write.as/jonbeckett

To be perfectly honest, I’m not getting an awful lot done today. It comes to something when the only accomplishment you can really think of for the morning has been re-installing KIK on your mobile phone. I’m “strangecodex”, if you have it installed on your phone.

I used to have a KIK account, but deleted it in one of the insane purges I occasionally go through – deleting apps, accounts, and identities here, there, and everywhere around the internet.

Anyway. That was all. Please excuse me while I try to find old friend’s KIK usernames, and re-connect with them. I’m not even sure many people use it any more – if you do, say hello!

I pulled somebody else’s code to pieces today, in search of an oversight that a client is calling a bug. It took half the day to build a test environment, and half the day to understand how the code works. I was sorely tempted to start re-writing huge swathes of programming, but thought better of it. The original author hopefully returns tomorrow – I’ll show him what I’ve done, and pick his brains about the re-write.

Still awake? I know programming isn’t really the most enthusing subject in the world.

I got told off earlier this week. Another co-worker has just left on paternity leave – I was asked if his work was handed over to me yet. I replied along the lines of “yes, after being parachuted in at the 11th hour, as per normal”. I don’t think it was quite the wording to use in a work email.

I am my own worst enemy. I’ve carried too many monstrous projects on my back single handed. It’s almost become expected that I can pull anything out of the fire, fix it, finish it, and land it smoothly. Of course nobody sees the late nights, the stress, or the blind panic. Nobody sees me fall into “one foot in front of the other” mode – blindly carrying on, solving the problem directly in front of me, then the next one, and the next.

Anyway. Tomorrow is another day. Let’s just get through tomorrow – then the weekend, then worry about next week when we get there. Hopefully next week will involve a little less parachuting.

Last night was a perfect example of the challenges faced by two parents attempting to parent three children. The eldest – often thought of as the most level headed, sensible, and placid – had fallen through the cracks while we juggled football, rugby, dance, and schoolwork with her younger sisters. When she needed us most, we were not there, and I feel awful about it.

I’m not going to get into what happened, or why. Not here. Not yet.

I will talk about last night though, and the idiocy that Tuesday nights have become. It started when I finished work, and cycled into town to meet Miss 17, who had just delivered her little sister to a dance lesson. As I swept into the car park on my bike, I saw Miss 17 leaning against a doorway – her silhouette casting a vast shadow towards me.

After locking my bike up we walked into town, with an hour to kill. I had promised a coffee, so we headed for the nearest caf, and talked about anything and everything – or rather I gently enquired about anything and everything. No sooner had she really started to open up, the coffee shop closed for the night, and we set off first to the supermarket, then back to the dance class.

Half an hour later – after a rapid change of dance leotard to football kit – we arrived across town for football training. Another hour after that I returned again to fetch her. Miss 17 stayed with me the entire time. She commented about the thousands of steps we were racking up, and I laughed – “welcome to Tuesday nights”.

By 9pm everybody was back in the house, everybody had eaten, and I was looking for something to do with Miss 17. Something to take the weight from her shoulders.

“Let’s start a new Tumblr for you.”

And so it was we found ourselves sitting in the junk room together for two hours, looking at Tumblr together – working out what to call her new blog, who to follow, what to like, and so on. If nothing else, the evening opened her eyes – there are lots of other people just like her out there – all thinking they are alone – all worrying about the same things – all struggling to put one foot in front of the other.

At some point as the evening stretched on I suggested we take a break and watch a movie. The Transformers movie looked like the perfect candidate – just something to enjoy without having to think too much. We both fell asleep half an hour in – I woke when my other half shook me at midnight. Miss 17 was stretched across the couch, her legs across my lap – fast asleep for perhaps the first time in several days.

I looked in on her Tumblr this morning, and hid my disappointment. No hearts, no follows, and no comments. As she left for college I copied the two most important posts from last night over to her Wordpress blog. It’s funny – despite what everybody says about the internet connecting people, an awful lot of people seem to walk around with very high walls around themselves. Lets hope I’m good at climbing them with her over the next few days.

David Karp is leaving Tumblr. It feels strange, finally seeing the various valley blogs breathlessly posting the news out to the internet – describing how he founded the blogging platform back in 2007, and changed the web.

I remember. I was there. I wrote about it.

I remember listening to an episode of a podcast while travelling with work back in 2007, and signing up to try the service out. Perhaps the most amazing thing about Tumblr is the core platform hasn’t really changed since those early months.

