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talesfromasnarkylisa · 8 months ago

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Lacey: Chapter 1

James: July 5th, 2023

God, I hate this job.

It’s not the actual work that bothers me. It’s quite a simple occupation, really. All I have to do is neatly crop and touch over images, then submit them to whichever publisher wants them. I’ve been doing this since I was 10. Only difference is that now I get paid.

And there lies the problem. My salary is basically nothing. Ever since I’ve started going to Yale University, I’ve had to juggle studying and working. The studying isn’t too bad. I’ve already memorized 90% of the material since 9th grade that the professors teach. The real troubles are the tuition fees.

Yale is an Ivy League school, which means it’s extremely pricey. I was lucky enough to even get in. But my parents are the old-fashioned kind. The types to kick their kids out once they graduate high school. So once I neared 18 before lockdown, I was on my own. Turns out that no one in retail wants to hire a guy who blanks out at job interviews.

I now work two jobs. The photoshop one and the influencer one. The influencer one hasn’t really been working out too well, though. I got kicked out of a bunch of online publications because I got into a ton of controversy. Looks like there is such a thing as bad publicity after all.

But hey, at least I got some editor friends back. Still not in any of the teams.

Three Weeks Later

On a Friday evening, I hung out in a voice chat with my online friends Corianna and Darian.

Corianna is the team lead of a set of blogs reviewing indie and folk music. She is 18 - a couple years younger than me - and goes by Artsy Carolina online. I used to be on that team, until she booted me half a year ago for talking shit about the other writers and editors. Cori and I are cool now, but I’m not getting back on her website team anytime soon.

She is a green eyed and long light brunette woman with ivory skin like her avatar. In addition to books and anime, Cori enjoys bluegrass and hip-hop music.

Darian is my best friend. Unlike his raven-haired avatar with a shade more like mine, he is auburn haired with light skin and hazel eyes. We first met on a Minecraft server when I was 15 and he was 14. I didn’t have many friends in school and no close ones. Admittedly, I wasn’t a huge fan of Minecraft. I was more of a casual player whenever I had time. But I had heard of the anarchy servers on the platform, where rules are few and chaos is plenty. I wanted to see if I could use my programming knowledge of JavaScript and Python to survive there. Boy, was I wrong. If Darian wasn’t in the server, I probably would have downloaded malware and fried my computer right there.

The weird part is, we already knew each other in real life. But until we were both 17, neither of us was aware of the other’s online identities. I just knew him as D. Noir and he only knew me as Archer J. We’ve only become closer since then.

“So,” said Corianna, “how’s the photoshop gig, James?”

“Mediocre as always,” I responded.

“Well, color me surprised.”

I checked my other DMs for a moment before switching back to the call.

“How’s it going?” I asked Darian.

“Great!” he answered. “Guess what? I got into-”

Darian’s audio went out.

“I can’t hear you,” stated Corianna. “It sounds like a hungry person on your end.”

Darian adjusted his microphone.

“Can you hear me now?” he asked.

“Yes,” I responded. “That’s better.”

“Alright,” said Corianna, “go on.”

“I got a voice acting role! And it involves singing!”

“That’s great!” Corianna exclaimed. “In what show?”

“I can’t disclose which one,” Darian answered. “The producers have a contract forcing everyone working on it to keep quiet about their involvement.”

Corianna sent a smirk emoji.

“And that is why you just bragged, D.”

“Well,” Darian snarked back, “it’s not like I’m telling you which show I’m in.”

“Don’t listen to Cori,” I teased, “she’s just trying to mess with your head. I’m happy for you.”

But honestly, I wasn’t happy. I wasn’t content that Darian could get in with his mid-tier acting and Auto-tuned singing while I have attempted to get multiple contracts in vain. They say that hard work is what makes you succeed, but I’ve worked my ass off in everything and I’m still not making it that far.

I’ve applied to several job openings - cashier, janitor, machinery, waiter, fucking babysitting. I’ve tried every online gig there is: website testing, design, marketing, amateur columnist, even video editing and those random surveys. And look where I am now.

Just a boring dude renting a hotel room and working photoshop as a summer job.

(Medium teaser: ��https://medium.com/@SnarkyLisa/untitled-no-1-story-preview-8966ffdde73a)

(Wattpad version: https://www.wattpad.com/1478131869-lacey-chapter-1)

#creative writing #story #storytelling #tumblr #tumblr stuff #writing #inspired by #folklore love triangle #folklore #lacy olivia rodrigo #lacy #loosely #wattpad #publishing #content creation

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buttercupsfrocks · 3 years ago

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Greetings, tumblr. I warn you this isn't going to be much of a post for a whole raft of reasons:-

It's hotter than Satan's buttcrack outside and, consequently, inside my un-airconditioned first floor flat.

It's impossible for me to look soigné or remotely put together when I'm a sweaty, irritable mess.

There is a British Gas engineer currently boring holes in the outside walls of my flat with the aim of relocating my gas meter. The same thing is going on in my downstairs neighbours' flat. We have no say in this noisy, intrusive, cat-terrorising folderol. They've been threatening to do it for four years and we are literally the last house in the last street to be done. 'twas ever thus.

I had in fact written about two thirds of this original post and saved it as a draft. Tumblr since appears to have eaten that draft and washed it down with a nice Chianti. I have since lost the will to live.

My hair, as you can see, looked like crap when I took these pics.

The reason my hair looks like shite is because twelve days ago I had a cataract in my right eye removed and getting one's 'do done is not recommended for a couple of weeks after surgery.

Prior to surgery I had to take out my right contact lens and affect an eye-patch for a couple of weeks. I did not look piratical. Mainly because the size and positioning of my ears made the elastic intolerable after twenty minutes tops. Instead I had to make do with a Moorfields eyeshield stuffed with tissues and stuck to my face with Micropore. In 40ºC.

I'm hoping to get the left eye sorted late September/early October. A few weeks after that I'll find out whether I'll still need to wear contact lenses for distance and what prescription my new readers will be.

So, yeah, cataracts. Only partial but rubbish genetics on my paternal grandmother's side have resulted in those and an official diagnosis of Pathological Myopia along with a squint I didn't even know I had. The cataract/next-best-thing-to-blind double whammy has been causing me double vision and a blind spot in my right eye for years and the situation was becoming critical. I'd also experienced occular migraines during lockdown, though I think they were down to stress. But, in short, my eyesight was a shitshow and I'd gotten whiplash from the conflicting advice I've received by eye specialists the length and breadth of London. I'm relieved to say Moorfields cataract department got the last word. Thus far I'm optimistic. Three weeks ago I couldn't read the numbers on buses unless I was physically boarding one. Now I could probably see them from space.

