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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?><feed xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" ><generator uri="https://jekyllrb.com/" version="3.8.5">Jekyll</generator><link href="https://chrisridgers.github.io/feed.xml" rel="self" type="application/atom+xml" /><link href="https://chrisridgers.github.io/" rel="alternate" type="text/html" /><updated>2020-05-29T22:48:52+01:00</updated><id>https://chrisridgers.github.io/feed.xml</id><title type="html">Chris Ridgers</title><subtitle>Just another damn blog from a guy on the internet.</subtitle><entry><title type="html">In 2020, nobody can hear you scream…</title><link href="https://chrisridgers.github.io/in-2020-nobody-can-hear-you-scream/" rel="alternate" type="text/html" title="In 2020, nobody can hear you scream..." /><published>2020-05-28T16:37:42+01:00</published><updated>2020-05-28T16:37:42+01:00</updated><id>https://chrisridgers.github.io/in-2020-nobody-can-hear-you-scream</id><content type="html" xml:base="https://chrisridgers.github.io/in-2020-nobody-can-hear-you-scream/">&lt;h1 id=&quot;in-2020-nobody-can-hear-you-scream&quot;&gt;In 2020, nobody can hear you scream…&lt;/h1&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Is it just me or has there not been a single good year since 2016?  Between celebrity deaths, referendums, political elections, wildfires, security breaches, terror attacks, global warming (to name a few off the top of my head) I’m pretty certain we’ve not had a month let alone a year where we’ve got to the end and thought anything positive about it.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Indeed, new years resolutions for the last half a decade could pretty much be summed up as, ‘Do better.  Be less shit.’  There will be year where I can look back and say we’ve pulled it off, but it is not this year.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;/images/not-this-day.gif&quot; alt=&quot;Aragorn proclaiming that Today is not that day! while epically riding a steed&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;2020 came in as badly as 2019 went out: Christmas Eve saw a family member going into hospital for medical reasons unknown and sadly never came out again.  It’s been rough on my partner and her Dad.  The last few years have been an emotional roller coaster of hospital trips, and the last few involved intensive care units and more questions then answers.   But to top it all off, this was immediately followed by the country imploding as it dealt with a pandemic.  We’ve not physically visited her Dad in months due to lock down, grieving is still ongoing.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;We’ve missed some other stuff as well, like the birth of my nephew (the idea of being pregnant in lock down is the absolute worst) but so far we’re considering ourselves lucky to have been so lightly touched by this health crisis.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;And it is a health crisis.  There’s no way the numbers are accurate.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Work is… a thing.  I have a habit of ignoring stressful stuff as much as possible and I’m putting as little thoght as possible into this.  Glad I have some savings but right now I wish it was more.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The only positive currently is I’ve been hammering my fitness while self isolating.  I miss the Welsh hills, but I’ve dropped a bunch of fat even if my weights remained at a chonky 16St (101kg -ish for those of you who didn’t Brexit themselves into the dark ages).  It has been super cool adapting my diet to veganism and following a plan to suit my exercise regime.  The Centr app I’ve bought into is amazing.  It provides meal plans, helps collate shopping lists, provides workouts and other well being content into a daily planner - something incredibly useful to someone as scatty as me, especially given the lack of routine I would have fallen into w/o going to work.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;/images/workouts-are-hard.gif&quot; alt=&quot;Woman crawling across floor, text reads It's like I did that push up last year for nothing&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;</content><author><name></name></author><summary type="html">In 2020, nobody can hear you scream…</summary><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="https://chrisridgers.github.io/images/facehugger.png" /></entry><entry><title type="html">/var/log/can_you_hear_me_now</title><link href="https://chrisridgers.github.io/can-you-hear-me-now/" rel="alternate" type="text/html" title="/var/log/can_you_hear_me_now" /><published>2019-06-17T22:09:35+01:00</published><updated>2019-06-17T22:09:35+01:00</updated><id>https://chrisridgers.github.io/can-you-hear-me-now</id><content type="html" xml:base="https://chrisridgers.github.io/can-you-hear-me-now/">&lt;h1 id=&quot;can-you-hear-me-now&quot;&gt;Can you hear me now?&lt;/h1&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Sweet, I can still do this.  Or at least, by the time this is published I’ll still be able to do this.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Woohoo!