write.as/jonbeckett

I'm sitting in the dark of the junk room at home, the soft glow of the computer screen lighting my fingers as they dance over the keyboard. I sat down to write a blog post an hour ago, and don't have anything to show for it.

Sometimes I look back at the trail of blog posts that stretch into the distant past, and wonder how I came to write them all – how I kept going – emptying my head – day after day – week after week – month after month.

I wonder what future generations will do with my words? Will they be printed and kept, or will they vanish into the ether as the various online accounts they reside in expire ?

Will these words endure, or will they quietly drift away ?

Douglas Adams once wrote “I love Deadlines – I like the whooshing sound as they fly by”. I'm starting to think the same way about weekends. Since finishing work on Friday evening the entire weekend seems to have been a marathon.

Saturday saw me accompany our middle girl to London for the day – a reward for doing well at school, and to cheer her up after the “no awards for girls rugby” scandal at her school sports awards evening. We set off early in the morning, and after connecting a number of trains, arrived in the heart of London a couple of hours later. Miss 15 busied herself with the Harry Potter game on her phone – catching no-end of baddies along the way. I read a book – the first time I have had to sit and read in weeks.

We visited “The Clink” (the famous London prison who's name became slang for all prisons), the London Police museum, Forbidden Planet (the biggest comic book shop in the country), and M&M World. Along the way we also managed to fit in a “cheeky Nando's” – if Nando's doesn't exist in your part of the world it's a faux-south-american chain that serves expensive chicken and chips in a variety of dressed up arrangements. I had a chicken burger, and Miss 15 had wings. To be honest I was just glad we stumbled upon somewhere that had ANYTHING gluten free on the menu – while in Paddington station in the morning we searched for a snack in three cafes and two chain stores, and came up with nothing. Every substatial food-stuff they had was either based on wheat, or a wheat derivative.

We got home yesterday evening after logging something like twenty thousand steps during the day, and of course I walked into a wall of chores – because that's what happens in a busy family – or at least mine.

This morning I was back up at 7, and shouted to my eldest. I had a shower, then put some coffee and bacon on, while waiting for her to appear. We bought tickets some time ago to visit “Hyper Japan” in the centre of London – an exhibition of food, music, culture, art, and everything else to do with Japan. I think this year marks the fourth time we have visited.

My other half dropped us at a nearby railway station in order to “life hack” an hour off the journey, and we found ourselves walking towards the entrance of Kensington Olympia by mid-morning. The next four hours were filled with an assault of on the senses – J-Pop, cosplayers, food, tourism promotions, sake (rice wine), more food, more J-Pop, Tokyo fashions, ridiculous toys, and anything else you might dream up.

After finally extracting Miss 18 (who had something of a strop because I'm not a billionaire, and neither is she), we trudged back towards the railway station, and I did my best to turn her mood around by filling her face with sushi. It sort of worked.

The train journey home was quiet. I checked my phone – another fifteen thousand steps. While 18 pretended to sleep to avoid talking to me, I checked my phone – and discovered a girl I used to work with had been at HyperJapan too. I kicked myself – she is one of the few people I've worked with over the years that I genuinely missed after she left.

Arriving home, I discovered the entirely predictable scene you might expect if a 14 and 15 year old have been left in charge all day (my other half went to visit her Mum). The washing machine had been on at some point, and left full of wet clothes. Another tub – of it's previous contents – was left in the garden. An assorted collection of cups, glasses, and plates were littered around the kitchen worktops, even though the dishwasher was empty.

After hanging the washing out, and while crashing around in the kitchen, the kids arrived home – they had been to the garage to buy food for themselves – or rather, complete and utter junk. It's amazing how children devolve the moment there is no parental input. They will wonder why their skin has erupted in spots tomorrow.

I'm looking at the clock, and figuring I have perhaps three hours of weekend left before work starts again. I'm trying not to think about work, given the vertical climb we face over the next few weeks. The bottle of sake I bought from HyperJapan may go some way towards helping with that.

I started writing this post an hour go. I'm not quite sure where that hour went. Perhaps it had something to do with the bottle of wine I bought on the way home from work, and that is now almost empty in the fridge (in my defence, Miss 18 helped make it vanish). It had nothing to do with watching YouTube videos, getting sucked into a movie on Amazon Prime about the production of the Peter Gabriel album “So”, or playing chess on the internet, honest.

