A few years back, I was tasked with sorting through a handful of boxes containing various stuff my mother has saved over the years, and to decide what to keep, if anything, and what to dump. Like the good son that I am, I ignored this task and instead tucked the boxes away into a storage unit. Now I’m finally getting around to it, and I’ve found some neat things which I will share here in a stunning photo essay.
My father-in-law, Mr. John Jackson, is hitting the road. For the next few months, it will be him, his motorcycle, and the open road. He’ll go where ever his fancy takes him. He’ll visit old friends and family, see places from his past, and visit new places as well. He may even go to the arctic circle! I hope that when I’m in my sixties, I can go on adventures like Papa John does.
Here is a #tbt pic of him from the early 1980s. Ride on John, and I wish you the happiest of trails:
During a recent a recent internet outage, boredom set in rather quickly. So this happened. I’m pretty pleased with how seamless the GIF turned out. Derek will be waving his weird, gangly arms forever!
On my first big run of the season, we ran out 2.5 miles on the green belt path in South Portland, then we strolled back to the car. We came upon a lone running shoe floating in some mineral rich run off from the local landfill. What we have here is natural beauty at its stinkiest.
Special #sketchySunday in honor of #wcme2015. Web developers, designers, bloggers and online business people, please join us for WordCamp Maine next weekend!
I spent some time on the first heated day of the season snapping pics of the wild animals I share a home with. Let’s make it irie, even if just for a few moments. #onelove #noworries #wildcats
We are making good progress at the new office. A ping pong table has been long sought after. We’ve got one now, and it’s great way to get on your feet after hours of sitting at a computer. Now we have got to do something about the blank wall. I’m excited at the prospect of painting a mural. I may post a few mock ups in the near future. Please be on the look out!
I don’t care what console you play, you will love the drama, the comedy, the sheer inventiveness of the ClickVenture. It’s like Zork, but with honest-to-goodness spit takes. It’s fucking funny, ok?
Here’s all of ’em: http://www.clickhole.com/features/clickventure/
The latest is a spy adventure, and it is both hilarious and infuriating. Let me know if you can “win” it. Please. Comment or email me if you figure that shit out. Other exciting escapades include surviving the first day of high school, and a harrowing sleepover at Brynna’s house.
Other Desert Cities is a play by Jon Robin Baitz. Megan and I saw a fine performance of the dramedy at the Old Vic last year. I was a mere 5 feet from #MarthaPlimptonsButt. #tbt! She turned in a fabulous performance as Brook Wyeth.
I’m throwing it back this Thursday in honor of the upcoming performance at the Mad Horse Theatre Company. They opened Other Desert Cities this evening, and it will be running through May 17. If you love a good show, go see this. Mad Horse does not disappoint. And if you are new to the theatre world, Other Desert Cities is a great intro course on contemporary theatre. Give it a try.
Do you want to go for free? We bought season passes this year, and we have many extra tickets because we haven’t been able to make a lot of shows. Hit me up and I can hook you up.
Here are photos from last year. #tbt!
On my recent trip to San Diego, my co-workers and I participated in something called a Code Retreat. It reminded me of my days in art school, when my professor would instruct me to hold my pencil in odd ways while drawing, which broke my reliance on muscle memory, and forced me to focus more on the process of mark making and see my task in a new light.
A Code Retreat is kind of like that. You pair up with a buddy, and write some basic software as a team. Every 45 minutes you have to delete all of your code and start over. There are other limitations too, such as you cannot speak to each other for one cycle, or every function you write can be no more than 3 lines, or you can’t use `if` statements or any type of loop. These limitations force you out of stale habits and can profoundly change your perspective on tasks that have become too rote and rigid.
On our retreat, we were tasked with making Conway’s Game of Life. Try Googling “Conway’s Game of Life” and you’ll see an easter egg of the game in action.
