Jonas Beckman

Coding has gone very well for a while, I feel more and more comfortable with the framework I am building.

Late today I’ll start switching hats. I’ll stop implementing backend functionality, have a brief meeting with my partner and hand over more detailed specs for the search front-end – then I’ll prepare for two days of demos, documentation writing and negotiations about future work. This is tight, but I have done it before.

Unfortunately my partner is behind with the front-end. It’s not that complicated, but his children take a lot of time and his girlfriend is about to give birth real soon. I wish them luck, of course – but it’s doubtful if I am physically capable of finishing myself in time. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.

We do have a good track record together – I think this will be alright in the end, too.

Update: hat-switching will happen soon. My partner is ready to take over the code and finish it.

A few more hours of adding new DB-tables and back-end functionality – then I’ll start making slides and practicing my lines instead. I’m working at home today and already talk to myself – it saves time, when people call I just keep talking.

Greg has started a June monologue. There is a part about re-used code vs homegrown that supports one of my pet beliefs: when coding, naming things is an act of communication. It should never just happen.

Hal, Alwin and everyone else appear very busy too. Someone recently mailed me and said it would soon be summer – but it IS summer already, we are just too busy to notice.

Last night Aila put me in a bath. I brought printouts and solved the worst remaining design problem after only a few minutes. Thanks!

After confirming that it really worked, I was too tired to go further and allowed myself to fall asleep…

When I woke up I realized the Thinkpad was still running beside me. The sound of that fan really gets to you after a few hours. I turned it of, but it was already early morning.

In other parts of the world: Alwin is contemplating ways to die while watching over his patients.

One way to die that doesn’t have to happen is capital punishment. As another American was executed yesterday, many people realized what really happened: the number of people killed by others went up by one. Killing creates nothing and restores nothing.

Late at night, I’m still regression testing after a DB re-design. It’s tedious, but satisfying in a primitive way: there are no magic bugs. Just slowly unraveling inconsistencies and typing errors… and once I pass my own tests I’ll be done. So it goes.

Very productive but long night. I wake up when Aila leaves and can’t go back to sleep.

There was mail: a possible new client had tried to attach sample files to her mail but failed. Thank heaven I don’t spend my time behind stupid corporate firewalls! I’ll probably have to go there in person to get the stuff.

OK – I’m off for a few hours at another gig. Hopefully I won’t be delayed there.

I am finally wrapping up my part of a never-ending editor project. Now that I am getting out it feels good again – and it’s nice to see new people get into the cool things we did.

In a way I wish I could spend more time there. But I have another system to deliver and lots of hustling to do in the next few days. We’ll see how it all turns out.

Take a look at what may be
the most satisfied shiatsu client ever! picture by Aila.

The sun is shining over Stockholm today. And Aila called a few minutes ago – she has rented a little house by a lake over the summer! Pictures should be up soon.. Update: first pictures are up!

Meanwhile, I am in bed behind black curtains with my Thinkpad, hacking to meet the last deadline of the season. It’s not really that close yet – but I never deal with customers in hacker-mode if it can be avoided. It’s much easier to focus on the business side of things with frozen code behind my back.

Did you ever wonder what your homepage sounds like?

Sometimes I code when I dream, trying to debug the kinks out of that grand re-design that will take me to the next level.

This usually happens just before or in the middle of an intense programming effort. Intense can mean many things, but I am thinking of two: understanding new concepts and the physical stress that comes from working very long hours.

Brent Simmons, yesterday:

Whenever something like Microsoft’s Smart Tags thing comes up, my first thought is to say: “Goodbye. Fuck you. I’m going to go collect butterflies. Fuck you.

And then I remember that the Web is way too valuable to just give it away like that. Sometimes I wish that wasn’t true, it would be so much easier.

Thank you for saying it so clearly. You are not alone feeling this way. And as Hal noted it’s not only programmers, this goes on everywhere.

1. blogging as journalism (respectable! productive! dull!)
2. blogging as storytelling (wussy! hippy-dippy! distracting!)
3. blogging as diarykeeping (effeminate! narcissistic! ugh!)

Which one is right for you? Greg currently wonders if an engineer’s log may be the right combination of all three. He is a good writer, so whatever he chooses will be interesting.

Welcome back, ~fletk!

Jörg has moved Schockwellenreiter.¨

Wes hosts an interesting little discussion of whether Smart Tags should be outlawed.

No, I haven’t given up writing here. Just lots and lots of work, the usual allergy and some minor illness. But it’s all getting better – and I am now only two weeks of crunch time away from a long vacation.

Reading my usual weblogs and surfing around is still a great source of inspiration – I just haven’t had enough focused energy to actually say something myself. And sometimes dreaming all by yourself is a good thing.

Aila has been busy, too – but her shiatsu practice is going well. We’ll soon celebrate midsummer together, like we always do. Then I’ll go here to sit up straight and shut up for while.

Looking around me I see many other webloggers taking breaks, for various reasons. Another trend is to move sites to commercial hosts (and sometimes new environments). Later this summer I will take a serious look at different alternatives. I’m still wondering if I’ll feel comfortable with Radio Userland – but I will give it another try.