I’m not going to get into a detailed history of Tumblr here – I am going to look back at one of the last vestiges of the beginning of the social internet though. Tumblr grew up alongside LiveJournal, Blogger, Vox, and MySpace as a place for people to post their thoughts, ideas, dreams, hopes, and inspirations for the world to share. A place that anybody could get started in minutes. I guess you need to remember that the only sensible alternative in the early days was a self-hosted installation of Wordpress – which entailed buying webspace, a domain name, installing Apache, MySQL, PHP, and tinkering with endless configuration files (the infamous “LAMP” stack). It’s not hard to see why Tumblr took off.

Regardless of what happens to Tumblr now, I’m always going to look at it through rose tinted glasses. Some might argue that David Karp’s departure is the first tolling of it’s final bell. They might argue that the money men from Verizon (wearing their Oath Inc. shirts) will twist, pervert, and water down the platform in order to asset-strip it. Others might argue that the platform will now be re-launched. It’s about time something was done – as I said, it hasn’t really changed since it opened it’s doors ten years ago.

I wonder what David Karp will do next? I’m betting it will have nothing to do with blogging at all. If he does though, I wonder if I should show him the prototype blogging platform I knocked together in a couple of weeks of evenings a few years back – the Tumblr killer that might have been ?

I came home from work early today. It turns out spending the whole of Saturday with somebody fighting a terrible cold pretty successfully transfers the germs to you. Who knew? I was fine until lunchtime, then throughout the afternoon it has felt like somebody pulled my power cable out.

Somehow I think tomorrow might be all about pyjamas, cups of tea, and a book or two. Actually, we all know that’s a load of rubbish – I’ll end up trudging my way across the internet, reading and following blogs, writing comments, and procrastinating famously.

Of course there’s also the chance that I’ll wake up tomorrow, and talk myself into going to the office. I can’t remember the last time I was off sick – it’s probably a couple of years ago – the company hates us going in with colds or flu though, because it spreads around the offices and brings everybody down.

My younger daughters have walked into town on some sort of secret mission, my other half has gone to visit her mother, and our eldest daughter is holed up in her room with a friend. Silence has descended on the house (well… apart from the constant rumble of the washing machine and tumble dryer in the background).

I’m at a loose end. I’m wondering what I used to fill weekends with when I was single – certainly not losing my temper spectacularly after asking the children to clean their rooms when I discover their idea of “cleaning” is to pick up all clothes in sight, and put them in the washing basket/mountain. I questioned Miss 13 on it, and she started grinning. I completely lost it. I may have said quite a few bad words in a row.

One of the cats is annoying me now. He’s obviously recognised an absence of people hassling me, and is now sitting in the door-way of the junk room, meowing at me for no apparent reason. Cats must have a pretty highly developed “choose the right time to be an asshole” section in their brain – the same bit that decides where to sit in the kitchen that will cause maximum disruption.

Coffee. Making coffee will pass some time. So will reading about all your adventures. So will reading a book. I can’t remember the last time I sat down and read a book without being interrupted, or thinking of something else that needed doing.

After sliding out of bed at 6am this morning, jumping in the shower, having shave, and throwing on clothes prepared last night, I knocked on Miss 17’s bedroom door for the first time. Over the course of the next half an hour I knocked on her door ten more times. With minutes ticking down until we absolutely had to leave the house in order to catch the train to London, she appeared – dressed, coat on, phone in her pocket, earbuds in her ears.

We caught the 7am train towards London, and sat rubbing sleep from our eyes, and talking about Stranger Things for much of the journey. Eventually the robotic train announcer informed us that Paddington Station was approaching, where the train would terminate. I started grinning – imaging the train being terminated, Dalek style.

After half an hour sitting on an almost deserted underground train – it never fails to surprise me how different the commuting experience is between weekends and weekdays – we climbed into the frosty morning air of Central London, and set off on-foot for the “Tobacco Docks” – and “HyperJapan”.

If you are a long-time reader of my blog, you may remember our visit to HyperJapan some months ago. It’s an exhibition held in London celebrating everything to do with Japanese culture – from food, to fashion, art, animation, performance art, and more. There is a live stage where J-Pop bands challenge the structural integrity of the building while ripping through guitar shredding songs at a hundred miles an hour, and a food hall filled with people trying out Japanese food – often for the first time. Like me.

The rice cakes looked amazing. Miniature models of perfection in small boxes, flavoured with this or that, filled with things we had never heard of before. I bought several, and we snuck of to try them. Miss 17 bit into the first one, and didn’t know what to make of it. I laughed, and popped the rest into my mouth – always willing to try new things. She almost spat hers out in laughter at my immediate description.

“It’s like bouncy snot!? But it tastes of chocolate?!”