&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;/images/woohoo.gif&quot; alt=&quot;'Homer Simpson shouting Woohoo! with his hands in the air'&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Been neglecting this pretty much since it’s inception.  Would be nice to actually have something worth looking at come next years Geek Mental Health Week.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;On a more technical pain in the arse kind of note, you ever notice that these things never seem to be ready to just go?  To even write this I had to replace rbenv and its associated ruby versions/ gems, update my entire project (fingers crossed it still deploys) and reconfigure access to GitHub because its been so long since I’ve done this that I have a new machine.  Not to mention that this thing is a Windows device and I’m essentially rolling the bones as to whether this works or not.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Last time I considered doing something developer like on this machine I spent the better part of a Saturday smashing Windows/Linux/Vagrant/NFS/Ansible together before getting very pissed off and leaving it.  Hopefully this will go smoother: although it would be nice to have a proper stack running to support this.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;You know.  Because developer.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Hmmm… I might need my eyes tested as well.  The font on the home page is either too small or the contrast ratios not cutting it.  Maybe I’ll bump it up with this post&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;This will do for now though, C out.&lt;/p&gt;</content><author><name></name></author><summary type="html">Can you hear me now?</summary><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="https://chrisridgers.github.io/images/can-you-hear-me-now-morse.jpg" /></entry><entry><title type="html">./working-for-the-future.plan</title><link href="https://chrisridgers.github.io/working-for-the-future-plan/" rel="alternate" type="text/html" title="./working-for-the-future.plan" /><published>2017-11-25T21:06:35+00:00</published><updated>2017-11-25T21:06:35+00:00</updated><id>https://chrisridgers.github.io/working-for-the-future-plan</id><content type="html" xml:base="https://chrisridgers.github.io/working-for-the-future-plan/">&lt;h1 id=&quot;working-for-the-future&quot;&gt;Working for the Future&lt;/h1&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I recently returned from a trip sailing up the coast of Norway.  Besides the
spectacular views, it offered a great opportunity to reflect on where I am right
now in life and where I would like to progress to in future.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I deliberately avoided taking my laptop with me.  I already knew that some none
screen time was required for my mental health, but also I was expecting the
internet in Norway to be crap.  It was not.  I had 4G pretty much none stop all
the way around the coast, even in Kirkenes right up in Finmark near the Russian
border.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;While I was itching to get back at a keyboard before we returned, the last few
days without really helped me mull through a few self truths and decide on a
plan for my return.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;So before looking forward, let us look back.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h2 id=&quot;what-kind-of-person-am-i&quot;&gt;What kind of person am I?&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I am not what you would call a ‘social person’.
I remember sitting in the car at 16 years old talking with Mum about the future
and saying, “I don’t know what I want to do.  But I do know I don’t want it to
be either in a service industry, or in sales.”  This is obviously unrealistic:
now I cannot think of any roles that do not fit into one or both of those
categories.  But it does say a lot about what I ‘wanted’ from life.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I think this is partly why I gravitated towards computers as a child.  Even
from a young age there are stories of me turning up in preschool and blanking
the other kids there while staring at a computer screen for the day.  Later on
when presented with the reality of growing up and getting a ‘profession’ or
even just a job, I think I viewed computers as an alternative to people.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately for me it turns out that the vast majority of computer work is
driven by social interaction. We work in teams.  Our skills complement each
other. We learn from each other.  Our ability to pull requirements from our
clients is key.  Features themselves can be heavily predicated on the
social interactions of users.  This is before even considering our own personal
brand — how we market ourselves and source work throughout our career.  If
there is a profession out there for wannabe hermits: Development is not it.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I am also pretty convinced that there is a certain social pressure to be
socially accessible to other human beings which has until now been a major
factor in me being unwilling to recognise this about myself.  You can hardly
walk into an interview and when asked, “How are you working within a team?”
