posted on Nov. 11, 2012 in Life, Web x.0 and tagged (two comments)

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