I'm home alone for a couple of hours. The younger girls are at a rugby club social in a nearby town, and our eldest is babysitting for friends that live nearby. I'm savouring the time to myself – tomorrow I have promised to escort Miss 15 to London for the day, and on Sunday I have tickets to “Hyper Japan” with Miss 18. Expect lots of photos to land on Instagram across the weekend.

The expedition with Miss 15 is a “cheer up” exercise. After being tasked with gathering “players player” votes from her school girls rugby team, we attended the annual school sporting awards last night, and discovered there was no award for players player in girls rugby. There were tears – lots of tears – and an entirely predictable sickie was thrown this morning.

We have something of a precedent set with throwing sickies – if any of the kids do it, all of their devices automatically get blocked from the internet for 24 hours. It happened to 15 this morning, just before I left for work. I stood in her bedroom doorway at 8am, and presented options – either I could write to the school and complain about the lack of any support for girls rugby – which would require Miss 15 to get up and go to school in order to avoid me looking like a numpty, or she stayed home and pretended to be ill, and I banned her from the internet.

She thought about if for a few seconds, and continued to pretend to be sick. I unplugged the television in the lounge before leaving the house, and hid the remote controls. Yes, I know – I'm horrible.

During our visit to London tomorrow we will hopefully make it to the Police museum. I've never been there before – it's apparently connected to a library, and is something of a little-known secret. Ever since she was little, 15 has wanted to join the police – I'm feeling sorry for whoever is on-duty in the museum in advance, because they don't know it yet, but their entire knowledge of policing is going to be put under the microscope tomorrow.

Last summer the local police force visited the green outside our house as part of a community out-reach initiative. After Miss 15 (14 at the time) gave the officer in charge a grilling for a couple of hours we wandered outside and rescued him. His first words to me were “your daughter's knowledge of police work is frightening”.

Anyway. I need another coffee. I'm trying to reverse the effects of the half-bottle of wine I drank when I got in from work. I have an on/off relationship with wine – I like it if I've not had any for a few days or weeks, but then as soon as I've had perhaps two glasses I regret it, because I know it's meddling with the workings of my head.

After making it to bed a little after midnight last night, I had just put my book down, turned the light out, put my phone on charge, and was drifting off to sleep when I heard noises from across the landing. Surely one of the children wasn't still awake ?

A few moments later the bedroom door creaked open, and a finger poked my shoulder in the darkness.

“Yes?”

“George has brought something into my room.”

George is our enormous ginger cat – the last of three brothers – survivor of being run over, serial murderer of mice and birds, and muncher of spiders extraordinaire.

After scraping myself out of bed I followed Miss 14 across the landing to her room, and squinted at George – sitting in the middle of the room, fixated on a cupboard underneath the bed.

“It's in there, I think.”

“Maybe we should just leave whatever it is to find it's own way out? I'll leave the door open, and we'll let it escape on it's own? Back into bed please...”

I returned to my own bed, and had a whispered conversation with my other half. We decided that Miss 14 probably wouldn't sleep if she knew there was some poor creature hiding in her bedroom. A minute later I returned to find her hanging over the side of her bed, trying to find out what was hiding. George had lost interest and wandered off downstairs.

“Don't do that – you might get bit” (I had no idea what might bite her, but it seemed like the right thing to say).

Over the course of the next few minutes I moved everything littered around her bedroom to a neat pile at one end, and then started retrieving items one at a time from the storage area beneath the bed. I started to wonder if there was anything hiding at all as we got down to an old running shoe, and a sandal. And suddenly there it was – the cutest little brown mouse you ever saw – perched on it's bottom, ears like radar dishes, looking straight at me.

Miss 14 saw the mouse at the same moment I did, and let out the cutest “oh!” sound I've ever heard. It didn't look injured at all, so god knows what the cat was doing, wandering round the house with it.

Next problem. How on earth do you go about catching a wide-awake, scared out of it's mind mouse ? I left Miss 14 to keep an eye on it, and tiptoed downstairs in search of something. I didn't have a clue what the something might be, or how we might use that something, but I looked for it.

I returned with a large plastic cake box – used to keep home baking projects fresh. By now Miss 14 was having a long conversation with the mouse, telling it how it was going to be fine, and that I was going to rescue it and set it free. I couldn't help feeling the pressure mount – what if it ran into the pile of clothes at the end of the room? What if it ran through my legs ? What if it bit my fingers or toes ?