It turns out rice cakes are often like that – the texture is just something we are not used to at all. The only thing Miss 17 didn’t like at all was a rice cake filled with red beans. I finished it for her.

Miss 17 was *supposed *to have been dressed in a full cosplay outfit – as a character from the popular Manga and Anime series “Attack on Titan”. To be honest, I was amazed we arrived at HyperJapan at all – she went down with a horrific cold yesterday, and only made it out of the house this morning after giving her the maximum dose of nurofen.

The cosplayers were probably the highlight of the day. Actually, the live stage acts were also pretty amazing – but the cosplayers were outstanding. I can’t imagine how many tens of hours go into the creation of some of the costumes. One girl in particular was stunning – I didn’t know the character she dressed as, but the attention to detail in her costume, it’s accessories, her makeup, and hair was unbelievable.

I asked a lot of people if we could take their photo – Miss 17 was too bashful – they all agreed with huge smiles. You might think it would get annoying if you are stopped every few seconds for another photo, or another selfie with somebody, but no – they all seem to live for it – sharing the characters they are fans of with anybody who takes an interest.

Talking of being a “fan”, while wandering around we happened upon an exhibition of original artwork from the artist behind the Manga and Anime series “Fairy Tale” – Miss 17 immediately dragged me in, and we spent some time looking at original inked pages, and their coloured counterparts. A wall of messages from fans drew us in, and a Japanese lady offered us a pen. 17 didn’t understand at first, but then realised what was going on. I thought she might write her name on the wall, and wondered what was taking her so long. Nope. She was drawing the cat from the series. A professional photographer working for the exhibition noticed too, and ran over – leaning over her shoulder with their lens to record her, and what she was drawing. I’m wondering when and where the photos will appear – I might get in touch with them.

We also watched skilled calligraphers writing people’s names in traditional lettering styles, looked at Kimono’s we would have to sell the car to afford, and gazed in wonder at a variety of art exhibitions.

A little while later – after throwing a chicken katsu curry in our mouth, and standing in a sea of thousands at the main stage for an hour, we decided enough was enough, bought an album of a J-Pop metal band that will undoubtedly destroy the bluetooth speaker in 17’s room, and made our way back to the station. Despite the cocktail of drugs coursing through 17’s body, she was beginning to flag. The moment we sat on the train back at Paddington Station, she fell fast asleep, and slept most of the way home.

A long day. A noisy day. An expensive day. But a good day, and a day neither of us will forget for some time.

A few minutes before leaving the house this morning the telephone rang. My other half.

“You know that bag I got ready last night with cakes for the school bazaar?”

“Yes.”

“I forgot it.”

I looked behind me on the kitchen floor, and sure enough there it was. I also knew that “I forgot it” really meant “will you cycle a mile out of your way across town to deliver the bag to me?”.

“I’ll be there in a bit”.

And so it was that I found myself struggling with both my work backpack on my back, and a bag full of cakes dangling from the handlebars – occasionally swinging against the front wheel and making a terrific buzz-saw sound. I had repeated visions of the cake box snagging in the spokes and catapulting me into the road, with cupcakes scattered all around me. I pictured a police officer arriving on the scene, and complaining about the state of the icing on the cake he would stand there eating.

Seeing as I was already late for work I took it upon myself to get my hair cut. It just so happened that Russell Brand (the actor/comedian/asshole) had switched the Christmas lights on in town last night, so the lady cutting my hair inevitably asked me if I was there.

“No – sorry

Russell has lived in the town for the last couple of years apparently. There’s a few people from TV and movies living locally – I guess we’re far enough from London that it’s quiet, without the journey in being too onerous. I suppose I should know, after commuting in several times this week.

Anyway! After chit-chatting about whatever forgettable rubbish you do while waiting for your hair to be stolen right off your head, I climbed back on the bike, and set off up the road towards work.

After finally arriving in the office, I discovered two boxes sitting in the middle of my desk – no doubt put there by the wonderful ladies that work downstairs. New lights, and new brake blocks for my bike. For the last few weeks I have essentially had no brakes on my bike – the back break in particular has been making curious metal-on-metal noises that I worried might eventually wear through the rim. Guess who stood out in the car park for half an hour later in the day, covering his hands in a pretty spectacular coating of soot, oil, and whatever else comes off a bike that very rarely gets cleaned? By the time I finished I could have passed quite easily as a car mechanic.

You know the funny thing? Having oily hands is kind of like wearing makeup, but in reverse. Many years ago, the company I worked for dressed in drag for a charity in the UK called “Children in Need”. The girl that worked in reception did my makeup in the morning (to go with a dress I borrowed, and a wig from a joke shop). I learned that day that when you’re wearing eye makeup, you cannot so much as TOUCH your eyes. You can’t rub them, scratch them – nothing. This morning I quickly became aware of the reverse, after scratching my nose while fitting the brake blocks. I wondered if I had a huge black smear across my nose for some time, and bizarrely forgot to check while washing my hands. For all I know I still have a black smear across my face.

