write.as/jonbeckett

I've had the strangest feeling recently – like there's just too much of everything. Too many websites. Too much information. Too many people. Too many conversations. It's like my brain is holding it's hands up and shouting 'THAT'S IT – ENOUGH!'. I suppose it doesn't help that I just spent the last two hours watching 'Brooklyn Nine-Nine', but that was more about spending time with my other half than rejecting the world.

For an hour earlier today I found myself looking at blogging options again – before sitting on my hands, and laughing heartily at my own idiocy. It was all triggered when I couldn't figure out how something worked where the blog is currently hosted, and then within my head it rapidly morphed into a furious rant about all of the web publishing platforms – about Blogger being a terribly built pile of spaghetti hell-code, Wordpress being a walled garden with blinkered citizens, Squarespace being an expensive utopia, and Medium being filled with pretend thinkers and essayists. There is of course no basis to any of these opinions, other than bitterness, jealousy, and ninja levels of fence-sitting know-it-all-ness. I think I might have just made that word up.

While dicking around, looking at blog hosting platforms, it occurred to me how long it has been since I consistently wrote anything insightful, or entertaining. I sit here, and force out a few hundred words every day or so. When I read it back, I often wonder why anybody else might bother reading it – then I remind myself that we are all interesting to somebody, because we all come from different countries – different cultures. My 'normal' is not the same as your 'normal'. Even the tiniest details – the words, idioms, or similes I might use – are vastly different.

Underwear is pants. Things that are rubbish are pants. Sensible trousers are pants. When a dog is tired it pants. Language is a nightmare at the best of times.

Anyway. There is no point to this post. I'm not really sure why I'm even writing it. Let's think of it as a release valve of sorts – clearing some built-up pressure so that I might start writing the delightful, entertaining stuff once again. Maybe.

I have the day off work tomorrow. I'm almost giddy with excitement. Ok, maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration. In all likelihood I'll be taking the kids down to Starbucks in the morning, and then to the park in town. We have a 'plus one' – our youngest has a friend over for a sleepover. At the moment they are looking forward to Starbucks, but I imagine feeding the ducks and swans will rapidly turn into the highlight of the morning.

I'm shattered. Even though it's still only Thursday night, this week really seems to have knocked the stuffing out of me. Endless coding stretches, massive complexity in the stuff I have been working on, and requests for my time flying in from all directions. And then of course I got home each day and had to deal with the usual round of craziness.

I had a count up of the lines of programming in the project I have been working on earlier today – the project that has seen my flying back and forth to Germany for the last year. We're now at roughly eighty thousand lines of code. It's quite sobering to think that I wrote it all, and that most of it seems to work.

I think perhaps the weirdest part about software development is that when issues happen you tend to develop a sixth sense – a knowledge not just of where the problem is happening in the code, but where it originated from. Often problems develop slowly – one thing behaves unexpectedly, which leads another to behave erratically, then another falls over entirely. The most difficult issues to solve are when multiple faiures disguise each other – I have a t-shirt somewhere with the various levels of debugging listed on it – starting with 'it works ok on my system', and ending with 'how did it ever work in the first place?'.

Anyway. Enough about that.

Time to switch off, watch a movie, read a book, and get away from the computer for a while. Maybe I'll read a few friend's blogs first though...

The children are on half term at the moment – which under normal circumstances would mean the house is relatively peaceful on a morning. Of course normal circumstances rarely occur in our house – this morning Miss 15 was busy causing mayhem while preparing for the final day of a Rugby Union referee training course. Yes, you read that right – my middle daughter is training to be a rugby referee. She's naturally bossy, so it's almost a perfect fit.

Each of our children is wildly different than their siblings. Miss 18 is shy, reserved, and overly analytical of anything and everything. Miss 13 is a free spirit that drifts along aimlessly from day to day, effortlessly making friends, and living in her own little world for the most part. Miss 15 is headstrong, argumentative, agressive, abrupt – in many ways the polar opposite of her sisters.

Until last week she harboured dreams of being in the police when she's older. She's studying history and citizenship among her exam subjects at school – both of which naturally suit a career in uniform. The colour of that uniform may have changed last week though – following an army recruitment officer visiting a careers day at school.

Suddenly she want's to 'blow things up'.

Her enthusiasm for whatever she becomes involved in is infectious. In recent months she has been playing in goal for both the school and town hockey teams, as well as playing rugby on Sundays. The biggest problem with being in goal has been the kit – have you ever seen a hockey goal tender? You must have seen an ice hockey goalie – it's essentially the same outfit, and can cost a considerable amount of money. Thus far she has been borrowing the school goalie kit when possible, and trudging across town, wheeling the bag behind her.