The mouse was quietly sitting on the corner of a sandal – so I hooked one end of the coat hangar I used earlier into the toe-strap, and slowly slid the shoe towards me – and towards the cake box. The mouse flinched, but stayed put on the shoe. I thought it was going to be easy after all. It's funny how things have a habit of going wrong just as you think they might be easier than you thought.

Just as the mouse approached the cake box, it finally burst into action, and made a flying leap to freedom – landing precariously on the edge of the box, and hanging on by it's tip-toes. More by luck than judgement, I intercepted it with the lid of the box, and captured my first ever mouse.

“Would you like to come and help release it?”

Miss 14 nodded with quite some enthusiasm. And that's how we found ourselves standing in the garden in our pyjamas at nearly 1am – I opened the box and up-ended it on the grass in the darkness, and out fell our temporary prisoner. After a few stunned moments it vanished into the darkness of the garden at quite impressive speed.

When I woke Miss 14 for school this morning, she yawned, rubbed sleep from her eyes, and said “don't forget to wash the cake box”...

Today was one of those days where I tried valiantly to go forwards, but ended up going sideways, no matter how hard I tried. Have you ever had a day like that? I imagine it's kind of like trying to swim to shore while caught in a rip-current.

Don't get me wrong – I achieved a lot. I just didn't achieve anything I set out to. That's not to say the things I achieved weren't useful of course. I'll stop now because I've written “achieve” far too many times already.

This evening was a classic baton race between myself and my other half. While she made dinner for one of our daughters early, and then transported her to Hockey practice, I arrived as she left and made dinner for the rest of us. While asking how our children's days had gone, Miss 14 volunteered that she would need to take dinner with her to school in the morning – on account of going on a school trip in the evening. So guess who walked into town after dinner to get groceries ?

The more observant among you may have noticed how often I seem to go grocery shopping. This has been a deliberate thing this year – rather than spend a small fortune on a car full of groceries ever other week or so, we are trying to only buy food as we need it – which hopefully means we don't end up throwing anything away. It seems to be working so far.

Miss 14 and 18 accompanied me into town. At first I was glad of the company, but then realised that if they hadn't been with me I might have made it to the supermarket and back in perhaps half the time. OH MY GOD they walk slowly. I also wouldn't have been talked into visiting the boutique cafe behind the highstreet for coffee before returning home. While it was eye-wateringly expensive, I have to admit the coffee was good.

It's now heading towards midnight, and I'm wondering where the rest of the evening went. Oh yes – I re-installed Elementary OS on both the old desktop computer, and the recycled laptop at home. I completely lost my shit with Windows 10 earlier, while waiting for a Windows Update to let me use my own damn computer. Deep breaths. I've left Windows in a partition on both machines – mostly so my other half can use it without setting fire to the computer, me, and anybody that gets in her way while printing something out that won't print on her Chromebook. Don't ask me why she prints things out – I have no idea – I haven't printed anything out at home since about 2011.

Anyway. It's getting late. Time to grab my book and head to bed. More of the same tomorrow.

While writing these words, a python script of my own invention is slowly delivering the motherload of all blog backups to write.as – the blogging platform I have been experimenting for the last few days. Rather than hide the programming under a rock and forget all about it, I've made it available as open source code.

I used to be somebody in the open source world – a very, very long time ago. I've told the story on the blog many times in the past, so I won't repeat myself, but it seems odd sharing code after so long not doing so. I used to share everything – how to do things, notes about how to do things, even fully-blown solutions to difficult problems. And then I stopped sharing much at all.

I suppose, cutting a long and boring story short, I started to realise that some of the things I solved were hard-won – they had commercial value. While it's nice to donate experience and knowledge to the community, when you provide professional services in the same field it becomes a bit problematic. Here's the paradox though – unless you share something, nobody knows about your skill set, or abilities – so nobody wants to buy those services.

I used to have this circular conversation with the sales and marketing guys at work quite regularly. Back when open source software really start to gain some traction in the early 2000s, I advocated giving everything away, and selling services instead of products. I was ignored. If I had been making the calls I would probably have ignored me too – it takes a certain amount of bravery and recklessness to fly in the face of accepted wisdom. It's worth noting that accepted wisdom struggles to explain why Linux has swept all before it over the last 25 years.