But back to the main content of the post. Identically-cut Monki frock, gingham edition. Thus far they've offered this design in black, beige, light blue, orange, and lilac gingham. But there's a reason why the emerald green variation called to my heart.

Between the ages of 4 and 9 I attended a tiny private co-educational school. Admittedly this was many years ago but even then it was quaint and anachronistic. It was run by three sisters called Fowle and I had an elocution teacher who was older than God's dog and still wore long skirts and a bonnet. On Mondays we had to march, in single file, around the room we took dance classes in, in freshly whitened plimsoles to the strains of what later became the theme music to Monty Python's Flying Circus; this mysterious custom was known as Drill. We walked to the Headmistress's home for lunch every day, which was cooked by the kinder of her two sisters. That's how small the school was. It was also attended by kids of every conceivable nationality and ethnicity, and after it closed in the early 70s, the building subsequently became one of Erin Pizzey's shelters for women fleeing somestic violence.

As a sprog my summer school uniform featured a green gingham dress, which I always rather liked. But – get this – the size of the gingham squares increased proportionally with the age and height of the wearer. So, while my dresses had teeny tiny squares on them, the "seniors" had big ones on theirs. By the time I was of high school age and attending a different institution, sixth formers were no longer required to wear uniform, but as soon as I clocked this dress the exotic allure of achieving Big Green Square Status came rushing back and I knew I had to claim it.

Stay weird, tumblr. (And hydrated).

#fatshion #plus size style #Monki #what i'm wearing #older lady style

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zrtranscripts · 4 years ago

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Home Front, Mission 14: Sam’s Recipe for Success

Full of Beans

SAM YAO: Hello, listeners! Sam here, coming live from Abel's kitchens. We're going to kick off another workout in a minute, so while I'm talking, why not do a little warming up? Dance about, or jog on the spot, something light and fun. Now I'm not usually allowed in the kitchens because of a little... incident with some marmite shortbread which I thought was a brilliant idea but Janine said was a waste of resources, especially after it caught fire in the oven.

But anyway, as some of you may know, we've had a bit of luck with the giant super horde besieging the countryside. A landslide hit the horde's east flank, scattering a huge chunk of the zoms, so we've got a little window to send runners out with supplies. Dozens of small communities were cut off by the horde, and we're sending care packages to everyone. It's been all hands on deck in the kitchens prepping the deliveries, and we're almost ready to go.

[paper rustles]

So to celebrate, today's first exercise is one I've really started to like. The instructions call it dead bug walking, but I like to think of it as happy puppy flailing. Just lie on your back with your arms and legs in the air, then walk them up and down as fast as you can for one minute, like an excited Labradoodle on its back. Ready? And go! Okay, that's 15 seconds down. Keep those paws wiggling. And that's it, halfway done. Yeah, I-I really think this is a good sign. You know, the horde weakening. A few more natural disasters and it-it could be gone. That's 15 seconds left. Yeah, not-not that we want natural disasters, obviously. Just little disasters. You know, zom-only disasters. And that's it, you're done!

Feel that Labradoodle energy. Okay, yeah, I'm gonna scoot the last crate of eggs and flour down to our dispatch runners, then I'll come right back. Meantime, I'll play some music. You can relax or keep flailing. I've borrowed Runner Seventeen’s latest good times mix, so this song should be perfect for keeping up the good vibes.

SAM YAO: All right, that's the last load of supplies delivered to our runners. They'll be leaving any minute. Now I tell you what, Runner Forty-Three has been baking some great treats for each package. You should see the cupcakes! It's amazing what Forty-Three can do with an egg and some scavenged Nutella.

Actually, I've been using the lockdown to work on my own baking. Yeah, well, first it was crochet until we ran out of yarn. Then it was photography, but Maxine wanted the last camera. So Forty-Three has been helping me practice recipes instead, by miming them to avoid wasting supplies. Janine made me promise not to get in the way in the kitchens today though, so I've mostly been carrying cans and crates out to the runners, which gave me the idea for our next exercise, running with cans.

So find yourself two cans or any two objects about as heavy that you can grip, and take one in each hand. But if you're not absolutely sure you've got a solid grip, put each one in a strong bag with a good handle, hold them like that. Then run on the spot, swinging your arms to get your heart pumping, okay? Yeah, let's try one minute of that. And go! Now that's 15 seconds down. Okay, 30 seconds left. Like Forty-Three always says, practice makes perfect. 15 seconds left. Actually, Forty-Three tends to say, that's weird, practice usually makes perfect. Cooking lessons could be going better, to be honest. And you're done. 60 seconds.

Time to rest, unless you want to keep running through... [device beeps] Uh, hold on one sec. Oh... okay. Um, just got an urgent message from Janine. Better take this off the air. I'm gonna cut straight to the next music break, okay? Dance along or run some more, if you fancy it. I'll be right back after this.

SAM YAO: Um, hello folks. Uh, I've uh... I've got some bad news. You might want to keep can running to distract you. Really wish I didn't have to say this. Apparently, we're not the only ones who decided to take advantage of the weakened horde. There was this group of runners in New Canton, vigilantes going against orders. They figured this was the perfect time to fight the zoms, rounded up a bunch of people, charged at the horde's weakened flank with guns and bombs.

Only well, the zoms got scattered by a landslide, didn't they? So loads of them were buried under rocks, which this lot charged right over. Zom hands came reaching up from the ground, scratching and pulling. Some of the vigilantes went down, some bombs went off early. Zoms got freed from the rock while the rest of the horde honed in on the noise. Basically, it was a bloody mess. And now the horde's as strong as ever. So no supplies going anywhere today.

Well, I know you must be feeling frustrated, listeners, because I am. But, but I've got another exercise that might help channel that. Yeah, uh... [paper rustles] Ah, yeah. Well, this one's pretty simple. Bicep curls. You need weights. Take your cans or whatever you were running with and if you haven't already, put them into bags, one per bag, and make sure each bag has a good handle you can hold. For heavier weights, add more cans. Then press your elbows against your flanks with your hands by your sides and your palms facing up, one hand holding each weight. Bend your elbows to bring the weights up to your shoulders and then down again, okay? Yeah, we'll do 60 seconds of that.

Ready? And go! That's it, 15 seconds down. [laughs] You know, Runner Twelve, stuck in a pub with a pinball machine? He swears this exercise helped him to top the high score. Ah, unless he was tilting it. That's it, halfway done. Concentrate on those weights. It must have been that. That would help, actually. 15 seconds left. And done. Now I hope that gave you all something else to focus on for a bit. Uh, I'm gonna play some music now, do a few curls myself. Because honestly, I've got a lot of frustration that needs channeling here.