Thankfully the lights were much more straightforward. They charge via USB, and strapped onto the bike in a matter of seconds. I felt like the second sun of Krypton as I cycled home, illuminating the road ahead rather magnificently.

I need to stop writing. It’s already past 10pm, and I need to be up at 6 in the morning. Myself and Miss 17 are headed to London for the day – the “Hyper Japan” festival at the Tobacco Docks, near the Tower of London. Expect lots of photos of Manga and Anime cosplayers, and insane J-Pop bands tomorrow night.

Just a quick post to wish all I know around the world that are celebrating thanksgiving all the best. We don’t celebrate it on this side of the world, but I know lots of people that do – many of which will be gathering together with family and friends to eat themselves to a standstill, do their best to avoid arguments, and fight over what forgettable movie to put on the TV.

Happy Thanksgiving!

It’s 6:31am, and I’m sitting on the train to London Paddington railway station. One of the advantages of travelling so early is the train is almost empty. I’m wondering if getting up this early is a sign of getting older? I keep hearing stories about old people getting up at ridiculous times in the morning – which no doubt explains how they manage to out shopping when everybody else is trying to get to work.

I’m hoping to get to my eventual destination an hour early, so I can find a cafe and chill out for a bit – grab some breakfast, have a coffee, and perhaps fall asleep at the table. I’ll be spending the rest of the day at a “partner event” – nothing to do with personal relationships – more to do with technology companies. I imagine my day will be spent sitting at the back of a lecture theatre, and being plied with canapes and more coffee throughout. I will be recognised on arrival, and will stear conversation entirely away from work if at all possible.

It’s still dark outside. Really dark. Properly dark. The train is bobbling around as it thunders towards London, but you can’t see a damn thing from the windows, other than an occasional house window or street light flashing past. At least the train is a new one with power sockets, and comfy seats – I’m taking advantage, and giving the Chromebook a drink of electricity en-route. That’s right – I’m going with the Chromebook rather than my work laptop today. It weighs half as much, and lasts all day on a charge (or at least it would if I had remembered to plug it in last night – hence charging it right now).

I have no idea what sort of time we will arrive at Paddington – I didn’t really factor that into getting up early. This appears to be the fast train. I guess we’ll see.

Several hours pass…

The underground was remarkably quiet this morning. After half an hour reading the free newspapers that are given out en-masse, I arrived at Blackfriars, and climbed out into a London soaked with rain, with commuters running in all directions, and tradesmen delivering to pubs, bars, and restaurants at every turn. I wandered in the direction of my eventual destination for the day, and spotted a McDonalds. I think I might be addicted to their breakfast wraps, so put my order in, and quietly stood waiting.

Somebody tapped me on the shoulder. The same guy I live five minutes walk from – that I was supposed to be meeting at our eventual destination in an hour’s time was standing behind me, grinning. I guess great minds think alike – it still made us both laugh though – that we had travelled across the countryside and city together, and had the same idea at the same time, arriving at the same place as each other for breakfast.

A few minutes later a third co-worker arrived, and we sat together eating rubbish, drinking gallons of coffee, and catching up with one another. I can’t write a thing about the next seven hours. Or perhaps I can. We were all shown non-disclosure agreements while sitting around a conference room table, offered endless cups of coffee, pastries, sandwiches, and chocolate bars while trying to concentrate on slide decks, conversations, and repeated calls of “what we are about to tell you doesn’t leave this room”. It was a good day.

I’m now sitting on the main-line train towards home. I imagine I’ll get back at about 7:30pm.

Something has been bugging me since leaving London. I stood in the middle of a London Underground carriage earlier, and repeatedly noticed men taking seats when women were standing. Call me old fashioned, but in my mind men should always offer vacant seats to women if they are able to do so – that didn’t happen at all. I’m not sure if it’s a London thing, a Millennial thing, or what. I’m sure some women will see this, and shout at me about equality, but I like to think that some traditions are upheld – women are on an uneven playing field as it is, without men being bigger assholes than they need to be.

Another couple of hours pass

I’m home now. Dinner was made from a leftover ready-meal in the fridge, eaten alone at the dinner table while my other half drove back and forth across town to fetch Miss 13 from football training. Half an hour later and I’m in the junk room, finishing writing this up. Forgive me if I don’t write much more – I’m running on empty once again.