Save as draft

I have a rule concerning blogging: a post has to be finished and published in a single sitting. With an absurdly active brain like mine, the subject matter changes like a kaleidoscope; yesterday’s topics ofter seem nonsense today and saving a post for later inevitably means it’s never going to be finished.

My drafts folder stopped growing once I realized the stuff there is never going to get published simply because it went out of date. I operate on a strict rule now: you start it – you finish it – you publish it.

Or trash it. But never leave work laying around, unresolved.


The same principle applies to code, probably. Every time so far I used git stash I ended up rewriting the code from scratch later simply because it was easier than trying to figure out which parts of the half-finished contraption still need work and what exactly did I have in mind while writing them.

Get well soon

I woke up to a phone call from my mom.

– Kosma, could you check flights to Toulouse for me?

Yup. The world never slows down, even when you do.

I’m recovering from the flu; give or take three or four more days and I’ll be up and running once again. I had an idea in my head that the life slows down in October; of course, the world proved me wrong. I’ve been ill for two weeks and I’m missing out on so much fantastic stuff it’s not even funny.

Given I have way too much free time on my hands right now, I’ve been thinking about my life even more. I can’t quite grasp the moment I went from unhappy to happy. It happened in the last 12 months, but when? I have a little photo project on the way which may bring the answer.

The Engineering.

Look. We don’t have a promotional video. We don’t work in a beautiful, well-furnished office in a highly hyped location. The last time we needed company t-shirts we just hand-printed some. Some of us work on equipment considered ancient, using operating systems way past the end-of-support date. Our JTAG adapters can easily get confused with scrap electronics. Our keyboards get so filthy it’s forbidden to show photographs of them to minors in 17 states. But ask us about the product – and we’ll show you something that fucking works.

We are not cheerful, glittery and fake. We don’t give false promises. We are not your typical Kickstarter kids.

And we don’t care. We are not a marketing department; we are engineering. There’s no time for all this nonsense. We’ve got a product to build.

Cycles

I just scanned a fresh batch of Autumn photos… and found something so shocking I don’t quite know what to think about it: almost every single frame from one certain roll bears some eerie resemblance to some other photo I took long time ago. Suddenly, memories of one weekend became memories of several years. I find them almost too strong to look at – and mesmerizing at the same time.

flash in the pan

People sometimes come to me with a painting they made, a program they wrote, an idea they conceived. They ask me about my opinion, fully expecting to be praised for their oh-so-hard-work.

They don’t get much praise from me, for I ask:

– You painted a picture. Good! Come back when you have finished another two.

They never come back.

I want to be around people that do things. I don’t want to be around people anymore that judge or talk about what people do. I want to be around people that dream and support and do things.

Amy Poehler

Loot

Coming back home from PyCon PL 2013. The conference was a bit disappointing; half of the lectures followed a familiar pattern of “read the documentation, poorly”. Yesterday I got so bored I skipped the lectures and attended a workshop called PyRiddle – which turned out to be a programming contest. Which I aced. And so I’m writing this on a brand new Nexus 7 tablet, sponsored by the company behind the Base CRM. Thank you, guys!

Conferences ain’t that bad, after all.

Hymn of Two Wheels

Rode my bike to work today after a long, painful month of commuting. Thus comes the blog post about freedom which I’ve been putting off for at least two weeks. Here’s the witnesses report:

I’m living under a terror. Terror of time. Every morning for the last month has basically been running. It’s because of a crappy commute: 134 departs only twice per hour – at :22 and :52. And so I run to the bus stop almost every morning and barely catch that damn bus. Forget morning coffee. It’s departure time – no room for your “sit down” nonsense! Then the transfer – one where I have to run to the other bus stop or I’ll miss the 612 which departs twice per hour. Returning home is even worse – the transfer is so tight it’s basically a hit-or-miss aided (only a bit) by an Android app which shows me the location of the return 134, which is often late. If it isn’t, I have to take alternate route which is 20 minutes longer, because 134 – YES YOU GUESSED IT – departs once every half an hour.

If you think this is just a commute – think again. This is my time, my valuable and precious time, being wasted. The original title of this post was Enjoy life, with the point being that it’s hard to do so while running.

This is precisely why I enjoy riding a bike so much. It’s all about freedom – the freedom to drink my morning coffee, to choose the route and the stops and the speed and the mood and everything about how and what I am. It’s about being able to change my mind without excruciating waits, about being able to spontaneously stop to shop for fruit and vegetables at some little local grocery, to make an impossibly tight U-turn and get back to some interesting spot I just passed. It’s about the road – not the points A and B that delimit it.

If life is just a ride, then being stuck in a giant metal cage rolling around the city at a bizarre schedule and an abysmally slow pace is not a ride. It’s a torture.

I welcome my bike back. I don’t feel intimidated by the impeding winter anymore: as long as I remember just how much there is to lose, I’ll just find some warm clothes, wrap myself up tight and keep rolling.

Nowhere near Berlin

If you asked me right now how to survive a two-day event like TechCrunch Disrupt, I’d answer “cocaine” – but please don’t ask. I have no idea and I’m too tired to fall asleep.

I underestimated it. Pitching people about your product for eight hours straight is so immensely tiring I could barely stand by the end. Even though exhausting, it was also a learning experience; apart from leveling up in social interaction I also really gained understanding of our product. Until now I had no clear answer to a simple question of “what does it do?”. I have one now; after a hundred iterations I could explain it in three sentences tops.

How did I like Berlin? I have no idea. All I saw was the expo hall, the S-Bahn and the countless doner kebaps. It’s not to say I didn’t like the city; I’d just really love to come back here under less stressful circumstances.

I’m coming back home tomorrow morning by a Deutsche Bahn bus. Yup.

PS. I think I uttered about ten words in German, total, during the entire trip.