Adventure Rocket Ship

A couple of months ago, I was probably opining about how I'd managed to successfully burn out on webdev-for-not-work projects, and how even writing down what happened made me feel carsick.

Not 'Oh jayzus what happened that last beer was a bad idea and so were the vodkas that it followed' sick, because I know what a hangover feels like and it's not like that. Nor even is it 'keeping anything on the inside is no longer optional curse you patient zero'.

It is 'I can smell Old Spice and we are on that long straight bit of road away from the Mythe Bridge and towards Ledbury and I would rather be at home playing with Lego than having to go and visit that woman who really doesn't seem to like us.' which was not nice, but which we kept on doing because of duty. And probably guilt leverage and fucked up family dynamics and oh anyway I was talking about coding.

Doing things with Rails (or Sinatra or Camping or oh just fuck off none of this shit works) makes me feel ill.

Today I did Sinatra things in more or less the same sort of way that you'd clean out layers of muck and dead forest animals from a disused shed. Crack on with it as quickly as possibly, breathe very sparingly so as not absorb too much atmosphere and do not think about what you're doing lest your unwilling suspension of belief look the wrong way at the wrong moment and it all comes clattering down as you steam outside to retch into a patch of stinging nettles next to the rotten door.

At some point I have to dive back in and make the thing sanitise its input and probably do proper work-queue things, which is going to mean more bloody Rails bolt-ons and some shitey edifice of opaque Gems with a pile of github bug reports going back two years. And toiling away in the sweaty dark at the back of the shed where the sludge is deepest, but at least you can't really see what you're shovelling. That crunchy squelching when you took a step sideways was probably a pheasant skull. That'll never come out of the treads on your boots.

Not tonight though. Tonight I have had quite enough of feeling like I'm going to vom.

The splendid orogeny, who put up with a nervous and jetlagged stranger on the drive up from Newark to, um, Woods Hole some three year ago, has sold a story to Strange Horizons. It's bloody good stuff. Go read the thing.

Well, that was... Surprisingly good fun.

A cheering lack of negative vibe merchants[1] meant room to breathe in the foyer-bit. UV-reactive earplugs-on-string meant the PA sounded pleasant for a change, and I could hear what people were trying to howl into my ears.

Matters arising:

I must apologise to Drew for leaving him to his fate among a pubload of BNP shitebags, though he seemed to enjoy the experience.

Met several Australians, who were uniformly lovely. Actually, I'm not sure I spoke with anyone who made me regret the encounter, which was a pleasant change. (Obviously, those concerned may have a different viewpoint.)

Swarf stormed it on the Friday. Frankenstein ruled on Saturday, mostly for setting fire to 'paint it black' and then jumping gleefully on the smoking remains. That's how you do cover versions.

[FX: Makes note of Eriseses t-shirt idea. Yes.]

I must have had a fine weekend since I've got the Whitby Lurgi for the first time.

[1] That's almost a post on its own. Almost. I refer the curious to bits of the JH-R bio.