SAM YAO: Uh, welcome back everyone. Yep, I've just had final confirmation from Janine. No one's going out anytime soon. [sighs] I feel sorry for those vigilantes, I really do, but how could they be so stupid, charging a super horde like that? Now they've gone and made things worse for everyone, [sighs] because they couldn't stand staying in and feeling useless, I guess. I get it. Yeah, I mean, I-I want to be doing more too, but we can't go off half-cocked, not when the stakes are this high. It's like Maxine says, right? The Z-virus is a medical problem and medical problems need patience. [laughs] I know it's a really bad pun, but it's true.

Anyway, in case anyone out there wants to reinforce their barricades now that the horde's been strengthened, we're going to do an exercise that's good for lifting furniture: squats. I bet most of you know this already. Stand with your arms at your sides and your legs hip-distance apart, then squat down like you're sitting on an invisible chair. Make sure your knees don't come out further than your feet and your bum is sticking out. And we're going to go for one minute of those. And go!

15 seconds down. Imagine you're lifting a sofa. 30 seconds down. Get that barricade reinforced. 15 seconds left. Just a couple more cabinets to lift. And done. Good job, everyone. I'm gonna play some more music for anyone who wants to keep going, but remember, you need to look after yourselves as well as your barricades, so don't be afraid to stop and rest.

SAM YAO: You know what, listeners? I always try and look on the bright side, but the truth is this is, um, this is getting to me. Yeah. I really thought it was going to be a good day, and then you know, wham. Janine's checked with the settlements we were going to deliver to and they've all got enough supplies to last a while longer, so... so that's something, at least.

I've uh, I've actually been secretly baking something for Janine. Banana bread based on Runner Forty-Three’s lessons. It was going to be a surprise to celebrate the deliveries. Guess them being cancelled doesn't make a difference. Come out all burned and blackened anyway, like that shortbread.

Oh boy. Ah. I think I need some cheering up here, listeners. I'm um... spiraling a bit. Tell you what. Yeah, there's this one exercise, it always looks sort of silly picturing loads of people doing it at once. Well, it'd put a smile on my face. It's called doing high knees. Just march really fast on the spot for one minute, pumping your arms and bringing your knees all the way up to your waist with each step, like something out of the Ministry of Silly Walks from Monty Python. Ready? And go!

15 seconds gone. Keep those knees up. Halfway done. Honestly, I don't miss a lot of Monty Python, but did you hear Runner Thirty-Four's radio reenactment of Holy Grail last night? I's brilliant. It was brilliant. 45 seconds, almost done. And that's one minute! Okay. That, that did make me feel better, imagining you all doing that. I couldn't help joining in towards the end, I admit it. [timer dings] Oh, and uh, yeah. That's the oven timer. Right, I'm gonna get my blackened, burned mess, listeners, but it's okay. I'm feeling more like I can cope with it now. You guys rest or keep marching to the music until I get back.

SAM YAO: [laughs] Right, you're not gonna believe this, listeners! I mean, I don't believe it. The banana bread, it's-it's perfect! The top is all nice and brown, and the inside's soft and spongy, and it has that delicious banana-y smell, and it's-it's just... perfect. Possibly thanks to Runner Forty-Three, who left a note on the oven saying set to 180 degrees, not 300. Guess you caught my secret project, Forty-Three. Couldn't have done it without you.

Or you, listeners. You really helped me today. I know this lockdown's tough, but we have to keep reminding ourselves the one thing we can do without going off half-cocked is just... be there, even at a distance. Be willing to help each other past dark days. And we can share the little victories that help us through, like Maxine's photos or Thirty-Four’s radio plays, or banana bread. Because if one of us scores a win, and we're all in this together, it's a win for all of us, isn't it? No matter how small it seems.

Now I'm gonna take this banana bread to Janine. She won't admit it, but it will cheer her up. And I'll put the recipe on ROFFLEnet in case you want to try it! Well, if you don't, that's okay, because exercising is a little victory too, so you're already winning today. We'll get through this, everyone, I know it. And maybe after, we can have some banana bread together. Until then, stay safe. I'll be back on air soon and I promise I'll share all my little victories and I'll cheer for all of yours.

#zombies run #zr home front #zrhf 14 #sam's recipe for success #zr transcript

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thefloatingstone · 5 years ago

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Last time I made a playlist of recommended youtube channels to enjoy while in lockdown or self quarantine, I focused on individual videos while also recommending other videos from the same channel.

I thought I’d make another list only this time I’m going to be recommending playlists or series on youtuber instead of just individual videos.

This is gonna go exactly like last time, so check out any of these that might seem interesting to you, and hopefully I can give you something to look into if you want something to watch but don’t feel like watching a Netflix or Crunchyroll show.

Last time I tried to put this under a read more break but it didn’t work and I ended up posting this long-ass post on everyone’s dash. Well I decided to do so again here. hit J to skip to the bottom of the post if you don’t feel like reading this whole thing. If you’re on tumblr mobile; why?

In no particular order;

Cinemassacre movie reviews and topics

All of you already know James Rolfe as the AVGN. I started watching him before Youtube was even a thing, before he was even signed on with Screwattack. Back when his videos could only be seen on his own website (or for some reason included on the free DVD you got with the local video game magazines). However, I eventually outgrew the outrage style humour of the AVGN episodes... but then James started doing Monster Madness where he would talk about his love for horror movies, and this where I learned about his vast knowledge about movie history and even films I had never even heard mention of before! I think it’s safe to say, he got me to be interested in movie history just as much as movie production and film as a viewing experience.

I recommend this playlist which is a hodgepodge of James talking about old horror movie franchises, talking about his first experience with Power Rangers as someone who didn’t grow up with it, or how Bob Ross is a childhood hero of his. It’s an excellent play list that’s really laid back but you learn a lot of stuff from it. James is very informed for the most part and it leads you to wanting to check out a lot of these things too, just because he’s so passionate about it.

If I ever get over my weird hang up about speaking out loud, these are the kinds of videos I’d like to make.

Vinesauce Vinny: The Neverhood

Vinny is by no means a new Let’s Player, having been on Youtube for over 10 years now, but I only started watching him a few months ago. I started with this playlist when I saw he was doing The Neverhood, a game I had heard about but never seen played before. The Neverhood is a bizarre game, as a point and click PC game from the 90s where the entirety of the video game was made with stop motion and clay. Something that sounds so insane you would say it’s impossible if not for the fact that it exists. The claymation itself is extremely well done, and the game has a really weird and absurd sense of humour. Just the strangest things happen in this thing. Now couple that with Vinny’s very dry and straightforward delivery and you have probably one of the funniest Let’s Plays I’ve watched in a long time.

This is also “short” for a Let’s Play series. With only 4 parts to it, the longest video only being a bit under and hour and 30 minutes. It’ll still take up a good chunk of your time, but it’s not as daunting as some of the other Let’s Plays I’ll mention on this list.