My biggest take-away from the retreat, which was expertly run by the legendary Michael Douglas Adams, was a newly minted respect for test-driven development. One of the limitations of our game, was that it needed to be written in Node.js, and we had to follow the standard patterns of test-driven development. From Wikipedia:
Test-driven development (TDD) is a software development process that relies on the repetition of a very short development cycle: first the developer writes an (initially failing) automated test case that defines a desired improvement or new function, then produces the minimum amount of code to pass that test, and finally refactors the new code to acceptable standards.
In my opinion, the short, quick iterations of TDD make for a cleaner and more logical end product where other developers can easily follow your process. My hopes are to inject these lessons in my day-to-day work.
Fellow developers: if you ever get the opportunity to do a Code Retreat, jump on that train fast! You’ll be surprised what you learn when you hold that pencil differently.
It has been an uneventful day after a long string of eventful days. I’m exhausted, and I have nothing to write about. In order to keep this streak going, I needed to look to the past, back to 2008 when I was 1 month away from graduating from college. I was a nervous wreck, afraid that I’d never get a job as a graphic designer and be able to pay off the stupid amount of debt I accrued. Here is a logo design and cover for a literary journal called The Northern New England Review. I remember thinking that I had to take on as much commercial work as possible so that my portfolio would be ready for the “real world”. There was a story in the journal about a dying horse, and I found this beautiful photo on Deviant Art. The horse in the photo, whose name was Sofa Potion, if I remember correctly wasn’t dead. That’s just how horses scratch their back.
Enjoy the designs, and think back to the time when you were graduating. ( I’ve you’ve never graduated from something, you didn’t miss much, but you can try to imagine. ) Were you a nervous wreck like I was?
Today we celebrated a baby shower for my niece, Taylor Webster, and her partner James Manion using my favorite style of party, the Yankee Pot Luck. First off a humble brag: I made the following in less than a half hour, and it was delicious. We have a tossed salad, a bruschetta, and not one, but two fruit salads. I’m fucking awesome. (maybe not so humble).
And then the food kept rolling in. That’s what I love about the pot luck, each new guest brings new stuff.
This is the perfect way to welcome new life into this world. “It takes a village” as the saying goes, and it really is magic when everyone works together. It was a great day and I have two wonderful families to thank for it. And Taylor looked absolutely beautiful.
I’m back in Maine and I’m exhausted. Happy Earth Day. Here are some photos I snapped during my trip of the many seals that hang out on the shores of La Jolla.
Today I traveled to San Diego to meet with my team for the first time. My verbal skills Are not at their peak right now due to some unruly jet lag. I can at least say this: I’m fully thankful to be working with these folks. And I’ll be writing more thoughtful words about them as our time goes on and my exhaustion ceases. At the very least, I’ll write a summary of the meetup and share some photos.
For now I’ll leave you with 2 words to ruminate on: Turkish Delight. Oguz brought us some from his home country and I had never tried it before. It was a pleasant experience. It is similar to what we call fruit snacks here in America. But the flavor is more deeply fruity, and they are coated in a very light powdered sugar. The texture is not like anything I’ve tasted before. Each color is its own flavor.
Happy tax day folks. Hope it went well for you. Hope you are happy and healthy, and not sick with the flu like I currently am.
To celebrate our nation’s lovely tradition of income taxes, here is “Paper Trail$” by Joey BADA$$
And here it is on Genius, which is a pretty fun website. Check it out if you haven’t yet.
Today, I’m taking a break from battling software bugs so that my immune system can battle a fierce flu bug. I haven’t eaten anything all day because food makes my stomach burn. I’m overly hot one moment, and overly cold the next. Every muscle aches. I’m hoping a good night sleep cures it.
In my weakened condition, I started thinking about 80’s movie chararcter Ferris Bueller, and how he got his fabled day off by hacking into his highschool’s database from a home computer. The movie was released in 1986, and I wasn’t really using computers at the time. I was just six years old.
I don’t know about you, but I call bullshit! There’s no way Bueller’s highschool was storing records in a database that was accessible via the internet. Gopher servers first made their appearance in schools in 1992. I’d appreciate it if someone with a strong knowledge of computer history could weigh in.