While she has been away on the referee course, my other half set to work on E-Bay, flexing her not inconsiderable auction skills. While selling all manner of old computers, game consoles and brick-a-brack from the attic over the last few weeks we have also been searching for pieces of hockey goalie kit.

When I got home from work this evening I walked in on a newly qualified rugby coach standing in the middle of the kitchen in a vest and boxer shorts, with a smile like a coat hanger, wearing three quarters of a field hockey goalie outfit. I have never seen her smile so much, or talk so fast. She also lucked into a couple of hockey sticks, and a bag of balls.

I have a feeling the green outside our house is going to turn into an unofficial training ground for the local girls hockey team this summer.

In-between conference calls, writing an endless stream of source code, cycling home, washing up, clearing the kitchen, and paying my children to tidy their rooms (no, really), I have been thinking about the email I sent out earlier – offering people the 'opportunity' to contribute to my blog's existence on the internet.

I'm going to put my begging hat away, and stamp on it a few times. I might even set fire to it, and dance around the burning embers singing some defiant song or other.

For a few moments this morning I lost sight of why I write a blog in the first place, and almost got seduced by the marketing monster. I write primarily for me. Nobody else. Just me. I empty my head into the keyboard almost every night because I like writing. It's really that simple.

I know a lot of people live in the Wordpress walled garden because they enjoy the community – the likes, the comments, the follows. I've never really chased any of that – if you happen upon one of my posts and it strikes a few chords with your own thoughts about something then of course that's great – but I'm never going to go out of my way to get my words in front of you.

I'm trying really hard not to start ranting about people that 'play the game' – that like and comment on blog posts purely in order to attract attention to their own blog. To each their own I suppose, but it's a bit like turning up to a party where you don't know anybody and walking the room complimenting everybody's clothes with the same three or four phrases.

Here's something you probably don't know – outside of the English speaking world, Blogger is and has always been just as popular as Wordpress. In Russia, LiveJournal is still massively popular too. There's a myopia common to the west that if we do not see our circle using or liking something we presume nobody else uses or likes that thing. Here's the thing though – the social networks all use algorithmic timelines, meaning that they only show us updates, influence, and marketing from sources we are likely to be interested in.

The end result of all of this is division, and losses of freedom and independence. It's a bit like the mayhem that has unfolded in the United States – and is probably common to many other countries too. The majority of people that regularly use social media presumed that they were in the majority of society as a whole – they still do – and yet they are not. The same thing happened in the UK with Brexit – the online majority were shocked and stunned to discover that they were actually a minority when compared to the populance as a whole – mostly because most of the news, opinion, and discussion they read, watch, and consume is broadly concordant with their views. This is of course no accident.

Enough about politics. I hate politics. I can never quite work out why anybody would want to take up a career in politics, because the old saying is absolutely true – 'you can't make all the people happy all of the time'. I'm not even sure it's a saying – isn't the more common version about fooling people?

Anyway.

There's the famous 'anyway' – where I get bored of what I was writing about.

I'm not fund-raising to put my words on the internet. I'm not selling the old iMac either. I am going to try and write a few more blog posts like this one though – but maybe not about politics, or blogging. Nobody wants to read about politics or blogging – certainly not me. Ah crap – if I start thinking about what other people want to see on the blog, that means I care about an audience, which flies in the face of what I wrote at the start of this post.

Crap crap crap.

Maybe I'll start writing fictional blog posts about a hassled software developer with three daughters, two cats, and a number of fish that writes idiotic blog posts in the few minutes he manages to steal for himself between work, chores, and whatever disaster is unfolding on a given day. Oh – wait a minute...

How is it already 9pm? Where did Monday go? How did I manage to make it through the day after falling asleep at 2am, and waking up again 4 hours later? Why does my body feel like it's shutting down on me, one system at a time? I suppose while at least my fingers are still working I may as well empty my head into the keyboard.

Of course it would help if there was anything to empty from my head. I'm coming up woefully short on anything interesting or entertaining to tell you – which, considering I've been working out how to best pay for a Squarespace account, doesn't really bode well for this whole blogging thing, does it. Maybe I'll just retreat into internet obscurity, leaving a trail of disjointed blog posts behind me like a modern re-telling of Hansel and Gretel's breadcrumb story.

Oh – I nearly forgot – I'm still back-populating the not-so-secret Tumblr account with photos from Instagram, and cross-posting from the blog when I remember. I'm nearly back to the start of 2017, where I will probably stop the idiocy. So far the Tumblr account has picked up 40-something followers – mostly bots, rebloggers, or marketing morons. I know the word 'moron' is a bit mean, but I like alliteration.