If you didn't know, both OSX and iOS are cousins of Linux – they have the same ideological parents. Where Apple cloaked their work in secrecy, Linux remained open and free, and through a roundabout route, that explains why Apple don't make server operating systems any more. Windows has always been similarly closed-source (although that story is slowly changing) – which also explains why the vast majority of the internet runs on Linux, and not Windows. Every super-computer of note in the world runs Linux. The Raspberry Pi runs Linux. Android phones run Linux. Chromebooks run Linux. Did I mention that Linux is free ?

For the past several years I've played around with Linux at home – installing it on the old desktop computer from time to time, and on the laptop. While hardware compatibility can be a bit challenging, by-and-large the experience is a LOT less painful than Windows. I wonder if – given the move towards applications running in “the cloud” – we might see Linux eventually push Windows and OSX away from consumer desktops. The progress Chromebooks have made in schools is perhaps they biggest indicator going (read: they are everywhere already).

Anyway. Enough rambling about techie stuff. Time to go read a book, and kick back for the remainder of the evening.

While sitting in Starbucks with Miss 18 this morning I installed the latest Harry Potter game on my phone (by the same company that made Pokemon Go). I won't pretend to understand anything about it, other than it being overly complicated, and having some back-story involving the Ministry of Magic, Harry, and Hermione. While waiting for 18 to finish her ice tea, I discovered some magical creature or other causing trouble in the middle of Starbucks, and waved my imaginary wand at it (or rather, drew a shape on the screen). On the way home I discovered a rather spectacular invisible unicorn blocking our way, and stopped for several minutes to deal with it. Miss 18 was not impressed with me at all.

I'm home now. After spending the middle part of the day filling the washing machine with clothes, and watching Stranger Things, the rest of the family have returned from a shopping expedition (because OF COURSE the younger children's shoes have fallen to pieces with only a few weeks of school left before the summer holidays), and I'm now half-watching the football World Cup final live from France. The children were obsessed with the tournament until England were knocked out – now they couldn't care less who wins.

We have two more episodes of Stanger Things to go, and then have to wait another year for the next season. Myself and 18 are the only people in the house that have watched it – my other half tends towards shows like Criminal Minds, CSI, NCSI, Sherlock, Elementary, and so on – I'm more drawn to shows like The OA, Mr Robot, and Halt and Catch Fire – although saying that, it's rare that I watch TV any more. The internet has almost completely taken the place of television in my life – reading and writing blog posts, catching up with distant friends, watching movies, playing games, and so on.

In some ways I've begun to think of those I know via the internet as closer friends than many I know in the “real world”. Both worlds are real of course – and I wonder if the generation that has grown up with the internet will not see such a division – because they communite with friends both near and far in the same way. I do wonder if their preference for messaging over face-to-face communication will have a negative effect in the long run though.

Anyway – enough soap box philosophy for one day. Time to put the kettle on and not think too much about anything for the remainder of Sunday evening.

It's the weekend! Finally a chance to decompress from work, kick back, watch movies, read books, and remember that life still exists away from source code, compilers, databases, and whatever else consumes me during the week.

Music is drifting through the house from the kitchen – Alexa has no idea nobody is listening. My other half and younger daughters left for an activity day some time ago – I'm home alone with Miss 18.

I'm sitting in the junk room, typing this into the recycled laptop I acquired some time ago. It may be old, but it's by far the fastest computer in the house. The old iMac is gently whirring away in the corner of the room – after a few months bundled up underneath the desk, it got resurrected yesterday evening to produce some flyers. It may be 17 years old, but it has the full Adobe Creative suite installed on it – which hasn't really changed over the years.

I have an eye-rolling announcement to make. I'm tinkering with a writing platform called “write.as” – that provides a wonderfully minimal method of posting to the internet. There are no comments, no themes, no statistics – just writing. They are doing some really interesting things around federation with mastodon, but I'll try not to fall down that particular rabbit hole for now. Don't worry – I'm not leaving Wordpress, or Tumblr – I'm just trying it out. I've paid for an account for a year to help support the developer behind it – to see where it goes.

Anyway. My coffee cup runneth empty – I should probably do something about that.