Team Four Star: Pokemon Shield Nuzlocke

Exactly what it says on the tin. The guys from Team Four Star play Pokemon Shield with Nuzlocke rules. They’ve done several Nuzlocke runs in the past, but I find the Pokemon Shield is the best one they’ve done. Especially since a lot of the needless fluff and grinding has been edited out. So unlike some of their previous series you don’t see a lot of Kieran and Grant running in a circle for an hour trying to catch a specific pokemon or trying to get to a certain level.

It’s also hilarious as they have a lot of “house rules” for the Nuzlocke often involving the exercise bike they.... have..... for some reason.

It’s very good and the gym battles become SUPER hype with the Nuzlocke rules and the music.

Baywatching

Having been going to a few years now, watch Allison try her very best to go through and do a video series where she talks about summarises every episode of Baywatch.

.... Ever. Single. Episode.

She’s not even close to done yet (and now she’s introduced Baywatch Nights AS WELL) but her trying to explain the batshit insanity of this show, it’s over the top characters, it’s insane plots and behind the scenes weirdness with all the enthusiasm and love for this slice of 90s is amazing. Please enjoy a good thick chunk of inside jokes, silly character voices, and a whole lot of ?????

Brutal Moose: Shenmue

Probably one of the most chill channels on all of Youtube, Brutal Moose aka Ian, prefers playing games you wouldn’t think would make for good Let’s Plays. And maybe they don’t, objectively. A collection of playlists covering Truck Simulator, Nancy Drew, Hidden Object games etc etc, spliced in with old commercials from drive in theaters from the 50s,60s and 70s. Ian’s Let’s Play channel is great for just putting on and letting play for company while you’re drawing or grinding in a video game or playing Stardew or something.

I recommend his Shenmue playthrough as Ian completely fell in love with the game and went on to play both the sequel and the newly released third game. Ian genuinely adores the weird voice acting and all the menial tasks and mini-games you can do. I watched this a lot in 2018 when I was going through a rough time, and it really helped me in a strange way to just put Ian on and listen to him talk to the chat and drive a forklift around for like 4 hours straight before going to Tomato Mart or wasting all his money on the gacha machines.

A Measured Response to “In Defense of Dark Souls 2″

At some point, big name youtuber Hbomberguy made a video called “In Defense of Dark Souls II”. I’m not subscribed to Hbomberguy but I enjoyed his video on why Sherlock (the BBC show) is trash. (come to think of it I should have added that to the first list). And it seems the video on Sherlock was really good and well argued.... and it seems his “In Defense of Dark Souls 2″ video... was not.

Using subjective language, bad representation of facts, or simply outright getting certain information wrong, Hbomberguy′s video on Dark Souls II is, at best, a man trying to argue that he likes Dark Souls II because it is “Objectively good”, rather than simply accept he likes it... because he likes it.

MauLer is kind of an asshole, but I have learned more about dissecting someone’s argument and deconstructing what they have said watching his response series than I have in any english or debate class I have ever had.

The response is over 10 hours long, but this is because MauLer takes time with each and every statement he takes umbrage with, discussing what is being said, discusses why it is false or dubious, and then compares with actual facts and research.

If you ever want to know how to to distinguish subjective opinion from objective fact in someone else’s argument regarding... ANYTHING really, I highly recommend this series.

I may not like MauLer as a person, but DAMN if he doesn’t know how to deconstruct an argument in a logic, emotionless way.

John Wolfe: Maize

Maize is a stupid game. a Stupid stupid game.

It involves sentient corn, and underground secret genetics lab, a Russian bootleg teddy bear that hates everyone, sentient corn, and a crumpet.

This game IMMEDIATELY went on my wishlist after watching this playthrough. Please watch John try and figure what the actual fuck is going on in this Monty Python-eque weird black comedy. It’s stupid, it’s weird, it’s bizarre and it’s honestly one of the funniest games I’ve seen streamed.

Hollywood: a Celebration of the Silent Era

This is not a youtube playlist. I mean it IS, but what this actually is, is a TV series released in the UK in 1980 covering the Silent Film era. As it was made in 1980, it includes interviews with many of the silent film stars who were often still alive during this documentary’s production. Each episode covers a specific theme of the silent movie era. One episode is about comedies, one is about WWI, one is about Westerns etc etc.

It’s a fascinating series, because it focuses on the silent era which, in modern day, I think many people unfairly think of as “those first few years of movies before movies really became a thing.” And that’s such a shame and really not true. The artistry, camera tricks, and raw nature of this early era of film making is so important and produced films which can still be watched today easily, possibly even easier than a few modern movies as often the very fact that the films are silent means they are universal, regardless of what language you speak.

I think an episode or two might have been turned to private or copyright claimed in this playlist, but I know if you do a search on youtube you can find the episode uploaded by someone else.

Diamanda Hagan: Bonekickers

Bonekickers is the show Mathew Graham made before he went on to work on the new Dr. Who. It is about archaeologists and it is God-fucking-Awful.

It is.... look. Ok. I like Archaeology a lot. But this isn’t a show that’s bad “if you like history” or “if you know things about archaeology”. This show is bad because it doesn’t make a single fucking lick of sense, all the characters are awful and terrible, and even if you understand what’s going on in the story you’re still going to be screaming “WHY????” at the screen as each new baffling stupid piece of the puzzle slots into place.

Diamanda Hagan has 0 time for this garbage and she’s going to walk you through each episode to show you how truly horrible this piece of garbage is.

Cry Plays: Ori and the Blind Forest

With Ori and the Will of the Wisps releasing recently, now is a great time to go and watch Cry playthrough the first Ori game. an absolutely gorgeous piece of work with a beautiful soundtrack and really likeable character designs and a sweet story, Ori is a great game to put on, sit back, and just let it wash over you. Cry’s playthrough is also great because although its a Metroidvania game, Cry fast forwards the parts where he backtracks for a long period of time, so you don’t get stuck watching him run back and forth as he tries to figure out where to go next or anything like that.

Cry also recently started playing the sequel as well!

If you enjoyed this list at all, please consider tipping me for a coffee

☕️ Ko-fi ☕️

#self isolation #Quarantine #Youtube #Links #Recommendations #Recommended #ask to tag #long post #No editing we die like men

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aion-rsa · 5 years ago

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Ghosts Series 2: ‘They’re stuck in an existence they didn’t ask for… like all of us’

https://ift.tt/35QzhQ6

The Ghosts creators have worked together for over a decade. To-date, the six-person team (Mat Baynton, Simon Farnaby, Martha Howe-Douglas, Jim Howick, Laurence Rickard and Ben Willbond) have written and performed in long-running children’s sketch comedy Horrible Histories, three series of fantasy sitcom Yonderland, feature film Bill, and two series of the supernatural BBC comedy Ghosts, with a third on the way.