I spent longer that I really should have at breakfast time today wondering about re-naming the Tumblr account. I can't use 'jonbeckett' because some French guy with a mountain bike acquired it a few years ago. He then lost the username to some reblogger, which made me laugh more than it should have. I also can't use 'jonbeckett404', because I've used it before (and it's therefore not available to anybody for several years). If you're wondering, 404 is the HTTP response code for 'Not Found'. I did think about going with the suffix 503, which means 'Service Unavailable'. Or maybe something altogether more eccentric – 'jonbeckett418'. It turns out if a webserver sends back the HTTP response code 418 it means 'I'm a teapot'. You can go read the back-story yourself – I just think it's a delightfully quirky, idiotic, and silly story that's too ridiculous to be made up.

In the meantime, I have the domain name 'jonbeckett.com' sitting doing nothing. One day, when I'm independently wealthy, I'll sign up for Squarespace and put a website on it. If I sold the retro iMac (that I'm using to write this post), I could probably fund Squarespace for a good few months. Well... two months maybe. I don't think a late model iMac in blueberry (or whatever Apple called this shade of blue plastic) is really worth that much.

Maybe I should upgrade the iMac – replace it's hard drive with an SSD, and max out it's memory – turn it into a slightly faster anachronistic finger up the nose of progress.

Anyway. I do believe I've just written several hundred words about nothing at all. I can only apologise. I will do better, I promise.

It only occurred to me this evening that I didn't post to the blog yesterday. After flying home from Germany I raced home to continue working for several hours – putting fires out with untested code that had fallen over spectacularly. Today has been all about tidying up, washing clothes, drying clothes – the usual round of chores after a week away. And tinkering.

There's a reason for the tinkering this time though.

While I was away my other half called me one evening, asking how to do something on the old computer in the junk room – 'my' computer. I talked her through logging in, and running various programs to achieve what she wanted – and we had to wait first for the computer to wake up, then for the each application to open, before we even attempted to do anything with it. I'm not talking seconds either – it was minutes in each case.

Long story short – the computer now has Linux installed on it once more instead of Microsoft Windows. I had a look at a website called Distrowatch earlier to find out which Linux distribution is popular (and therefore supported by the community), and went with 'Manjaro' on both the desktop, and my old laptop. It would be foolish to say 'it's great!' just yet – but it does launch in half the time Windows took, and opens a browser in seconds rather than minutes.

One day – when I'm rich – I'll buy a new computer for myself (this will of course never happen).

While talking about money, and the cost of things, I found myself looking at Squarespace earlier – the blogging platform. If I could somehow guarantee making the hosting fees back, I think I might quite like to move to a platform like Squarespace one day – they are SO expensive though. It sounds ridiculous – worrying about covering $12 a month to run a blog – less than many people spend on coffee from coffee shops. And yet here we are – struggling along, and knowing that I really can't warrant that much money at the moment.

And before you ask – all of my expenses in Germany are paid for by work. Everything I eat – everything I buy from the supermarket – falls within agreed budgets. I pay for meals on a credit card, and work pay me it back.

When it comes to my own money... yeah. This is where I admit I just ate a bowl of cornflakes for supper, because I can't warrant spending the money on chocolate from the store. Of course I don't NEED chocolate – or the cornflakes for that matter. It kind of explains why I can't afford Squarespace either though.

I'm painting a very dark picture, but it's really not as bad as it sounds. It does make me smile sometimes though – when I hear other people complaining that they can't afford to do this or that – and yet they eat out several times a week, go on grobe-trotting holidays, have laptops, ridiculous phones, and all manner of other 'things'. I should make a huge banner with 'PRIORITIES' written on it, and sit behind it in a deck chair when they even think about opening their mouth.

This evening I feel like a clockwork toy that is slowly winding down. It's not that I'm particularly tired – just weary.

After leaving the office this evening I chose not to go out into the city for a final meal. It's February 14th – St. Valentine's day. All of the restaurants will be filled with people going out for expected meals – fulfilling their obligation to make some sort of unwanted or unwarranted romantic effort. I'm sorry, but if you need to wait for an invented day in order to show affection to somebody, you're a bit of an idiot.

While walking towards the supermarket to get something to eat, I passed a beggar. He looked hopefully at me, trying to engage me in German – I murmured in Germany that I can't speak German (and yes, the irony in that isn't lost on me), and carried on my way – feeling bad for him. While a part of me knew he was probably targeting couples out on dates, another part of me wanted to do something for him. Along with the salad I bought for myself, I picked up a chocolate bar for him. It's sitting on the edge of the desk next to me now – he had disappeared by the time I returned, and now I can't bring myself to eat it.