respond with, “Well ideally everyone would fuck off and leave me alone, but I
get on alright.”&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;My other self acknowledgement is that I am a consumer.  And a pretty intense
one at that.  I think I have spent a lot of time in my life mentally combatting
the consumerist nature of 21st century life and its associated bollocks:
Advertising, subscriptions, junk food, DLC packs for video games, social media,
emojis etc.  Some of it has actually turned out to pretty important within what
I do (whether I like that fact or not), but also despite my aggressive
anti-ness to it all I have my own behaviours that play right into it.  Given a
new TV show I will binge watch the crap out of it, regardless of what is going
on.  Third year of University was a terrible time to begin watching Game of
Thrones. I can consume 160 gram bags of Haribo without realising it in under a
minute.  Costa coffee will go from a one off treat to a daily habit in under two weeks.
Fast food will replace meals if allowed.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I have consumed my media like this since childhood, since the first day
Dad booted up Doom II for me at 5 years old. Since the first play through at 9
years old of the story telling master piece that is Metal Gear Solid.  The
hundreds of hours absorbing the soundtracks of WWE Smackdown and Tony Hawk’s
Skateboarding.  That was me growing up.  I did not create things.  I absorbed
them.  Video games were my medium and it was not until very late on
(16/17 years old) that I truly began to recognise the individual components of what it
was I was engaging with: the graphics.  The design.  The soundtracks.  The
bands.  The story.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;When talking to Mum in the car 10 years ago:  “I don’t know what I want to do.
But I do know I don’t want it to be either in a service industry, or in sales.”
Until then I had never processed the stuff I was playing in such a way that
acknowledged that somebody out there made this stuff for money.  That is me
though, it still is.  The anti-consumer consumer.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h2 id=&quot;so-what-about-the-future&quot;&gt;So what about the future?&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;For a while I have been considering the way I
treat money.  For the past 3 years I have been treating my money in the same
way I treat my emails.  Always working from zero base.  Just as I would always
attempt to get my email inbox to empty, so too would I attempt to empty my
account each month.  “To me,” I would say to my exasperated girlfriend, “It is
all just digits.  Numbers.  I don’t care.  As long as there’s enough going in
to cover what’s going out, that’s fine by me.  If it’s sitting there doing
nothing then what’s the point in having it?”&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;This approach is not working though.  Funding the recent trip to Norway was
hard.  Even with a credit card.  Without the full board of the cruise we would
have starved.  We took spending money with us however we were painfully aware
of our bank accounts.  On top of this, the chaos monkey approach to money
management has meant that I have often put back things I want/ need to get
done, simply because funds were unavailable at a given time.  I have been
meaning to get my driving licence for about 3 years now.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;We are always saving for the next big thing on the list, and always struggling
to do it.  Now it is Norway, previously it was our computers.  Before that it
was Berlin.  Something has to change.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;So the plan is two fold.  First, reduce all our outgoing costs to the absolute
minimum. Lower our cost of living to a known number as low as possible.  Today,
I was looking into our Gas / Electricity costs.  I cancelled Netflix.  Tomorrow
I am freezing our Gym memberships.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Two, save a full 6 months of living costs in the bank.  Realistically nothing
will change in order to achieve this.  Yesterday was my first Costa since
booking the Norway trip 3 months ago.  We have not eaten out in that time
period either.  If we maintain this for another 6-8 months we will have that
capital saved up as breathing space for whatever we want in life.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The other major concern is work. I’ve mentioned previously about being on
review: with the cash buffer I’m hoping to dedicate some time to achieveing some
accredidations: PHP, Docker, Networking etc.  In doing so I am going to flesh
out my knowledge in those areas and improve my value in the workplace. In the 6
months while I am saving I will have to find some other way improve my skills
within the office — ideally I would like to get my head down and get on with it
until I am ready to go and get the certs, but I do not think that is a viable
option.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;In order to give myself some direction in the meantime, I am returning to what
I know and love: Video Games.  I think I am going to build a couple of projects
alongside each other in order to play around with some code and the operations
