write.as/jonbeckett

The government is finally losing patience with the people – and by “the people”, I absolutely mean the privileged, ignorant, and thoughtless. As of today in the UK all the bars, restaurants, cafes, and so on are being asked to shut. That hasn't stopped idiotic gangs of teenagers from roaming the streets together, flying in the face of advice and instruction.

I walked into town mid-morning on my own to see if I might find some basic groceries – fruit and vegetables to get us through the next few days. I found a supermarket struggling to re-stock, and wandered the aisles in disbelief.

I've always known I lived in a wealthy part of the world, but today really brought it into focus. All of the wine had gone. All of it. And all of the ready meals. Luckily, if you are prepared to actually – you know – COOK anything – then there was plenty to be found. I came home with potatoes, peppers, cheese, tomatoes, cucumber, chicken – a huge bag stuffed with the basics that will last us for a little while.

I've also come to the realisation that the wealthy idiots don't bother leaving the supermarket – unbeknown to them (or due to lack of effort), all of the independent shops in side-streets are fully stocked. I made a second journey out – to our local corner shops, and discovered their shelves brimming with everything you might need. I've heard second hand that the same is true of other small shops in the area.

To be honest, while the world is locked down over the next few months, I'm thinking we will use the smaller shops in preference. Yes, it might cost a little bit more than the supermarket, but it's going to keep them afloat.

Tomorrow I need to sneak out and get a birthday present for my other half. Given the idiocy going on, I'm thinking a book, some chocolates, and something nice to drink might be just the thing – bought from the independent book shop, the old-fashioned sweet shop, and the corner shop. Two miles on-foot. What the hell – I haven't been out all week anyway.

At lunchtime today I walked up to the local pharmacy with my eldest daughter to pick up a prescription – and joined the remarkably patient queue of people standing in the rain outside. So this was social distancing and safeguarding in action. It's shame some people completely disregarded it.

While quietly waiting, an elderly woman walked towards the health centre, emblazoned with bright red “DO NOT ENTER UNLESS YOU HAVE AN APPOINTMENT” signs, and spotted an acquaintance in the queue. Completely disregarding that everybody in the queue was stood a couple of meters apart, she walked straight to her friend and began talking in her face – loud enough for the entire queue to hear her many and varied complaints about anything and everything.

She was an exception though – on the whole people seem to be trying to follow the guidance they have been given. We passed two women talking in the street – having a conversation with raised voices, several metres away from each other. I might have smiled a little as we passed by.

In other news, work is going well. I'm working on a significant piece of software development at the moment, and having the chance to cut myself off and really focus has helped enormously.

I tend to work a lot better on my own – I suspect most people do, unless they don't know what they're doing. That works both ways though – sometimes working in a team helps you learn new skills, but that also slows everybody else down. It's chicken-and-egg, isn't it – because without mentoring and sharing, skills transfer doesn't happen.

Knowledge is a curious thing though – there's only so much you can learn from books or courses. Certainly in my field of work, experience and rigour count for perhaps more than “knowing things”. The internet has made it possible for anybody to find out how to do pretty much anything incredibly quickly – and we all take advantage of that. Being able to write neat tidy code that's easy to read, easy to maintain, efficient, and consistent is a whole other ball-game though. It crosses over from “toolmaker” to “artist” pretty quickly – but in this case a really pedantic artist that suffers from obsessive compulsive disorder about anything and everything.

I'm doing a great job of selling software development as a career, aren't I. I won't even get started about a huge proportion of your knowledge becoming obselete every four or five years. I suppose that's no different than doctors and nurses though – where the drugs, procedures, and practices they work with change year-on-year.

Anyway. Somehow it's already 11pm. Time for a quiet coffee, some rubbish TV, and then bed. Tomorrow is another day in the junk room.

Well this is all very exciting. After months experimenting with a variety of blogging platforms, I have retreated back to my own small island in the middle of the internet ocean. A self imposed reclusion from the world at large.

Perhaps the most interesting thing is how these posts are now making it to the web – I push plain text files in “markdown” format to a source code repository at GitHub, who then automatically run a static site generator called “Jekyll” that creates the pages you're looking at. The comments are provided by Disqus, the photos all come from Unsplash, and the domain is managed by CloudFlare.