I have a feeling I may not be returning to Germany for quite some time. The simple economics of three days on-site per week versus five at home starts to make sense over time – particularly when we can so easily share screens, or even talk face-to-face if we so wish. Never say never though – there are whispered rumors of future projects from people in high places.

So. Tomorrow I return to the airport, get on a plane, and fly home. That's the plan anyway. I'll get up early, make a bacon and egg roll in the hotel restaurant, down a coffee or two, then check-out before dragging my suitcase to the railway station.

I want to say 'wish me luck', but know it's a cliche. Flying around the world, earning money, doing this job, supporting my family, and being greeting with handshakes, smiles, and hugs – it's not about luck – it's about hard work, and caring, and perseverance. If there's one thing I'm good at, it's perseverance.

It's half past nine in the evening, and you find me sitting in my fifth floor hotel room with the window open to the night air. Richard Marx is singing about being 'right here' for somebody or other while traffic slowly makes it's way across a nearby bridge – reflections of headlights dancing on the water below.

Today was a tough day. Mentally exhausting.

After returning to the hotel this evening I changed into jeans and a warm jumper and walked into town. A part of me wanted to grab food from a nearby supermarket, but something inside me snapped. After a ten minute walk through the city I was shown to a 'table for one' at a fake American diner by a tall asian guy with shoulder length hair, and the most welcoming smile I have seen in a while.

A large glass of Belgian beer, a huge bacon cheeseburger, and a pile of fat fries covered in cheese and chilli re-balanced the world somewhat. My order was taken by a confident German girl with a ponytail and perfect winged eyeliner. I thought her rather lovely, even if she had only given me a few moments of her time. It's amazing how even the smallest of interactions have come to mean so much while here on my own.

While walking back to the hotel, I passed several busy bars, and had a sudden attack of the lonelies. It's rare that I ever feel lonely – I'm usually quite happy with my own company – but for a few moments while passing those windows full of noise and smiling faces, I wished I might have been anywhere but there. It's ridiculous really, because you only need to sit in a public space for a few minutes to realise that the guy walking his dog is probably weighed down by all sorts of problems – and the quiet girl using a phone as a defensive shield either wishes somebody would notice her, or that everybody would leave her alone. Everybody has a multitude of stories buried deep inside – some happy, some sad.

One day left. One day left until I get back on a plane and return home to my family. I'm counting the hours.

I woke with a start this morning, and took a few moments to get my bearings. Ah yes – a hotel room in Frankfurt, Germany. Far from home. After groping across he bed in search of the phone I had left on charge the night before, it took my eyes a few seconds to focus on it's screen.

3:30am. Wonderful.

I slept fitfully for the next few hours, and then finally fell into a deep sleep at about 6am. In the next half hour I managed to fit in a huge, complicated adventure that the 6:30 alarm dragged me from reluctantly. I always seem to wake up minutes before an alarm, or am wrenched from a wonderful dream by the alarm. Of course I can't tell you what on earth the dream was about now – just a sense that it was good.

The next half hour was spent battling the microscopic bathroom in this week's hotel room – just big enough to leave bruises on your elbows without quite knowing how you got them. I managed to half-flood the bathroom floor too, despite deliberate attempts not to. Somebody remind me to write a lengthy complaint about the shower design in the hotel feedback form.

Breakfast in the hotel was... well it was breakfast in the hotel. There's not really much to tell. The hotel is a typical mid-range hotel that provides a massively over-priced 'continental breakfast'. This translates as a number of food-stuffs set out for you to choose from, along with various drinks machines. I typically grab a bread roll, cut it in half, and fill it with bacon and eggs. I also fill a cup with cappuccino, and a bowl with yogurt and fruit. I think I've told the story about a Japanese traveler watching me make the bacon and egg roll, and copying me in the past. His look of satisfaction as he bit into his creation will stay with me for the rest of my days.

I can't really talk about what I did at work. I suppose I can talk about sitting in a conference room on my own for the better part of the day though. I was shattered at the end of the day. I really am my own worst enemy when it comes to setting my own unrealistic expectations. If I had an escape kit, I would build a trap door beneath my own feet – every time.

After leaving the office this evening I got changed and immediately set off for something to eat. A part of me wanted to walk into the city and try somewhere new. Unfortunately a greater part of me – the really lazy part – knows there is a Japanese restaurant just round the corner. And that's how I ended up eating some un-pronouncable Japanese dish half an hour later.

