Hello there. I’m having a go at weeknotes again, to see if there’s any chance I can do it as I venture into a world of freelance where time is more under my control (?). I’m going to try to keep things lightweight – gentle thoughts, poetic reflection, and interesting links. There may be no pictures though.
Tues 4 May
Thanks to the Bank Holiday, the earlier day had been a hybrid day of Monday and Tuesday (Muesday?) and some of us were still groggy from the weekend and the wind. I bounced a bit between checking through company policies for risk assessment (relentless, but oddly fascinating), clearing some tech debt (fun, but never enough time) and running a 1-1. Halfway through the 1-1, I realised it was likely my last one with this person, which caught me off-guard.
Had a nice catch up with A via Signal in the evening, while discovering RadioReverb is now listed on RadioDroid (also on F-Droid), which is great news.
Video: An ROI-based approach to technical debt – how to review and think through what debt to attack. I suspect the same things can be said about other debt, too: effort vs risk and time.
Article: Having a Healthy Pull Request Process for Teams – or how to discuss your work with others professionally.
Wed 5 May
I hadn’t realised how much I missed travelling by train until the hedges started rolling past. Even the rush to get coffee and a ticket – a familiar and also novel routine now – hadn’t triggered any real memories. But as the leafy mallows and cow parsley slid past in the foreground, set against the faraway wind turbines, I settled back into that slow glide that blurrily marks the edge between home and work life.
Thu 6 May
Well, some celebrations in order. The job role was defined back in January. The ad went out in February. We had a few interviews, we went to a shadowing fortnight, we got feedback from the Board and the whole team, and today we made a decision. I have a … "successor". A new Head of Tech.
Looking back, I’m pretty pleased with how the process has gone. I still don’t know if it’s a hard role to recruit for, or if the ad was ‘good at filtering people out’, or if the time is just generally strange, or what, but it was fairly different to the usual avalanche of CVs that you get when looking for a juior developer.
But here we are, we have someone we’re happy with, and the future, as they say, lies ahead. I’m not sure how I feel yet. Some relief, some excitement, some awareness it’s just a beginning and there are now a few weeks of actual handover. But things are going along as hoped ("planned" would be too strong a word) and sometimes the line between luck, strategy and synchronicity just can’t be discerned.
Article: What does the Schrems 2 judgement mean for cloud computing – actually really fascinated by the state of international data privacy, even if I roll my eyes when I tell people I’m looking into it, and it means filling out risk assessments is tricky.
Fri 7 May
Caught a train into Brighton again. I’m picking up and returning a few bits and pieces from the office while I can, and took the opportunity to meet up with a couple of old friends and contacts from many years ago. I wandered through the north Laine as the shops and cafes opened up, and found it strange to feel so normal. I popped some film in to be developed, and popped into my old hairdressers to say hi. I chatted board games at Dave’s, and watched the world go past from a warm bench in Kemptown.
I even lay on the grass for 10 minutes and watched seagulls and pigeons soar past. It’s been a long while since I’ve done that. Far too long.