Channelling Mrs Merton asking Debbie McGee what first attracted her to the millionaire Paul Daniels, I ask Baynton and Howick via Zoom what inspired the group to write Ghosts, a sitcom about a group of individuals who frequently drive each other nuts, trapped together for what may well be eternity?

Both laugh. “I’m sure we do drive each other nuts in many ways,” says Howick, “but the truth is, like the ghosts, what we always come back to in these episodes is that they love each other and don’t know what they would do without each other. I think that can be said for the group?” He looks to Baynton for confirmation and gets a happy nod.

Considering the well-documented fallings-out and imploding egos of other comedy gangs – the Pythons not least among them – this level of harmony over such a long period feels remarkable. What’s their secret? “I think we keep each other honest,” says Baynton. “There are certainly heated debates.”

Heated’s too strong a word, says Howick. “We only really fight for our opinion, we never fight each other.” On the rare occasion that there isn’t unanimity about a particular topic, there might be a locking of horns and a democratic vote, but real arguments don’t happen. “There’s no animosity or jealousy with each other’s independent careers,” he explains. “We are our most important project. We have no desire to work each other up. We’re all genuinely fond of each other.”

That much is clear watching them interact. The online BBC press launch for series two was punctuated by the group making each other laugh. Silly voices. Running jokes. At one point, to the absolutely delight of his colleagues, Simon Farnaby’s crotch moved unavoidably front and centre as he stood up in front of his webcam to adjust a window blind. The rapport is real.

Indeed, during UK lockdown, say Baynton and Howick, the group’s regular Zoom calls drafting Ghosts series three were a godsend. Aside from the boon of having regular work when so much of their industry was in uncertainty, being able to see friends for three hours on a Wednesday evening kept them sane.

“It’s been a tonic in an otherwise relatively difficult and quite miserable time to have been able to jump on Zoom and make each other laugh with ideas for these characters that we love,” says Baynton. Entertainingly, when the group splits off into writing pairs, each does impressions of the absent characters while drafting dialogue. “It’s funny,” remarks Howick. ‘When we come together as a six, if we’re trying to pitch a positive idea, it’s usually done in a [segues into the regional accent of his upbeat character] Pat voice. Or if it’s a melodramatic idea or if it’s over-the-top, it might be a [Baynton’s Romantic poet character] Thomas voice.”

Via video chat, it took a little longer for the group’s writing wheels to start turning. Ordinarily a new series would start with two weeks of the gang together in the same room. Stretching that to months of three-hour Zoom calls, fitted in amongst home schooling for the parents among them, was an adjustment. “The energy that you would bring to a room at 10 o’clock in the morning in an office wasn’t there,” says Howick. “You’d have to try and generate this feeling even though everyone was exhausted.”

Howick found himself seeking out frivolity to reach the right frame of mind. He played videogames. “If I sat and thought too hard about what was going on outside my door, it would make me really sad, and so in order to keep a vital part of me going, in order to meet with Mat and the others every Wednesday and keep that bright demeanour, it was good to do that.” The writing momentum started to return with the ease of lockdown, says Baynton. “The simple mental health-saving fact of being able to meet up with family in a garden helped a lot.”

Movies

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By Rachel Meaden

The Teleprompter Interview: Katy Wix ‘My First Screen Crush was King Kong’

By Louisa Mellor

Trying to write comedy against a such a serious backdrop of world events also felt uncomfortable, says Baynton. “You feel like it’s almost… immoral is too strong a word, but when there are nurses and doctors and teachers and crucially important people doing the work they do… It felt like an elephant in the room to be tap tap tapping away at a story about another day at Button House and what the ghosts are up to.”

It helped to know how warmly Ghosts series one had been received by its many fans. “What’s touching is when we do get messages from fans who say how much the show means to them. I know how important comedy has been to me in my life, so if we can be that to other people, it doesn’t feel completely frivolous.”

Ghosts, with its colourful selection box of characters (there’s a caveman, a headless Elizabethan, a 17th century witch, an excitable Regency woman-child, an Edwardian snob, a WWII captain, a 1980s scout leader and a 1990s Tory politician) may look frivolous, but series one had moments of real pathos. Baynton is proud of the fact that the series doesn’t shy away from the bleaker side of its ‘dead people’ premise. “If you really interrogate the truth of it – these are people who lived, people who died, people who loved or were thwarted or killed or suffered injustices or never got to love the person that they admired…”

The original idea was for a much bigger cast of ghosts, with everybody playing multiple parts, Horrible Histories-style. It quickly became clear that the story needed to home in on a small ensemble, giving the gang what Howick calls “its own silhouette”. Had they stuck with the original plan, “It would have been like The Muppet Show,” he says. “Every week would only have scratched the surface.” Too many ghost characters would have diminished the show’s emerging premise, says Baynton, which is about “being stuck forever in a tedious and endlessly repetitive existence.”

A bit like lockdown, we joke. Exactly, says Baynton.

“We talk about this a lot. The way I see it is that their situation is just the same as a living person’s: they’re stuck, they’re in an existence they didn’t ask for, they don’t know why they’re there or what happens next. They know that there is a next ‘thing’ but whether they go to heaven, or hell, or something else, they don’t know. They’re just the same as people on earth.”

Howick agrees, “Their existence is very mortal in that respect.”

Writing about the afterlife, a sense of existential metaphor is unavoidable, says Baynton. “There is something deeply relatable about it, which is where sitcom will always thrive. You can’t really fail to connect with a story about a person who doesn’t know what to do with their time or who feels stuck. Regardless of class or job or circumstance, that is all of us.”

If the ghost characters are all of us, they’re also peculiar to their time period. The collision and unexpected blending of different social contexts is where much of the series’ comedy comes from. Howick compares the composition of the group to Blackadder Goes Forth, which kept “ranks of characters from different classes stuck together in a hell hole, cheating death every single week.”

The source of much of the comedy is thwarted status, says Baynton, “It’s the stuff of Alan Partridge and Hyacinth Bucket and Basil Fawlty… people who see themselves a certain way but who aren’t that way to the audience. Every single one of the ghosts is that to some extent. Anything that gave you status in life, you’re robbed of the second you die, so that’s already pretty funny in the sense of a captain who can’t lead, a wealthy woman who has no wealth, a politician who is not recognised as an authority, a poet who can’t pick up a pen, a Scoutmaster with no kids…”

“Not Scoutmaster!” interrupts Howick. “Adventure Club leader!” Before series one aired, they were instructed not to use the “Scouts” organisation name in scripts. “That was before they knew who Pat was going to be,” says Howick. Pat, for info, is a sweetie, and the Scouts should be proud to have him. He’s also a vibrant dancer, as series two, episode two shows.

