scruffian

Our house has gas fired central heating, but 2 years ago we had a wood burning stove installed, as an alternative means of heating. I made friends with a local tree surgeon who keeps me busy with a constant supply of freshly cut logs. It seems that winter is more or less over now, so I feel confident that we can claim that this winter we didn’t need to use the gas heating once.

Its been more than a year since we used the gas to heat the house; an achievement we are proud of. It takes a lot of work to cut, stack and dry all our fuel. Lighting the fire every day and keeping it burning is a small chore but it requires attention.

There were several factors that made this possible. Firstly this winter was relatively mild. Secondly we had built up a big supply of wood over the last two years which mean we had enough seasoned wood to keep us going.

Relying on the stove as our only means of heating is challenging but also rewarding. By using this free supply of wood for heating our house, we save a money on our fuel bills, and also help the environment but reducing our reliance on fossil fuels.

A few years ago I would commute to work every day by train. Here are some announcements I collected during these journeys:

Short trains

I would like to apologise for the short formation of the train today. This is due to unavailable stock available. I do apologise for the short formation of the coaches this evening.

A regular conductor

We are just arriving at London Bridge where this service will terminate. Please remember to take all your baggage personal belongings with you. Please don’t forget mobile phones, laptop computers, gloves, scarves, bobbly hats, umbrellas, sandwiches, livestock, artificial limbs. and if you have any children, please take them with you as well. Thank you for travelling with Southern. let’s hope the rest of your day is wonderful.

Pigs

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, this is your conductor speaking. I have a brief announcement for you this evening, how can I put it, well, we have pigs on the line this evening. Once the pigs are cleared we can be on our way as soon as possible

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, this is your conductor speaking. We still have no more news on the pig situation. All I can do is apologise for the delay. Hopefully we will be on our way very soon.

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, this is your conductor speaking. Once again I do apologise for the delay on this service. We still haven’t sorted out the problem with the livestock running about on our network. Once again i do apologise for the delay on this service but i actually do not know how long we are going to be here

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, this is your conductor speaking. I am just letting you know there is movement up in front so give it a few minutes and we will be on our way. Once again i do apologise for the delay on our service this evening

This was the last we ever heard about the pig situation.

A year ago I started a project to write a haiku every day. These 366 haiku can be found on diurnalhaiku.wordpress.com.

The haiku act as a mini diary. I can remember where I was when I wrote many of them, and what inspired them.

This is a song I wrote with Rebekah. Well, she wrote the words and the music, and I helped when she got stuck.

This was a time in our life when I was out of the house working in the city for 12-14 hours a day, and she was at home in the countryside with the children. The video tries to capture this disconnect in our lives at that time.

It’s also on vimeo if youtube isn’t your cup of tea.

Growing Wild is now on Spotify.

I am writing this blog post using a desktop app.

For the last year and some, I have been working on a secret project at Automattic. Today this project was released Open Source for the whole world to see.

This has been a fascinating experience; this project has changed a lot of things about the way we work at Automattic. Many of the changes have been technical; this was my first project using Node and React for example. However for me the biggest change is not the technology but the process.

Code reviews

Historically we have had no formal code review process at Automattic; while it did happen it was sporadic, unsystematic, and almost always after the fact.

With this project we approached the process differently. Using GitHub we were able to open pull requests against the codebase in way which made it easy to share code between developers, designers, testers and other team members before it was in production. GitHub’s inteface makes it really easy to comment on specific lines of code and suggest a better approach. We made it a habit to always have at least one other person else give your pull request a “+1” before it was merged. Merging your own pull request is like giving yourself a high five.

This was scary at first; now my code was going to be seen by more people; “what if it’s not very good?”! It was also frustrating. Going from a system where you can make changes to the code instantly, to having to have someone else sign off on it does slow down the pace of development.

In return for this there some real benefits. I learnt a huge amount from the developers, designers and testers who reviewed my code. Often my code had problems; knowing this before I commited the code to the repo was a huge improvement, since now problems could be caught and improvements made.

We all learnt a lot through this process; we learnt how to review the code not review the coder; we learnt that critisism of your code is not critisism of you and should not be taken personally.

The result of this is a codebase of much improved quality, maintainability and consistency. Another benefit is the opportunity I have had to improve my coding skills. By talking to more people about my code, and also reviewing other developers code, I have learnt a lot more about what clean, maintainable code looks like.

Collaboration

With this project the way we worked was different by necessity. While GitHub helped us to collaborate more closly on projects and as a whole, than we had before, at its root the change was a cultural one.

Because we are encouraged to review code in areas that we have not worked on, this has lead to a more wholistic approach to solving problems. The work that went into major decisions like defining navigation and information architechture was always a cross-team effort.

This increase in cross team communication has improved has made us much more closely aligned in our vision of the product. I believe this is evident in the consistency you see throughout the new WordPress.com

Feedback

My experience at Automattic up to this point was generally one of working on a project on my own, up to the point where it was ready to be launched internally. This was partly a cultural thing, parly due to smaller sized teams and partly because collaboration was harder given the tools at our disposal.

I went from working on my own on a feature, to working closely with a group of 2/3 developers, and more broadly with all of the developers working on this new project.

By working on a feature with a team there is a lot more opportunity for us to use our respective skills to improve feature. A good team is more than the sum of its parts; as each member contributes in their specialty.

Having people who specialise in each of these areas to focus on these aspects of the product at the same time, and while the code was being actively worked on shortened the feedback loop in the development cycle, meaning that issues were caught early. Thus false assumptions were picked up before they became entrenched in code, and inconsistencies were ironed out before they became too difficult to change.

By increasing the level of communication around all of the decisions that go into building a project like this, whether its user experience, coding standards or business requirements, the result is that each of these areas receieves the attention it deserves at the point when the feedback is most useful.

Practically speaking this means that whereas before I would have probably committed code with a sub-par user experience, bad architectural designs, poor syntax, or (and!) sloppy designs, now the collaboration between the different members of the team lead to a product that is improved in all of these areas.

I have found this feedback to be really valuable, both in helping me to understand the things I need to work on to improve as a developer, and in reassuring me that I am making a valuable contribution to the project. As someone who loves making things this is very useful.

All of this communication also helps create a team who have a more closely aligned vision of what they are trying to build together and are pulling in the same direction

Open source

The latest change in the way that we work has been to make the project Open Source. This has meant making some changes to the way we work. We have to be careful not to share any private or personal information in our public repo, and have to consider how developers outside Automattic understand our code and issues.

This is a change we are still working out; I am interested to see what changes it brings to the way we work.

More info

Download the Mac desktop app
Learn about Calypso from the developer’s point of view
See the user announcement on WordPress.com
Browse the GitHub repository
Hear about the backstory from Calypso’s lead, Andy Peatling
Matt Mullenweg’s announcement

This riddle was written by Rebekah for my birthday:

If you feel lonely give me a squeeze,
I’ll do my best not to respond with a wheeze.
My keys cannot open any door,
But stand on a street and we won’t be poor.
Push my buttons but don’t wind me up,
Bystanders will put money in your cup.
Not just on the street, play me at home,
In field and in forest, wherever you roam.

I can be sown but not with thread
I’m only useful when I’m dead

I have many ears but can’t hear
I have hair but only on my ears

When I’m old you cut off my head
And grind my ears to make your bread

I don’t have legs yet still I stand
And though I wave I have no hands