side of deploying / maintaining them.  I am a huge fan of World of Warcraft.  I
think I will enjoy putting together some client/ server applications to mimic
some of the behaviour they display.  Potentially down the line there will be
opportunity to develop some tools to help aid their development/configuration.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I will begin by creating a client and a server that can connect to one another
and send events back and forth.  The client will likely just echo those events
out to start.  It will be interesting to see what tests get created to cover
the respective applications’ functionality, interactions, and infrastructure.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;It will also give me something to write about on here, which is nice.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Til next time, tussen takk.&lt;/p&gt;</content><author><name></name></author><summary type="html">Working for the Future</summary><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="https://chrisridgers.github.io/images/norway-lighthouse.jpg" /></entry><entry><title type="html">Burnout</title><link href="https://chrisridgers.github.io/burnout/" rel="alternate" type="text/html" title="Burnout" /><published>2017-06-18T20:03:34+01:00</published><updated>2017-06-18T20:03:34+01:00</updated><id>https://chrisridgers.github.io/burnout</id><content type="html" xml:base="https://chrisridgers.github.io/burnout/">&lt;h1 id=&quot;burnout&quot;&gt;Burnout&lt;/h1&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Burnout is a tricky thing… It’s slow, subtle.  No single event is ‘Burnout’.  Everyone is wired differently. Whatever burnout means to me or you likely means something different to someone else.  To anyone with Burnout on their radar these are reasonable statements to make. We’ve been there, felt it.  Come through it. We can look back and go, ‘Ah, that was that then.’  Ask someone else to describe their experience or read about it online and we will find stories that differ from our own.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;It’s also not a one time thing.  Burnout isn’t chicken pox. It’s mental fatigue.  Left unchecked our brains will run us into the ground.  There’s no rest day where your brain doesn’t go to the gym.  We can learn from it, better look after ourselves.  We can see it coming before it hits.  But make no mistake: it’s never finished.  It’s never gone.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h2 id=&quot;my-experience&quot;&gt;My experience&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I found it was the day to day that got me.  Nothing major.  Things we all have to deal with at some point or another.  Workloads increased and as a result I found myself working later.  When I didn’t work later I’d worked harder, my brain struggling to keep up with the stuff it was working on.  Returning home I struggled to think, to prioritise things correctly.  Things that needed to be done were replaced with things that I wanted to do.  ‘Washing up’, ‘Cooking’, became things like ‘TV shows’, ‘Gym’.  Tensions slowly rose in the household over me not pulling my weight.  ‘Gym’ dropped off the list and was replaced by ‘Chores’, which often had built up throughout the weeks so that completing them took hours instead of minutes.  Eventually household apathy spread to my partner: like hell she was going to do my crap for me and rightly so.  Meals became a none daily event: if there was washing up to be done and there often was, then there was no space to cook.  With fewer, less healthy meals and a suffering living space, the brain numbed out to the problems.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;As time progressed the hours got pushed later and later to fit everything in.  By the time chores were completed it was often 11PM. To get any of ‘my stuff’ done it would mean pushing the midnight oil later and later… 12AM… 1AM… 2:30AM… Already uncomfortable mornings became horribly rushed affairs, struggling to meet even the flexible hours my workplace offered.  Days: spent tired.  Nights: spent tired.  Weekends time for all the things not completed during the week: 4:30AM finishes… Horribly inefficient days where tasks that were simple enough to get done took too long.  Those that didn’t got pushed back for other weekends.  Thing’s like ‘have a shave’ would take days. A haircut; 3 weeks from deciding to do it to it getting done – I clocked it.  Weekends spent socialising with friends or family were weekends wasted: stuff to do, stuff not getting done.  Personal projects went from being things like ‘have a play with Docker to see if we can use it’, to ‘open mail’.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;In work, my brain lagged.  Tasks became blocked.  Taking longer than required. Often requiring input from other people.  Reviewing our time tracking system there were gaps that couldn’t be explained, even to myself.  Too much time spent between tasks struggling to figure out what to do next.  When I was asked what was going on clear answers were beyond my grasp.  Flags were raised, likely long before I even realised it.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The walks home from work were loud.  Traffic noises reverberated in my head playing back over themselves, unable to be filtered into background noise.  