Tag: sabbatical
-
Sabbatical Lesson #2: Burnout
The second lesson I took from my sabbatical was that it's possible to risk burnout (and therefore, it's important to be aware of and ready to counteract it) even when you're not working (in the conventional sense). Fortunately, my coach is on hand to help.
-
Back at work after a three-month break, and it turns out the first thing that I'd missed is my team's quirky morning ritual.
Alt
Slack screenshot of Dan saying, at 08:57am: 'You know how many people pika-waved at me on a morning while I was on sabbatical? None. None at all. I missed you guys.' The quote is bookended by an animated GIF of Pikachu waving and another of Pikachu dancing around a heart. Five people have reacted with a mixture of Pikachu dances and waves.
-
Sabbatical Lesson #1: Boundaries
My three-month work sabbatical has taught me a lot, perhaps too much to digest in a single blog post, so here's the first lesson: especially in a life-friendly distributed workplace, it's important to set boundaries to make your work/life-balance function properly.
-
The final weekend of my sabbatical was spent, like the first one, at a Three Rings event. As a side activity to the volunteer work, everybody was asked to put their name on a paper plate and leave it on a particular table, allowing others to semi-anonymously add compliments, thanks, or kind words about its owner.
Alt
Dan holding a plate containing his name and a collection of compliments, listed in the full post.
Comments on my plate:
* Your my faveriot [sic] brother (gee, I wonder who THAT one was from 😂)
* Always seems to be doing interesting things. A maverick! Thinks outside the box
* Awesome
* Thank you for inventing this (a) system & (b) corporate model!
* Always smiley and excited
* Thanks for always pushing lots of new features!
* Puts up with idiots willingly and patiently
* You literally dreampt this whole thing into existence!
* Quirky
* Innovative solutions!
* Helpful in all ways!Fabulous. I might wall-mount it.
-
Moving Three Rings' Servers
Yesterday I achieved one of my primary sabbatical goals and moved Three Rings' primary servers to a new datacentre and a new architecture. But while the visible part happened yesterday, the whole thing's been months in the making and builds upon the effort of an entire team of dedicated volunteers.
-
International Volunteer Day
It's International Volunteer Day, and thanks to being on sabbatical I got to spend most of the day volunteering with Three Rings. I liveblogged everything I got up to in a series of notes to try to shine a light on what volunteering (in a developer/devops role) with Three Rings can look like; this post is a summary of all that liveblogging, plus a few extra thoughts.
-
Happy International Volunteer Day! Volunteering rocks.
As I'm on sabbatical, I'm in the lucky position of being able to spend most of the day on a volunteer project very close to my heart: Three Rings. Three Rings is a 22-year-old web-based service produced by volunteers, for volunteers. The software service we produce supports the efforts of around 60,000 volunteers working at charities and other voluntary organisations around the globe.
Alt
Dan, a white man with a goatee-style beard and long hair tied back, wearing a black t-shirt with an abstract pride rainbow, holds a mug of coffee in one hand and gives a thumbs-up with the other. Behind him, three computer screens show a mixture of code, source control, chat, email, and web browser windows. His desk is cluttered.
I'll be posting throughout the day about some of the different tasks I take on. My volunteer role with Three Rings is primarily a developer/devops one, but it takes all sorts to make a project like this work (even if my posts look biased towards the technical stuff)!
But first: coffee.
-
It's been a long day of driving around Ireland, scrambling through forests, navigating to a hashpoint, exploring a medieval castle, dodging the rain, finding a series of geocaches, getting lost up a hill in the dark, and generally having a kickass time with one of my very favourite people on this earth: my mum.
And now it's time for a long soak in a hot bath with a pint of the black stuff and my RSS reader for company. A perfect finish.
Alt
A pint of Guinness alongside a can, on a tiled bathroom shelf.
-
Off to Ireland to hunt for geohashpoints. Wish us luck!
Alt
Dan and his mother standing in an Oxford street, carrying luggage.
-
When my mother proposed that we take a holiday together somewhere, and that I could choose the destination, I started by looking at the Geohashing Expeditions Map.
Where, I wondered, could I find a cluster of mostly-land graticules ("square" degree of latitude and longitude) in which nobody had ever logged a successful expedition?
Alt
Somewhat recognisable map of Western Europe, broken up into square degrees of latitude Ave longitude and colour coded based on the number of geohashing expeditions recorded for each. Four contiguous squares on the West coast of Ireland are marked and annotated by hand with the word 'Target!'
I've been geohashing for ten years now and I've never yet scored a "Graticule Unlocked" achievement for being the first to reach any hashpoint in a given graticule.
Over the next week, if the fluctuations of the Dow Jones and the variable Irish weather allow, I'll be changing that.
-
Maybe it's just that my sabbatical is making me pay more attention then usual, but it feels like I'm getting very lucky with nearby geohashpoints lately. Tomorrow's hashpoint in my graticule might be achievable!
Alt
Map showing my location on Witney and a pin 2.5km away in a field outside Ducklington. Geohashpoint for tomorrow.
This is a good omen, perhaps, for next week. Next week my mother and I are going to hop over to the West coast of Ireland where there are several contiguous mostly-land graticules that have never seen a successful expedition. We could be the first! 🤞
-
Sabbatical Magic
Two weeks into my extended break from work and on my way home from Spain, I've discovered something magical about a sabbatical: it frees me from my compulsion to think about next week's work, at the weekend.
-
Me, hacking challenging Javascript at work: "Damn, I need a holiday."
Alt
Dan sits at a laptop in a hotel bar, a view of Barcelona out of the window behind him, a beer bottle alongside him.
Me, hacking challenging Javascript on sabbatical: "Ah, so relaxing."
-
Enjoying a glass of cava while the kids peer down out of the window of a Barcelona skyscraper.
Alt
Half-full champagne flute on a table. In the background, two children look out of a floor-to-ceiling window.
Day 8 of my sabbatical. Think I'm doing this right?
-
Geohashing expedition 2024-10-22 51 -1
My sabbatical might give me more time for geohashing, so long as the numbers come up right. So let's take an expedition up Harcourt Hill with the dog (plus video)...