“There’s a lot of dancing this series” says Howick. “Without giving too much away, there’s dancing in the last episode. I think Thomas’ best dance is at the end.”

Fans can expect more playfulness with series two. Now that the characters are established and the tone has been taken to heart, the team could afford to experiment a little more. “With series two, because the audience hopefully are with us at this point, we can throw different curveballs,” says Baynton.

“In that way that The Simpsons or those long-running American things, you can suddenly do one in black and white, as if it’s a Hitchcock thing. We’ve definitely had fun. There’s an episode later in the second series which is a format of its own. We’re thinking about those things for series three, being free to be really playful with it.”

There’s a Christmas special episode to come, “the last one ever to be filmed!” joked Farnaby at the press launch. The timing on series two’s filming was especially jammy, with only one day lost to the UK TV and film industry shutdown in March. They made the decision not to use supporting artists in the last scenes filmed, set in a Medieval plague village. The irony of having to tell actors they couldn’t come and play plague victims because there was an actual plague wasn’t lost on them, says Baynton.

Thomas gets a gun in series two, they tease, and we’ll find out how he met his end. “The burning question for fans of the show is how the characters died, and you will find out some in each series,” says Baynton. “There are some we’re holding onto for as long as we possibly can, but rest assured, they’re coming!”

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

Ghosts series 2 starts on BBC One at 8.30pm, with all six episodes available to stream afterwards on BBC iPlayer.

The post Ghosts Series 2: ‘They’re stuck in an existence they didn’t ask for… like all of us’ appeared first on Den of Geek.

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philipholt · 4 years ago

Text

Looking back on Software Development in 2020 and forward to 2021

I think we can all agree 2020 sucked. Hopefully 2021 will be better.

I've been a remote worker for 13 years by choice but in 2020 I HAD TO DO IT because, well, most programmers and tech workers did. I wrote about how Remote work != Quarantine Work while our whole division and then the whole company moved back home! We were a fairly remote-friendly company before but I have to admit I didn't always think my coworkers had really deep empathy for the remote...until they, too, were forced to be remote.

Last week on the podcast, I got to speak with Amanda Silver. She's a CVP in the Microsoft Developer Division who has been coding and thinking deeply about coding for many years. She's leading the creation of tools like Visual Studio, Visual Code, Live Share, Code Spaces, IntelliCode, and other collaborative productivity products. She's always thinking about what coding will look like in 1, 5, and even 10+ years.

We talked about her thoughts on moving the division remote and whether it would slow us down. Would it change how we develop software? What about when everyone comes back? After talking to her about her thoughts on 2020 and where she thinks we're heading, I got to thinking myself and wanted to put those thoughts down.

2020 broke everything, and developers like to fix things

Somewhere in the spring as we started into lockdown, developers started making sites. Sites to track COVID, GitHub projects with scripts to scrape data and analyze it. Javascripters started making D3.js visualizations and codepen users started building on top of them. Bots on twitter would tweet out updates and parse new data.

When there's a problem - especially a scary or untenable one - developers run towards the challenge. Necessity breeds invention and 2020 was definitely a year where we were collectively reminded there was a bunch of stuff that was always possible, but we needed a push. Cameras and mics were upgraded, ring lights were purchased, home networks got fancier, and everyone who could called their ISP and got an upgraded plan. We could have done all this before, but why? Remote work happened for the first time in 2020, and I say that having worked remotely forever.

We HAVE to collaborate remotely now

Back in 2010 I spoke to PhDs at Microsoft Research about how people feel when they are remote and what they can do to be more connected. Ten years! Folks thought it was pretty "out there" but I sure needed my virtual cubicle buddy this year.

2020 accelerated what was possible with remote collaboration. I spent hours coding with Live Share, pushing text and coding context over the wire, not a ridiculous 4k worth of pixels. Having two cursors (mine and my friends) - or even 10! - in one Visual Studio seemed like magic. Even more magic is me pressing F5 and my coworker hitting their localhost and seeing our app running! We needed tech like this more than ever in 2020.

I heard one story where a company sent everyone home but folks had disparate desktops and laptops so they set up 100s of Virtual Desktops over a weekend so everyone was able to log into secure work systems from their home machines.

For us, since we use Github and Azure DevOps here in DeviDiv, our collaboration model is asynchronous and distributed whether we are in the office or not. Can you imagine everyone working remotely while using a locking source control system in 2020? I feel bad for those who are in that predicament.

Can something be BETTER remotely?

Many of us miss being in the same room with co-workers, and we will be together again one day, but are there some things that the constraint of being remote can make better? In the podcast episode Amanda said that our new hire bootcamp was so much better remotely!

She said (paraphrasing a bit):

We have a bootcamp for anybody who's newly started on the team. They actually fly out for two weeks. And the first week is introduction and the second week is our customer driven workshop. And our customer driven workshop is basically this really intense team project where you break up into groups of five to six people, and you're given a business assignment like - how could we double the number of Python developers using Visual Studio Code.

You're basically doing like stickies on the wall the entire week - that's how you collaborate. I've been so amazed that that has transitioned to be remote first. And it's better. It's better. That was a brainstorming process that I thought was only possible in person it's better.

When we moved remote, we had to essentially reboot the way that we thought about our meeting culture to actually make it much more inclusive. And if we go from 40 to 50% of the people participating to just 2 people participating, that's a huge, not only degradation, but you're wasting people's time. Right?

Now if we can actually take six people who've never met each other before and get them to work super collaboratively on a new problem area that they've never worked on before. It's incredible. And the thing that's also really awesome about it is they are forced by nature of the fact that this is remote to actually create it as digital content. Whereas in the beginning they would literally walk us through sticky notes on the wall and they had fantastic ideas, but it was really kind of somewhat unorganized and, and it was hard to be able to see and, and retain and share out afterwards what these incredible ideas were that they came up with.

But when remotely starts with this digital format by necessity because everyone is remote first, we actually now have all of these things archived. We can come back to them, we can go back and actually see, you know, what was the genesis of the thought and, and pursue a lot of these things that we really weren't being able to pursue previously.

Constraints breed innovation!

It was nice to be reminded that People are People

2020 normalized being a person. Having a boss welcome a sad child to sit with them during a meeting reminded me that, what, my boss is a person? With a life and kids? Having meetings while going for walks, talking about treadmill desks, and video called parties with family, and OMG when will this be over is the most horrible team building exercise ever.

It's forced us to rethink our group's culture, how our interpersonal dynamics work, how many meetings we have (let's have less), and it's given everyone the joy of somewhat flexible hours. We talk more now about 'is everyone in this meeting being heard?' than ever before. We use the "hand raising" tool in Teams to make sure all voices get a chance to speak.

