CTO

Posted on by Kosma Moczek

The news is still semi-official, but here it goes: I’ve been promoted for the CTO role at our startup Cloud Your Car.

It’s gonna be a ride. I’m taking over tons of responsibilities – which isn’t too bad, as the part I was working on until now (firmware development) is entering the maintenance phase, so I already spend a large deal of time poking on issues that need polishing. I’ll still be doing what I’ve been enjoying doing recently – except it will be official.

Am I scared? Hell yeah. I’ll undoubtedly spend this Christmas buried under tons of people management books – my soft skills REALLY need to improve – but at the same time I’m extremely excited. Even though I have no idea what I’m doing. ;)

On a related note, my friend got a job at a very cool startup in Kraków today. He’s relocating. I wouldn’t have the balls to do that. Kudos for him. Too bad there are very few dreamers like us around.

This post is dedicated to those of my friends who got married, found a well paying job and, well… stopped at that point. We’ll probably never really understand each other.

studio

Posted on by Kosma Moczek

My house looks like a junkie meeting place right now – except that instead of needles and syringes there are empty cups everywhere. I did my first real studio shoot today; a friend came by and we spent the evening tuning the lighting, trying out the poses, exchanging ideas, talking about life and drinking coffee. Lots of coffee. Mix the excitement of creation with the power of caffeine and I’m feeling like a little bouncy spring right now.

The idea to build a studio in my room was born in a flash when I was terminally bored a few weeks ago and I resolved to do something crazy before the boredom actually puts me in a coma. At that moment I knew what I was going to do – and before the end of the day I ordered a white background and wall brackets.

The results are exceeding my bravest expectations. I didn’t even attach the background to the wall yet and I already got three shoots arranged for the upcoming week. Turns out I’m gonna have to borrow my friend’s professional lighting set as the IKEA lamps don’t quite cut it when it comes to color balance. Besides that, though, I’m amazed how little one actually needs to find the much needed inspiration and the space for making the ideas spring to life.

Then there’s also the story of two desks – but that’s for another time.

Prague loot.

Posted on by Kosma Moczek

The huge 50m bulk reel did not fit in my loader; I had to manually split it into two smaller ones. There’s no question whether Fomapan 400 is any good: I bought 30 rolls worth of it, so it’s going to be my film of choice for the next six months – no matter what.

Bored

Posted on by Kosma Moczek

Here’s a dirty little secret of living an interesting, creative life: you must allow yourself to get bored, and then act on it.

Took me an awfully long time to figure out, but this is what’s been missing from my life for at least a year. We all seem so busy now we CAN’T STAND being bored. Here’s the killer pattern: people get together, people talk about recent stuff, people get bored because they run out of recent stuff to talk about, people part and go searching for new thrills because bored is a waste of time.

Except it isn’t.

This seems to be the only practical difference between the careless life of a young person and a serious, grown adult: the adults don’t play.

The last time I allowed myself to get genuinely bored was the previous Sunday. The result? I completely reorganized my room, adding a second desk exclusively for offline-mode crafts (drawing, etc.) and installing a photo background – something I’ve been putting off for years. All this because of a single “I’m bored, let’s do something” said to my friend.

Cats with wheels

Posted on by Kosma Moczek

Another session of hardware hacking finished. Lo and behold, things in my room that have wheels and can be freely moved around:

  • a desk that serves as a mobile computer workstation (Valve-style)
  • the computer attached to it
  • a second desk that serves as a workbench
  • two coffee tables
  • a chair.

I’m fighting the urge to add wheels to everything else. Time will tell how good the idea was, but it seems a perfect solution for any kind hacker- or creative space: make rearranging things as easy as possible.

Posted on by Kosma Moczek

I’m definitely getting a pair these badasses this winter… that is, when and if my left arm recovers. It no longer hurts like hell every time I move, but I it’s still pretty much unusable; I basically can’t lift my hand above the head level without cringing in pain and reminding myself that was a really stupid idea. I could probably ride a bike if I kept I peaceful pace but I shudder to think what would happen if I had to make a sharp turn or I actually had another accident.

I had no idea you can actually hurt yourself that bad just by falling off a bicycle.

Creation

Posted on by Kosma Moczek

I just had an enlightenment that’s so important it’s already hanging above my desk – and I’m replicating it here lest I forget:

Creation happens offline.

It came in a flash in the middle of the night, after I turned all my computers off and was drawing something in my sketchbook. I realized every single creative endeavor I take upon needs no internet access to complete. Be it playing music, drawing, coding, editing photos, et cetera – the creative phase happens in a state of isolation from the world and even if there’s an upload phase, that’s just the cherry on the top of the cake.

This inevitably means I’ll soon start some kind of “work offline” experiment. It will end abruptly after three to five days as my lolcat addiction will kick in, but three attempts later it will actually work – albeit in a much different form than I’d ever expected.

PS. We are shockingly good at rationalizing our addictions. Until this day I was quite convinced I actually needed internet access to work – while, in fact, it’s the opposite.