Running my own site means I can do all sorts of clever things that were impossible before – like automagically pulling in the RSS feed of the podcast on the Podcast page – go take a look – it's got all the show-notes and everything!

I suppose now I really need to get back to writing about daily life, instead of boring the pants off everybody.

Half an hour ago the Prime Minister announced the schools will be closed for all except the children of “key professions” from Friday until “further notice”. We told the children a few minutes ago – I don't think I've ever seen them so excited about anything. Bizarrely, they are already making plans to help with chores, and to do online courses (if their schools don't issue homework via the internet).

Our middle daughter was a month away from starting to take her exams – I imagine her grades will now be projected based on her mock exams. Thankfully she has worked her arse off in recent months – attending breakfast and evening study sessions, and putting a huge amount of work in. She's almost guaranteed a place on the course she had hoped for in the autumn as a result.

Have I ever written about her chosen occupation? She wants to join the police. In the autumn she will start a uniformed services course at college, which covers everything from citizenship, to psychology, sociology, and of course square bashing. You never know – perhaps they will teach her how to put things away too.

Anyway. Dinner is about to arrive on the table in the lounge, accompanied by shouts through the house of “DINNER'S READY!”.

Somebody I have known for years and respect enormously blocked me today, and I feel kind of awful about it. I wrote a comment on one of their blog posts about the media reporting distorted statistics about Novel Coronavirus fatalities, and apparently that was the wrong thing to do.

The media ARE reporting distorted statistics though – if you spin the numbers it sounds more dramatic – which of course attracts eyeballs, which increases advertising revenue. It's an insidious game, and it needs to stop.

I am heartened however that so many people are pulling together and helping one-another. So many differences no longer seem particularly important. If anything good comes of this, it might be the return of community spirit. In recent days our local Facebook groups have been filled with people volunteering their time for others – to help those less able.

I'm reminded of the famous observation by Mr Rogers – 'Look for the helpers. You can always find people who are helping'.

After provisioning a number of bits and pieces in “the cloud” this morning for some upcoming pre-sales demos, I noticed a notification about the first “daily update” from the Prime Minister, and thought I better stop to watch the first few minutes.

Over the next ten minutes, in the sort of excruciating detail usually reserved for legal letters, the plans for the weeks ahead were laid out. There would be no more choice about working from home – if we can work from home, we should. We can, and we are. Shortly after listening I met one of the directors on the stairs, who was about to tell us what we already knew.

“My laptop is already in my bag.”

No more conversation was really necessary. I'm guessing there will be some sort of rapid organisation of morning meetings – mostly to make people feel happier about sitting on their own all day, every day, for the next eight or ten weeks – or however long it takes. I quite like working on my own, but I also understand that I'm probably in the minority with that.

So it begins – the “working from home” thing that we all knew was coming. My eldest daughter is already horrified – my being at home means I will tidy up and load the washing machine during coffee breaks.

In other news, more retro video games arrived in the post this evening. We now have nearly all of the “Singstar” games – and the younger girls have already tried them out. When I ordered them I thought “that will keep them occupied for a while” – I didn't factor on the endless drone of teenage girls mumbling the lyrics to songs they only know the chorus for.

Anyway. Enough. I'm going to go pour myself a glass of wine, and figure out what I haven't watched on Netflix (essentially the whole of Netflix).

Despite the rain that fell all day, I took Miss 19 out for a walk in the woods this morning – or perhaps more accurately, a walk through the fields to a nearby hamlet where a small pub serves lunches.

The trip had more to do with getting her out of the house, and facing the world for a little while than going out for lunch. We pulled on thick socks, walking boots, and waterproofs, and made light of the persistent rain as we wandered away from town.

The anxiety she suffers from has returned with a vengeance recently. While some might have thought it dangerous in the current climate to mix with strangers, the reality was that we saw nobody on the walk, and were the first in the pub. By the time we had eaten and settled the bill, there were perhaps six other people sitting at tables around the place. Six was enough for Miss 19 to start becoming nervous.

'You want to go, don't you.'

'Yes.'

We wandered home through the now heavier rain, and called the rest of the family to see how they were doing. They were at a rugby tournament a few miles away – half the teams hadn't turned up. I imagine all youth sports will be shut down before long.

Life goes on. For Miss 19 life is often a little more of a struggle than for the rest of us, and we do our best to encourage her – to push her boundaries – to take first steps.