If 2020 hadn’t happened, we may not have made these important leaps forward. MAYBE this would have happened by 2025 or 2030 but COVID was the pivot point that forced the issue.

Here's some other blog posts that are both reflecting on our last year and hopeful for the coming year:

Software Development in 2021 and Beyond by Amanda Silver

4 Open Source Lessons for 2021 by Sarah Novotny

Low-code Trends: Why Low-Code Will Be Big In Your 2021 Tech Strategy by Dona Sarkar

PODCAST: Living through 2020 as a Remote Developer

Sponsor: Looking for free secure coding training but don’t know where to turn? Check out Veracode Security Labs Community Edition to start hacking and patching real apps online. Try it today.

Looking back on Software Development in 2020 and forward to 2021 published first on http://7elementswd.tumblr.com/

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prakash29sahu · 3 years ago

Text

My 2022 Plans & Goals

Here are my plans for 2022 starting today: The goal is to be Productive and stop being lazy. Lockdown period just made to more lazy than ever, I was just watching web shows and movies to pass my time rather than learning some skills. It’s time to make up for that lost time. Here is the list of things I’m gonna try to figure out this forthcoming year.

1. Learn Coding — The goal here is to first understand how Web2 works and then shift towards learning core Web3 concepts. Some of concepts and languages I would like to learn are:

Programming Languages: C++, Python, C#, Java, Ruby, Kotlin, Solidity (Web3)

Frameworks: NodeJS, Django, Bootstrap, Next JS, jQuery, Angular, Flask, Atom, React

Web Development: HTML, Css, JavaScript

Concepts: DSA, Cryptography, Smart Contracts, DAO

Tools: Android Studio.

NOTE: I’m picking one language at a time to learn, this list is a lot to learn and may take forever. Once I feel I’m done with one language then I’m moving to the next language. Anyone who is just starting out to learn coding I would suggest just pick one you like which also has good job opportunities near you. Build your fundamentals learn DSA, Programming Paradigms(OOP/ functional), design patterns, etc.,

2. Read Books — One of most procrastinated things in my life has been reading books. I’m not much of an avid reader, but I have read a few (4 to be exact). Books help in learning new words, improving vocabulary and imagining new worlds.

Looking at fat books scares me a lot. I have kept a target of finishing at least 8 books this year, which ones I’m not sure. Book recommendations are most welcome. But I do have a list of books to finish for a lifetime:

https://t.co/iILkBipD0P

3. Improve financial knowledge — This pandemic has made everyone aware of their finance situation. I do know a little about finance, this year I want to learn in detail.

From reading balance sheet to understanding option chain data. It’s time to start building my portfolio. I’m looking out for crypto investments to diversify my portfolio. Hope the Government does not ban crypto. This year I will also be buying my first NFT. Sounds very small step but got to start somewhere.

4. Make connections — with people who are smarter than me. Build relationships with businesses and improve my communication skills.

If you guys didn’t know then here it is I suck at verbal communication. This is also the reason why I have started to write blogs, threads and newsletter as an exercise to improve my communication skills. Connecting with smarter people not only makes you smarter but also open minded and you get to learn a lot more than what you would in your domain.

5. Start Meditation, Play Outdoor Games and Take Cold Showers — Sounds very simple, trust me it’s not. For the last few months I think the universe is signaling me to start meditation constantly. I did try it for 2 days and gave up cause mostly I look for fast results.

I’m gonna try meditating everyday, not for any spiritual benefit cause I haven’t experienced any of it yet in my life but to increase my patience level in terms of expecting results and to increase my focus. Cold Showers are to challenge myself. Outdoor games to build sportsman spirit and to learn co-ordinating in a team.

6. Learn Skills — like affiliate marketing, Sales, UI/UX Design, Premier Pro editing, etc.,

Just trying my hands on these skills.

7. Writing — In the process of learning the above mentioned skills documenting all of these in the form of blogs, newsletter or threads.

This will not only help in solidifying what ever I have learnt but also help in building an audience. Oh! by the way here is my Twitter link, you guys can follow me there.

For example: while coding I can make a GitHub repository of all my practice programs. This will not only act as a proof of work but also help in tracking my performance or maybe building a personal portfolio.

8. Less Social Media Usage & sleep less — The second part my be confusing cause it is applicable only to me. I’m one of those guys who sleep for more than 10 hours a day. More than 50–60% of my time is wasted in sleeping and scrolling through social media sites.

This is also the reason why I recently deactivated Instagram. Social Media is a good place if you follow the right people, but it gets addictive. Also there is a lot of misinformation and cyber bullying. For some reason I find Twitter to be a lot better than Instagram.

Here’s a summary:

1. Learn Coding

2. Read Books

3. Improve Financial Knowledge

4. Make connections

5. Start Mediation, Play outdoor games and Cold Showers

6. Learn Skills — Marketing, Sales, & Design

7. Writing

8. Less Social Media Usage and Sleep less

Do share your thoughts and suggestions on my first blog/thread. If you think I should try something new in 2022 then go on I’m reading your comments. Sign Up to my newsletter where I share my regular updates, learnings and new experiences and a lot more stuff!

Let’s get connected on Social Media. I’m available on the following sites:

Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube LinkedIn Discord Medium GitHub Tumblr Reddit Substack

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suzanneshannon · 4 years ago

Text

Looking back on Software Development in 2020 and forward to 2021

I think we can all agree 2020 sucked. Hopefully 2021 will be better.

2020 broke everything, and developers like to fix things

We HAVE to collaborate remotely now

Can something be BETTER remotely?

She said (paraphrasing a bit):

Constraints breed innovation!

It was nice to be reminded that People are People

If 2020 hadn’t happened, we may not have made these important leaps forward. MAYBE this would have happened by 2025 or 2030 but COVID was the pivot point that forced the issue.

Here's some other blog posts that are both reflecting on our last year and hopeful for the coming year:

Software Development in 2021 and Beyond by Amanda Silver

4 Open Source Lessons for 2021 by Sarah Novotny

Low-code Trends: Why Low-Code Will Be Big In Your 2021 Tech Strategy by Dona Sarkar

PODCAST: Living through 2020 as a Remote Developer

Sponsor: Looking for free secure coding training but don’t know where to turn? Check out Veracode Security Labs Community Edition to start hacking and patching real apps online. Try it today.