Ambient skies and lit shop windows glared enough for me to dip my head, squinting my eyes.  Everything around me melded into an internal weight that I was unable to process.  When pressed for change by the local homeless, I could barely register them.  My responses delayed, deliberate effort made to apologise for my lack of coins.  The walks to work were often missing from my memory.  On worse days, entire hours missing from the middle of the day.  When asked at home what I’d done that day in work: Shrug. ‘Stuff’.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;This hasn’t happened once.  I’d say that so far this has happened at least twice since leaving university.  Probably more to a lesser extent.  Throughout there have been signs that something was not quite right; people around me noticing before I did; work noting that I’d not taken my allocated leave from the previous year; my partner pointing out the patterns of chore avoidance returning; Mum actively calling me out on the phone when my response to the question ‘How are you doing?’ was ‘Surviving.’  She’s good like that.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h2 id=&quot;out-of-the-mess-of-it-all&quot;&gt;Out of the mess of it all&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I’ve noticed that on the rare occasion where I was able to exercise the benefits were significant and immediate.  My brain is clearly wired to respond positively to physical stress every now and then.  The problem with burnout is that difficult, stressful things are the first thing to be dropped from the list and once it is happening finding the time to regularly visit the gym is a big ask mentally.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;There are definite periods where life isn’t like this.  Things suddenly, often without any reason that I can see, snap back into focus and shit actually get’s done for a while.  I’m in no way saying I’ve mastered this but with each wave of ‘Burnout’ there’s more warning that it’s happening:  The evening walks start hurting more subtly, but detectably; the people around me sometimes spot it before I do.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The importance of a quality diet and regular nourishment has never been more apparent.  Time, while short is highly valued.  Late nights are still a thing, but the toll they take is measured before they happen. Exercise is very slowly making its way back into my weekly cycle.  Priorities are regularly reviewed to make sure that a) I’m happy, and b) my mental health is doing more than ‘Surviving’.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;So that’s my experience.  To be continued.&lt;/p&gt;</content><author><name></name></author><summary type="html">Burnout</summary></entry><entry><title type="html">A Fresh Start</title><link href="https://chrisridgers.github.io/a-fresh-start/" rel="alternate" type="text/html" title="A Fresh Start" /><published>2017-06-17T22:32:30+01:00</published><updated>2017-06-17T22:32:30+01:00</updated><id>https://chrisridgers.github.io/a-fresh-start</id><content type="html" xml:base="https://chrisridgers.github.io/a-fresh-start/">&lt;h1 id=&quot;a-fresh-start&quot;&gt;A Fresh Start&lt;/h1&gt;

&lt;p&gt;In 2014 I started a blog that was meant to be a documentation of working in tech following graduation from University.  It was supposed to be at least a place for me to market myself to potential employers, and ideally would have become something that would allow me to reflect on what I was doing and where I was going. To provide a semblance of clarity in what would otherwise be murky and uncharted territory.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, as so often is the way of the world: life happened.  I immediately found myself hired by small startup called Mashbo.  After an exuberant celebratory post in which I displayed enthusiasm at the world to be, my blog died.  RIP blog 2014.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Since then I’ve been working at Mashbo on a number of projects and been consistently busy.  Clients have come and gone, projects have increased in size and complexity, our development processes have evolved significantly.  Right now, I’d say we’re the busiest we’ve ever been. After many weeks (130+) unable to find the time to sit and write, eventually even the platform I’d based my blog on became outdated.  Relearning and restructuring that into something useful was an ambiguously large task, one that that I didn’t have the time or head space to sit down and treat properly.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Recently though, I’ve been considering the idea that some reflection is needed. So I’ve cleared my Saturday out and migrated my platform to Octopress 3 and GitHub Pages.  I’ll spend some time tomorrow hooking up my live domain, or I might not.  Right now, the idea of my own domain name above my site isn’t as important as just getting some stuff written down.  At some point, if this keeps going, I’ll want to turn this into a bit of my brand that I might use out there professionally.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;But right now, this is just a space.  For me.&lt;/p&gt;</content><author><name></name></author><summary type="html">A Fresh Start</summary></entry></feed>