It was only while standing in the shower this morning that I realised I had completely missed posting to the blog yesterday. A small voice in the OCD part of my brain really lost it's shit about that.

So. It's the weekend. Given that most of the world is entering lock-down at the moment, everything seems remarkably quiet. It could have something to do with me getting most of the washing done throughout the week – so the usual washing machine apocalypse isn't happening – or hasn't happened yet. My younger daughters seem happy to live in what can only be described as “abject squalor” in their rooms – despite the various threats we have leveled at them regarding the removal of WiFi. Of course as soon as WiFi does get removed, their entire world will fall around them amid much shouting, wailing, and claims that we are the “worst parents ever”. We're ready for it – we've been here before.

Anyway.

I actually have something to blather on about today. A messaging app that I'm sure lots of people have heard about over the past three or four years, but may not be actively using. It's called “Telegram”, and you really take a look at it if you have not done so already.

I think perhaps the main reason to use Telegram is because it's not Facebook Messenger, and it's not WhatsApp – so they can't touch your friends, or conversations. It also has best-in-class peer-to-peer encryption, and get this – you can force a deleted conversation to be deleted from the other person's phone too. What's not to like about that ?

Strictly speaking, there is an even more well regarded messaging app, called “Signal”, but if people find out you're using Signal, they tend to suspect you're up to something – because it's SO well regarded in the security community, it invariably means you have something to hide. Urgh...

So.

What am I going to fill my day with, given that the world is on lock-down and we're trying to keep ourselves to ourselves? I'm thinking Netflix, books, board games, and video games are going to dominate the next couple of months – let alone the next day or two.

wp:jetpack/markdown {“source”:“This week on the podcast I talk to Natalie about life in Louisiana, computers, the internet, computer games, table top board games, podcasts, graphic novels, and of course her blogging journey with \u0022Coffee with Calypso\u0022.\n\nYou can find Natalie at the following locations online:\n\n* Blog – coffeewithcalypso.tumblr.com\n* Twitter – twitter.com\/anurbannomad\n* Instagram – instagram.com\/anurbannomad\n\nClick the link below to listen to the episode:\n\n* #10 – Natalie – Coffee with Calypso\n”} This week on the podcast I talk to Natalie about life in Louisiana, computers, the internet, computer games, table top board games, podcasts, graphic novels, and of course her blogging journey with “Coffee with Calypso”.

You can find Natalie at the following locations online:

• Blog – coffeewithcalypso.tumblr.com
• Twitter – twitter.com/anurbannomad

• Instagram – instagram.com/anurbannomad Click the link below to listen to the episode:

• #10 – Natalie – Coffee with Calypso /wp:jetpack/markdown

A curious thing happens when I work from home – in short order all the dirty clothes get washed, the clean clothes get folded, and the kitchen remains somewhat clean. Of course the reason any of this becomes possible is because I'm home alone – there are no teenage girls present to systematically destroy the house. While making coffee throughout the day, I notice if the washing machine has finished, and re-fill it – it's really that simple.

So yes – I worked from home today – the first day of perhaps many, given the madness and paranoia sweeping the world. Luckily my work isn't really affected by distance.

I might go a bit stir crazy by the end of the week though.

I've had a cold for the last couple of days – nothing too bad – just a bullshit cold that any parent of children will roll their eyes at throughout the winter months. However – after a conversation with the HR manager at lunchtime, we agreed that I should perhaps work from home for the next few days. Let's not call it an “abundance of caution” – let's call it absolute paranoia instead. We'll also ignore that it took me another three hours to finally leave the building.

So – for the next few days I'll be holed up in the junk room at home with my work laptop, getting much more done than normal. Go me.

We had the conversation in the office (yet again) today, about how ridiculous it is that the company owns and operates offices, when we could all quite happily work remotely. I'm beginning to think it's a generational thing – the need to be in each other's faces. I'm quite happy existing behind Microsoft Teams and Outlook while working on development projects.

Anyway.

I have some sort-of-secret news. Somebody has sort-of-agreed to go on the podcast that is sort-of-famous – or at least they were quite a long time ago. That's all I'm saying about it at the moment – you'll have to watch this space.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'll get back to starting to panic about who I might record with this week in order to get an episode out by Friday night. If you would like to volunteer yourself, now would be a very good time.