Looking back on Software Development in 2020 and forward to 2021 published first on https://deskbysnafu.tumblr.com/

0 notes

parabolicadventures · 4 years ago

Text

2020

year of covid

ns - ord-ed in feb, was a bittersweet farewell at safra jurong where they made me chug a whole mug of beer geez

greece - absolutely loved this. felt super blessed/privileged to experience a different way of life. plus the travelling vibes were really something else - i just felt so carefree walking down the pretty streets. only regret was not spending more time in athens :-(

flash - really slow start with nothin much to do cos covid and all and i was struggling to stay awake HAHA. at least i picked up some useful stuff here and there plus the boss was so knowledgeable about so many things. also the ppl were super fun and nice!!!! plus decent money too

circuit breaker - q shook a legit lockdown happened and seeing it all around the world too. staying home practically the entire time, doing housework, working out almost every other day (i actually gained 4kg not sure if muscle of food tho) was p bored tho trying to be productive... i even tried to learn python lmaoooo

orientation - was hella awkward online, to make it worse my social skills probably regressed from reasons all too familiar. made a grand total of zero friends geez

got notified about the scholarship when sch already started and i already lost all hope so i was super thrilled

archi - the learning/teaching is so different from the usual sch and i love it. but the work can get super crazy at times where everything else is drowned out by all the deliverables. still struggling with the design aspect as well as with presentations... but i know i’ll get there

usp - residential life is another highlight - the convenience + freedom is great - sometimes i note how surreal it feels that i’m actually studying philo. but still having mad doubts cos the workload & deadlines was intense with archi man i was q stressed during crunch time.... really need to learn how to write essays faster if not i cfm cannot balance one but made my first friends here!

grades were kinda expected so i’m not too disappointed, but really need to pay more attention to my health/social life lmao lost 5kg, barely exercised, didn’t join any ccas at all.. picking up sos dinner, prods and icg sports next sem + thinking of joining more committee bs and feeling compelled to start volunteering again but looking at how i handled my first sem its gonna be hard man

didn’t feel like i’ve grown much tbh... developed mostly hard skills like writing, drawing & softwares i guess. as a person i actually feel like i’ve regressed? more inward looking unfortunately. yet when i compare myself to that that jc kid i’ve changed for better (more perspective, manage stress better) & worse (less bubbly, more withdrawn)

others - turned 21, friends turned 21 so had some great celebs and catchups, finally passed driving but tbh still not really digging it cos i lack the confidence (also i almost crashed into fking parked motorcycle lmao wtf), bought my first big ticket item (laptop) with no regrets, starting investing (only with robos tho), jaded-ness in life still remains, i find myself increasingly judgmental + disagreeing with parents + sometimes it feels so suffocating to be at home (hint hint, tb to ns & my love for staying in).

also still haven’t gotten over her wtf

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sacha-oleksandr · 4 years ago

Text

Today, instead of doing a random prompt, I have an announcement and a happy little story!

Earlier in 2020, about the same time that we went into lockdown, my department at work was restructured. Previously, I was under the Final Documents Department, and we were our own thing parallel to the Shipping Department. However, the company hired a new manager for both departments and put them both under the Shipping umbrella (we shall call him Z). I was carved out as my own department and brought someone over from Final Docs with whom I worked well and who would become my ops assistant.

I became an actual manager with one employee. I delegated a few tasks to her, and we were in contact every day (both of us are still working from home), so it wasn’t like managing a team. Thankfully. Being a manager has reinforced my aversion to being responsible for another living being in any capacity, let me tell you. But we have been a pillar of efficiency and despite some technical difficulties a few times we have always managed to get everything done. (Okay, there are a few things dropped in our laps that we never got around to—but a lot of balls were dropped in the juggling of these tasks, and none landed in our court.)

When I first met Z, we had a video call where we introduced ourselves and spoke some about his philosophies on management and I explained what MERS is and what we do on my team. I mentioned to him that I was learning data science on my own time, especially since I was obsessively completing DataCamp courses while in quarantine, and he told me he knew the data scientist at our company who he was happy to connect me with. (Yes, there’s only one data scientist. We’ll call him A.)

A got me all kinds of permissions “under the table,” like access to the database that the software we use for the main company gets its information from and the ability to download programs and such things onto my computer. I got set up with Jupyter Notebooks and he walked me through some basic things I was having trouble figuring out. Once I got comfortable experimenting and building things on my own, I built a handful of report generators and transformers in Python that I could run on my computer, which takes a bunch of manual organization and review out of my daily routine (which is huge, because I’m handling daily reports and responsibilities for two of the three companies—my ops assistant does the dailies for the third). A helped me troubleshoot my code and marveled at what I could do on my own.

Fast forward to two or three weeks ago. A calls me and tells me he’s been talking with his boss about me, and for a few weeks they’d been discussing bringing me onto the new team of which A has recently become team lead, the Strategy and Innovation Group. He offered me a position as a junior software developer on his team and told me my first project would be to finish automating the crap out of my current responsibilities.

I had a call with Z and my ops assistant this morning to finalize the details, one of which is that she was offered a team lead position in the Final Documents Department! It’s extremely gratifying to know that the tools and methods I’ve taught her are actually contributing to her forward momentum and success.

The announcement, then, obviously, is that I accepted the position as Junior Software Developer in the Strategy & Innovation Group. I’m officially a tech person lol. And I have to learn a new programming language (Clojure) which is exciting and terrifying at the same time. The whole thing is, honestly. I have been the MERS Operations Manager since 2015 and frankly all my dreams for it are coming true: It’s being moved to a technical position, it’s being highly automated, and I get to be the one to make it happen.

Yay me! Sorry everyone, but 2020 is totally my year.

#clojure #software developer #new job #got a raise #I have to learn how to use a mac now #managers who are not entrenched are the best managers

0 notes

suzanneshannon · 4 years ago

Text

Looking back on Software Development in 2020 and forward to 2021

I think we can all agree 2020 sucked. Hopefully 2021 will be better.

2020 broke everything, and developers like to fix things

We HAVE to collaborate remotely now

Can something be BETTER remotely?

She said (paraphrasing a bit):

Constraints breed innovation!

It was nice to be reminded that People are People

If 2020 hadn’t happened, we may not have made these important leaps forward. MAYBE this would have happened by 2025 or 2030 but COVID was the pivot point that forced the issue.

Here's some other blog posts that are both reflecting on our last year and hopeful for the coming year:

Software Development in 2021 and Beyond by Amanda Silver

4 Open Source Lessons for 2021 by Sarah Novotny

Low-code Trends: Why Low-Code Will Be Big In Your 2021 Tech Strategy by Dona Sarkar

PODCAST: Living through 2020 as a Remote Developer

Sponsor: Looking for free secure coding training but don’t know where to turn? Check out Veracode Security Labs Community Edition to start hacking and patching real apps online. Try it today.

Looking back on Software Development in 2020 and forward to 2021 published first on https://deskbysnafu.tumblr.com/

0 notes