When I leave the office on an evening I usually try to call home – to see if I need to pick anything up from the supermarket along the way. This evening I got no answer – on land line or mobiles – and even got as far as checking the shared family calendar, or the mobile phone locator app – to see if something might be going on. Nada. Zilch. Nothing. What to do? I decided to go to the supermarket anyway, and buy food for dinner – given the clear skies, a barbecue seemed like a good idea

After cycling slowly into town, I locked my bike outside the supermarket and made my way around the various aisles, filling my basket with burgers, sausages, veggie sausages, wine, fizzy drinks, and so on. While looking through the bread rolls in the bakery section somebody tugged on my sleeve.

“Hello?”

I pulled my earphones from my ears, and looked sideway. At my other half. She was grinning at me. Moments later two of our children appeared. In something of a miracle, we had not picked up the same items as each other – they had bought pizzas – I had bought barbecue food. I handed them my basket, and continued on my way home – wondering if I might clear the house up before they arrived (I did).

A couple of hours later – after our eldest had returned home from work, and we had all eaten ourselves to a standstill around the barbecue – I found myself snuggled on the couch with our eldest daughter, half-watching a streaming movie. She fell asleep with her head on my lap, and slowly fidgeted herself into a position where I was trapped beneath her – unable to stop the movie, or move at all really.

While sitting there, wondering what to do next, I gazed down at her peaceful face, and listened to her deep breaths – and realised that no matter what happens, I'm always going to be her Dad. It sounds like a funny thing to say, and a strange thing to realise – but I've never really thought about it before. I'm always going to be the one she comes to when unsure, laughs at stupid jokes with, and that stays up all night when she's drunk too much.

None of this was in an instruction book, and just like any other parent, I kind of make it up as I go along. I hope I get something right – I certainly get a lot of things wrong – but this isn't one of those things where you decide you don't like doing it much, and decide not to, is it – it's kind of an “always” thing.

I have nothing to report, which of course isn't going to stop me from emptying my head into the keyboard for the next few minutes, because this is me, and this is what I do. In a world of social media influencers, vloggers and podcasters, I quietly record the days of my life into a blog that somewhat intentionally escapes too much attention.

So what HAVE I been doing today?

The day began with a cycle across town in the opposite direction of work – meeting a wonderful neighbour quite by chance while en-route to the school where my other half works. After patiently weaving my way through a steady stream of parents leaving the school having dropped their children off, I made it to the office, watched by a somewhat circumspect, and ridiculously attractive young teacher.

It occurs to me while writing – somewhat humorously – that all infant school teachers seem young to me now. I remember walking to work past a secondary school in a previous career, and noticing that the young lady walking a little way ahead was... well let's just say I noticed her. And then I realised as she turned towards the school, carrying an arm-full of exercise books, that she must have been a teacher – and something snapped inside my head. Until that point I had always thought of teachers as being tweed skirted or jacketed, and of a certain age – and here was a pretty young thing – about my age – striding purposely up a school drive with calves for miles.

Where was I? Oh yes – standing in the reception area of the infant school, waiting my turn to talk to the lady on reception (my other half) – my bicycle leaning on the wall outside, one earphone still in an ear playing Owl City, my bicycle helmet perched lazily on my head, with the scruffiest shorts in the known world complimenting a half-way decent white t-shirt.

Finally it was my turn. I slid the backpack from my shoulder, unzipped it, and retrieved a clear plastic sandwich box containing a cheese and pickle wholemeal bread sandwich. My other half looked at me questioningly.

“Can we switch lunches?”

“Why?”

“Because you picked mine up.”

She burst into a fit of giggles – as did the pretty teacher waiting alongside me. I received a tin-foil package in return, which I dropped into the backpack, and slung onto my back. I smiled at the teacher, and explained;

“She's vegetarian – my sandwiches have ham in them”.

I'm not entirely sure why I explained – nobody asked – I suppose it just looked incredibly suspect – exchanging packages with the lady on reception in an infant school without any conversation, or identification. The teacher broke into a huge smile as I turned and left.

Twenty minutes later I arrived in the office, and set about picking apart a programming problem some of my co-workers had been looking at when I left the evening before. After a few minutes I thought I might have a solution, and showed them. It turned out they had struggled for a good hour after my departure, and built quite the most impressively complex solution I have seen in quite some time. My solution consisted of perhaps six lines of code, was easy to understand, and ran faster. A younger co-worker held his head in his hands:

“Why didn't I think of doing it that way? Of course that was the way to do it!”

I grinned.

“I'm glad 25 years of software development still counts for something.”