I did a thing too. The last time I visited the Japanese restaurant I paid with the credit card I always use for work – and the waiting staff didn't ask about adding a tip to the transaction. I had no cash in my pockets (I never do any more – by design – it cuts the work involved in doing the expense claims in half). I felt SO bad about not leaving a tip, but the waitress had already moved on. I made up for it tonight – paying double the typical amount. The toothy grin that spread across the waitress's face made every penny worth it. Settling the unwritten account in my head lifted a small weight off my own shoulders too.

A tremendously grown-up voice in my head told me that 'going for a walk' would be very-much the thing to do after dinner. Before I knew it, my feet were busy carrying me deep into the city. I have to sheepishly admit that half the reason I didn't notice was because my other half called, and I spent the better part of a mile talking to her – by the time I put the phone away I had arrived at Goetheplatz, and streets filled with cafes, restaurants, and ridiculous clothes shops.

I looked through the window of the Prada shop, and accidentally laughed out loud at the price of a crochet vest. Now let me think – shall I buy two vests, or a car ? Sorry for being flippant, but really. Just along the road the Dior shop had a ladies suit in the window similar to the one Gal Gadot wore in Wonderwoman. Go on – have a guess. Let's just say we could have bought our car three times over for the same price as that suit. Yes, it was nice – but three cars nice? Nope.

I do love walking city streets at night though. There's something about seeing people out and about – smiling across cafe tables at each other's conversations – walking arm in arm – laughing, telling stories, or just spending time with friends. There's something about the reflected light from candles and lanterns that makes the world a little more friendly.

After a somewhat circular route through the hubbub, bustle, and noise of Frankfurt, I arrived back at the quiet street outside my hotel, and dodged behind a businessman lighting a cigarette in the doorway. The thought occurred to ask him to step outside to do what he was doing, but the stony stare of the doorman did that for me. I half-smiled as I turned the corner towards the elevators.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have half a bottle of supermarket wine waiting for me, and television filled with German talk shows, and a very comfortable hotel bed. Maybe I'll give the television a miss, and read a bit more of the book I've been mired in for the last few days. Or fall down an internet rabbit hole. Choices, choices.

• The card not working in the ticket machine in the railway station
• People walking up to me, starting conversations in German I want to write that the flight to Germany was uneventful. I really do. I worry that if I tell the truth, I’ll get accused of prejudice. Maybe if I describe the scene it might help.

The plane was half-empty again – perhaps sixty or seventy people in total. I took a photo and posted it to instagram of the nearby rows of empty seats, wondering if I was the common factor in the planes being half-empty recently. I almost smelled my own armpits, just to check. I thought I might actually get the back half the plane to myself for a little while – until “the family” turned up.

I’m not going to claim to know their nationality, because I don’t know what it was. I will tell you how they spread themselves out across the back half of the aircraft, and then continued their conversation by shouting to each other, instead of sitting nearer to the person they wanted to talk to. They continued this shouting match throughout the safety briefings, and the pilot’s introduction.

Oh how I hoped they would miss something crucial. I buried my head in a book for the next half an hour – until the air hostesses served food and drink. Given the low numbers of drinks to serve, I was offered both hot and cold drinks if I wanted them – I imagine the crew do anything to pass the time on empty flights. Of course in the movies you end up making friends with Kirsten Dunst, who sits next to you and makes entertaining conversation for hours before sending you on a road-trip across America to find her at a fayre and fall in love. That’s the movies though, and Cameron Crowe can get away with things like that.

While mentioning Cameron Crowe movies (that was an Elizabethtown reference, if you didn’t realise – great movie) – did you know there is a special version of Almost Famous in existence, that is over an hour longer than the original theatrical version? I’m not just talking about the “Bootleg” version – there is ANOTHER even LONGER version.

Anyway. We got to Germany in the end. We also got to the hotel – but not before the ticket machines on the railway platforms refused to sell me a ticket, or no trains turned up for half an hour. The displays kept claiming the next train would be along in 10 minutes – which would invariably tick down, before resetting back to 11, 12, or even 14 minutes at one point. I’m guessing the people that wrote the transportation computer system couldn’t count.

That all happened an hour ago. Since then I have checked in, unpacked, and gone grocery shopping. While walking towards the supermarket an overweight man cycled past on the footpath, and I couldn’t help noticing he had a wookie bike saddle. No, seriously – it was huge, and very hairy. I had to look twice.

Oh – before I forget – my other half caught me well and truly. I opened my case to unpack in the hotel this afternoon, and discovered a Valentine’s card and present. Now I have to figure out what on earth I’m going to get her in return. I’ll be passing through Paddington Station on my way home on Friday – perhaps something from there.

Now if you’ll excuse me, a pre-made salad from the supermarket is waiting for me.