Doing the spring cleaning on a server of mine today, I keep stumbling upon artifacts of the good old times. Hidden deep inside the UNIX directory structure are remains of awesome projects, logs of chats with brilliant people, user accounts not used for years and long forgotten Subversion repositories containing projects so hackish I wonder why did I ever write them.

Such was the technology world before I discovered Facebook and whiskey. Once I did, I was out of the game for some years.

Fast forwarding to today, everything seems to be made of AWS, Heroku and Github. We see neither the machines nor the people behind them. Experienced UNIX engineers seem to be a dying breed, being quickly outnumbered by overzealous unit test writers.

Has the world changed, or is it just me?

You probably remember a post from ancient times (actually: just over a month ago). Today officially marks the end of the renovation works.

My new studio has barely any furniture. I did my best to keep the amount of stuff there to an absolute minimum – and I intend to keep it this way. Some things are still missing – like armchairs – but the essence is there. The walls are pure white, there’s a big desk just for the PC workstation, an extremely comfortable office chair, the shelves eagerly wait to be filled with books… Yet, when I sat at the desk today to do my daily share of work, it didn’t feel any different.

It was a really simple enlightenment: work is work. Writing a new blog post, editing photos, cranking out code – it takes passion and discipline, not a new chair. The new space may make it easier for me to work consistently without burning out or getting tired – but the work still has to be done, and no amount of office supplies and electronic devices will make it any easier.

Twelve rolls of film waiting to be developed. Turns out I don’t even have enough developer, and the darkroom is in a disarray.

Spring has come to Wrocław. Coming back from the long trip, I’m starting anew too – especially that my newly renovated work room is almost empty right now. I like the space. Again, why do we keep cluttering our space with stuff?

This really calls for some more spring cleaning.

Nothing to write about. Things have really slowed down since I left Spain – there’s much less trouble, but at the same time much less challenges and almost nothing to write about. Describing whatever I’m doing here doesn’t make much sense because there are no real adventures – while certainly having some novelty value, there’s nothing adventurous about visiting Camden Market and seeing Tower Bridge.

At least I don’t let my camera sit idle. I ran out of film a few days ago and had to resort to shooting on expired Agfa color film – which is not that bad actually, considering that London seems so colorful to me. I think I shot 10 or 11 rolls already – that’s going to be a lot of work developing, scanning and editing once I get back home.

Two days left.

If you’ve been wondering about the silence during the last few days: that’s because I’ve been either to busy or too tired to write; also, somehow there’s not much to write about right now.

Arrival in London was the best culture shock I ever had – simply because I’ve never been to any English-speaking country before. Compared to Spain, my life here is incredibly easy. Sure, I’m living at my friend Hipek’s flat right now, so the extremities and discomforts of living in a hostel are gone – but mainly it’s easy because I can understand almost every single word I see or hear.

The only thing I can’t quite understand is that despite the fact that I’ve been studying English all my life it never really crossed my life to just come to England.

Why…?

Written at the airport and in-flight; forgot to publish it.

Departing in 58 minutes. I’m excited.

As usual, I won’t be posting any conclusions about Barcelona yet – it would be foolish to do so while I’m still there. Let the experiences mature at least a little bit.

One thing I forgot to mention yesterday: Barcelona’s public transport system is fantastic. After climbing Tibidabo I wanted to get back to the hostel; the combination I used was: bus, funicular, train and metro – all of them using just one 1€ ticket. Impressive.

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One last gift from Barcelona to me: the takeoff. The familiar sea of light, clouds over the ocean, ships on the reed as little as toys – a view I’ll remember for a long time.

arrived in london. got almost no sleep last night. too tired to press shift. will post an update once I get some rest.

Climbed Tibidabo today. It’s the third hill I’ve climbed this week – and the highest one in Barcelona.

The second leg of the trip is coming to an end. Flying to London tomorrow morning – going to really miss the Spanish sun.

Addendum to the previous post: if you happen to be in a need to send a letter or postcard in Spain, don’t bother with standing in a long queue at the post office. The easiest and quickest way to acquire stamps is to go the nearest tobacconist. A bit illogical – but really makes things simpler.

I’m a big fan of writing letters. If you haven’t received a letter in years, that’s probably because you haven’t sent one either. Here’s what you need to start doing it again.

• Stamps. If you live in Poland, I’ll be happy to tell you that the tariffs were simplified considerably in January 2013 – right now, almost everything you can stuff in a not-too-big envelope ships at the same rate (normal: 1,60zł, priority: 2,35zł). You buy the stamps at the post office (yes, I’m playing Captain Obvious here) and receive the accompanying PRIORITAIRE stickers if you choose that service. I recommend using priority services – otherwise, your letter can take many days – or even weeks – to arrive.
• Envelopes. You can get the plain ones at the post office too, but I recommend getting some quality ones. I have my two favorite shops – you can probably find some in your town.
• Writing paper. Personally, I buy high-density decorative A4 paper and cut it into four pieces, each 10x15cm in size. You can use anything that strikes your fancy here – for example, I have a few sheets of very old paper for special occasions. Generally, everything works – just avoid the plain paper.
• Addresses of your friends. Try to get them in a non-obvious manner – so they won’t suspect you’re going to send them anything.
• Optional: quality pen/pencil. Letters are best handwritten – I tried typewriting once, but found it too impersonal; it doesn’t help to have a machine between people.
• Optional: stationery. Quality stationery is almost impossible to get – all they print today are some roses and puppies, perfumed with rose fragrance. Ugh.
• Optional: photographs. Writing letters is hard at first – I actually started by sending people printed photographs. The size that fits the standard envelopes is 10x15cm and you can print that in every photo lab for next to nothing.
• Even more optional: anything you find appropriate. You can put small flat objects in the envelope – pages from a book, bus tickets, leaves, rocks, kittens… okay, photocopies of kittens.
• Finally: time and courage. These one are the hardest to find.

When you actually succeed in writing a letter, you put the address on the envelope – the way you were taught in school – and toss the letter in a mailbox (the red one on the street, not the one at your front door ;). Then you wait – these days it takes people a while to check their mail – but it does arrive at some day. And then, some other day, you might open your mailbox and find something waiting for you. ;)